The 50 Greatest Saturday Morning Cartoons

Image via Complex Original

When the U.S. was struck by Pokémon, it happened in one fell swoop: The game was such a success that the cartoon adaptation arrived almost immediately.

How did that go? Ten seasons, five films, a store at Rockefeller Plaza—and hundreds of millions of dollars later, the creators' children and grandchildren won't ever have to work again. With Digimon and Monster Rancher following the same formula (but failing), we think it's OK to co-sign Pokemon off of success alone. And seriously, who didn't wish they were real?

A year after becoming a worldwide pop rap sensation with his third album, Please, Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em, MC Hammer answered all the critics who called him a cartoonish, dancing-ass sellout. How? By starring in this Saturday morning cartoon, in which he played a youth center worker who transforms into the superhero Hammerman whenever he dons magical anthropomorphic dancing shoes.

OK, so maybe it was a bit of a minstrel show, but we were kids. Hammerman featured live-action and animated Hammer, and we wanted to get our hands, eyes, and ears on anything he put out, no matter how many times he told us, “You can’t touch this!”

In each Harlem Globetrotters episode, the first cartoon ever to feature black male protagonists, America’s favorite comedic traveling basketball team snapped on folks and solved a local conflict with a game of hoops (against all odds and despite a villain trying to rig the contest)—much like in Kevin Bacon’s racist 1994 sports movie The Air Up There!

Sure, it would have been slightly less offensive if George “Meadowlark” Lemon (voiced by the legendary Scatman Crothers) and Freddie “Curly” Neal had achieved peace with treaties instead of behind-the-back passes, but a step at a time, we say. Or is that just what The Man has taught us to say? Damn you, expectation-lowering white overlord!

It's common knowledge that anyone who has ever played the D&Drole-playing game is a dork. What you may not know is that anyone who watched the surprisingly violent—and thus controversial—animated series is cool.

We followed the gang of kids who were transported to the Realm, where they were given fantasy roles and sent on quests by the Dungeon Master (who's not a dominatrix, btw) so that they might return to their world, and we're certainly cool. No, seriously, we are. And if you let us down off the flagpole we'ill draw you a chart that explains exactly why this is.

Despite Levar Burton's best intentions, reading was pretty lame in the '80s. Still, CBS almost made us pick up a book with this short-lived Saturday morning showcase, where Captain Kangaroo introduced various cartoon adaptations of famous kids books, from Dragon's Blood to How To Eat Fried Worms. Book publishers take note: The key to getting kids excited about reading is to have a kick-ass electric guitar theme song. Sold.

First dubbed Ewoks in the first season and then changed to The All New Ewoks as a part of Ewoks and the Droids Adventure Hour, this 30-minute Lucasfilm confection centered around the fuzzy and cute-as-balls protagonist, Wicket W. Warrick, and his home on the forest moon of Endor before the famed Battle of Endor, which Star Wars continuity nerds will know places this joint BEFORE Return of the Jedi, which is significant to, like, 17 people.

Why pair a flying rodent with a couple of wisecracking magpies? Why the fuck not? Mighty Mouse was the flying mouse (no shit you say, but here's something you didn't know: MM creator Izzy Klein's original super-powered vermin was a housefly named "Superfly"), and Heckle and Jeckle were the magpies, and along with new characters Quacula (a vampire duck) and Swifty (the sidekick to longtime Mighty Mouse adversary Oil Can Harry) they formed one of the most bizarre anthropomorphic menageries in animated history. Which is saying something.

Imagine Kobe Bryant, Derek Jeter, Alexander Ovechkin, and Drew Brees saving children across the world from evildoers while living together in a gym operated by a gadget-building Jewish lady. That was the premise of ProStars, featuring cartoon versions of Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Bo Jackson.

This show, which felt like Captain Planet meets The Three Musketeers, didn't last more than two seasons, but stained our memories with a few misconceptions: a) Michael Jordan has a Leno-sized chin, b) Wayne Gretsky's always hungry like he's blazed, and c) Bo Jackson can swing tree trunks to destroy tractors.

Seriously, for some of us who were barely potty-trained when we peeped this show, we really thought Bo knows how to do anything!

Talk about international. Based on characters by an American author, produced by a French/Canadian studio, and animated by a Japanese studio, The Littles took the original story of a miniature, meddlesome family of mouse-humans a bit further. It being the '80s, the show touched on the perils of drug abuse (crack), abandonment, and the dangers of trusting really tall white guys (Ronald Reagan). Lessons learned, thankfully.

Alright, so this wasn't really a cartoon, but the claymation and the costumes were dope enough to make us believe Steven Spielberg was behind it. It made us ignore the plot holes and inconsistencies. We only wish the sexy-ass Pakuni people in the horrible film adaption were in the original.

What's better than Kid 'n' Play in live action? Kid 'n' Play in animated form, of course!

The rapping duo brought their dancing, silly-ass game, and positive messages to Saturday mornings where they were somehow stuck in middle school and made it actually look cool to be young, broke, and corny. Ah, the Golden Era, where have you gone?

Not the most popular girl at school, Pepper was all about individuality and being cool in your own world (not that she didn't flirt with changing her steez to fit in, to which her young fans (read:us) said: "Nnnooooooooooo!!!").

Pepper Ann was a great Saturday morning cartoon about strong-willed pre-teens with elaborate fantasy lives, even though it didn't have any sneaky drug references. Although her best friend Milo was always so sleepy, relaxed, and hungry...and he did play hacky sack a lot. Hmmmmm.

Not to be confused with the Jim Carrey vehicle or the Cher/Eric Stoltz disgusto-face-gingey-nightmare movie, M.A.S.K. (Mobile Armored Strike Kommand) was billed as a cross between G.I. Joe and Transformers, which is just retarded because this was a whole other thing. Simply put, it was so flagrantly bootleg.

M.A.S.K. seriously made Gobots look legit. Matt Trakker battled V.E.N.O.M. (Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem—another champion acronym), and even though the series only lasted a couple seasons it still became a wealth of inspiration for an awesome line of toys that they quickly recouped all show expenses on (about $20 bucks in today's money).

Unlike Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling(the shameless 1985 cartoon that tried to cash in on the popularity of pro wrestling but had voice actors putting words in the mouths of our favorite WWF heroes and villains), Mr. T actually voiced himself in this show, and also appeared in live-action intros and narrations that broke down moral lessons for that ass at the end of each episode.

Granted, the show was an obvious rip-off of Scooby-Doo, and the thought of Mr. T as a gymnastics coach who travels the world solving mysteries with his limber youngsters still makes us laugh, but we could never be mad at more Mr. T. And even if we could, we damn sure wouldn't put it in print anywhere he might read it and "pity" us fools with his fists.

Back in the day, John Candy was the muthaeffin' man. And a cartoon featuring him (real voice) as a lovable camp leader who fought evil developers and rival disciplinarian camp leaders, all while teaching kids important outdoor skills—well that was pretty dope. Throw in a character voiced by Different World goddess (and frequent cartoon voiceover actor) Cree Summer and a theme song penned by Harry Nilsson, and you've got a Saturday morning sleeper classic.

In the late '80s animated dinosaurs were in (think The Land Before Time), skateboarding was in, and teal was definitely in. Capitalizing on all that was Denver, the Last Dinosaur, a short-lived 'toon about an animated teal dinosaur that learned to skate. The show lasted just two months in its original run which was thankfully not as long as the skateboard craze, and thankfully much longer than the dinosaur and teal phase.

When Jackie Chan realized he couldn't hop around buildings or use kitchenware to dismantle villains like he used to (age hurts), he decided to immortalize his on-screen persona by adapting a cartoon version of himself as an archeologist living with an adrenaline-pumping niece and a grumpy chi-magician uncle.

Sounds quirky? You're dead wrong! The show featured great action sequences inspired by some of Chan's classics, hilarious characters that mimic '70s kung fu film dialogues ("Bunny flees from vicious Jackals!"), and for once Asian stereotypes portrayed by Uncle and Mama Tohru were bearably funny.

Now if only we can get an animation version of Chris Tucker... Wait, even if he's a cartoon the jokes are still the same. Man, is Rush Hour really done for?

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but not in the case of Street Sharks. The short-lived series not only ripped off elements of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but took shots at the boys in green too (the Sharks hated pizza, for one). Add in the fact that it was mostly created to sell a toy line and not borne of artistic merit, and you'd think we would hate the show. Nah.

Most shark biters don't get the co-sign (word to Raekwon), but the utter ridiculousness of this show is what made it so good. Jawsome!

There have been many versions of this classic cat-and-mouse cartoon, but this is our favorite. Full of creative chases and violence, it didn’t feature the overt racism of the Hanna-Barbera era (1940-1958) with its Mammy Two Shoes caricature of a poor black maid, the soft batch pussy-footing of 1975’s The Tom and Jerry Show, in which the natural enemies were inexplicably peace-loving friends, or the janky animation of The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show from the early ’80s. Nope, just good ol’ Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse teaching kids how hilarious violence is.

The first two seasons of Gargoyles ran in the afternoon, and it wasn't until the third and final season that the show, re-branded as The Goliath Chronicles, got a weekend slot. Most of the talent shifted for this iteration, and the series suffered as a result, but it was still dope to see the defenders of the night run through Manhattan one last time.

God bless the Japanese and their amazing imagination for peace-defending anthropomorphic weaponry, which inspired Peter Keefe to develop this one-of-a-kind clusterfucking of robotic lions that promoted unity, teamwork, and action figures that raped our parents' wallets. For the '90s babies out there, think Power Rangers in animation minus the racial typecasting.

The Japanese video game giant hit brainwashing marketing gold with this Saturday morning adventure that featured Nintendo references galore. After average teen Kevin (a.k.a. Captain N) gets sucked into his TV, he's forced to save "Videoland" with his Duck Hunt zapper and the N-Team, his all-star squad that features NES favorites like Mega Man and Kid Icarus.

But, hands down, the most memorable character was the diabolical villainess Mother Brain, the terrifying giant talking organ from Metroid who's behind Videoland's destruction. Seriously, she wore lipstick and talked like Little Richard. Scary shit.

Oddly enough, two different Sonic-themed cartoons were on-air at the same time during the early '90s. The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog was lighthearted and playful, but Sonic SatAM, as this version was commonly called, aired on Saturday mornings and stuck with a darker theme much different from the popular video games.

The fact that Sonic was voiced by Steve Urkel (Jaleel White) already makes it a classic, but sick animation and surprisingly strong character development really drive the point home.

Not to be confused with the original Ghostbusters, this quality adaptation of the classic '80s comedy-horror flick was the rare movie cartoonification that actually worked. By turning Slimer into a good guy and landing a killer voice cast (Arsenio Hall as Winston!), they condensed the film's spooky/goofy fun into kid-friendly half-hour segments, and sold a shitload of Hi-C's green Ecto-Cooler along the way. Damn that shit was tasty.

Who ever thought a Saturday morning cartoon show would be our first introduction to sociology and political theory? Yes, it's true that Recess revolved around six clichéd fourth graders in an uber-clichéd environment but the saving grace to the show was that it featured a fully functioning society equipped with laws, a social hierarchy, and all that good stuff Marx liked writing about.

Thoroughly more evolved than the chaos of supporting characters in most children's shows, the supporting cast in Recess provided the structure to the gang's agency. If it wasn't for that, the show would have totally whomped (as T.J. Detweiler would say).

The mid-'90s iteration of the Spider-Man franchise featured a meticulously recreated Manhattan setting and a Peter Parker taking on a variety of age-appropriate issues (issues that meticulously avoided mentions of the words "dead," death," "die," and "kill").

What are we saying? Don't blame this Spider-Man for Columbine.

We bet you thought Arthur Rankin Jr. wasn't cashing new checks in the '80s. Come on, B.

Though Thundercats was a departure from the usual Rankin/Bass stop-motion family fare, you could kind of see his fingerprints throughout the corny-ass dialogue we took as animated awesomeness back in the day. Whatever. We were hooked on the four seasons to cop the briefs, dinette set, bed sheets and toothbrush. Ain't consumerism grand?

Tight jeans, red flannel under a long sleeve sweater, a fitted cap atop his footballish head, and a spot in "Hillwood" (a big city that shares more than a few landmarks with Brooklyn): Is it wrong to call Hey Arnold!the original hipster ensemble show?

Yes, especially since Arnold and his fourth grade friends ruled the hood with their cool thumbshaking greeting instead of gentrifying the hood with beer bars and boat shoes. From stoop kid to pigeon man everyone could relate to the show. Oh, and who didn't want Arnold's room? Or a pig for a pet?

Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!

You can't talk great Saturday morning cartoons without summoning the magical, shape-shifting, prank-pulling "ghost with the most" from this show, which was based very loosely on Tim Burton's 1988 movie Beetlejuice.

Joined by his best friend, Lydia Deetz, an eccentric young goth girl outcast, the trickster scourge of Neitherworld goes on adventures and generally screws with people (making him every kid's obvious choice for a role model). With sight gags for the youth and intelligent writing for adults—not to mention CGI segments that were cutting edge—it's a show that we can still enjoy today.

We certainly aren't too old for a Beej on a Saturday morning. What? That's his nickname! Get your mind out the gutter!

Ever wondered what it would be like if Batman were a duck? We never did either, but from the beginning we were, ahem, down with this DuckTales spin-off, in which unassuming dad Drake Mallard puts on a purple getup at night and fights St. Canard's criminals with his sidekick Launchpad McQuack (originally Scrooge McDuck's pilot).

A well-intentioned but bumbling fame-whore who struggles to keep his daily life in order, Darkwing Duck was actually a sharper parody of superheroes than we may have realized at the time. Layered fun for kids and adults, episodes continue to quack us up today. (Sorry, we promise to duck hunt ourselves for that one.)

Adapted from the comic that spun off of the newsletter mascot that teenager Ben Edlund created for a Boston's New England Comics shop in 1986, this brilliantly written superhero parody took the piss out of popular good guys like Batman, Aquaman, and Captain America.

Named for a parasite and dressed in the "blue tights of justice" with antennae, the proud—and rather dense—muscle-bound hero protects The City from ridiculous and hilarious villains (Chairface Chippendale, El Seed, Professor Chromedome) with help from his meeker, wannabe-superhero sidekick, Arthur, an accountant who dresses like a moth and is the actual brains of the team.

Given the metropolis' other superhero schmucks, many of whom are lazy, lascivious, and even cowardly, the Tick is like your best worst option when in danger. This joint is must-watch material, 'cause if you can't laugh at men in tights, you need to pick that atomic wedgie out of your tight ass.

Every '70s baby grew up on The Muppet Show, but by the time the '80s came along, the legendary puppets all kinda started to look like a bunch of dirty hippies. Luckily, the franchise attracted a new generation with this wholesome cartoon update, a spin-off of the hilarious toddler dream sequence from The Muppets Take Manhattan.

Piggy, Kermit, Fozzie, and the gang grow up in a bizarrely isolated nursery and get into a series of adventures that pretty much take place entirely in their minds. The only anchor to reality is their beloved Nanny, who never shows her face once in the entire series. Great legs, though!

Heathcliff had his share of pals over his cartoon life, from Dingbat and the Creeps to Marmaduke, but the game changed in 1984 when the second half of Heathcliff became The Catillac Cats. And then it was time for the adventures of Healthcliff's street-smart buddy Riff-Raff, his friends (Hector, Wordsworth, and Mungo), and lady-friend Cleo.

They lived in the town dump, got into scrapes, and Wordsworth wore a Walkman and rapped everything he said. What's fucking with that? Oh, and, also, this is just a personal theory, but Hector and Mungo were the inspiration for the Plutonians from Adult Swim's Spacecataz.

See? Amaze your friends with that little tidbit.

Contrary to popular belief, the richest kid in the world is not Diggy Simmons. It's the tow-headed young lad known as Richie Rich, a.k.a. The Only Aryan You Ever Envie.

Jumping off the pages of the Harvey Comics universe (comprised of Casper, Sad Sack, etc.) and into ABC's Saturday morning lineup—along with Scooby-Doo, and later Pac-Man—the pint-sized gazillionaire ran rampant in his mansion and the fortunately named town of Richville.

Fun fact: his girlfriend was Bart Simpson! Or, rather, his girlfriend was voiced by Nancy Cartwright, who's also the voice of Bart. Which makes us think that "eat my shorts" started as the twisted sadistic fetish of a child who already had everything...EXCEPT TOTAL SUBMISSION.

An underrated gem, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters wasn't your typical school yard drama. The show revolved around three young monsters (Ickis, Oblina, and Krumm) who go to school underneath a garbage dump. But forget learning about math or science—that shit is for suckas and Asians. Instead, they learn about how to scare humans.

Wait, didn't we just describe the plot to Monsters Inc.? Pixar, you got some explaining to do.

With the success of DC's Batman: The Animated Series, you know Marvel had to get in the action with a series of their own.

We can't decide what we love most about this show. Sure, we could praise the mature story lines—that dealt with everything from religion to the Holocaust—but who cares about that when we can talk about the obnoxious animation style which gave bulging muscles to every single character (dudes didn't have 6-packs, they had 16-packs). But our favorite character had to be Rogue, with her super-tight spandex, slim waist, and magical disappearing and reappearing southern accent.

We assume a full-body condom would protect us from death? Not that we thought that as kids; we just thought she's purrrrrty.

Before he was bald (but after he was already a germaphobe freak), Howie Mandel created and voiced the lead character in Bobby's World, a cartoon about a precocious 4-year-old with a hyperactive imagination. He was comparable to a kinder, gentler, original version of Family Guy's Stewie.

A subliminal pro-steroid message? A parable for Prohibition-era oppression? A thinly-veiled warning about environmental destruction? One huge candy commercial? Whatever you got out of Disney's juice-head adventures, there's no doubt that this classic show is entertaining as hell at any age.

Living in a huge hollowed-out tree with a network of underground tunnels, each week the Gummi Bears battled for their medieval forest against the evil Duke Igthorn and his band of bumbling ogres. Luckily, the bears keep little bottles of GummiBerry Juice on deck, a magical elixer that gives them the ability to bounce on anything like a trampoline. Remember kids, drugs can be good!

Based on Garfield, Jim Davis' comic strip about a fat, lazy, and mean-spirited Tabby cat, this long-running series is a cartoon classic. Garfield's "friends" included not only strip regulars like his bumbling cartoonist owner Jon, Jon's dim-witted dog Odie, and vain kitten nemesis Nermal, but also introduced a cast of curious farm animals on the spin-off U.S. Acres, which featured well-read OCD swine Orson, and Wade, a bitch-made duck who wears a flotation device.

The jokes seem pretty simple to us now, but with three cartoon segments and several shorts packed into a half hour, it was perfect for our new ADD generation to snort Ritalin to.

The truth about Spongebob Squarepantsis this: It initially struggled to get ratings in its first season, became popular via incessant merchandising, became a hit in its second season, it went on to become a cultural phenomenon (and an occasional symbol for gay pride), and then it sold a shitload of merchandise.

But that's not to take away from the excellence of the show itself. Although the plots were never too complicated, the show was filled with great characters (Patrick!) and a wonderful animation style which would take plenty liberties and morph Spongebob into all types of creative shapes.

Nickelodeon's Doug, which ran from 1991 to 1994, never aired on Saturday mornings, but Disney changed that when they acquired the rights and re-named it Brand Spanking New! Doug (later Disney's Doug for the latter part of the '90s). A few things changed: Patti Mayonnaise got a new haircut, Roger Klutz got rich, and Honker Burger became Swirly's, but the show was still on point with its timeless tales of awkward preadolescence.

It aired under many different names, from Challenge of the Super Friends to The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians, but everyone knows the Justice League of America cartoon by its original name. DC universe icons (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman) and shoehorned-in lames (Wonder Twins, Gleek, El Dorado) alike battled baddies and took hydraulic shape-shifting to new...heights, we guess. Although "FORM...OF...ICE CUBE!" doesn't seem much like heights to us.

Don't even bother trying to figure out what the hell an Animaniac actually is—just know that the Warner Bros. siblings were a blend of the old school wit that was Bugs Bunny with pop culture references for all ages.

Yakko, Wakko, and Dot provided comedy for kids that required suspension of disbelief or just a good moment of someone slipping on a banana peel. Anything with the title "Steven Spielberg Presents" is a sure thing. Not to mention, those two mice with their hearts set on world domination. NARF!!!

If elves and fairies were Protestants and Catholics, Smurfs were the Mormons. They lived in a tight-knit and self-sufficient society, and cherished community bonding through occasional campfire sing-a-thons.

But unlike the believers, they weren't allowed to keep multiple wives and an entire population of blue phallus-wielding males (no relation to Dr. Manhattan) was stuck with three hoes (Smurfette, Sassette, and Granny Smurf) to pluck.

Forget the beef they had with Gargamel—imagine how many times they brawled to get some dome?

The first of many cartoons to feature everyone's favorite cowardly talking Great Dane, this undisputed classic is formula genius. Four teens (preppy Freddie, stunner Daphne, nerd girl Velma, hippie stoner Shaggy) and Scooby-Doo are stranded somewhere with a ghost/monster problem when their van, the Mystery Machine, breaks down and they wind up investigating and unmasking some seemingly innocuous deviant who was dressing up and scaring people off to cover up a crime.

It took on a whole different meaning to us when we got hip to the sweet cheeba and realized that Shaggy and Scooby, with their "Scooby Snacks," insatiable hunger, and jumpiness, are high all the time—and yet they still contribute to society in a positive way. So go screw, Narcs!

Thirty-eight years. That's longer than anyone reading this (or working here) has been alive! Yet it's how long the Looney Tunes world stayed on Saturday mornings (after two years of primetime-only in the early '60s), influencing just about anybody who grew up in any of the four decades.

Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester and Tweety, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe LePew...should we go on? Because we can.

There's simply not a television show that can boast that many lasting cultural symbols, and that many memorable moments, animated or otherwise. Bow down or lay the fuck down. We're taking a left turn at Albuquerque.

Don't get it twisted, despite being a children's show, Batman: The Animated Series has much more in common with Tim Burton's Batman and Chris Nolan's more recent adaptations than it does with Joel Schumacher's horrible schlock.

With a film noir art style, the show was consciously darker than the average kiddie show: guns were fired, people were punched, and blood was drawn. The show was most famous for three things: giving Mark Hamill a second career as a voice actor thanks to his memorable voicing of The Joker, introducing Harley Quinn into the Batman canon, and the Emmy-award winning episode "Heart of Ice," which reinvented the Mr. Freeze character and made him a gazillion times more nuanced than Arnold Schwarzenegger could ever be.

Seriously, that was the worst fuckin' movie ever.

When we were kids, everyone liked to say they wanted to be an astronaut or a fire fighter. Fuck that, we wanted to be Cosby Kids. It didn't matter who: We'd be fine with ultra-slick pornhound Rudi, or even speech-impediment poster child Mushmouth ("obeekaybee!").

As long as we got to be part of an ill junkyard ensemble and race home after school to watch The Brown Hornet, we were happy. We didn't even care if we learned a thing or two before it was done. Fucking hell, this was the greatest cartoon ever, with a theme song to match. HOW IS IT NOT NUMBER ONE?

Based on the Uncle Scrooge comics, DuckTales told the story of greedy-ass Scrooge McDuck, the richest mallard in the world, who spent most of his time trying to add to his fortune on treasure hunting adventures with his nephews.

Disney's first cartoon series produced specifically for syndication, it enjoyed a good run in the '80s, then re-upped in the late '90s to teach our little brothers and sisters that only dudes with no money swear that money isn't everything. Be sure to step on those morons on your way to the top.

If you were trying to build the perfect franchise for guys of all ages, you couldn't do any better than TMNT: four skateboarding turtles living in a sewer with their grizzled rat sensei, munching on pizza and banging the hot TV reporter from Channel 6 (OK, so maybe that last one's just implied).

Oh, and the best part? They're fucking ninjas for fuck's sake. Yes, the whole enterprise got a little overplayed once it entered the realm of lunch boxes and plush toys, but there was a time when Saturday mornings weren't shit without the turtles with the Renaissance names. And to think all the kids these days get is a cheesy CGI flick.

Cowabunga to our youth!