I think cartoons today are as good as cartoons of the 90's

[sanjiskellington]

I see a lot of people saying 90's cartoons were best. I used to agree with this but I think there has been a large improvement on cartoons for kids.

Don't get me wrong in the 90's we had Animaniacs, Batman, Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Ren and Stimpy and Spongebob, they are all awesome but over the last few years I think cartoons have improved.

I do think Gravity Falls, Adventure Time, Regular Show and Mlp are great examples of how there are great cartoon shows that can be enjoyed by both adults and children.

What do you all think? Do you think cartoons are getting better or worse or simply different?


For anyone interested I was born in 1988 so I do remember watching a lot of the 90's cartoons.

[sanjiskellington]

although I do think adult american cartoons have been a bit on decline lately.

Strangely I'm more into kids cartoons that can be enjoyed by adults than cartoons like family guy or futurama that are aimed squarely at adults.

[DopamineDefense]

I don't think they are better or worse. There was some shows in the 90's that sucked but it's just like today. A lot of shows today suck as well.

[OtakuJeannie]

I think people have filtered out enough of the bad old cartoons of the 80s and 90s to forget more than the hits were produced. I also think to a degree cartoons of the current era are better, I prefer for one the new Thundercats, Turtles, Ponies, He-man and GI Joes to the old ones. The plots are better, the animation's better and in all I feel the VA are better.

[Kalium19]

I feel the same way. Today's cartoons may even be better, since less producers and showrunners are seem to be treating viewers like idiots than back in those days.

[Creativerealms]

So do I.

[Iced Lionheart]

It's debatable. I recently saw a commercial for a cartoon called Uncle Grandpa. That means he slept with his mom and had his brother. Making him a Father Brother. That's just wrong. Don't get me wrong though. There are a few cartoons that I do enjoy, just not as many as I used to. Though, I would assume that is due to age.

[Pawlas Cathena]

I find any decade's cartoons to be better than the 90s.

[Nanaran]

Maybe it's because of the rise of the internet that let's people relive a part of their childhood more easily but I think anyone says "this generation of cartoons suck/cartoons from the 90s were way better" just have their nostalgia glasses on too tight. I don't think there's a large gap in quality between 90s and current cartoons, the only thing that's substantially changed is what I just mentioned: the rise of the internet. There have always been shitty cartoons, they were just forgotten for a reason but with the internet and information and socializing so readily available it's easier for 90s kids to go back and watch their favorite shows on Youtube and compare them to todays shows. Plus, a lot of the highly praised shows that came out during the 90s I don't even find to be all that good. It's just those nostalgia goggles again cutting off circulation to the brain. neutral

[frrrick]

I do miss a lot of those cartoons, but there are equally great ones now! People exaggerate how bad stuff is.

[doitsundere]

I know that a lot of the cartoons for kids today have more adult content in them. But, there are some 90's cartoons I love and hate, and same with the cartoons today.

[AnimeFromTheHeart]

I remember lots of cartoons from when I was a kid that I would avoid because I hated them. I still think there were more shows that I enjoyed back then, than shows I like now, but I think that a lot of it is just that shows don't appeal to my sense of humour, not that they're bad.

[OtakuJeannie]

Das Deutschland

I know that a lot of the cartoons for kids today have more adult content in them. But, there are some 90's cartoons I love and hate, and same with the cartoons today.

There have always been adult content in cartoons.

[Professor Giggles]

Super 9-Volt

I find any decade's cartoons to be better than the 90s.

If you believe the majority of cartoons from the 60s, 70s and 80s are superior than the majority from the 90s, you're out of your damn mind.

Either that or you just hate when anyone says anything good about 90s cartoons, immediately claiming that they need to "take off their goggles". That, sir, is bias and a very ignorant one. I believe this one to hold some truth, because I've seen this sort of thing from you before. Multiple times. I mean, I'd understand if you're frustrated by kids running around talking about how everything was better during the 90s without giving any good reasons, because I'd be too. That sort of thing does exist and I've seen it happen as well.

But damn. To sate what you did is ludicrous. Anyone with half a brain can tell you that the 30 minute, poorly written and animated toy commercials of the 70s and (especially) the 80s are not nearly as good as what we got in the 90s.

[basselope7]

My take on this is that basically, although there are some cartoons today that are in fact very good, the reason cartoons were better in the 90s is most cartoons then were less shy about certain types of scenes/topics, and a lot of the parodies and other humor that they inserted was either slightly more intelligent or less restrictive. These days most (not all!) people who write kids' cartoons, including both ones that came out more recently as well as the people who are still writing for new episodes of shows that have been on the air for a decade or more, seem to not be trying as hard. Instead they seem to just be sitting there and thinking "let's come up with a boring premise for an episode, but none of the kids will notice it's boring, because we'll add a lot of scenes where people beat each other up, jokes about farts and the size of people's butts, and make every character over-emote to hide the fact that the dialogue was all written in less than 10 minutes."

Granted, there was some of this in older cartoons, but they didn't over-rely on this method back then like they do now. 90s cartoons were more... creative and diverse in their sources of humor, and tended to be able to tell a story in 11 minutes without the characters spelling out every movement of the plot via dialogue.