For me, this topic has come to mind ever since I became hooked to Adventure Time as a result of my parents banning my young sister from watching it. Thus, fuelling my curiosity and eventual admiration of the show (btw I'm now 19 years old). I have watched many shows from both Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, both cartoon and non-cartoon, and here's my history as well as my favourites:
The first time I remember watching cartoons was about 2001-which at that time I was living in Singapore, and my parents could afford cable. I often switched between Nick and CN. I found that on Nick I enjoyed the non-animated shows-the two favourites that come to mind are the game show Legends of the Hidden Temple (
here's a snippet) and
Kenan & Kel (
Who love's Orange Soda? 
)-as much as I enjoyed the cartoons shows-Rugrats, CatDog and Angry Beavers spring into mind the most vivid recollections. Nick also aired Arthur, which has probably one of the best opening theme songs to any cartoon in my opinion
. As for CN, I absolutely LOVED the cartoons; Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff girls (admittedly
), Ed, Edd n Eddy and (very briefly) Samurai Jack, these were amazing shows of which I spent many an hour watching-as going outside wasn't an option due to the monsoonal-like rain during half of the year...
Then around mid-2003, my family and I returned to Australia. Cable was expensive so my parents didn't purchase it initially.
Thus, the only enjoyable shows available were on Australia's Government-funded channel known as the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), with the only cartoon I remember being Blinky Bill (Australian GTPlanet member will more likely know the show). There was also Yu-Gi-Oh on another channel (10), which was amusing (whilst the fad existed at my school for the best part of a year and a half)
Then, about two years later (mid-late 2005), my parents finally purchased cable. Note that I emphasise the word cable, because free-to-air had started to become (and has now come) to the point of stupidity in terms of content and especially advertising (from the amount of commercial breaks they can cram in to the cross-promotion during the show and in sport, through the commentator's mouths), although some cable channels are also guilty of this (especially Cartoon Network cross-promoting products including their apps, Adventure Time merchandise purchasable from EB Games and Steven Universe-all whilst the show is running
). Off-topic rant over...
Unfortunately, my love for cartoons at this stage began to fade. I stopped watching CN as all the shows I loved disappeared and were replaced with others that I didn't like, and as for Nickelodeon, there were still some shows both new and old that I didn't mind, such as Avatar, All Grown Up (the Rugrats as teenagers), Spongebob, The Fairly OddParents-but in comparison to the shows I watched in Singapore, they weren't nearly as enjoyable. Spongebob was probably the one I watched continuously. What's worse, Nickelodeon Australia also began to populate with several non-cartoon shows, the majority of which were High School related and I absolutely regretted watching them (especially the shows featuring Miranda Cosgrove
, whom I absolutely loathed in comparison to Amanda Bynes. The existence of iCarly would be the final nail in coffin in terms of me watching Nick). Thus, by 2008, I stopped watching cartoons (and kids shows) altogether; the only form of 'animation' I really watched was the Simpsons (and sometimes Family Guy and Futurama), which I enjoyed watching until I realised that the 'marathons' that were on every Saturday and Sunday consisted of nothing more than the same old episodes from the 90's being repeated for the 90th time
.
My love for cartoons has only been just rediscovered last year in the form of Adventure Time, as I mentioned above. Initially, and in all honesty, I had no idea that the show had existed and the first time I saw reference to it was, of all places, in Call of Duty Black Ops 2 with people running around with Finn and Jake as their customised emblems (kids and CoD, what are you going to do?
). I then heard of the show from my sister, who had only just started school (there is a large age gap, as I had only just started University), got hooked onto that show until she was banned. When I asked my parents why, they saw some of the more mature references the show had to offer, and deemed it as inappropriate for her to watch (this is also considering the fact that CN Australia has probably the strictest censorship of material than anywhere else). Curious as to what they meant by mature, I began to watch it, enjoy it and get hooked on it-up to the point that I did back when I was in Singapore, as a kid. So my favourite shows would be (and in no particular order):
- Rugrats
- CatDog
- Angry Beavers
- Hey Arnold!
- Arthur (One of the best theme songs ever!)
- Dexter's Lab
- Powerpuff Girls
- Ed, Edd n Eddy
- I Am Weasel
- Samurai Jack
Like Jump_Ace, I was also unable to shorten my list either.
Some honourable mentions would also include:
- ChalkZone (the first and only show made by Frederator Studios that I really enjoyed, until now...)
- The first season of Beyblade (also containing an epic theme song), Pokemon (collected lots of the cards) and Digimon too. I'm not a big fan of anime so please don't judge
- Shows I watched when I was much very young-Postman Pat, Thomas the Tank Engine, Blue's Clues and the classic Popeye the Sailor Man spring into mind
- Of course, the classic Loony Tunes shows that I have watched every now and then for the past 15 years.
I could keep going with this and probably have about 20-25 shows on here...
As for Adventure Time, whilst I enjoy the show a lot, I think its too premature to consider it one of my all-time favourites, and in fact, to call it a classic. Who knows, if this site is still around, 10 or 20 years later we may see members saying that it was their favourite cartoon and series as a kid?!?
P.S. For your listening pleasure, here's the song Believe in Yourself by Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers-a.k.a. The theme song to Arthur:
The only thing I can say about this song is that it's so damn good...
