Cartoons of the 60s

Sci-fi series from Cambria, makers of Clutch Cargo. Very imaginative, if mostly devoid of real motion. Alex Toth did much of the design work, along with Doug Wildey (Jonny Quest). The stories are serialized and quite good, but the synchro-vox technique of superimposing human mouths onto the cartoons is distracting.

This was in re-runs in the 70s, but the powers that be hadn't really messed with the content. It is still one of the most imaginative adventure cartoons ever. People died, there was real peril, some monsters, genuine creeps, amazing machinery and good characters. You can't do much better than this.

Lasting through several variations, from the 60s through the 80s, this was still the best cartoon show on Saturday morning. It was on CBS in that era and was even 90 minutes long, at one point. Again, the censors hadn't gotten out of hand yet, so you still had the gunshots and some of the wilder antics that were edited out by the 80s.

Scooby Doo was a classic by any standard! Things got greatly watered down with the later shows, but this one is still memorable. The show was formulaic but the scripts were pretty inventive and the visuals were quite wild. Added bonus, no Scrappy Doo.

This was surreal, to put it mildly. You have a weird combination of live actors, people in puppet costumes, and actual puppets. The colors were bright, the humor was silly, and the stores were bizarre, but it had an immense charm. Witchiepoo is still the best!

Spun off from Wacky Races, here Dick Dastardly and Muttley tried to stop Yakee Doodle. It was pretty much swiped from the movie Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines, with Dick Dastardly taking the Terry Thomas role. The planes were pretty wild, as I recall.

Another spinoff from Wacky Races, with Penelope Pitstop and the Anthill Gang matching wits with the Hooded Claw (Paul Lynde). It was pretty run of the mill, with tons of serial cliffhangers and plenty of bondage themes for future fetishists.

This was from the 60s, but was repeated a couple of times in the 70s. Loads of fun from the gang.

Another show repeated in the 70s, alongside the Herculoids (especially after Star Wars). Great designs, voicework and stories, though the earlier ones are the best. The show would return in the early 80s, in a new format.

Repeated, alongisde Space Ghost, in the 70s. Tells the tales of a family of adventurers, on a primative world. Zandor was at one point going to be called Zantar, but I suspect the lawyers said to change it. The monster characters were the real draw. It was inventive, but the stories got repetitive after a while (a common theme with H-B).

Like Bugs Bunny, this was a Saturday morning showcase for the theatrical cartoons, though they made new ones. The overall quality was good, though the individual cartoons varied. Also featured the The Ant & the Aardvark (very much a Road Runner and Coyote swipe) and the Inspector, and animated version of Inspector Clouseau.

This was still going in the early 70s. It featured child-oriented movies from around the globe. I rarely watched it, as it came on opposite American Bandstand.

The first of the Filmation cartoons with the Riverdale gang. There were short cartoons plus musical numbers. Pretty entertaining. Howard Morris (Ernest T Bass on Andy Griffith) was Jughead, amongst others. He would do a lot of voices for Filmation.

This was still on when I was little and was my first real exposure to the World's Finest duo. These were done before network crackdowns, so Batman and Robin got to hit the crooks and Superman got to smash things. Filmation also created cartoon segments with the characters for the earliest days of Sesame Street.