Gen X. I lived through the glory days of 70's & 80's Saturday Morning cartoons and the early 90's Disney Afternoon, and as such I have a wide range of favourites, from The Archies, Scooby Doo, and the Cosby Kids through the Smurfs, Garfield and Friends, GI Joe, and of course Gummi Bears, Duck Tales, Tale Spin, Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop, and Gargoyles. I was there to enjoy the Hanna Barbera staples (Flintstones, Snagglepuss, Hong Kong Fooey, Captain Cave Man, Speed Buggy, Yogi Bear, etc) and the Filmation favourites (He-Man, She-Ra, Brave Starr) and even a smattering of anime (G-Force, AstroBoy, Speed Racer) and some poorly animated but brilliantly written classics including Rocky & Bullwinkle, Tom Slick, George of the Jungle, and The Mighty Hercules. On top of all of them, though, would be the Warner Brothers classics (Bugs Bunny & Tweety show, Roadrunner, Tazmanian Devil, etc).
In order to appreciate what the 1980's were like for cartoons you really had to be there. If it was a thing at all (popular movie, toy, game, etc) it was a cartoon (and usually a breakfast cereal and video game). No matter how poorly suited it was to animation they did it anyway. Rubik the Amazing cube was literally a cartoon about a magic Rubik's Cube. Rambo, the star of the R-rated and extremely violent movie First Blood, became the star of the cartoon Rambo: Force of Freedom. Monster trucks, which do nothing but drive over cars in an arena, had their go at it: Big Foot and the Muscle Machines. Many cartoons owed their entire existence to toy lines, and were basically nothing more than 1/2 hour animated commercials. Transformers, He-Man, GI Joe, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, The Wuzzles, Go-Bots - all existed only to sell toys.
They were weird but fun times.
