Journal Entry #35: Saturday Mornings

Date: December 3, 2007
Time: 22:50

When I was growing up, Saturday mornings were something special. Especially when I was allowed to watch television. Saturday mornings when I was a kid meant cartoons. Real cartoons, not these 22 minute, not counting the commercials, ads for toys and such. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's a use for them.

In fact, when they brought back "G.I. Joe" action figures, albeit at 5" tall, I saw the commercials for them and immediately said "There gonna make a cartoon series." Okay, I was about 16 years old when I said it, but I was right.

But cartoons when I was young were different, they were populated by Bugs' Bunny, Daffy Duck, The Road Runner and the Coyote. You had the Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, a spin-off of "The Flinstones" and yet, a carbon copy, to an extent, of "The Archies". You see, back in the 1970s, whatever your characters did in your cartoon, usually hunting down fake ghosts or international spies, you had to have them appear as a musical group at least once during the program. The only cartoon characters that were allowed to appear as a musical group more than once were the only ones that were a musical group in the first place, "Josie and the Pussycats".

"The Archies" were a close second, but they would only appear as a group if the script called for it. I have to admit that there was one cartoon series I watched that, looking back, was pretty much the worst of the lot. That series was called "The Brady Kids". Yeah, them.

I think what made it so bad was, oh let me see, there was the talking bird, the two pandas, and the fact after the first year, the voices for Greg, Marcia, and Peter were performed by other actors. Oh, and we cannot forget "Jabberjaw", the undersea music group with a pet shark that played the drums, and sounded like Curly from The 3 Stooges.

But I have to say, my favorite program out of all of them was "The Banana Splits Show". It featured 4 people dressed in these fuzzy costumes, and they "hosted" a variety of cartoon shows and one live action series called "Danger Island" that co-starred an actor by the name of Jan-Michael Vincent. The one thing I always wished for was to be able to ride in the little six-wheeled carts they rode around an amusement park in.

Still do.