Remembering the 80s cartoons – Part 1

I grew up watching the cartoons of the 80’s. One of the earliest cartoons I remember watching was the Smurfs. Everybody should know something about the Smurfs, but if you don’t, then they’re little blue creatures that are three apples high and live in mushroom houses. The evil Gargamel kept trying to capture them. The show was pretty good for a few years, but the last couple of seasons or so of the series were very forced; the final straw was the last season, when they had the Smurfs time traveling. Some other Saturday morning cartoons I remember watching and enjoying on network television in the 1980s included Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Snorks, and Shirt Tales.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was a major 1980s cartoon milestone. It earned its place in 80s cartoon history by being one of the first animated programs released to help promote a toy line. It was released in 1983, and was very successful. It was successful enough that a spin-off series, She-Ra: Princess of Power was also produced. Both shows featured a character (Prince Adam in He-Man, Princess Adora in She-Ra), that possessed super strength which they could harness by holding up their sword and saying certain words.

In the wake of He-Man, other cartoons with ties to toys were also produced. There was Transformers (about robots that could transform into other items, such as cars, cassette players, dinosaurs, insects, and other things). G.I. Joe featured a counter-terrorist team, who defended human freedom from Cobra (a ruthless terrorist organization). For the girls, there was Jem; Jerrica Benton could transform into glamorous rock star Jem by using her computer Synergy and her JemStar earrings (which served as microprojectors for Synergy). Jem and her group had to deal with a rival group of “bad girls,” known as The Misfits.

Anime also made its mark in the 1980s. The two biggest anime properties of the 1980s had to be Voltron and Robotech. Some could also argue that Star Blazers belongs in this list (although the first season, where they go to Iscandar to obtain the Cosmo DNA, actually aired in the late 1970s; the second season aired in 1980, and the show continued on syndicated television for a few years in the early 1980s).

There were also attempts to turn popular video games into Saturday morning cartoons. The most memorable of these were Pac-Man and Dragon’s Lair. And there was also Saturday Supercade, which features shorts of several videogames: Frogger, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Pitfall, Q*Bert, Space Ace, and Kangaroo. Generally, these particular cartoons were not very well produced.

There were other cartoons in the ’80s as well, but to me, these are some of the most memorable.

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