I've recently taken a huge interest in 1980s cartoons. Being born in the late 80s, many of the great 1980s cartoons rose to huge popularity either before I was born or I was too young to know about them or appreciate them when they were popular. Because of this and because the cartoons of my day, the 90s, overshadowed a lot of 80s cartoons for me, I never really had much desire to watch shows like Tranformers, GI Joe, Thundercats, and TMNT. But recently I've really wanted to check some of these classic 80s cartoons out and after watching a decent amount of episodes from several of the biggest franchises, I sort of had a epiphany that many of these shows were developed to sell toys based of the characters in the show, and little more.
Another thing that leads me to believe this is while I am an adult experiencing many of these cartoons for the first time in 2018, watching them from a more objective point of view has seemed to show that the plots, stories, and characters for the most part are nothing special or deep in most of the episodes I've seen. They are mostly just good guys vs bad guys with enough story and plot to push the series along just so another new character or vehicle can be shown off. While I'm not saying these shows are bad I do feel like they are pretty shallow for the most part and seem to focus heavily on introducing as much new marketable, merchandiseable content as possible.
Let me know what you think; do you agree or disagree? i'd also like to hear the perspective of people who were old enough during the 80s to be the primary demographic these shows appealed to; do you still look back on the show with the interest you used to? Do you feel like nostalgia plays a heavy part in you being able to enjoy them?
