it also said that the people who ran Hanna-Barbera at the time only let Mike Lazzo at the "forgettable" H-B properties when wanting to do something with them
Besides SG, it went on to name Touché Turtle and Dum Dum, Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har, and Wacky Races
Maybe it was different then, but I have to question Wacky Races being forgettable, because it seems to have a decent cult following nowadays
But yeah, Touché was a waste of a funny idea and Lippy was a character who existed pretty much to take up space, his fucking sidekick was more appealing and he was a one-note character
Early CN's roster does seem a little anachronistic, somehow.
but NOT anachronistic ENOUGH; where were the old Felix the Cat shorts and Talkartoons, eh? Where was Steamboat Willie?
More seriously, i think there's a perception that made-for-TV cartoons are ephemera, and should not continue to air past a certain time. It means a lot of stuff that would still find an audience gets dropped, and it means some series become very difficult to obtain. OTOH, i think it's also the case that the perception influences the content of shows, as animators and execs prioritize keeping up with trends over trying to craft something that will endure.
Anyway, i certainly wouldn't call Wacky Races forgettable; i could be wrong but i think Dick Dastardly and Muttley are more widely recognized characters than Huck or Quick Draw, even.
Disney would never let Turner or anybody else get at Mickey Mouse cartoons
I know a lot of people don't think the good H-B stuff holds up very well, and maybe it's nostalgia speaking, but the Huck/Quick Draw/Yogi stuff does, to a certain extent, have a certain timeless quality to me. Maybe it's just the look of them and the outsize personalities and not so much the dialogue and stories that say that though.
There are lots of TV cartoons that postdate the heyday of Hanna-Barbera that I wouldn't consider ephemera though, like The Ren & Stimpy Show and Rocko's Modern Life. RML is very much a '90s thing but I feel the underlying sentiments and humor to transcend time.
Anyway, i certainly wouldn't call Wacky Races forgettable; i could be wrong but i think Dick Dastardly and Muttley are more widely recognized characters than Huck or Quick Draw, even.
Huck doesn't seem all that popular these days, which is understandable but kind of a shame. Quick Draw is mega-underrated
anyway, yeah, I don't consider "running lots of shows that are more than ten years old" anachronistic
I really don't like how television shies away from older product, even on networks ostensibly devoted to said older product (look how far fucking TV Land has fallen)
i wouldn't consider R&S or RML ephemera. i'm just noting what i think is a popular perception.
The old H-B cartoons do feel distinctly like they're from another time, to me. The old Looney Tunes shorts used to feel timeless, but that timelessness kind of evaporated for me once i became more aware of their context and influence, which kind of situated them in the timeline, if that makes sense.
i do feel that old things can nonetheless have a lasting appeal, but if you were to air old episodes of The Huckleberry Hound Show or The Yogi Bear Show today, very, very few (if any) first-time viewers would mistake them for new shows.
I don't know about others, but when I was a kid I didn't care how old this stuff was
Realizing those old Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry shorts were from the '50s and stuff was so mindblowing to me when I started learning that when I was around 10 or so
and to be honest, I do think Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! is kind of a hunk-a-junk that wasn't very well-made, but a lot of people my age loved it as kids
Scooby has come a long way since those days - even his 1970s stuff seems a little less poorly-done
I don't know about others, but when I was a kid I didn't care how old this stuff was
Realizing those old Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry shorts were from the '50s and stuff was so mindblowing to me when I started learning that when I was around 10 or so
i don't remember ever being surprised to learn of that. i think i was surprised to learn how old Scooby Doo was, although now that of course seems obvious. i also remember i was surprised to learn how old the character of Sabrina the Teenage Witch was.
i never cared how old stuff was as a kid, either, but some old stuff just didn't appeal, because it felt like it was written for older people. i thought things written for adults were boring.
Scooby Doo was repetitive, predictable, and seldom funny. i never understood why it was supposed to be so great.
I just can't get over how Scooby's appeal is so enduring that Cartoon Network was able to run The New Scooby-Doo Movies as weekend filler in the early 2000s, but they would never show anything like The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show or Yogi's Gang in those days.
The familiarity makes it easy-viewing, so maybe that's it.
When you sit down to watch an episode of Adventure Time you have absolutely no idea what it is you're about to watch. When you sit down to watch Scooby Doo, you know exactly what you're gonna see.
Maybe that's why people kicked up so much of a fuss about Scrappy. They changed the formula, and that formula *is* Scooby Do.
Wait is miss Utilis Anonus, or did Centie finally marry Anonus so her new name is Miss Utilis, or is Miss Utilis the daughter of Centie and Anonus sent back in time?
The familiarity makes it easy-viewing, so maybe that's it.
When you sit down to watch an episode of Adventure Time you have absolutely no idea what it is you're about to watch. When you sit down to watch Scooby Doo, you know exactly what you're gonna see.
Maybe that's why people kicked up so much of a fuss about Scrappy. They changed the formula, and that formula *is* Scooby Do.
also A Pup Named Scooby-Doo was pretty much the anti-Scooby, whereas when I was a kid it was the only incarnation I found entertaining
but yeah I'd love it if WB did some funny, reverent stuff with the H-B funny animals
I know this is probably some sort of godawful cliché but the notion of Quick Draw McGraw being confronted with a smartphone amuses me
In part because his hoof hands don't seem, well, hand-like enough to really handle one of those well enough and also because he's a dunderhead who'd probably corrupt the thing easily or something
i don't think i've seen any of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.
i think old cartoons started to feel less timeless to me once i began to realize that the old conventions of animation had histories the same as anything else. The iconic cartoon bomb isn't something that only exists in cartoonland, it's a stylized depiction of an old-fashioned hand grenade. American roads don't have dashed white centre lines anymore, but they did once and this has been preserved in cartoons.
And like, stuff like cartoon physics didn't just spring from nowhere, they're an artistic choice. Falling anvils aren't 'just a thing that happens in cartoons'; someone came up with the gag and others imitated it. The gag probably referenced the historical practice of anvil firing. In anime they drop washtubs instead of anvils, but it's the exact same gag, it's not as though washtubs are inherently more Japanese than anvils or anvils are inherently more American than washtubs, someone just made a falling washtub gag and others imitated it and that became a 'thing that happens in anime'.
Thick lines are strongly associated with the H-B house style, and subsequent artists to use the style adopted it with this in mind. There's no such thing as generic cartoon hair. And so on.
This probably all sounds quite obvious to you, but the idea that cartoons 'just are' a certain way was a big part of what gave me the impression of timelessness.
i think cartoons often preserve particular images as a visual shorthand, like how cacti are always the same shape. Sometimes this means particular outdated models get preserved as the shorthand for particular technologies, as with the Mills bomb (not the 'generic bomb', but the 'generic hand grenade', a distinct item).
i liked how Gravity Falls frequently references current technologies and trends; there's a lot of humour to be found there, and cartoons that rely overly on stereotypes as visual cues tend to miss out on it.
i think there are things that don't age well, but they're subtler cues, like comedic timing, dramatic pacing, the volume of the soundtrack in the mix, stuff like that. They seem like they'd be timeless, but instead they change slightly over time, in a way that can alienate later audiences.
Other stuff, like instrumentation, fashion, tech, even pop culture references, i think audiences can easily adjust to, since they're recognizably historical. The extra-diegetic conventions are something you have to be tuned into in order to spot, otherwise you just get a feeling of wrongness that's hard to place.
Maybe I cotton to older stuff more because when Cartoon Network was in its prime, they ran a lot of it and weren't ashamed of it. CN and Boomerang told us that the Looney Tunes and MGM cartoons and the good Hanna-Barbera stuff was great and meant to be cherished always...
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
Nothing is ever going to "age well." That's what time does.
Have you ever tried to read one of those goddamn thousand-year-old novels? Those goings go on and on and on for fucking ever. They are by modern standards "bad writing." Everything we value now - economy, digestibility, clear and defined story arcs - these are all things those folks never learned, never even thought about, because they didn't exist.
In another thousand years they'll still be telling the same stories, about loss and anger and grief and hatred and love and joy. But their own modes and forms and story shapes will be completely different.
Comments
but NOT anachronistic ENOUGH; where were the old Felix the Cat shorts and Talkartoons, eh? Where was Steamboat Willie?
More seriously, i think there's a perception that made-for-TV cartoons are ephemera, and should not continue to air past a certain time. It means a lot of stuff that would still find an audience gets dropped, and it means some series become very difficult to obtain. OTOH, i think it's also the case that the perception influences the content of shows, as animators and execs prioritize keeping up with trends over trying to craft something that will endure.
The old H-B cartoons do feel distinctly like they're from another time, to me. The old Looney Tunes shorts used to feel timeless, but that timelessness kind of evaporated for me once i became more aware of their context and influence, which kind of situated them in the timeline, if that makes sense.
i do feel that old things can nonetheless have a lasting appeal, but if you were to air old episodes of The Huckleberry Hound Show or The Yogi Bear Show today, very, very few (if any) first-time viewers would mistake them for new shows.
i don't remember ever being surprised to learn of that. i think i was surprised to learn how old Scooby Doo was, although now that of course seems obvious. i also remember i was surprised to learn how old the character of Sabrina the Teenage Witch was.
i never cared how old stuff was as a kid, either, but some old stuff just didn't appeal, because it felt like it was written for older people. i thought things written for adults were boring.
When you sit down to watch an episode of Adventure Time you have absolutely no idea what it is you're about to watch. When you sit down to watch Scooby Doo, you know exactly what you're gonna see.
Maybe that's why people kicked up so much of a fuss about Scrappy. They changed the formula, and that formula *is* Scooby Do.
i think old cartoons started to feel less timeless to me once i began to realize that the old conventions of animation had histories the same as anything else. The iconic cartoon bomb isn't something that only exists in cartoonland, it's a stylized depiction of an old-fashioned hand grenade. American roads don't have dashed white centre lines anymore, but they did once and this has been preserved in cartoons.
And like, stuff like cartoon physics didn't just spring from nowhere, they're an artistic choice. Falling anvils aren't 'just a thing that happens in cartoons'; someone came up with the gag and others imitated it. The gag probably referenced the historical practice of anvil firing. In anime they drop washtubs instead of anvils, but it's the exact same gag, it's not as though washtubs are inherently more Japanese than anvils or anvils are inherently more American than washtubs, someone just made a falling washtub gag and others imitated it and that became a 'thing that happens in anime'.
Thick lines are strongly associated with the H-B house style, and subsequent artists to use the style adopted it with this in mind. There's no such thing as generic cartoon hair. And so on.
This probably all sounds quite obvious to you, but the idea that cartoons 'just are' a certain way was a big part of what gave me the impression of timelessness.
i think cartoons often preserve particular images as a visual shorthand, like how cacti are always the same shape. Sometimes this means particular outdated models get preserved as the shorthand for particular technologies, as with the Mills bomb (not the 'generic bomb', but the 'generic hand grenade', a distinct item).
i liked how Gravity Falls frequently references current technologies and trends; there's a lot of humour to be found there, and cartoons that rely overly on stereotypes as visual cues tend to miss out on it.
i think there are things that don't age well, but they're subtler cues, like comedic timing, dramatic pacing, the volume of the soundtrack in the mix, stuff like that. They seem like they'd be timeless, but instead they change slightly over time, in a way that can alienate later audiences.
Other stuff, like instrumentation, fashion, tech, even pop culture references, i think audiences can easily adjust to, since they're recognizably historical. The extra-diegetic conventions are something you have to be tuned into in order to spot, otherwise you just get a feeling of wrongness that's hard to place.
Good night.
i am slowly escaping the clutches of flab
i would like to thank the academy