Tag nostalgia

Cartoon Country: Who’s Got the Power? (Not the Retro-Snobs)

silverstar 5 Comments

It has begun.

PPG 2016

Yesterday, the long-awaited and much talked about reboot of The Powerpuff Girls made its’ nationwide debut on Cartoon Network (though clips and snippets of the show have been leaked across various places on the net prior to that). Let’s examine what’s changed in Townsville since the Girls’ original series ended in 2005.Powerpuff-girls-2016The Girls sport slightly modified designs; Bubbles now sports barrettes in her hair, Buttercup now has a cowlick and Blossom has a more rounded bow.

  • The titular heroines have new voice actresses: Amanda Leighton voices Blossom, Kristen Li voices Bubbles and Natalie Palamides voices Buttercup.
  • The Girls are a little older this time around, attending elementary school rather than kindergarten.
  • The series sports a new opening title sequence and a new theme song, “Who’s Got the Power?”, performed by Tacocat.
  • And of course, as is the natural order of things, 90’s kids who grew up with the original PPG series are losing their collective shit over this reboot.

Predictably, the Retro-Snobs and 90’s brats are relentlessly trashing this new version of PPG, shouting the rallying cry of the stupid and falsely entitled:

Little Lord Fauntleroy

“CHILDHOOD RUINED!”

So your childhood’s ruined now, eh? How, exactly? How has this one new iteration of a children’s cartoon show that wasn’t made for you and that you’re not required by law to even look at ruined your childhood? ‘Splain this to me. The producers of this show didn’t travel back in time to mess with you when you were a kid, nor has Cartoon Network locked away any and all copies of the original PPG into their vaults vowing to never release them and are forcing us all to accept this new iteration as the One True Canon, so precisely how has your childhood been ruined, Precious?

The following are actual quotes of reactions to the PPG reboot:

jackass

“Sorry, but it turns out to be a really cringey cartoon with terrible jokes on the same level as Teen Titans Go!”

Were we watching the same cartoon? Because I’ve seen both shows and I didn’t get a TTGO! vibe from this at all. This new PPG series does have something in common with TTGO!, though; the fact that the new series tends to cloud fans’ memories of the original. It amazes me how people seem to remember the original Powerpuff Girls as being this serious action cartoon when it was never that. News flash: PPG has ALWAYS been a comedy! So how is the reboot insulting the franchise by having comedy in it? The PPG reboot didn’t remind me of TTGO! We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.

mortimer-snerd

“I’d enjoy this new show more if it had the original theme song and the original voice actors.”

TRANSLATION: It’s not a carbon copy of the original series, so I hate it!

In regards to the intro, PPG’s producers most likely gave the reboot a new theme song and intro so that kids would know that these are new episodes. If CN had just recycled the original opening title sequence, kids would likely have seen it, thought “Geez! These are just the same old reruns that I could see anytime on Boomerang!” and switch it off. In regards to the new voice actors:

get-over-it

People SERIOUSLY need to stop having puppies over the fact that the original voice actresses have been replaced for this show. For whatever reason, it happened, and guess what: the planet hasn’t spun off its’ axis as a result. The Powerpuff Girls are voiced by different actresses now, deal with it, nerds. For anyone who’s still butt-raged about the new PPG voice actors, I suggest you read this.

And then there’s this gem from a YouTube commentor in response to the new theme song:

Bad Luck Schleprock

“I feel like killing myself sometimes.”

Seriously, dude? After reading this sentence, I wanted badly to drop kick this loser to someplace with some actual pain and suffering. If the theme song to a kids’ cartoon show is enough for you to contemplate suicide, I’m surprised that you haven’t offed yourself a long time ago. If you’re that resistant to change, I’m guessing that people had to talk you down off of a roof when Google changed it’s font.

People are also wanking on the show because the producers aren’t bringing back all of the original villains! (Blasphemers!) Several of the episodes deviate from the old show’s formula! (Why, God, Why?) The Girls use cellphones! (GASP!) And…horror of horrors…

powerpuff-girls

In one episode they were shown to be fans of a BOY BAND!!!

Homer Scream

“OH, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOES!!!!!!”

Allow me to address each of these heinous crimes individually:

  1. Regarding the story structure: I don’t mind this because the standard “The City of Townsville/And the day is saved!” formula was, quite frankly, getting a little old. Nothing wrong with a little variety here and there.
  2. Regarding the cellphones: it actually makes sense, given that the Girls are the protectors of Townsville, as such, they can be called into action from anywhere at anytime, so it’s only logical for each of them to have a mobile device as opposed to just one single land-based hotline. Besides, it’s really not that unusual, since kids play with tablets. Lots of kids these days own a portable electronic device of some kind. The reason why you never saw anyone using a hand held mobile device in the 1990s show was because hand helds weren’t a thing back then. Yeah, there were cell phones, but they hadn’t progressed to the point that they are now.
  3. Regarding the boy band episode: Yeah! How dare those writers depict these young girls doing things that plenty of young girls do! The nerve! Let’s just tar and feather the sods!

The thing that these 90’s brats and nostalgia-tards need to keep in mind is that this reboot, like everything currently airing on Cartoon Network, is for THIS generation, not THEIRS. You had your time to be coddled by CN; right now the channel’s target demographic is people who are kids now, not people who were kids 20 years ago. Franchises like Scooby-Doo and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles get rebooted every few years, this is no different. And whenever a project gets rebooted for a new generation, there are going to be some changes. Did anyone honestly think that PPG was going to come back after an 11-year absence without the original creator and there’d be absolutely NO changes made to it? The irony to all this so delicious that it must be fattening. Nostalgia-tards beg networks like CN to reboot something they grew up watching, they do, but since it’s not a 100% rehash of the original, these same wankers brand it a failure, accuse it of raping their youths and declare it not worth watching.

hardy har har

“Its not the same. Oh dear, oh my. All is lost, things will never be the same, woe is all of us 90’s kids and our poor little nostalgic hearts not being satisfied!”

If this new series isn’t to your liking, simply DON’T WATCH IT. If you prefer the original PPG series, WATCH THE ORIGINAL SERIES. Really, CN doesn’t care what you do, since this series wasn’t made for you anyway. Getting back to Teen Titans GO! for a second, I know that TTGO! has now become adults’ go-to reference whenever anything on CN pops up that they don’t like, and I’m no TTGO! fan either, but there’s something these folks are forgetting: the reason that TTGO! stays on the air is because, wait for it….KIDS LIKE IT. I know that’s a really hard concept for some 90’s brats to grasp, but you guys aren’t kids. In the end, it’ll only matter if kids take to this new PPG. If the show does badly with them, then and only then will the bad, bad reboot go away.

Personally, what I’ve seen of this show so far hasn’t rocked my world, but I didn’t hate it either. I could see myself watching this for a half-hour (or quarter-hour) and not complaining about it, but at the same time I understand that this series wasn’t made for me; it’s just like whenever 90’s kids hear me say that I wasn’t a fan of Hey, Arnold!: the show didn’t appeal to me personally, but I was already an adult in the 90’s, so I was too old for it. Plus, I generally prefer zanier cartoons, so a grounded show like Hey, Arnold! was never going to do anything for me anyway. FTR, I was a Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, DuckTales, Darkwing Duck and Rocko’s Modern Life guy.

My advice: forget that it’s new. Forget that it’s a reboot. Try to detach yourself from your precious memories of the original. Just watch the show for yourself, judge it on its’ own merits and draw your own conclusion. I give the new PPG a B-. Nothing mind-blowing, but still pretty good in it’s own right and by no means a blasphemy on the original, which, lest we forget, wasn’t always that good, especially the post-movie episodes.

The changes don’t bother me, and I’m personally digging the new theme. Crank it up, man!

 

Quit Being So Cheap!

goldstar 5 Comments

You know what really grinds my gears?

When people on animation message boards complain endlessly about how their favorite old-school cartoon shows like The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Animaniacs aren’t airing on TV anymore, and then when I mention that many of them are available on DVD now, someone inevitably comes back with this:

Schleprock

“People don’t have the money to spend on things like this all of the time.”

or

Ventriloquist Dummy

“Even though this series is entirely on DVD, not everyone has the extra money to buy “this want”. Needs come first. And simply getting the DVDs isn’t as appealing as watching the program on regular television to some. Sometimes, just watching a program on TV is good enough.”

In response to this, I have to say…

Carl

“You have got to be freakin’ kidding me!”

I love how retro snobs who want their favorite era of entertainment to go on forever never seem to have any problem with indulging themselves with little luxuries, but then want to play the broke card whenever someone suggests that they buy a DVD or Blu-Ray of their favorite canceled/ended TV show instead of complaining that they’re no longer airing in TV, as if the networks are somehow obligated to continue airing the reruns for all eternity. Sorry, folks, but the excuse that DVDs and Blu-Rays of your favorite shows are an expensive luxury that many people can’t afford, and therefore the networks should be obligated to keep running them on TV is a bunch of…

Bull Cartoon

 

…well, you know.

People need to stop with the “DVDs are too expensive” excuse ’cause it’s a weak one. Cable/satellite TV, video games and the internet aren’t necessities either. They’re luxuries that cost more then the price of a DVD, and yet people seem to have no problem paying for these luxuries every single month. The cost of a complete season of Tiny Toon Adventures is around $35, which is less than what you’d pay for one meal at a sit down restaurant. If you can afford cable, internet and/or video games, you can afford DVDs.

First, what’s up with the quotes around “this want”? What does that even mean? Second, let’s be real about this: shelter, food, clothing and medicine are necessities. Everything else is a luxury. Before anyone starts to lecture me on peoples’ needs versus their wants, let me ask you all a question:

What about this?

No one really needs a smartphone. Sure, they’re neat to have around and they look cool, but all you really need is a phone in case you need to call someone while you’re not at home or if there’s an emergency to report and there are no phone booths around. You don’t need something to update your Facebook status, check your horoscope or watch movies on. No one needs to be carrying around a miniature laptop in their pocket. Smartphones are an expensive luxury, but people buy them anyway. If you can afford a smartphone, you can afford a DVD.

And how about this?

frappacino

You’re going to tell me that buying a DVD of The Jetsons is too expensive, yet you have no problem with dropping $5+ dollars on a cup of coffee with whipped cream on top? If you can afford a frappucino, you can afford a DVD.

And what about pets? Dog and cats at least have their uses under certain circumstances, but does anyone really need a parakeet, a goldfish, a turtle or a hamster? No! But people buy them anyway. If you can afford a pet, you can afford a DVD.

Do you have a job? If so, why not put aside $10 each week. By the end of the month, you’ll have $40, which is enough to purchase a DVD or Blu Ray. Keep doing that and eventually, you’ll have amassed yourself an impressive collection of shows that you can watch whenever you want.

Hauntleroy

“I don’t want to buy a bunch of DVDs.”

Then find a site where you can legally stream your favorite old shows and download them from there, or create an account with a site like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, iTunes, Crackle or something similar. That’s what, $9 a month? You can afford that can’t you?

Basically, it all boils down to “How bad do you want it?”. Alcoholics will do whatever they have to do to get a drink. Drug addicts will do whatever they have to do in order to get their fix. These fans need to think of these old-school cartoons as their drink or their drug. A true fan would do whatever they had to do in order to enjoy their favorite show, but if you’re not willing to shell out a little bit of money for something that you enjoy, then obviously it doesn’t mean that much to you. If you choose not to buy a DVD or Blu-Ray of a show that you like, that’s your decision, but don’t grouse about it if you’re not willing to stick your neck out.

Scrooge_McDuck

“Maybe the problem is that you’re just cheap!”

Let the 1990s Go, Already!

silverstar 6 Comments

Hey, remember the 1990’s?

Duuuuude! The 90’s were AWESOME! Cartoons like X-Men, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Doug, Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy and the Disney Afternoon were TOTALLY RADICAL TO THE MAX!!!
 
Yeah, that was a pretty great decade for cartoons, wasn’t it? But let me clue you in on a little secret about the 1990’s. SPOILERS…..
……..They’re over now.
Today, Twinsanity would like to speak to all of the 90’s Kids out there. Those folks who, when asked how channels like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney Channel can improve themselves, inevitably pipe in with “They should just cancel all of that new crap and bring back the 90’s shows!” and make ranting YouTube videos shouting “I want my Nickelodeon back!” or “We want old Cartoon Network back!” To these individuals, we offer this little piece of advice. Five simple words which we feel will be beneficial to you yourselves, but to everyone around you and the TV networks you love as well:
LET THE 1990’S GO ALREADY!

We’re continually amazed when we hear or read teens and young adults saying that kids’ channels (most notably Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network) should abandon all of their current programming and only air the shows from their 1990’s schedules.

“Seriously? An’ people say I’M goofy! A-hyuk!”
 
These fans don’t seem to realize just how wacky that idea sounds. The very idea that a 24/7 cable channel could survive in today’s market by staying locked in a single era for all eternity is laughably absurd. How are Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon supposed to evolve and succeed if you waste their time slots and waste space with shows that have been run countless times, literally everyone knows about, everyone has seen at least a zillion times, everyone can buy on DVD or Blu-ray and everyone can watch on a different channel or online? The television/entertainment medium is a fast moving industry that slows down for no-one. What these people don’t seem to realize is that networks like Nickelodeon, CN, Disney Channel and The Hub are tailored for kids, not adult nostalgia buffs. What they also fail to realize is that in order to move forward ad keep success going, new and original content is necessary. Statements such as “I want my old (fill-in-the-blank channel) back!” or “Only air the 90s shows!” annoy me, because doing so would be ratings suicide because today’s kids are more interested in their shows, which is not to suggest that some kids wouldn’t watch them, but the kids’ demos have always been stronger for the current shows over the canceled reruns. Network executives know that a current airing of Phineas & Ferb will put more butts into seats than a 30 year old rerun of Gummi Bears would.
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And what sort of egotistical, delusional butt head would say something like this un-ironically?
“The only reason why kids prefer their shows is because they haven’t seen the good ones. If kids saw the older cartoons, they’d like them more.”
 
if-my-calculations-are-correct-youre-an-idiot
 
 
Do you have a source for this claim? I mean, besides the ass that you pulled it out of? Using this logic, then the shows from your parents’ time are automatically better than they shows that you grew up with. Honestly, the “old shows = good, new shows = bad” argument doesn’t make sense to me at all, because every era has/had good shows and bad shows. A TV show isn’t automatically bad because it’s new, nor was every TV show from the past automatically a classic. Some TV shows were either forgettable or were garbage even when they were first run, and said shows haven’t improved any 2 or 3 decades later. Waynehead wasn’t a good show when it debuted on Kids’ WB back in 1996, and even now, the worst episode of Regular Show is still better than the best episode of Waynehead.
Another thing people who make statements like the above fail to take into account is that today’s kids actually like today’s cartoons. Imagine if the 90’s Kids got their wish and the Big Four kids’ cable networks did remove all of their current shows and only ran the 90’s stuff all day:
 *************************************************
Kid: Hey, what happened to Sanjay and Craig?
Parents: Oh, we went out to Nickelodeon Studios with picket signs and sent them angry emails and boycotted their network until they promised to get rid of all of those new shows. Now Nick only carries Doug, Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy, Clarissa Explains it All and Hey, Dude all day. Enjoy!
Kid: But I liked Sanjay and Craig! That was my favorite show!
Parents: Kill that noise! Sanjay and Craig is a terrible show! It wasn’t on when we were kids, so it obviously sucks! Now you’ll watch the 8-hour Doug marathon and like it!!
 ****************************************************
Are you seriously so narcissistic that you honestly believe that kids would instantly glom onto the 20+ year old shows that you grew up with and think that they’re better than the shows that they enjoy watching now? To be fair, some might like them almost as much, or just as much, but most of them would still want the Breadwinners, Clarence, Finn and Jake, Mordecai and Rigby, Uncle Grandpa, Blythe Baxter, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Phineas and Ferb and the gang from Gravity Falls back. While some kids do indeed have some appreciation for older shows, by and large kids generally prefer the current stuff of their generation to the stuff of previous generations.
**************************************************
There’s another little detail that these nostalgiatards seem to be overlooking: that 20 years ago, there were people who were saying the exact same things about their generation of cartoons that they’re saying about the current one. Back in the 90’s, there were folks nerd-raging about how Cartoon Network needed to get rid of the Craptoon-Craptoons like that gawdawful Johnny Bravo, that ghastly Cow & Chicken, those repulsive Eds, those stupid Powerpuff Girls and that immoral, hedonistic Toonami trash and go back to the “good ole days” of being the Hanna-Barbera Reruns channel and just showing Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones, Bugs and Daffy all day like God and nature intended. This is precisely why I don’t take stock in nostalgic fan-wanking: most nostalgia boils down to: “(This current show) is so stupid! It’s nowhere near as good as (this other older show which was just as stupid but I love it because it was a part of my childhood)!”
****************************************************
Then there’s this statement that I read regarding Warner Brothers animation:
“Maybe Steven Spielberg should come back”
 ********************************************************
Nice thought, but it’s both short-sighted and unrealistic. First, there were many talented people responsible for Warner Brothers’ Silver Age: Tom Ruegger, Paul Dini, Paul Rugg, Sherri Stoner, Deanna Oliver, Bruce Timm, James Tucker, the late Dwayne MacDuffie, to name only a few, so it’s illogical to credit only one person as being responsible for an entire era of programming. Second, love your optimism, but you’re not going to invite Steven Spielberg to work with WB again and suddenly everything is going to magically return to the way that it was in 1991. I enjoyed the Silver Age WB shows also, but that era is over, and nothing can resurrect it. The above notion is just as realistic as suggesting that Quincy Jones return to Motown so that studio can go back to the way it was in the 1960s. One can’t make another Silver Age any more than one could make another Woodstock* (by which I mean the 3 day music festival of 1969, not Snoopy’s bird pal).
*And before anyone points this out, I’m aware that a Woodstock II was tried a couple of decades ago, but while the original Woodstock was the bringing together of an entire generation, Woodstock II was nothing more than a pathetic cash grab that came and went with barely a thought and you’ll also notice that to date there hasn’t been a Woodstock III.
You can’t artificially re-create a Golden or Silver Age. They just happen, and lightning rarely strikes twice. You can’t just go to Liverpool, round up 4 guys, give them mop-top hairdos, teach them how to sing and play instruments, ship them over to America and declare them the new Beatles. There will never be another Beatles. There may be other successful British bands, some may even possess huge talent, but they still won’t be the Beatles. Only the Beatles will ever be the Beatles. Hollywood tried to create New Monkees once, and we all saw how that turned out:
 **********************************************
Young Cutup on the Street: I think the New Monkees should be a heavy metal Monkee, a New Wave Monkee, a dentist Monkee and a Rabbi Monkee. Yuk-yuk!
MTV Reporter: Look, if you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m out. (Tosses aside his mike and walks away)
**************************************************

Another tired practice which needs to cease is the nonstop whining to bring all of the 90’s shows back with new episodes. “Bring back Johnny Bravo!” “Bring back Powerpuff Girls!” “Bring back Hey, Arnold!!” “Bring back Jimmy Neutron!” Guess what? Rob Paulsen is working again: he’s currently the voice of Donatello on Nick’s new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. And guess what else? Warner Bros. is working on a new animated series starring Bugs Bunny titled Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production. You’d think the 90’s kids would be happy about these things, but nooooooo! All we hear in response is “NO! WB should be reviving Animaniacs and Rob should be voicing Yakko and Pinky again! I don’t care about Wabbit unless Buster and Babs and Taz’s family from Taz-Mania are going to be in it! Where’s our new Animaniacs revival? Where are our new Tiny Toons episodes? Where’s that mega-Animaniacs/Tiny Toons crossover show that WB never actually said they’d make, but we’ve all concocted in our heads and have declared on the internet that they must make??!?” Do you honestly think that WB can just say, “Dude, we’re getting the band back together!” and round up all of those same voice actors, writers, producers, directors and animators from all of the separate lives and projects that they’re working on now and just resume the show and it’ll be exactly as it was before? I think a more feasible solution would be to take just some of those characters, like just the Warners or just Slappy Squirrel or just Rita and Runt and spin them off into separate individual series.

But let’s play devil’s advocate here for a second and assume that WB did decide to make a new Animaniacs. I can guarantee that all of the same people who were crying to get the show back would within weeks, days, be ranting on the internet about how much the new A! sucks, how it’s not the same as before and how WB ruined their childhoods. Do you know how I know this would be the case? Because it’s the same thing that happened when CN revived Dexter’s Lab with different art and animation, no Genndy Tartakovsky, Candi Milo replacing Christine Cavanaugh (who retired from voice acting) as Dexter and a bunch of Mandark, Mom and Dad cartoons. It’s the same thing that happened when Xiaolin Showdown was brought back as Xiaolin Chronicles, with nearly all of the characters having different voices and the addition of the character Ping-Pong, aka the Cousin Oliver of the Xiaolin Showdown franchise. It’s the same thing that happened when Teen Titans was brought back as Teen Titans GO!, with the same voice actors as the original but completely different in tone and visual style. It’s the same thing that happened when CN gave you those 2 post-cancellation Powerpuff Girls specials (the 2nd one of which was minus creator Craig McCracken) that everybody complained were too fast-paced and looked and sounded too different from the original show. Well, guess what? YOU wanted all of those shows back and they gave them to you. Like the old Toyota commercials used to say: You asked for it, you got it. Now choke on it!

 “I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. Now go eh-way or I shall taunt yew a second time!”
*****************************************

And then there are requests like the following:

“I think that Warner Brothers and DC Animation should make another season of Teen Titans. Just one more season, to wrap things up.”

C'mon Man!

Haven’t you had enough? Teen Titans was supposed to end after 4 seasons, but due to fans’ requests, you got 5 seasons and a made for TV movie! And I don’t want to hear some WB executive say “Well, we were going to make a new Superman animated series, as well as a Super Best Friends Forever animated series, but titanfan 4 eva11!!! wanted a 6th season of Teen Titans, so the aforementioned DC animated projects have been pushed back to late 2016.” If you just want to see TT’s loose ends tied up (whatever those “loose ends” might happen to be), then a Teen Titans: TAS comic book series, prime-time special or a DTV would be a better idea, I think.

To sum up: were the ‘toons of the 90’s awesome? Yes, of course they were. No doubt. But does that mean that we should try to ram the 90’s cartoons down the throats of today’s youth and scream to them that our cartoons were better and theirs aren’t worth jack? No, dude, just no. It’s a simple equation, folks: we should just let this generation enjoy what they enjoy, while we enjoy what we enjoy. Is that so unreasonable?

Don’t Just Stand There…DO Something!

silverstar Leave a comment

You know what’s been grinding my gears lately?

These nonstop internet threads, rants and YouTube videos of people whining, “I want my old Nickelodeon back!” or “I want my old Cartoon Network back!” These things have been sprouting up like weeds online; I’m currently on 2 message boards, and invariably, we’ll get a “ways to improve Nick” or “How would you improve Cartoon Network?” thread; it never ceases to amaze me how so many peoples’ idea of “improving” these networks entails booting off all of the current shows and bringing all of the 1990’s shows back. The final straw for me was this obviously fake news bulletin stating how Nickelodeon was basically dumping all of its’ “terrible” current shows like iCarly, Big Time Rush and T.U.F.F. Puppy and would be resurrecting their 90’s cartoon franchises like Doug, Rugrats and Hey, Arnold! with new episodes. What’s scary about this is that many people actually believed this to be true.

Sadly, this attitude is all too prevalent on the net nowadays. To all of the people yelling, “I want my old Cartoon Network back!” or “I want my old Nickelodeon back!”, I’d like to say just three little words:

Let. It. Go.

Seriously, get over it and get on with your lives. Yes, the 90’s were a great decade for both channels, but it’s Reality Check time: CN and Nick are never going to go back to being the way they were in the 1990’s. Never. You know why they aren’t? For one simple reason: it’s not the 1990’s anymore. The 90’s were 20 years ago. If you’re old enough to fondly remember the 90’s then you’re officially out of CN and Nick’s target demo and are therefore invisible to these channels. CN and Nick aim their programming at kids, not adult nostalgia buffs, but kids. And that means people who are kids now, not people who were kids 20 years ago. I get that you’re fans of the 90’s era shows (I enjoyed several of them myself), but don’t let your fanboyism blind you into believing that a schedule devoid of anything new and which endlessly loops all of the shows that you grew up loving would be better for the network. That’s not how it works. Nick and CN constantly re-running their 90’s shows and not making any new shows might please some fans, but from a business perspective it would be a terrible idea. TV is a business, and no bsuiness has ever gotten ahead by constantly looking back. Just because the majority of the 90’s cartoons were great doesn’t mean that nobody should ever try to make new ones: people would be out of work that way, and eventually, with nothing new coming down the pike, these networks would eventually start to lose money. And losing money is never good for business.

I think that instead of wishing for Cartoon Network and Nick to bring the old shows back, we should hope for these networks to produce new shows with the same level of creativity and commitment to quality as the shows of the 90’s.

The problem with the rallying cry of “I want my old (fill-in-the-blank network) back!” is that Nick and CN aren’t “our” networks anymore. They’re for the kids of today. While it would be great if their parent companies would show viewers our age some love with the occasional returns of the shows from our era onto their schedules for a little while as well as some decent DVD sets, we really should let today’s kids have these channels, since that’s what matters for the survival of these networks. The shows that Nick and CN run currently may not appeal to you or I, but that’s not a requirement; it only matters if today’s kids like them. CN and Nick are “their” channels now, we should let them have them and form their own fond memories.

I generally don’t take much stock in nostalgia because it’s circular; in 20 years time, in 2031, we’ll be subjected to piles of threads videos and rants from people who are complaining that they want their 2011 Nick and CN back.

Another thing that bugs me about the TV nostalgia complainers is how so many of them aren’t willing to put forth any effort to satisfy their needs. All too often they just sit on their saw-horses and kvetch about how their desires aren’t being met and wanting the networks they watch to do everything to accommodate their wishes. Last year on 1 of the forums I’m on, there was this guy who would come on there every week just to whine, complain, crab and moan about Boomerang: he would go on and on about how he didn’t like that Boomerang was now airing newer cartoons and what he called “Japanese fighting shows” like Swat Kats, Teen Titans, Samurai Jack and Pokemon (never mind that 3 out of those 4 shows are in fact American and the 4th isn’t a fighting show, but a collecting show) and how he wished that Boom would go back to showing Looney Tunes, Superfriends and Mr. Magoo (never mind that those shows are all property of Warner bros. and if Turner ever wanted to re-acquire them, they’d have to pay Warner a whopping royalty). Around this same time, there was another forum member who wouldn’t stop yammering about how he wanted to see Kekaishi moved from [adult swim] to the Cartoon Network schedule; apparently this kid had once watched something on [adult swim] when he was younger and was so freaked out by what he saw that he refused to watch [as] anymore, and he wouldn’t stop going on about how he wanted Turner to move Kekaishi to CN (Never mind that currently the only anime that CN runs are the toy-based ones like Pokemon, Bakugan and Beyblade).

To these couch potatoes, I ask this: instead of wishing, hoping and dreaming that these networks will change their ways for you, have you ever considered, I don’t know, DOING something to remedy your predicament? Crazy thought, I know, but you could actually DO something instead of just spiting what CN and Boom are doing now.

And when I say “do something about it” I don’t mean creating an account on a message board just to complain. That doesn’t work, because most of the time the people in charge of programming on these networks don’t hang out on public message boards. Nor do I mean signing some online petition or starting some “revival project” on Facebook. Online petitions are like miracle diets: they don’t work because they’re too easy to doctor, and a gathering of people on Facebook to talk about how great a show is and post really bad fan art isn’t a “revival project” because neither of those things are going to get your favorite shows back on the air.

If Da Boom or CN aren’t running the shows that you want them to or they’re not running them at a convenient time for you, DO something about it. If these shows aren’t airing at a convenient time for you, record them and watch them at a time that is convenient. If these shows are on DVD, buy the DVDs and watch them at your leisure. Find out if these shows are on a legal streaming video service and subscribe to that service. If a DVD distributor isn’t producing DVD sets of your favorite shows, then write to them and ask them to; let them know that you’d be willing to pay for your favorite shows on DVD. Heck, you could even study the art form you love, learn to write and draw, take a course in animation or art or creative writing so you can 1 day actually MAKE the sort of cartoons that you want to see. And I don’t want to hear stuff like “That’s too expensive” or “That takes too much time” or “It’s not the same as watching them on TV”. Stop making excuses. Think of getting to see these shows again as a drug or a bottle of booze: if you want your fix badly enough, you’ll find some way to get it. If you had your own kick-ass cartoon collection on DVD or streaming video, then it wouldn’t matter what these channels do. Ultimately, it comes down to ‘just how bad do you want it?’

It seems to me that being proactive and doing something is better than just sitting on your duff and hoping that 1 day one these networks will come around to your way of thinking, ’cause that may never happen.