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The 60's and 70's were not part of the "Non-Violent" 80's.
most of them did have some level of violence, but not for Violence sake unless it was Cartoon Violence.
I tried to watch some of the late 80's Loony Toons and they butchered them worse than TBS ever did to good movies.

And the came our savior: EeK! The Cat.

This thread is enjoyable because of the name dropping. I haven't thought bout James Bond Jr., or Eek! The Cat in years!

Well, among western shows, Avatar: The Last Airbender is better than every cartoon named in this thread, and that's from the 00's, so I guess that decade wins.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Well, among western shows, Avatar: The Last Airbender is better than every cartoon named in this thread, and that's from the 00's, so I guess that decade wins.

Blasphemer! Philistine!

All true cartoon lovers know Gargoyles is the One True Toon.


I mean come on, the show had not only David Keith, but the vast majority of the cast of Next Generation!

I hate Star Trek though.*





* I don't actually hate Star Trek.

Given my earlier comment, it's true that cartoons I enjoy the most are things like GiJoe but I also liked Transformers. I was a huge fan of Teenage Turtles and liked Bucky O'Hare. I liked the Spiderman series a lot but the BBC seemed to show a lot of them out of order so I've only seen fragments of multi-part stories. Since then I've seen more of Batman and X-Men which are also very good. Animals of Farthing Wood was a great series and worth mentioning as an alternative to all the obviously boy-orientated superhero things.

I even thought Captain Planet was good when growing up, and the Free Willy cartoon seemed acceptable (does anyone even remember that?). They're both terrible.

There are some great cartoons in recent times. Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated and the new Thundercats have a maturity and cleverness to them making them enjoyable for many ages. That's why I'm sure that cartoons of all decades can have their fans.

For me my favorite decade was the 80's. Transformers, He-Man, thundercats, TMNT, GI Joe, and duck tales. Were all my favs growing up. The 90's had dark wing duck, xmen, batman, reboot, dragon ball Z, and continuations/reboots of a lot of my favorites so it was a tough decision though.

I think the Disney afternoon and the mid 90's batman/superman really 'hold up' when it comes to 'good gak'.

Most of the 80's stuff was trash toy commercials which only work through nostalgia filters. The 90's stuff has some legitimate 'cartoon for cartoon's sake' series which still are valid 20 years later.

I have to say, some of the current stuff is pretty legit. This era of kids and adults series makes for some really well done executions of series.

For me (17) it was the 2000's. I'm still catching up on cartoons today from that era

Some of my favorites are
Samurai Jack
Ben 10 Alien Force & Ultimate Alien
Star Wars the Clone Wars started in 08 but it got better as it went on
Avatar the Last Airbender has got to be my favorite american animated television show of all time
Lesse... what else...
KND was good... AND FOSTERS!
Foster's home for Imaginary Friends is my runner up for favorite cartoon of the 00's
I think that pretty much covers it as far as the 00's go. So yeah. 00's certainly. I don't really have the urge to go watch anything much older

I also watched the entire 90s Spiderman show. All 5 seasons. That's probably the oldest non slapstick cartoon I've seen and enjoyed. (By non slapstick I mean with a fairly serial story line to it)

The 90s did have some good stuff, of most worthy note and debatable as a cartoon... To Mend and Defend!

90s. There were so many good cartoons. The Disney Afternoon was great. But by far, Batman: The Animated Series was very very good.

I always looked at that as the definitive version of Batman. And it was dark.

Man, I loved Reboot.

90's were the best in my eyes. Transformers Beast Wars, Walter Melon, Samurai Pizza Cats, Eek! the Cat, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Power Rangers, and dozens more.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
Late 80's to early 90's (let's call it 1985 to '95) would get my vote. TMNT, most of GI JOE and Transformers, Exo Squad, X-men, Centurions, Robocop, Biker Mice from Mars, Bucky O' Hare, Dinoriders, JEM, Adventures of Zelda, Inspector Gadget, Duck Tales, Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, Tiny Toons, Peter Pan and the Pirates... oh, I could keep going. Cartoon gold!

This right here... Though you forgot Spider Man, Super Man (Adventures??), Batman, with Mark Hammill as Joker... to go with "Tiny Toons", you also have Animaniacs, and Pinky and the Brain. OHHHHHH....


School House Rock, and Magic School Bus, FTW!


Also, I'd throw in Cartoons that still aired during the 80s-90s without censorship, like the original, 1930s-1940s Looney Toons and such. As well as the original tales of Scooby Doo and the like.

Smurfmania........100+ male Smurfs and one female Smurf.......

One of the cool things about the 80's were the 60's and 70's reruns. Johnny quest, flintstones, the jetsons all the WB and hanna-barbera stuff. It was awsome until they started cutting stuff up to edit out violence. The 90's saw cartoons catering to adults in prime time or cable but also saw the children's cartoons take a hit. Two of the best Saturday morning shows, Mad Jack the pirate and Project G.E.E.K.E.R. had short lives. Project Geeker had the best ratings for a Saturday cartoon in years but was cancelled to show junior jeopardy reruns. Not that it's cancelation was a conspiracy but try to find a DVD of project Geeker.

Cannot believe I just remember this now.....

Saturday Morning Kung Fu Action Theater

You can never go back to a lot of the 80s cartoons, though they were awesome at the time. I loved Ulysses, but saw an episode about 5 years ago. It had two frames of animation. Awful. 90s stuff fares better.

Modern choices, Ben and Holly's little kingdom is blatantly not written entirely with kids in mind. They have an Apollo 13 episode! And, unbelievably Peppa Pig has Brian Freaking Blessed doing voice acting, which is just as epic as it sounds.

Are we forgetting Star Blazers? The "western" dub of Space Battleship Yamato?

While I grew up watching the 80’s stuff, it did not age well. And most of the good stuff was older re-runs from the 60s-70s.

I have seen some of the newer stuff, and I think it holds together a lot better then the toy adds I grew up with. Samurai Jack, The Animaniacs, Kim Possible, Powerpuff Girls.

The 80s had stuff I grew up on (GI Joe, Transformers, He Man, Robotech, Thundercats, Wheeled Warriors, TMNT, etc) but apart from a handful, most did not age well. The 90s have a ton of absolute garbage that was absolute garbage at the time, but it also had a run of shows that were excellent then and are still excellent now (Gargoyles, Exo Squad, Animaniacs, Batman TAS).

I have to vote that the 90s had more shows that managed to be better than just 'Saturday Morning cartoon' cartoons. While I am filled with nostalgia for the 80s cartoons, with the exception of TMNT (which was deliberately camp) and Robotech (which had built-in maturity due to its source material) most 80s shows come across as rather bad these days. Yeah, they are still watchable... but there is little to recommend them, apart from nostalgia. The 90s had: Batman TAS which inspired every DC cartoon to come after it, Exo Squad which was the most mature war cartoon to not come from Japan, Freakazoid which nobody watched but for some reason everyone can quote, Animaniacs which was socially-acceptable subversive humor for tweens and teens, and Gargoyles which was (and still is) the most un-Disney thing Disney ever did (and it helped all those recently out-of-work Star Trek TNG actors to pay their rent).

Picking 90s because of swat kat.

For me it would be the 00's, if only because I never watched cartoons from earlier decades.
I absolutely loved Avatar

After growing up watching show like Johnny Quest, one of my favorites now is the Venture Brothers.

All of them! Seriously, I love cartoons from all decades.

Also, for Bucky O'Hare fans.... from memory

In another dimension, another time and space; a parallel universe is fallinng on its face. When out of the chaos who else could it be, but the animal adventurers from S.PA.C.E.

Bucky! Captain Bucky O'Hare! He goes where no ordinary rabbit would dare.

When your righteous Indignation has suffered a hit, and your proton accelerator is broken to bits. When your losing your mind and having a fit get the funky fresh rabbit who can take care of it!

Dang.... I have to go work now. I know more.

This thread insults me. No has mentioned Ren & Stimpy, this means you are all wrong.

On one hand, the 90's had Batman, Animaniacs and Gargoyles, while on the other, the 00's had Samurai Jack...

Really, every generation is going to have the stuff that still holds up today (the above mentioned titles, for example), and then a hell of a lot of crap that gets forgotten, for good reason.
I'd have to give it to the 90's, but that's not to say that everything that came after that sucked. Batman and Animaniacs just happened to be the perfection of the medium, really. Considering how timeless and just plain good they are, they could have been the product of just about any era, really.

When did Fritz the Cat come out?

 Soladrin wrote:
This thread insults me. No has mentioned Ren & Stimpy, this means you are all wrong.

You may wanna read 1st post closer.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Soladrin wrote:
This thread insults me. No has mentioned Ren & Stimpy, this means you are all wrong.

You may wanna read 1st post closer.

Alright, you two, it's log time!

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Soladrin wrote:
This thread insults me. No has mentioned Ren & Stimpy, this means you are all wrong.

You may wanna read 1st post closer.

Alright, you two, it's log time!

I prefer Powdered Toast Man myself.