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Saturday Morning Nothing

It’s nine o’ clock in the morning, and Mr. and Mrs. Wulf have just been woken up by the squeaky belting of a six-year-old sitting way too close to the television, spilling milk and cereal all over the carpet, singing “I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!”

Watching Saturday morning cartoons was a ritual. Wake up, get a bowl of cereal and plop those little buns in front of the ol’ boob tube just in time to be mesmerized by the zany characters and wacky stories of classic cartoons like “Recess,” “Doug” or heck, even “Street Sharks.”

Saturday, September 17, 2014 marked the last Saturday morning cartoon block to be aired. The following Saturday, The CW’s last standing cartoon block “Vortexx” was replaced by “One Magnificent Morning,” a syndicated block of live action programming.

Kids born today will never know the true meaning of a Saturday morning cartoon.

This end of an era is being heralded as a tragedy by young adults whose Instagram filters are permanently set on nostalgia, but considering that many of the Saturday morning cartoons were essentially half an hour toy commercials that sandwiched actual toy commercials, the end of this era might not be so bad.

In the mid-1960s, networks began airing Saturday morning cartoon blocks to concentrate children’s television viewing so as to attract advertisers who wanted to effectively market products to children.

Although parents’ lobby groups pressured networks into regulating the content of children’s cartoons and helped push networks to include more educational programming, it did not stop marketers from creating shows like “Transformers” or “Dino Riders,” whose only real purpose was to sell toys.

Through the 1990s to 2000s, an increase in legislation that mandated stricter regulation of children’s programming, which required networks to air educational programming and limited how and what advertisers could market to children, started the steady decline of Saturday morning cartoons.

Couple that with the rise in cable stations Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon that aired cartoons all day, an increase in the awareness of childhood obesity and the fall of iconic cartoon production companies like Hanna-Barbera; it’s a wonder that Saturday morning cartoons lasted as long as they did.

Now that they are gone, what will we have our kids do Saturday morning? Watch a DVD? Eat a tall stack of syrupy flapjacks? Maybe play with their iPad? Anything as long as it isn’t watch Saturday Morning Cartoons.

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