movies/tv Are 90s cartoons really better than today's cartoons

[TheMisterManGuy 344]

You hear 90s kids shout it all the time, "Cartoonz today suk, 90s waz bettar!!!". And while we have had some terrible shows come out these days, does anybody really even buy that nonsense? People seem to forget that the 90s had just as much mediocre, terrible, or just plain forgettable cartoon programming as today. The thing is, we have gotten older and have become more aware of the animation industry output than we did as kids. Not to mention a lot of shows you may have watched as a kid, may not hold up as well as you'd expect when you watch them today. Remember Mike, Lu, and Og? Yeah.....

 

And I really don't see how you could call this decade terrible for cartoons. This is the decade that brought us Adventure Time, Regular Show, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, Dan Vs., Korra, Archer, Wander Over Yander, and of course, Friendship is Magic. Some of the most well-written and creative cartoons on TV today. Don't judge this decade just based off the crap Nickelodeon shovels out, and don't base the 90s off shows you actually remembered as a kid. Every decade has gems, every decade has shit. Quality has no time limit.

[Castle Bleck 19,319]

Indeed.

 

However, it's just that the '90s had many more gems by comparison.

[Moonlight 7,286]

90's cartoons aren't better than the ones today and they tend to be only thought of as "good" because of the nostalgia factor not because of it's actual quality. Every decade has good and bad things, it'd be nice if people would stop forgetting that fact. 

[Starlighty 814]

I think cartoons were much more popular then now a day...

 

I mean beside having way a lot of cartoons that were actually decent....

 

Today there are like 3 out of millions show that are actually good.

[Aurelleah 894]

Back then, cartoons were drawn. Now most are computer animated. Some shows were better, but others.... meh. Besides, 90s, didnt have MLP gen4

[Raritas 6,820]

I think a lot of it has to do with nostalgia. People remember the good shows, for example Dexter's Lab, Ren and Stimpy, older Simpsons. They compare cartoons today to the likes of them.I personally prefer the older shows, but more the early 2000's. But I can remember shows just as bad then as some today.

 

There are a lot of shows today though that have certainly become worse; Simpsons, Spongebob etc. I think this is a lot down to a lack of ideas, after so long, a show loses it's touch. 

 

You sum it up well though, Nickelodeon are a shadow of their former selves imo. 

[Zoraxe 546]

Now-a-days we got a ton of great cartoons. It was the time period before now and after the 90s that had the slump in good cartoons. There were still good cartoons in the 00s, in particular Invader Zim, but in general the number of quality shows declined rapidly as the decade went on. Things now are greatly improved since then.

[TheMisterManGuy 344]

Back then, cartoons were drawn. Now most are computer animated. Some shows were better, but others.... meh. Besides, 90s, didnt have MLP gen4

Nearly every single show I listed was 2D. Besides, are you really going to ignore ReBoot, Beast Wars, Action Man, the shitty DKC cartoon?

[Kamii 595]

I don't think 90's cartoons were "better" so to say. They were in huge quantity and most of them are good nowadays due to nostalgia. Even though IMO some cartoons were and still are amazing (like the first season of Digimon, that was/is great And I know it's an anime... It counts!).

[Larkybird~ 734]

I'd say...not to an extent. Yes there's plenty of crap on tv nowadays but there was plenty of crap on TV in the 90's.

Though yeah. Most of the "90's cartoons are better than cartoons nowadays" are looking through rose tinted glasses, or to put it simply are being overly nostalgic. Not that there's anything wrong with being nostalgic. The better question would be to ask the ones who are that nostalgic is to ask them to watch those shows again and to say if they honestly still hold up well.

I wouldn't say that 90's cartoons are better though, but some of them to me do still hold up and can easily be compared to nowadays cartoons and are even better than others. Which ones do I think of? Oh I'm not going to say.

[Andaasonsan 3,205]

I know I've seen some crap cartoons from the 90s but I can't name any because it was like 20 years ago, and they weren't worth remembering.

 

But this is a phenomenon that seems to come up with a lot of stuff like music. Music is particularly bad for this, because if you're listening to a station that plays older songs, they're only going to play the 'best of' from that time period. Every decade produces a few great songs that stand the test of time and also a lot of generic formulaic crap that got a lot of play but are now forgotten because they were never really that great. I guarantee you that you can take whatever your favorite decade in music was and look at some top ten charts, 90 percent of the bands present are going to have you going "who?".

[remove p l e a s e ? 800]

More than 90% (lol) of the cartoons from back then haven't dated all that well.

Heck, some of them I'd consider to be just as bad as Breadwinners or maybe worse.

Also, why hasn't anyone started talking about the 00s? We had cool stuff too.

[Moved to Elsewhere 11,331]

Oh I can really talk about this.

 

You always hear 90s elitists screaming about how cartoons aren't the same using arguments like, "They're stupid." or "They're weird." Or even worse they don't explain at all. You wonder how much modern cartoons they've actually seen. I've noted that it seems to have died down a bit when 2010 rolled around when shows like Adventure Time, Regular Show, FIM, and Young Justice came out. Also, really weird? Oh, and Ren and Stimpy, Cow and Chicken, IM Weasel, Rocko's Modern Life, and CatDog were completely normal.

 

Honestly, even some 90s cartoons don't age well. I find half the 90s nicktoons not as good as they claim they are. Well Cartoon Network and Disney's lineup and the time is good, Nick's was kind of meh.

[Megas 27,551]

I liked 90's cartoons, but I the 2000's had more of my favorites. In my top 10 cartoons list, only 4 of them are 90's, and one of them was made in 1999

[The Coffee Pony 1,390]

Nope!

 

I actually revisited some of the 90's cartoons and I can say this:

 

90's Cartoons from Cartoon Network for the most part have aged pretty well. The Cartoons from Nickelodeon on the other hand have just aged poorly. Now I can't say that much for animated comedy shows since I don't usually bother with those but I've seen some pretty good ones from the 00's like Invader Zim.

 

As for action-based animated shows they have aged well for the most part (though Spider-Man '94, while it's still good, is dated due to the heavy censorship that took place back them) but I think it's safe to say that the action cartoons of today are just as good if not better. If you take a franchise action-based cartoon from the late 80's or 90's and compare it to a future incarnation of a show from the 00's or 10's, chances are you are going to pick one of the future generations.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: '87 show was topped by the '03 show which was then topped by the '12 show

 

Transformers: Beast Wars was topped by Transformers Prime.

 

Spider-Man: Spider-Man '94 ended up getting topped by the Spectacular Spider-Man. Unfortunately the cartoon after that didn't retain that quality and plunged Spider-Man into a Dork Age on the Animated front.

 

But yeah, Action-based western-animated shows for the most part have aged well but the newer ones tend to be better.

As for Anime in the 90's....no! Most haven't aged well at all. Voice acting in the 90's for the most part sucked, the dialog just seems corny and the art style from back then just looks ugly today. There are some exceptions, don't get me wrong, we have Trigun and Cowboy Beebop after all. And while the dialog is VERY corny now I do enjoy Gundam Wing.

[Zoraxe 546]

I think its the live-action childrens shows that went downhill and never returned. The 90s had Legends of the Hidden Temple, Clarissa explains it all, Pete & Pete, Kenan & Kel. I'm sure there were good shows after the 90s, but not as many.

 

 

Also, why hasn't anyone started talking about the 00s? We had cool stuff too.

 

I did, my post was all about the 00s. As the 00s went on, the number of quality cartoons went down, but in this decade have picked themselvs up again.

 

There were good cartoons in the 00s, but then there was also this.

 

Edited December 4, 2014 by Zoraxe

[Shanks 10,816]

Yes, this is not to say there weren't any crappy cartoons or shows in general back then but nowadays it is much more difficult to find the good stuff with networks being steadily bombarded with worse and worse shows. Live action shows though have deteriorated faster and further than cartoons though, especially ones geared toward adults. I find it really ironic how people use the "its for kids" argument to excuse bad quality in cartoons despite this.

[TheMisterManGuy 344]

Yes, this is not to say there weren't any crappy cartoons or shows in general back then but nowadays it is much more difficult to find the good stuff with networks being steadily bombarded with worse and worse shows. Live action shows though have deteriorated faster and further than cartoons though, especially ones geared toward adults. I find it really ironic how people use the "its for kids" argument to excuse bad quality in cartoons despite this.

Again, its really just because we have more refined tastes as adults now, and we are more aware of what's getting made than when we where kids.

[Alex Z 848]

I loved a lot of cartoons from the mid and late 90s like Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Ed, Edd N Eddy, etc. But, cartoons from the early 90s I have a hard time watching because I didn't really grow up with them. I don't know if you were a kid that grew up in the 90s probably but, if you're a 2000s kid like me, probably not.

[CT-1138 3,182]

Looking back, I feel safe in saying that the good cartoons far outweighed the bad ones, which seems to have been flipped today. And a lot of the cartoons that were around in the 90s that have made it to today (Spongebob, South Park, Simpsons) just aren't as good as they were in the 90s and the early 00's.

[King Sejong 859]

   I will say the 90's cartoons took risks, nowadays few cartoons unlike Gravity Falls, Adventure Time or My Little Pony for example, are daring and bold, they break the barriers of political correctness, commercialism, focus groups and enforced sensitivity, that is our present, it is the reality of the world we have inherited, Animanicas and the Tiny Toons were well written and animated, plus they talked to their audience maturely, for this is becoming increasingly rare. The cartoons back then were hand drawn, and some CGI, I suppose there was a better balance between the two back then, but as computers improved so did the animation, furthermore, I believe many of better aspects of the nineties cartoons are the fact anyone could enjoy them, my mother loved Batman the Animated Series; my father loved the Disney Afternoon block, sure they had zany moments, but cartoons also had moments that appealed to adults, similar to Pixar movies, some were dark like Sonic the Hedgehog, and others had a soft side like Tail Spin, so that is the major difference I see, I lived to see the whole nineties, so I can speak from experience, that cartoons had a broader audience in the past, now we are segregated by gender or age, adults and children living in their demographics. I am grateful for living in this present however, the internet is far better than it was in the nineties, a cartoon I love besides My Little Pony is PAW patrol, it is a hybrid of past and present, animated in CGI but has story structures the nineties would have been familiar with, the character have depth, Marshall is my favourite pup, and the plot is good, also similar to My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, only with greater complexity and conflict, nevertheless, if we can remember what the cartoons of past did for us, perhaps we can write good cartoons that anyone could watch, as C.S. Lewis said "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children, is not a good children's story in the slightest."    

[Shanks 10,816]

Looking back, I feel safe in saying that the good cartoons far outweighed the bad ones, which seems to have been flipped today. And a lot of the cartoons that were around in the 90s that have made it to today (Spongebob, South Park, Simpsons) just aren't as good as they were in the 90s and the early 00's.

Some have fallen a bit harder than others though, Simpsons is okay South Park has a mix of hit and miss, stupid and good episodes in its recent seasons. The most recent season of South Park though has been the best season in quite a while with the one that lampooned mobile gaming being the best episode in a very long time. Spongebob has really hit rock bottom, it is hard to believe it is even the same show anymore.

Edited December 5, 2014 by EarthbendingProdigy

[Lisa 5,553]

No they're not. As someone else said, the only reason we find today's cartoons to be bad compared to previous classics is because we're older now. We can more easily spot out flaws in the animation, script, characters, etc.. When we were kids we couldn't give any shits about that stuff. In fact, we probably didn't even know what a script was. And the reason we're not criticizing old cartoons now that we're adults is because of nostalgia. We loved those cartoons as kids, and we're in denial if we say "They were perfect! Way better than the mainstream shit that gets put onto TV nowadays!" Because every cartoon has it's flaws.

[baba_booey 4,302]

Well, really, I think they're just as good.

 

Yes, while there are a lot of stinkers in this era, there's also great ones, such as Regular Show, Adventure Time, Chowder (oh yeah, I said it) and of course my favorite, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

 

That said, there were still good shows in the 90's, most notably Britt Allcroft's Thomas and Friends, Hey Arnold, Angry Beavers, Sonic SatAM, Dexter's Lab, etc.

 

Though, most of the shows that have been alive since the 90's really went downhill after a few years, such as Spongebob and 2005-2012 Thomas and Friends, so yeah,

 

tl;dr - I think, as much of a 90's wannabe as I am, they're both just as good. Both have some bad stinkers and great ones.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Skarloey

[Castle Bleck 19,319]

There were good cartoons in the 00s, but then there was also this.

 

 

It was the So Bad, It's Good trope, IMO.

Edited December 5, 2014 by A.V.