Hard to beat Wile E. Coyote, ACME products, and the diligent effort to capture the Road Runner. But it was more about that Saturday morning for 1 hour was the only time we as kids were allowed to watch TV. Then it was "Go outside and come back at 5:00 for dinner, don't be late."
You bring up a good point — the best part about Saturday morning cartoons was that they ended (sometime around noon when "Wide World of Sports" or whatever came on) and we headed out into the big blue world.
Yeah. Saturday mornings were either cartoons or going with my mother to to the farmers' market. Then afternoons were doing whatever outside most of the time.
I am really hoping that the "Coyote v. Acme" movie set to release next year, as well as "The Day The Earth Blew Up" from last year, revive interest in The Looney Tunes. They are iconic Americana, omnipresent for nearly a century, but mismanaged for the last 10-15 years. What could have been with Space Jam 2...
Kids these days don't seem to have much of a childhood. My fondest memories are summers where I would disappear late morning on my bike with friends, go on an adventure, and not come home until dinner time.
Now it seems childhood is filled with sports practice, homework, summer camp, and fortnite.
People my age are nostalgic for Minecraft. You could still disappear all day (and night, too) and go on an adventure... in Minecraft. It might not be the best or healthiest thing, but it's where the memories are.
It's different but it's still a childhood. Although I did all those things in my childhood, except fortnite was some other computer related thing.
The difference I note is we spend a lot more time together as a family, whereas when I was a kid it was more with friends. I'm not sure it's a bad thing, I wished I had spent more time with my dad.
And in modern times, we can't forget the concerned citizen calling the police when seeing young kids out on their own. So childhood has become semi-illegal, depending on the mood of the officers on duty.
The funny thing is the classic Looney Tunes weren’t made for Saturday morning kids shows, but for movie theaters to be shown between the newsreel and the feature. (And weren’t necessarily kid stuff either - they were full of topical references that nobody has understood since the 1940s.)
Warner Bros has been a lousy manager of the Looney Tunes property lately but I expect they’ll remembered fondly for decades more, while most of the repetitive schlock that was made for Saturday morning will be forgotten.
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