Saturday Morning Cartoons: The Lineup We Still Remember

There was a specific sound to a Saturday morning in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s: the thunk of the TV dial landing on the right channel, the hum of the set warming up, the clink of a spoon against a cereal bowl balanced on your knees. No parents awake yet. No homework. Just you, the carpet, and the glow of the screen about three feet from your face.

Getting up before everyone else

You woke up early — not school early, better than school early. You tiptoed past your parents’ door, poured a bowl of whatever cereal had the best prize buried at the bottom, and claimed your spot on the floor. Pajamas stayed on. Nobody told you to get dressed, nobody told you to turn it down.

Then, sometime before noon, a man in a blazer appeared behind a desk to talk about the news, or a golf announcer started whispering over a putting green. That was the signal. The cartoons were done for another seven days, and spinning the dial didn’t bring them back.

The shows that owned the morning

Depending on your years, the lineup shifted. There were the Looney Tunes shorts, where Bugs and Daffy landed jokes that flew over your head and your parents’ heads at the same time. There was the mystery van of Scooby-Doo, the Super Friends up in their Hall of Justice, and later the little blue world of The Smurfs.

Every kid had the one show they’d sprint downstairs for — and usually a brother or sister who wanted the other channel at the exact same time. Negotiations over the dial could get surprisingly diplomatic.

Learning without noticing

Between the cartoons sat the three-minute songs of Schoolhouse Rock, on the air from 1973, teaching grammar and multiplication and how a bill moves through Congress. Ask someone who grew up with it to explain the legislative process and watch their eyes glaze over — until they start humming.

Plenty of grown adults can still recite the Preamble to the Constitution. Most of them can only do it if they sing it.

How it ended

Then cable arrived, and cartoons ran all day, on channels that never signed off. When Bugs Bunny was on at three o’clock on a Tuesday, there was nothing left to wait for. New rules about children’s programming and a living room full of video games did the rest. By 2014 the last of the broadcast Saturday-morning cartoon blocks had given way to other shows, after decades on the air.

Plenty of people can still hum those themes note for note — the Looney Tunes fanfare, the Scooby-Doo chase music — long after the last Saturday bowl of cereal went cold.

Still know your classic cartoons and TV themes? Test your memory with our Entertainment trivia →