RIP Saturday Morning Nostalgia
A unified theory of Saturday mornings and the joy today’s kids, and future generations, will never experience
I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night a lot lately. Is this a being in your forties thing? I don’t know, but it’s a drag. I’ve been making the best of it though by eating a lot of cereal. It’s been Cheerios mainly (since that’s all my Millennial wife likes to buy in bulk… you know, so the kiddos eat healthier)— screw that! I take it up a notch by adding some granola. Take that insomnia! 🥣
To say that I’m a cereal buff would be an understatement. I have a preferred midnight snack— Mr. T cereal. Since I can’t get Mr. T cereal, I settle for Cap’n Crunch.
If you were to ask me what I fantasize about, I’d say it’s an absurdly large bowl of Cookie Crisp cereal mixed with a quarter cup of Mr. T cereal swimming in a generous amount of vitamin D milk. I am not at all ashamed to tell you that the best way to to truly indulge in a similar taste is to mix Cap’n Crunch and Cocoa Pebbles together, and crumble a couple of Keebler cookies into your bowl. Drown them in vitamin D milk. And if you want to get real crazy, toss a few slices of banana in! So now you know how my mind works. 🤣
I’d love to know what you’re favorite cereal was or if you have a bowl you fantasize about. It’s ok, we’re all adults here.
Now, let’s talk about something that is near and dear to every GenX kid—
Our Saturday Morning Nostalgia Cannot Be Beat!
If there was ever a ritual that connected the life force of a generation, it would be waking up on Saturday morning, grabbing a bowl of your favorite sugary cereal, and watching your favorite Saturday morning cartoons.
Whether it was sitting on the carpet and chomping down on cereal and watching, or placing the bowl on our favorite cartoon tray, or sitting at the kitchen table and reading the back of the cereal box, Saturday mornings were magical.
As soon as the sun peeked through the curtains, we'd leap out of bed, pajama-clad and blurry-eyed, we'd scramble to the living room and turn on the television. We would then rush off to the kitchen, the sweet sound of toy commercials reached our ears, and we went to work preparing the perfect serving of a cereal bowl.
Boxes lined up on the kitchen counter or on top of the refrigerator, their mascots grinning at us— Cap'n Crunch, Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam, Boo-Berry Ghost, Count Chocula, Fred & Barney, Donkey Kong & Mario, and so many more! These weren't just advertising characters, they were also our Saturday morning companions.
Choosing the cereal was a decision of monumental importance. Would it be the chocolate-y crunch of Cocoa Puffs? The fruity circles of Froot Loops? Or perhaps the marshmallow-studded landscape of Lucky Charms? On a few occasions, depending on how much cash my dad gave my mom, I’d have to eat a generic puffy rice cereal. Even worse, if my mom had not gone to the grocery store before the next weekend, I might have to eat my dad’s Raisin Bran. Yuck! 🤮
Bowl filled to the brim, we'd pour in the milk, grab our favorite spoon and we'd make our way to our designated spot in front of the TV. My mom covered a lot of our furniture in plastic (that was a thing back then), so I would bring my The Real Ghostbusters sleeping bag out with a pillow and lay on them on the floor.
If you were really on point, you could be eating a cereal from the same cartoon franchise you were watching. Toys were not the only product advertised through cartoons. I remember eating Bill & Ted’s cereal while watching the cartoon!
We had the greatest lineup of cartoons back in the day. It just kept getting better year after year in the 80s and into the 90s, and then it just sort of died off some time in the 2010s!
I have four sons of varying ages, so I’ve seen my fair share of Saturday morning lineups. Currently, my two youngest (6 and 4) watch Spidey and His Amazing Friends, but that’s pretty much it. Something that has definitely impacted Saturday mornings in my household is little league baseball my sons are involved in. My parents never signed us up for sports when I was a kid, but if watching Saturday morning cartoons was a sport, I’d probably be the Michael Jordan of toon watching! 🤣
Here’s a short list of cartoons that aired Saturday mornings and the majority of us watched — This is a short list, the rest of which will be published in my book — Some aired during the weekdays but also aired on weekends at some point:
The Smurfs, The Real Ghostbusters, Pac-Man, Heathcliff, Spiderman and his Amazing Friends, Inspector Gadget, Garfield & Friends, Dungeons and Dragons, Gummi Bears, Scooby-Doo, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Thundercats, The Smurfs, Rainbow Bright, My Little Pony, The Care Bears, The Littles, The Wuzzles, Mr. T, Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling, BraveStarr, M.A.S.K., COPS, Dino-Riders, Beetlejuice, Punky Brewster, My Pet Monster, Simon and The Chipmunks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, ALF, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, She-Ra - Princess of Power, Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light, Centurions, Droids, Jem and the Holograms, He Man and The Masters of The Universe, Snorks, Denver, The Last Dinosaur, Jayce and The Wheeled Warriors, Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo, Captain N: The Game Master, Kidd Video, Turbo Teen, The Karate Kid, Camp Candy, RAMBO, Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos, Muppet Babies…
I haven’t even listed cartoons created in the 90s yet!
I still get giddy when I look at this NBC advert! Just thinking about flipping through a comic book and seeing an ad like this is further proof as to how incredibly different childhood today is from the time we grew up. Have you looked inside a modern comic book today? If there are ads, they are for modern video games mainly or a streaming show here and there. There is no childhood joy pouring out of the pages.
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Between shows, the commercials were a spectacle in themselves. I never wanted to miss the commercials! The toy ads showcased the latest must-have action figures and playsets, and we watched, spoons paused midway to our mouths, mentally adding to our birthday and Christmas wish lists!
Remember this commercial?
You know what else happened Saturday mornings? The grown-ups seemed to fade away and allow us space to enjoy our cartoons. It’s like they knew. I think it’s because they grew up doing something similar, except for not as cool a line-up of cartoons. And I think my parents wanted to relax Saturday morning, so they let us be. There were no school bells, no homework, and no bedtimes looming on the horizon. For those few precious hours, we were the masters of our domain, kings and queens of the living room floor!
I also sat through my fair share of Rainbow Brite and Jem and The Holograms since I had three sisters at the time that would partake in this Saturday morning ritual.
The spell would break around noon. The cartoons would give way to sports or infomercials, and that was our sign that it was time to go outside and see what our friends were up to.
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For generations, Saturday morning cartoons were as much a part of American childhood as baseball and apple pie. However, it’s clearly evident that this important ritual has largely faded from the creative minds in broadcast network television. I wrote about the tragic dilution of the past and the reality is that it starts with people. And I believe the people that ran these networks in the past invested in Saturday morning because they saw an opportunity to promote fun things that kids loved. Today, people working in broadcasting are focused on general content as part of an ecosystem of the streaming network. Everything has become divergent. It’s all about streaming.
I will say that changing cultural norms played a significant role in the decline of Saturday morning nostalgia. As families became busier and schedules more fragmented, the idea of a dedicated block of time for children's programming became less practical. As a parent, I’m fairly conscious of screen time, and that’s not to say because I believe in some underlying addiction, but there is simply a lot of crap on tv. There just is. I can’t blame parents for seeking out more educational or interactive activities for their children on weekends.
But I believe one of the more significant factors to the decline of Saturday morning nostalgia is due to increased competition. The rise of cable TV, with dedicated children's channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, meant that kids could watch their favorite shows any day of the week, at any time. This 24/7 availability of cartoons diminished the special appeal of Saturday mornings.
When streaming services came along, it further accelerated this trend. Platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ allow children (and nostalgic adults) to access vast libraries of animated content on demand. The need to wait for a specific time to watch cartoons has become obsolete.
Saturday morning nostalgia lay on the foundation of cartoon television. Cereal, snack and beverage, and toy companies flourished as a result of the full morning of advertainment that we took in. Even as an adult, and parent, I still have no problem with advertainment. I understand the ecosystem of entertainment and product placement. Money needs to flow to keep the talent working and the fun programs coming.
Somehow, adults in the past didn’t seem to get it. Heavy media regulations were dismantling Saturday morning nostalgia. The Children's Television Act of 1990 and subsequent rules required broadcasters to air a certain amount of educational programming for children. While well-intentioned, these regulations made it more challenging and less profitable for networks to air traditional cartoon blocks. Why wasn’t there a compromise? It’s so obvious that advertising restrictions and limitations on children's programming made the time slots less lucrative for networks. As profit margins shrunk, networks began to view Saturday mornings as less valuable real estate. Why didn’t the network leaders and activists figure out a way to make Saturday morning an eternal rite for all children?
In the late 2000s children’s entertainment was beginning to change dramatically. Everything was shifting towards more live-action and reality programming, which was often cheaper to produce than animated shows. This trend further eroded the dominance of cartoons in the Saturday morning lineup.
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There is some good news. I mean, it’s ok news.
We can purchase most of our favorite cartoons in physical or digital format. I download most of the cartoon content that brings me joy off of YouTube. While the traditional Saturday morning cartoon block may be a thing of the past on broadcast television (I use Hulu live), most of the cartoons we loved lives on in new forms. Streaming services and apps have a lot of those animations available. We can create our own Saturday morning experience for our kids. Yes, it’s more time consuming, I know, but it’s worth it.
I realize for kids from my generation, as well as older Millennials, the loss of this shared cultural experience is bittersweet. But as long as there’s cereal being sold in stores, and I can access the extensive digital library of nostalgic content I’ve purchased over the years, I’m going to make Saturday mornings a part of my family’s tradition. I will be in my pajamas, massive cereal bowl in hand, waiting in anticipation for my next favorite cartoon!
Great piece. I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons every week in the '80s and had forgotten a lot of the names of the shows until I read your list. Those advertisements you added in the post really brought back memories. I remember Smurfs and He-Man the best, but Hulk Hogans Rock-N-Wrestling had the most impact on me and was the reason I actually started watching pro wrestling way back then. I watched that cartoon for a few weeks before I decided to see what actual pro wrestling was like. I actually wrote about that cartoon when I introduced my substack in the very first post.
💔💔 I would do almost anything to feel all of this again. I miss the Saturdays that I would stay with my cousin and we would wake up in a tent in his living room. With not a parent in site we’d help ourselves to cereal and spend the majority or the morning overindulging in everything kid. I actually feel sad for our kids because they don’t know how fun life truly can be. This was great article dude! Thanks for reminding us of how great it all was!