The Gene Deitch years

Where these the worst Tom and Jerry cartoons?

I never thought Tom and Jerry was very good to begin with.

I liked the aesthetic in these ones actually.

I am not gonna lie, the recent one with the fucking awful flash animation is far worse than the Gene Deitch shit.

How?

DICKY MOOOOEEEEEEEEE

All cartoons suffered in quality during those years. Popeye took the bigger hit let us compare this

To this

...

...

Wasn't this animated by some Mexicans?

Czechs.

Interesting, were they able to get some agreement with the Soviets to do this?

I don't know why, but I fucking hated Chuck Jones's artstyle back when I was a kid. In fact, when I finally got internet and read on the T&J history, I automatically assumed those were the Gene Deitch shorts everyone hates. Also I recently binge-watched all the original Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and found one thing that bugged me - for some reason, at the end of their run, they decided that it's a good idea to remake some of the earlier shorts, except with shittier production values. I mean, what's the point?


Well, it was made before 1968, so Soviets had less of a hold on them.


This was a downfall of Tom and Jerry. It was all about slapstick and visual humor, limited animation of Dark Age was just not working for it, and, as much as I like Krtek, neither was Czech-style animation.

At least Filmation kept the tradition of Tom vs Jerry.

What the fuck happened?

TV happened.

Did you motherfuckers even see the Tom And Jerry movie?
THEY HAD CANES AND SANG ABOUT BEING FRIENDS TO THE END

In some ways the 90's were as much a Dark Age for animation as the 70's were.

Did you forget? They dragged out Tom and Jerry's dessicated corpses to do a half-assed shot-for-shot remake of Willy Wonka.

Dark Age of Animation only applied to American animated shorts. Feature Films went into decline later.

They've been doing that with other fairy tales and stories for a while now.
On another note, remember Tom and Jerry Kids?

It's been a long time since I've watched Tom and Jerry Kids (everything got a kids/babies version back then, didn't it?) but I don't remember it ever being as bad as the direct-to-video animated movies.

I remember this intro rather vividly but not the show at all.

I don't remember anything about it aside from the intro. But even if it was bad, it was probably nowhere near as bad as some of the other kids/babies spinoffs there were.

Pugsy was like the bastard offspring of Poochie from The Simpsons, and the rapping dog from Titanic.

Why post that 1957 shit and not 1936's Popeye meets Sinbad? Fun fact, the first cartoon with 3D rendered backgrounds was, well, this. Go to the 6 minute mark and pay attention to the background while the giant bird takes off.

Popeye was still making technological firsts well into the 1980s. His 1983 Nintendo arcade game was the first to employ high definition graphics (a 512x448 sprite layer for the character sprites.)

Muppet Babies was good and Tom and Jerry Kids wasn't all that bad for what it was. It was at least closer to the cartoon slapstick of the originals than the straight to video movies where they talk and sing and get into weird, oddly human-focused movies.

Can't really think of any Kids/Babies spin-offs that were noteworthy or remotely good, though.

...

Forgot to list The Oz Kids in the bad category.

Are those claymation backgrounds?

Still the best Popeye

You have to see Filmation Tom & Jerry

Never watched Pink Panther and Sons, but the rest of your list is definitely true.

I think Muppet Babies was the show everyone else was copying when they did "younger" reboots.

The rest just used it as a way of recycling a series, but Muppet Babies was actually a bit different to The Muppet Show.

...

So much in their first appearance they were a just a fantasy sequence

You dodged a bullet then, it was the Pink Panther but no Panther only three bears and the humor was watered down to the dumbest, what's more unusual is that it had the same exact artstyle.


There's another Popeye short where he builds a bridge and used the same effect for the construction background..

I honestly think animation like this was due to companies realizing they had a dedicated fanbase of kids and saying "fuck it, they'll watch it no matter how cheap"

I think it was because thanks to TV, demand exceeded the supply, so they had to find a way to churn out as many cartoons as possible.

You know, I just realized something. The whole Dark Age of Animation mirrors the current situation with anime. Think of it:

Really makes you think.

I think so.

LWA flies in the face of everything you've just said

Yeah, and they had to go through insane lengths to get the funding. Anyway, I know there are some good series, and so what? Industry on the whole is still fucked, and entire seasons can go by without a single decent japanimation to watch.