10 rules for kids cartoons

There was a time, not long ago, when cartoons dominated Saturday from the hours of 7 AM to 11 AM.  As a kid, this was practically a holiday every week until they started rerunning the cartoons, but even so, they ruled.  Then came cable TV and the Cartoon Network.  Now Saturday was every day and slowly cable TV killed Saturday Morning Cartoons in mid 2014.  Cartoons have a world all their own.  It's a world similar to our less exciting world but there are many differences.  Some of these differences have rules.  It's these rules that make the difference between a loonytoon cartoon and an instructional military animation. There are a few of them

10 - Cartoons are easily surprised - Think of it this way, if you can't easily surprise a cartoon, you won't get those great cartoon surprised expressions that are super funny.  Not only that, but if cartoons aren't surprised then why are you watching them?  They aren't going to do anything interesting.  So cartoons will be shocked and amazed at nearly anything that happens in front of them that isn't super average boring.

9 - If cartoons can talk, they say everything they are thinking - Scooby doo was famous for this, but it extends to really any cartoon.  It's pretty difficult to use subtilty on a cartoon where kids are concerned.  You need to make sure that the expression of doubt includes something like 'I don't know if this is going to work'.  The most interesting thing about this is that it is actually educational for the kids.  If you have noticed people will often use the same facial expressions that they saw on cartoons in regards to what they are thinking.  Don't believe me?  Next time someone says 'I wonder'  look at what they do.  They will look up and to the right and maybe put their finger on the side of their face.  Just like a cartoon would.  Even better, when you have kids you can watch their expressions change based on the cartoons they are watching.

8 - Cartoons must heal up in the next scene - Violence and cartoons are like cake and frosting.  Yes you could have one without the other, but you really would rather have them together.  One of the rules of this violence is that if the violence is not an integral part of the story, it will be erased by the next scene.  Cartoons heal up very quickly.

7 - Pain is different cartoon world - In the cartoon world, pain is used to show you the level of something that happened to the character.  Hit your hand with a hammer and it swells up in seconds and glows red, that's the rules.  The character gives you the same pain face that they give for a nail through the foot or a poke in the eye.  If you should have been killed by what happened, you will show near debilitating pain as well as a black eye and missing teeth.  It's ok, next scene you'll be fine.

6 - Cartoons fear death and Cartoons can't die - Pretty strange, but obviously true.  Often a character is threatened by another what will happen?  Well presumably they are scared because the other character means to kill them.  Cartoons fear for this.  yet cartoons rarely die and even if they do, you and everyone else can see their ghosts or angels in the same scene that they died.  Cartoons also often fear hell.  Who doesn't when hell is a flame filled hole and a classic textbook devil waiting to poke you with a pitch fork.







5 - Cartoons are nearly always hungry -  If a cartoon sees food, a cartoon is hungry.  one of the corollaries to this is all food in cartoons looks like thanksgiving dinner or dessert.  No wonder they are hungry all the food looks good.

4 - Cartoons are good singers - I guess it's kind of obvious, and yet strange, every cartoon that can sing, sings well, just ask Disney.  If you are a character that is going to last more than 2 scenes, you are gonna have some pipes.

3 - The underdog ALWAYS WINS -  Rule of cartoons, The smaller and more defenseless a creature, the more likely it is that they will not get beat up.  This one is pretty much universal, so much so that there was a cartoon called UnderDog.  He also always won because he was humble and lovable.

2 - Cartoons run at roughly the same speed - Have you noticed that no matter how fast another cartoon is, their competitor cartoon is nearly as fast?  this has more to do with the screen size than it has to do with the actual speed.  Road runner was always much faster than the Coyote, but often the Coyote could be seen matching the pace of the road runner.  Yes of course as the scene gets over, the faster leaves the edge of the screen.  I realize there are exceptions to this rule, but often it is true.

1 - Cartoon science is the science of the obvious - There is no real scientific principles in cartoons that aren't painfully obvious.  If you drop a large anvil onto the road below you need to use a lever.  The blueprints explain it all.  Every machine in cartoons are rube goldberg type machines that need reactions from elements to react with other elements to finally create the desired outcome.

Allow me to give a big thanks to Spencer for giving me this idea to work on.  Thanks!

10 Classic Cartoon Characters

When I was a kid, Cartoons were a vital ingredient of mornings .  ANYTHING that disturbed this was immediately looked upon with disdain especially Saturday morning.  Unless of course you were taking a Saturday to go to Disneyland or something, but that is most certainly the exception to the rule.  When I heard that these cartoons were the self same cartoons my dad watched when HE was a kid, I was amazed.  The truth is, these characters and their cartoons are classics even today.  They are still funny and still clever.  You can see the timelessness in them.  Now before you read my list.  You will not find any Disney properties.  This is only because in my own youth, there were no Disney cartoon shorts.  They just didn't exist after Steamboat Willie.  Otherwise,  the mouse would be included.

10. Foghorn Leghorn - Some of the most funny big talking ever.  Foghorn didn't have a lot of cartoons, but when he did, it was terrific. Often the pain in the side of the farm dog and a diminutive chicken hawk, Foghorn Leghorn was one of my dad's favorites.  Memorable lines:
Nice boy but he's got as much nerve as a bum tooth
Nice girl, but about as sharp as a bag of wet mice.

9. Daffy Duck - The constant competition to Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck went from just crazy to the perfect image of the 2nd tier Hollywood star.  Pretty much the opposite of Bugs Bunny. When Daffy took hold of his sanity it seemed that he would never get the upper hand.   In so many cartoons, with out his counterpoint, you would not get near as many laughs.

8. Porky Pig - The every man character.  Porky pig is the most personally identifiable to everyone that watches cartoons.  Paired up with nearly everyone, Porky pig was the perfect consistency to the zany nature of the rest of the troupe.  He was also the character that said 'That's all folks!'

7. Elmer Fudd - Some would say that Elmer was the every man.  Elmer to me was more of a different character that represented The Man.  Elmer was the hunter, the business man, the homeowner.  Elmer was 1940's middle class.  He was the suit, he was the rules.  He was bugs bunny's favorite target.  Yet he was always the heavy when it came to Daffy Duck.  We kind of enjoyed seeing Elmer get it.  After all he was gonna 'kill da wabbit!'

6. Tom and Jerry - Making a departure from the Warner Brothers camp.  Tom and Jerry to me were brothers that were constantly feuding.  Yet they were still brothers.  For me Tom and Jerry had phases that were good and others that were really strange and almost upsetting.  The Chuck Jones era of Tom and Jerry featured strange sound effects and odd music that I still can't place with the Hanna Barbera Tom and Jerry.

5. Popeye - I remember as a kid singing a song that had to do with garbage cans and Popeye.  The cartoons seemed sometimes very very old and other times quite current.  Popeye was the protector of the innocent and hapless in the face of the ultimate threat.  Bluto or sometimes Brutus.  Never enough to quite best his nemesis, Popeye would resort to eating spinach and then handily dispatch his foe with muscle and magic.  I remember him shooting someone from a tattoo of a battleship on his chest and using his signature corncob pipe as a blowtorch to open the can of spinach.  The 1960s were my favorites, but the black and whites were pretty good too.  Popeye always had a subtext of conversation with himself that I found to be very funny.

4. Little Audrey - From the 40's and 50's This cartoon along with Popeye and Casper would show up on weekdays on a local show that was designed to entertain and advertise to the kids while they ate their breakfast before going to school.  The episode of little Audrey I remember the most was Audrey the Rainmaker.  She had wished that the rain would stop forever so she could play every day.  Then she got her wish.  There were daffodils or possibly Irises that were screaming for water.  Those flowers often haunted my nightmares.  They were so desperate for water!

3. Casper - The friendly ghost!  Made by the same folks Casper was a member of a supernatural troupe that tried to convince kids that the supernatural was fun.  I guess.  I have no idea.  However, Wendy the witch was his good friend and he never really wanted to scare people, he just wanted to be friends.  I wonder how he died.  In the Simpsons I recall them mentioning that perhaps Casper was a dead Richie Rich trying to pay penance for a life of wealth and privilege.  I had seen certain Casper cartoons so many times that I remember every line and every piece of timing.

2. Snoopy - Snoopy Was the first comic strip I ever read.  I loved it.  I loved everything about it.  At the time, the only things I could count on was Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Charlie Brown Christmas.  But both of those shows were so important to me as a kid that they were marked on a calender so I wouldn't miss it.  The animation was fairly sloppy according to Charles Shultz, but for me it was the voices and the music that made it.

1. Bugs Bunny - The king of Saturday morning.  Overture!  Light the lights!  This is it.  We'll hit the heights.  The bugs bunny loony tunes hour would replay all of the loony tunes cartoons from decades in the past.  For me, they were new.  Everything about them was what made Saturday morning worth waking up for.











There it is.  My childhood wrapped up in animation.  Thanks for reading!