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I mean, he's not wrong. It's certainly not a reflection on the quality of Pokemon, though; in this case it's a major advantage of airing dubbed anime. Kids WB got a sweetheart deal for Pokemon from 4Kids, basically being handed the episodes free of charge (I guess 4Kids didn't mind since they were cleaning up in Pokemon merchandise sales at the time) and likewise, 4Kids was able to afford to do that because they weren't animating the show, just dubbing and editing it.

I remember how they'd air Pokemon two or three times each Saturday morning, squeezing out the other shows. Animaniacs and co. were terrific cartoons that brought in strong ratings, but there was no way they could compete with Pokemon financially unless they found a way to create an entire cartoon for free.

Also, Histeria is tragically underrated.

(Oh, those early post-Roger Rabbit 90's, back when Spielberg thought cartoons, let alone Warner Looneys, were supposed to look like Animaniacs. Wonder how we ever survived.
It was already the Beginning of the End for US cartoons, and Ren & Stimpy hadn't even happened yet.)

Although discussions of Glitter Force have also gone into detail about WHY kids' shows have to air on Netflix now.
The stations thought all the kids were watching cable, and corporations kept the cable networks to themselves, so if Warner had a cartoon network, Animaniacs could run there....
Hey, wait! THERE'S an idea! What if Warner had their own cable network for cartoons? Razz

Pokemon was the 90s equivalent of the biggest 80s cartoons. By which I mean, it was a giant commercial for all the ancillary merchandise. Heck, Nintendo and whoever had the card game at the time could fully have run the show at a loss just to sell games, not even accounting for dolls and other toys.

Zin5ki wrote:

Here is a bandwagon upon which we can all jump! By virtue of an ever-trusty post hoc inference, I blame the rise of Pokémon for the decline of Cosgrove Hall Films. Gone from our screens are the likes of Danger Mouse, Count Duckula, and, perhaps less notably, Fantomcat. Alas my youth!

The British animation industry never seemed that big or even very stable. With a few rare exceptions, most were very cheaply done, and few made much of an impact on popular culture. There also seems to be a lack of identity, it mostly seems to close to American animation, where a lot of other countries have their own style.

From what I've seen, things are even worse now, ever watch Peppa Pig, the animation is so cheap it makes Yogi Bear book like Tom and Jerry.

While I don't think that he's wrong about what lead to the decline of American cartoons like Animaniacs, I think that's only part of the story. I also think there was a big shift in what we in the US consider appropriate for children now, as opposed to what was appropriate back in the 1980s and 1990s. With exception to the Avatar series, I can't think of any series aired in CN or Disney in the past decade that has been even remotely as dark as, say, Batman the Animated Series was, or as politically charged as Animaniacs.

In the attempt to sanitize what we show to children, we've lost the humor and serious themes that US animation brought to children and young adults two decades prior. I think we're doing a disservice to all but the youngest of children in the name of protecting them from the world around them.

Considering Pokémon had video games and trading cards to promote it which were also immensely popular, it doesn't surprise me to hear this. I'm even a Pokémon fan, and this is quite saddening since I also liked Tiny Toon and Animaniacs. But if anyone here watched the early days of Kids' WB like I did, they so remember the insane amount of promoting Pokémon got over every other show. Compare that to the promotion it gets on Cartoon Network, which didn't even produce new promo material for the 19th season.

Looneygamemaster wrote:

Just as well, to be honest. I make no apologies for my love of Animaniacs, but by the time it went to Kids WB, the cartoon anarchy it perfected was already dying.

Again, Spielberg's Amblin' productions thought it "understood" the love of vintage cartoons, because they had trotted out all the classic character cameos in Roger Rabbit, even though Zemeckis' movie treated all vintage cartoons like shrieking, hyperactive, tongue-stretching, anvil-dropping Tex Avery MGM toons. And since it was 1988-1992, and most grownups didn't have the genuine real old classics on video to watch, most mainstream people believed it. Especially Spielberg.
As a result, Warner built a whole afternoon industry around "new-generation" tributes to the Looneys, but pitched at a hyperactive, rib-nudging level, with self-amusing grownup-writer gags that would be more at home in a Dreamworks Shrek comedy than in Chuck Jones. Buster Bunny and Wakko represented the soulless image of Bugs Bunny Warner gives us today, of an obnoxious sociopath amusing himself with tossing out dynamite sticks, rather than Jones's "this means war" bully-avenger or Bob McKimson's overconfident Bronxlyn wisenheimer.

And, as noted, although there were some kids who watched it because it was on, after school (hey, why do you think they watch Adventure Time and Spongebob?), to grab a 10-yo., you need to think like a 10-yo.
And Pokemon battles, like Power Rangers and Sailor Moon, grabbed them in a way that smug West Coast jokes about Arnold Schwarzenegger and pop movie lines never could. Even in 4Kids form, Anime brought something new to the early 90's toon-verse, it was called Earnestness--Japanese kids still loved their toys.

(Something that, as Zin5ki pointed out, Cosgrove-Hall had a decade earlier, until they gave us that smug, hyperactive 10's Danger Mouse reboot.)

JaggedAuthor wrote:

From what I understand, Kids WB was unhappy with the fact that Animaniacs, Freakazoid, Pinky and the Brain, and the other Spielberg/Ruegger cartoons were more popular with teens and young adults than the network's target demographic - kids between the ages of four and eleven. Even though the ratings for these series were consistently high, the network had difficulty finding sponsors for them because many of the people who actually tuned in weren't going to buy products targeted at young children. (I watched - and enjoyed - all of the above-mentioned series as a child, but until I revisited them as an adult, I wasn't aware of just how much of their humor had been lost on me.)
.

Which fits with various decent shows with solid ratings being pulled from Cartoon Network over the last few years, which Warner owns. The problem wasn't the numbers, the problem was that they weren't the "right" numbers.

As for his explanation, that makes complete sense. It has less to do with Pokemon itself, and more to do with the creation of a business arrangement that is nearly impossible to compete with.

Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Wed Apr 13, 2016 3:51 pm; edited 4 times in total

FenixFiesta wrote:

A similar event happens to the Toonami block in the form of the "Perfect hair forever" shorts which proved similarly that subpar animation with a bizarre narrative would keep enough attention "for the ratings", and more importantly it was cheaper than trying to license anime, this would lead to the rise of ATHF and all other similar low budget works and the hiatus of the Toonami block.

Correct me if I'm wrong but ATHF, Sealab 2021, and Home Movies were a thing on Adult
Swim before Perfect Hair Forever?

Not to mention that none of those alleged shows as far as I know led to the initial cancellation of Toonami.

EricJ2 wrote:

The stations thought all the kids were watching cable, and corporations kept the cable networks to themselves, so if Warner had a cartoon network, Animaniacs could run there....
Hey, wait! THERE'S an idea! What if Warner had their own cable network for cartoons? Razz

Well it did run on this mysterious network at one point and time along with Freakzoid, Batmam TAS, and I think Superman TAS for a time before being shuffled off to Nickelodeon.

Cutiebunny wrote:

In the attempt to sanitize what we show to children, we've lost the humor and serious themes that US animation brought to children and young adults two decades prior. I think we're doing a disservice to all but the youngest of children in the name of protecting them from the world around them.

Modern cartoons not being as funny or serious as their older counterparts is purely subjective, hell you can say that about every generation of animation.

Greed1914 wrote:

Which fits with various decent shows with solid ratings being pulled from Cartoon Network over the last few years, which Warner owns. The problem wasn't the numbers, the problem was that they weren't the "right" numbers.

The right numbers insofar as the merchandise sales. But hey if there wasn't a rule prohibiting the running of toy commercials alongside the shows they're based of.......

Clickbait title. His answer sounded like he wasn't necessarily blaming "Pokemon" for the Network's decline.

This is sad. Anamaniacs, Freakzoid, and tiny Toons were just too real for t.v.

As someone who enjoyed Animaniacs, Freakazoid and Pinky and the Brain well into my teens, I'd say Hysteria's aggressive unfunniness also played a big part in the downfall of WB Animation.

Oh please, this is hardly relevant since it's almost 25 years later. Freakazoid went down in quality a little bit before Pokemon aired.

I think western animation has gotten better in the last few years. Hell, I don't think 90's cartoons could compare to Gravity Falls and Steven Universe in terms of story. Animaniacs and its ilk were really freaking funny, but that was about it.

Hoppy800 wrote:

Freakazoid went down in quality a little bit before Pokemon aired.

They sort of retooled the show in its second season. Whereas almost every first season episode had been made up of shorts and skits, the entire second season was devoted to telling half-hour stories. While there was still a lot to like in the second season, the original format was much better suited to this particular series.

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