Cartoons

When you think about your childhood, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

For me it’s the cartoons my sister and I used to watch. When we first discovered Cartoon Network, the channel that had cartoons all day long, non-stop, Oh My God, we were ecstatic! Life could not get any better.

In the Golden Cartoon Network age which only lasted a couple of years we watched Galtar, Captain Caveman, Plastic Man, and other ones I don’t remember.

On YouTube, the source of all wondrous things you can see episodes of all these cartoons. I tried watching some Galtar a few weeks ago, but… I guess you really have to be a kid to enjoy it. The only thing funny about this experience was D’s comment “hey, why don’t you have an outfit like that?” vis-a-vis the purple corset/mini skirt/armor and above-knee-length boots Galtar’s female companion is wearing. Yeah. I’ll wear that when you bring home a sword and a blue horse with two horns coming out of its forehead (I’ll go out on a limb here and say that’s not a real horse!).

But before Cartoon Network there was the era of Japanese cartoons: Sandy Belle, Candy, Perrine, The Prince and the Mermaid (I couldn’t find any decent quality pics for this one). In the old days,when the author of this blog was an annoying brat (aka, the 90s), cartoons were dubbed, especially the Japanese ones. Which means there was one guy doing all the voices and you could still here the original Sayonara! or Arigato! in the background. Oh, those were the days! Who could resist those big, watery, shiny eyes filled with lots of tiny bubbles?

Then there was the era of the Japanese anime on Italia Uno. That was the time I understood Italian perfectly and could speak it fairly well. Seriously. And you know what was cool about those cartoons? The theme songs, in Italian, sung by Cristina D’Avena and which my sister and I would sing ceaselessly. Even though some of the words came out in non-Italian. We watched L’Isola della piccola Flo (Little Flo’s island), Occhi di gatto (Cat’s eyes), Zorro, Fiocchi di cotonne per Jeanie (Cotton flowers for Jeannie), Papa gamba-lunga (Daddy long-legs), and many, many others.
 

I loved these anime. Not to sound like a frustrated elderly woman but kids today could benefit a lot from these. The message was always alluding to the importance of having strong values like always helping others, telling the truth, respecting your parents or being a good friend. There were no aliens, no monsters, no Pokemons or mutant creatures.

And now… well, I still watch Dexter’s Laboratory. Because I just love the sound of “Ooooo, what does this button do?” and “Today is a good day for science”!

How about you? What cartoons did you watch as a kid? Which one was your favorite?