The Happy Place of Saturday Morning Cartoons

Summary

Stuff You Should Know

Episode: The Happy Place of Saturday Morning Cartoons

Date: October 7, 2025

Hosts: Josh & Chuck

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Overview

This nostalgia-driven episode explores the golden era of Saturday morning cartoons—why they mattered, how they shaped generations, the commercial forces behind them, and what led to their decline. Josh and Chuck reminisce about their own routines, the cartoons and commercials they loved, and the societal conversations that swirled around those precious Saturday hours. The hosts blend humor, personal memories, and genuine pop-culture analysis, highlighting why these shows remain emotionally charged touchstones for Gen X and beyond.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Saturday Morning Routines (03:05–06:46)

• Josh and Chuck share their childhood routines and sibling stories.
  • Josh: “I sat, like, three feet from the TV on the ground, cross legged in front of it.” [03:52]
  • Chuck: “Our routine was... a race to the big yellow chair...” [03:38]
• Parental sleep-ins gave kids freedom, and the block’s magic came from this sense of independence and communal experience.

2. The Cultural Phenomenon: Why It Mattered (06:46–08:01)

• Saturday morning cartoons were a unique mass communal event: “...a point in time every week where essentially every child in America...had their own...” [05:57]
• The concept was not limited to the U.S.—similar traditions existed in the UK, Canada, Australia, Asia.
• Choice was limited, which added value and excitement.
  • Josh: “There was something special about a block... dedicated to you, aimed squarely at you... saying, we see you kids and we wanna sell you things.” [07:31]

3. Cartoons as Commercial and Cultural Vehicles

The Early TV Years (09:16–13:50)

• Cartoons originally aired in theaters; Mighty Mouse Playhouse (1955) cracked the TV landscape for kids.
• Josh: “Cartoons are a super stimuli. They hit our brains differently than watching Alfalfa or the Lone Ranger or that SAG clown...” [11:03]
• Early TV cartoons were cheaper and immediately attention-grabbing.

Rise of the Saturday Block (13:50–16:19)

• 1966 pivotal: all three U.S. networks aired cartoons Saturday mornings; the beginning of the “golden age.”
• Cartoons created common reference points—bonding generations through shared jokes, characters, and themes.
  • Chuck: “It bonded a generation... all watching the same thing, on the same day, at the same time.” [16:19]

4. The Commercial Machine & the Blurring of Content and Ads (22:09–27:11)

• The 1970s-80s saw content and marketing blend:
  • Brands, celebrities, and toys became cartoons and vice versa (Care Bears, Smurfs, Pac Man, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc.).
  • Chuck: “Let's take a thing and exploit it in as many different ways and sell it in as many different ways as we can.” [22:56]
• Many shows were developed in tandem with toy lines—cartoons as half-hour commercials.

Deregulation & Escalation (27:11–34:33)

• 1980s: Deregulation turned cartoons into aggressive marketing tools.
• Example stats:
  • Late ’70s: $500–600 million/year in ads aimed at children; 95% were for sugared products.
  • In nine months of 1975: 7,182 of 7,515 ads were for sugary foods (95.7%). [28:28]
  • Only four ads in the sample promoted meat, vegetables, milk, or cheese.

Young Audiences Blurred Ads and Content (32:06–34:33)

• Kids couldn’t tell the difference between shows and ads, especially when cartoon characters appeared in both.
  • Josh: “If you're a little kid, you're like, this is great. This is some weird short... But it's not an ad.” [32:43]

5. Pushback and Regulation (34:33–44:12)

• Parent and advocacy groups pushed against cartoon violence, laughable adult figures, and rampant consumerism.
• Science showed increased family conflict from children’s demands for advertised products.
  • Josh: “Because there were so many ads... it increased the frequency of kids asking for stuff, which increased the frequency of being told no, which increased the frequency of arguing...” [31:14]
• Studies showed kids could not distinguish between programming and advertising, especially when the same cartoon characters were used in both.
• FTC & FCC Attempts:
  • Late ’70s: Proposed banning ads targeting kids; requiring “pro-social” messages (public service announcements) (36:06).
  • Introduction of health-oriented cartoon interstitials, e.g., “Timer,” “Bod Squad,” “The More You Know.”

6. Societal Shifts: The Beginning of the End (44:12–50:40)

• 1980s: Heightened violence in cartoons.
  • By 1990, kids’ shows averaged 26.4 violent acts/hour (compared to five to six in prime time).
• Reagan-era deregulation began the unraveling, but the real blow was new media:
  • Rise of cable (Nickelodeon, Disney Channel), home video games, and eventually DVRs ended the era of forced collective viewing.
  • Networks lost incentive as restrictions increased and cable offered cartoons 24/7.
  • Final prominent kids blocks fell away: NBC (1992), CBS (1997), ABC (2010).

The Last Saturday Morning Cartoon (50:45-51:14)

• The final Saturday block: September 27, 2014, on The CW; last show aired was Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Commercialism’s Impact:

  “When I read about just how shamefully bad the commercialism was in the 80s, I still am like, I don't care. Like, I loved every minute of it.” —Josh, [08:01]

• The Power of Cartoons:

  “Cartoons are a super stimuli. They hit our brains differently...” —Josh, [11:03]

• Shared Cultural Experience:

  “It bonded a generation... all watching the same thing, on the same day, at the same time.” —Chuck, [16:19]

• Kids vs Ads:

  “Kids couldn't tell the difference between cartoons and ads, because sometimes it was the literal characters from the cartoon selling you something.” —Chuck, [32:16]

• Funniest Nostalgia Moment:

  “I can recite a specific Fruity Pebbles ad that they used to show around Christmas.” —Josh, [51:05] “As I was thinking about it today, I was highlighting, like, my notes for today and I started drooling. So, like, that's how. That's the Pavlovian response that was trained to me...” —Josh, [51:49]

• Generational Touchstone:

  “If you weren't sitting down for Saturday morning cartoons, you would just have your bowl in front of you. Of course, if you were at the kitchen table eating cereal, what were you doing? Reading the back of the cereal box.” —Chuck & Josh, [54:29–54:39]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Personal routines & what made Saturday mornings special: 03:05–06:46
• How cartoons created a generational culture: 15:46–16:59
• Origins of TV cartoons & transition from theater to TV: 10:04–13:50
• Blending of content and advertising/IP explosion: 22:09–27:11
• Rise of direct-to-toy cartoons (Transformers, TMNT, etc.): 24:16–27:11
• Statistics on advertising to kids: 27:11–28:28
• Kids’ inability to distinguish ads from shows: 32:06–34:33
• Pushback, regulation, and “pro-social” PSAs (e.g., Timer, The More You Know): 34:33–38:44
• Deregulation, more violence, and end of the golden era: 44:12–50:40
• Last Saturday morning cartoon aired: 50:45–51:14
• Nostalgia and legacy—from Fruity Pebbles to cereal box games: 51:05–54:48

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Fun Callbacks & Listener Input

• Schoolhouse Rock’s educational impact recapped ([17:07–17:56]), and why it’s an eternal favorite.
• Nostalgic shouts: ET Cereal, grape Hubba Bubba, cereal box license plates ([52:06–54:12]).
• Listener mail as a humorous coda: “grossest cockroach story ever” ([55:26–57:39]).

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Tone and Takeaway

Josh and Chuck’s episode is affectionate, irreverent, and layered with both personal nostalgia and critical context. They shift easily between astute pop-social critique (the incredible power—and damage—of advertising to children) and the warm, fizzy joy of remembering cartoon blocks, breakfast cereal, and the pure anticipation of Saturday morning. Ultimately, the decline of the tradition marks a poignant loss of communal childhood experience, even as new technologies empower kids to watch what they want, when they want.

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For Further Exploration:

• Look up classic "Saturday morning cartoon blocks" on YouTube for full runs—ads included!
• Schoolhouse Rock episode (referenced here) for a deeper dive into teaching through television ([17:07–17:56]).

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Summary by an expert podcast summarizer. For those who didn’t listen—you now know!

Transcript

[Chuck]

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[WebMD Host]

Hear insightful, entertaining discussions on today's important health and wellness topics on the Health discovered podcast from WebMD. Through in depth conversations with experts, Health Discovered covers everything from tips for healthier living to the latest on therapy and mental health. My goal is to really destigmatize mental health treatment and looking at it from a whole health perspective, physical health and mental health can be intertwined. Listen to WebMD Health discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, there's Jerry, and we are practically perfect in every way here on Stuff. You should know.

[Chuck]

That's right. I'm just a bill. Only a bill.

[Josh]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Have you ever been to Capitol Hill?

[Chuck]

Oh, I'm just sitting here on Capitol Hill.

[Josh]

Do you remember we did a whole episode on Schoolhouse Rock once and you had Bob Nastanovich on.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Of Pavement. Who, by the way, I finally met him in real life.

[Josh]

Oh, yeah?

[Chuck]

Yeah. I was at a hard quartet show, the new supergroup with Matt Sweeney and Stephen Malkmus and Emmett Kelly and Jim White in Atlanta. And I turned around in the Variety Playhouse lobby and Nastanovich comes strolling in. And I was like, hey, man. I was like, and I'm sure he gets hay manned a lot, so he has his guard up. Actually, he didn't. He was nice, but I was like, hey, it's Chuck from Stuff youf Should Know. I was like, good to finally meet you in person. And he's like, oh, hey, man. And we chatted for a minute and it was great.

[Josh]

Oh, that's cool. He remembered you, huh?

[Chuck]

Yeah, yeah. We've emailed and texted here and there.

[Josh]

Oh, gotcha. Wow, that's great, Chuck.

[Chuck]

So that's my Bob Nastanovich story.

[Josh]

That's a great one. That's about as good as a Bob Nastanovich story gets.

[Chuck]

Yeah. I mean, I got to meet a pavement guy, so that was, like, bucket list complete.

[Josh]

So I guess I can't think of a segue from bucket list. I mean, I guess it would be an uncrossed off thing on my bucket list to build a time machine and go back to 1983 and watch Saturday morning cartoons again. How's that?

[Chuck]

Yeah, I mean, what was your routine in your house?

[Josh]

Oh, baby.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Let's hear it.

[Josh]

I don't ever recall having to worry about my sisters trying to change the channel. Like, when it was Saturday morning cartoons, it was all me.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Okay. Morning. Yeah, it was great.

[Chuck]

So they weren't watching.

[Josh]

No. Amanda's five years older than me. Karen was 13 years older than me, so. Yeah.

[Chuck]

So she.

[Josh]

Neither one of them had much interest in Saturday morning cartoons. When I did, the interest didn't overlap.

[Chuck]

Yeah, we were close enough. Scott's three years older, Michelle's six. So we overlapped a bit. And our routine was. There was, you know, Saturday morning cartoons, but it was always a race to the big yellow chair to see who could claim that first.

[Josh]

You sat in a chair? I sat, like, three feet from the TV on the ground, cross legged in front of it.

[Chuck]

Yeah. You were one of those guys.

[Josh]

Yeah, for sure.

[Chuck]

Cause you weren't blocking anybody.

[Josh]

No, it was totally cool. It was just me.

[Chuck]

I love it.

[Josh]

Yep. With my ET Cereal.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Parents sleeping in.

[Josh]

Yep. For sure. Actually, I can't say what anyone else in the house was doing during 8am to 12pm every Saturday morning.

[Chuck]

Yeah. I don't remember watching them, like, the whole block, but maybe I did.

[Josh]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did. Except I know we've talked about it before. I don't remember what episode, but Thundar the Barbarian, I would miss it. I would get to watch, like, the first seven, eight minutes, and then my mom would be like, it's time to leave for swimming lessons. And it was such a bummer.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And I know I've talked about it before on the show because a listener was so kind that they bought the complete series of Thundar the Barbarian and mailed it to me so that I could see it. Yeah.

[Chuck]

That's amazing.

[Josh]

Yeah. Beep, beep, beep. I'm going to insert the person's name, but I have to get to Atlanta to find it.

[Chuck]

Okay.

[Josh]

Beep, beep, beep.

[Chuck]

Was it vhs?

[Josh]

No, dvd, man. They really. They styled me out, so. Thank you.

[Chuck]

That's amazing.

[Josh]

So, all right, let's get into this, because I'm sure we're going to pepper our own, like, favorite cartoons that we watch throughout this, Right?

[Chuck]

I might mention a cartoon or two. You never know.

[Josh]

Okay. I mean, you were into this, right? Like, for years and years. You spent Saturday mornings watching cartoons, right?

[Chuck]

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I mean, as you've reminded me over and over through our lives, I am a bit older than you, so there will be some overlap. But also, you know, as evidenced by, like, your love of, like, the GI Joe stuff. That was a little bit after, when I was into that kind of thing, so There'll be some Mrs. Here and there, too.

[Josh]

I'm sorry, you left out the adjective superior. GI Joe stuff. Yeah.

[Chuck]

This is a fun trip down memory lane, though, and big thanks to Julia for this.

[Josh]

Yeah, for sure. So for those of you who were born after the mid-90s or even the early 90s, I guess, because it took a few years to come to realize that there was such a thing as Saturday morning cartoons, and then get into them, you might not really get what we're talking about. Maybe you've heard of Saturday morning cartoons, like Gen Xers. Love to talk about it all the time, clearly. But it was a very special thing, like a. A point in time every week where essentially every child in America, and I've read also Australia, had their own. The UK had their own to an extent. Canada, other countries in Asia had, like, Saturday morning cartoons. And you came and you sat down and you watched four straight hours of cartoons.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Peppered with ads directed to you. A 5, 6, 7, 8 9, year old, and loved life. And that was, like, your time in the week because, like you said, parents tended to sleep in during that time. They were totally happy with their kids, amusing themselves for the first four hours of the morning, watching TV and eating sugary cereal. And, like, it's. There was a real loss when it went away. Like, I was well out of watching Saturday morning cartoons by the time they went away.

[Chuck]

Same.

[Josh]

But I remember feeling, like, a real, like, sense of, like, younger kids and, like, subsequent generations, like, really missing out on something that we were, in retrospect, really lucky to have.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure the counter to that could be like, yeah, bruh, but we can watch anything we want whenever we want, all the time, including Saturday morning. And not to say like, oh, Things were better then. But there was something special about a block when you didn't have choice like that, dedicated to you, aimed squarely at you for a certain amount of time, saying, we see you kids and we wanna sell you things.

[Josh]

It's true. When I read about just how shamefully bad the commercialism was in the 80s, I still am like, I don't care. Like, I loved every minute of it. Yeah.

[Chuck]

And the commercials, as we'll see, were not that much different than the content. And I saw this in action when Ruby was younger and she would watch commercials with the same fervor and I would be like, yeah, I guess I did the same thing.

[Josh]

You know, I remember when we first started podcasting with ads. The whole idea was, yeah, just all of a sudden start talking about the product so no one gets that you're giving an ad. And we were both like, we're not doing that at all. And that's where the idea for the fan submitted jingles came about, was to make sure everybody knew an ad is coming. We're not just suddenly going to start talking about how great our Casper Mattress is, you know.

[Chuck]

Right. Because I love cartoons and I love printer ink, now that you mention it.

[Josh]

Yeah, I do too. And you know, I've got one of those Epson printers and they have like a tankless or a bottomless tank where you just refill the cartridges. You don't even have to go buy new cartridges, do they? Yeah, Epson.

[Chuck]

I wonder if people are gonna suspect that's real and not a bit.

[Josh]

No, it's a bit everybody.

[Chuck]

They should send you some dough though, you know. Yeah, but what we're talking about is a span of time of a few decades, about 65 to 2000ish. Although we'll see. There was one straggler at least beyond 2000. And cartoons had been around, but they had mainly been in movie theaters. Like they would play them before. Like you go to like a fancy movie theater and there'd be like an organ player and you would see a cartoon and maybe a newsreel. The first sort of regular running TV cartoon was something called Crusader Rabbit in 1950. Just ran for a couple of years, but the first big breakout was the Mighty Mouse Playhouse. Mighty Mouse had been around since 1942, but it made its big Saturday morning television debut in 1955 on CBS.

[Josh]

Yeah, and that changed everything because prior to this, there was Saturday. Saturday morning programming, apparently all the way back to the days of radio. If you were a kid, you would tune in either after school or on Saturday mornings to hear your favorite program. So they were well aware that this is when kids listened and then eventually watched tv. But if you were a kid on Saturday morning, you're probably watching, like, some clubhouse style show where, yeah, some local dude who might or might not be dressed as a SAG clown is interacting with puppets, and the studio audience is nothing but kids. There's a single camera, it's produced by your local TV station. And, like, that's what you watch because they were so dirt cheap to make. And then when Mighty Mouse came along, it basically showed. These things are maybe a little more expensive than that clubhouse style show, but they're way cheaper than, like, the Lone Ranger or our gang or some of the other stuff we're showing on Saturday mornings. And there's something else that's really, really important to remember. We talked about it, I think, in our political cartoons episode. Cartoons are a super stimuli. They hit our brains differently than watching Alfalfa or the Lone Ranger or that SAG clown who are live action, real life people. They hit us differently. They capture our attention differently. And so Mighty Mouse essentially showed, like, hey, you want to, like, get into a kid's brain and sell them stuff?

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

This is the way to do it. Cartoons are the wave of the future.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Wait till you get a load of Droopy.

[Josh]

Droopy was great, wasn't he?

[Chuck]

Yeah. Although I don't remember stuff like that Saturday morning. I remember stuff like Droopy, more of like afternoon after school kind of hours. But cartoons became a big deal shortly after they hit the small screen. And in 1960, and this is, I don't know, one of those little weird factoids that I think some people might not realize is that Flintstones is actually a primetime show. A lot of people do know that, but a lot of people don't. So was the Bugs Bunny show at first. The Jetsons and the New Adventures of Jonny Quest. They were all primetime major network, which is to say either ABC, CBS or NBC. This was pre Fox even. There were only three. And not too long after 1967 was when they said, you know what? We gotta consolidate all this stuff to Saturday morning. And that was it. It was a new thing. And like you said, it was pretty cheap to make, especially. I mean, some of the cartoons were better than others. There were some that were really cheap and kind of poorly made, where like just the mouths moved and stuff like that. And it was the same person voicing every character, like, kind of clearly. And they were like, hey, what we can do Here is, we got these kids, we got this captive audience, tons and tons of kids named Josh Clark sitting three feet in front of their tv crisscross applesauce. And that means we can sell them toys and sugar.

[Josh]

Yes. And they were already doing this. I mean, Those clubhouse style TVs, the guy would do like what the original podcast ads were supposed to. He'd just suddenly be talking about a brand new toy that he loves.

[Chuck]

Right? Yeah.

[Josh]

Right. So they've been doing this before, but again, cartoons, they just were operating on a different plane. And I think 1966 was a pivotal year. According to. I found a pretty good article about this by a guy named Paul FP Pogue. Great name on encyclopedia.com and he basically says 1966 was the, it was the year. Because that was the first year where all three networks showed cartoon blocks on Saturday mornings. And from that moment on until I would argue the late 90s really was a golden age for cartoons on Saturday mornings.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. And you, you know, you didn't have DVRs or TiVo or anything like that to record stuff. Obviously you didn't really even have VCRs to record things. You probably just had the one TV. At least until kind of mid to late 70s is when multiple TVs really started showing up a little bit more. Unless you were like the rich kid. And so you had to figure out and debate with your siblings if they were around what to watch by reading. A lot of people got TV Guide, but we did not pay for that because we didn't pay for extra things in our family.

[Josh]

Sure.

[Chuck]

But you know, we had the local paper which had the TV listings. And so you pore through some made arguments that, you know, it had kids reading on Saturday morning as a result. And you would, you know, sometimes there were real Sophie's choices to be made on what to watch.

[Josh]

Right. And the reason why, and this is what's hard to understand, if you're like Gen Z or even like a late millennial, there was no choice in what you were watching. When you said on Saturday mornings, the, the networks that you were watching were showing you the shows that they decided they wanted to run. So a show you watched was on a specific time, on a specific network, on a specific day, in this case Saturday morning. So you just sat down and I think there was something about not having that choice that made it even more enjoyable. So long as the stuff was good.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I mean, they were serving us exactly what we wanted. I never had any complaints. Did you?

[Josh]

No. The only Complaint I had is that I didn't have three TVs, that I could watch them all at the same time or even better, sequentially.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. And while this is all, you know, kind of fun and games, or not all fun and games, mostly fun and games. There are people out there, you know, kind of smarty pants people who have made arguments for things like, hey, it introduced a new generation to the Beatles. Because I certainly remember watching that Beatles cartoon when I was a kid.

[Josh]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck]

It came out in 65. But by, you know, it was still running somewhere because I watched it. And that's where I kind of got my love of the Beatles. It introduced kids to, you know, concepts like what might happen in the future with the Jetsons. There's a historian named Joel Rhodes who said that the cartoons perform what the scholars call the bardic function, as in, like medieval bards. When people would sit around and listen to those stories and it would give kids on the playground, like, they knew the same jokes, they had same reference points. It bonded a generation because they were.

[Josh]

All watching the same thing on the same day at the same time. So, yes, that was the culture for kids. That's where you got your culture, largely. I mean, not entirely. There was Mad magazine, after all, but that was because there wasn't choice, because you couldn't be like, hey, have you seen Black Dub? No, I haven't seen that. But have you seen Time Crimes? It's a great movie. Like, those conversations didn't happen. It was some kid yelled out, like, exit stage left. And every kid on the playground just cracked up because they knew exactly what they were talking about. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, just look up cartoon exit stage left.

[Chuck]

Yeah, that's right. Is that Snagglebuss?

[Josh]

Yes.

[Chuck]

Okay, I get some of those confused sometimes.

[Josh]

No, you nailed it, buddy. You nailed Snaggless.

[Chuck]

We also hammered this home in the Schoolhouse Rock episode. But we do have to mention that how pivotal Schoolhouse Rock was. And literally teaching kids things about history and about politics and civics and government and math and English, like, you name it, it was all there. And like, real learning, like, legitimate awesome learning. Awesome stuff.

[Josh]

Yeah, that was a good episode. I remember I cracked myself up and we almost, like, had to take a longer break. Yeah. If I remember, I remember correctly.

[Chuck]

Do you remember the joke?

[Josh]

I think I did some weird impression of Chuck Jones, the Looney Tunes guy.

[Chuck]

Oh, man, I gotta listen to this one now.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Maybe we should put Schoolhouse Rock as our select on Saturday.

[Josh]

Oh, that's a great idea.

[Chuck]

When this one comes out.

[Josh]

Good idea. Yep, that's a wonderful idea.

[Chuck]

Chuck, Jerry, make a note of that. And then now I'm doing the Flintstones hammering something into a stone tablet.

[Josh]

Oh man, I looked up the Great Gazoo because anytime I hear Flintstones, I think Great Gazoo.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And did you know he was an alien who was banished from his planet for creating a doomsday device?

[Chuck]

I don't remember that part.

[Josh]

I didn't either.

[Chuck]

I remember him floating around, but yeah.

[Josh]

That'S him being extremely condescending.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. He was a real jerk.

[Josh]

You're dumb. Dumb.

[Chuck]

Shall we take a break?

[Josh]

Yeah, let's take a break. All right.

[Chuck]

Whenever you call me a dum dum, that means I have to go. Reset. We'll be right back.

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[Josh]

Chuck, there's one other thing that one other place you could find out what was running at what time on what network for Saturday morning cartoons. It was the annual ad full page ad in the comic books in the fall that announce like the Saturday morning cartoon lineup. Yes.

[Chuck]

Huh. I didn't know that.

[Josh]

Yeah, well, I was gonna say go look em up cause they're very nostalgic but they're just awesome. They're just so great. And it would tell you what time it was on and then it was all starting in two short weeks and you just couldn't wait.

[Chuck]

Well, and how sweet that you could publish a one time thing. And that was the lineup, right?

[Josh]

Exactly.

[Chuck]

It's like it's not changing.

[Josh]

No, for sure. Although apparently they would change lineups in spring for shows that weren't working. But more often than not you were seeing largely the same shows.

[Chuck]

Yeah. So yeah, I remember that when things would change sort of mid season, that was always disconcerting.

[Josh]

Yeah. And one other thing I just barely touched on. There was a subtext to it all. This started right after summer ended. So you had all of summer to have a great time. Summer stops, school starts and then Saturday morning cartoon kicks off a new season.

[Chuck]

Oh man, I love it. The fall TV season. So we mentioned advertising. This is gonna be a big part of this episode because it really goes in lockstep with, with Saturday morning cartoons and all children's programming of all time. But at one point, you know, like I mentioned, they, they realized they had a captive audience. They could sell them toys and sugar. But the lines started to Blur in the 1970s between content and advertising in such a way it was sort of like the beginning of. In fact, I'm curious when people started using words like ip Intellectual property. Because now we would just call it ip Back then it was like, hey, we got the Jackson 5. They're a successful musical group. Let's give them a cartoon. We got the Osmonds kids love the Brady Bunch. Let's do the Brady Bunch kids. We got the Flintstones. Hey, let's give them a cereal. And things started just kind of crossing streams such where, yeah, like we would just call that IP today. It's like let's take a thing and exploit it in as many different ways and sell it in as many different ways as we can.

[Josh]

Right? Yes, exactly. It was. They were cartoons starting, like you said, in the 70s, became marketing tools. And at first it was to basically extend the advertising power of an existing TV show. Like all the ones you listed. Right.

[Chuck]

And more.

[Josh]

Yeah. But then they started saying, like, hey, we have this line of greeting cards. The Care Bears started out as a greeting cards line. So did shirt tails, as a matter of fact.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And they would say, like, people are going crazy for these mugs with these adorable characters on them. Because Care Bears did have the loveliest animation potentially of all time, of all Saturday morning cartoons.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I think so.

[Josh]

And then they said, okay, mugs are not enough. Greeting cards are not enough. Let's like really blow out this. This ip, if they were calling it and turn it into a kids show and then start selling like dolls and figures of these cartoons to the kids watching these shows. And you could take something like the Care Bears as a greeting card line and turn them into a hot property.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I mean, we'll read through a few of these. There was a Pac Man TV show, of course, that was good, which was an arcade game. Of course. There was a Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.

[Josh]

That was pretty good.

[Chuck]

Role playing game. I don't think I ever saw that. There was, let me see here. Obviously the Transformers, long before they were not so great. Michael Bay movies. They were toys and then a cartoon. And as you'll see some of these things kind of. It's hard to remember which one came before the other or if they were developing toys just to sell a cartoon or developing a cartoon just to sell toys. It kind of. Except for Rambo and Chuck Norris, which were actual shows in 1986. Rambo, the force of Freedom and Chuck Norris karate commandos. Double K. Right. I think the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the one that started out as a show just to sell the toys. Right?

[Josh]

Yeah. They were basically co developed at the same time as part of a grand scheme. I know Gem and the holograms was a cartoon before the toys. About a year before the toys.

[Chuck]

Okay.

[Josh]

There were Smurfs. When the Smurfs came out, that was a big deal. Yeah, there were. There was like. Was it 100 or 101 Smurfs with Papa Smurf. And they made little like really collectible size action. Well, not action figures because they weren't action at all, but just little figures of the Smurfs. You remember those?

[Chuck]

Yeah, you could smurf them all and.

[Josh]

Yes, exactly. I'm pretty sure they had like 100 different ones that you could collect and people went bonkers on those things because they were just so cute. And you could put them on your desk or you could play with them or do whatever. The Smurfs came first. And I think that they really kind of helped kick off that genuine. Like we can really market the heck out of these cartoons if we make figures based on these.

[Chuck]

Yeah, see that, that's a slight divide. I was a little bit old for Smurfs. A little bit old for Smurfs. Full stop.

[Josh]

Smurfs is still pretty good.

[Chuck]

Hey, they're still making those movies, man. Those went out last year, wasn't there?

[Josh]

I have not seen the. You mean like the CGI movies? Yeah, yeah, I've not seen them, but yeah, I think they've got several out.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I think it's the same thing. They're still smurfing at the box office.

[Josh]

That's great. And then there were other ones like Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, where like you said, the lines between did the cartoon come first, did the toys come first? It really doesn't matter because they were all part of the same package. By this point we're well into the 80s, which not coincidentally was the deregulation minded Reagan era. And cartoons at this point had evolved into half hour, essentially commercials for the actual toy. And in the most pronounced cases the actual commercials were for the toys in the cartoon that the toys were based on.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I've got some stats here because in the late 70s the FTC, and we're going to talk about the FCC and the FTC quite a bit because parents and the government started to get a little upset. Basically they saw the writing on the wall. And in the late 70s they released numbers by the FTC that highlighted what they called it like a real health problem for this programming companies every year, and this was back then in the 70s, spent 500 to 600 million dollars on ads targeted to children. Of all the foods being advertised to kids, two thirds, I'm surprised it wasn't more than this. Honestly were highly sugared products.

[Josh]

It was by my Josh Math calculations it was over 95%.

[Chuck]

Okay, that feels about right.

[Josh]

Yeah, for real. Because of all the foods. But even of all the ads, Chuck, most of them were first sugared foods. There was a that study or that trade commission study looked at some data that looked at nine months of 1975. Not even the whole year looked at 7,515 ads. 7,182 of those ads were for sugary foods, 95.7%.

[Chuck]

Was there anything for good food?

[Josh]

Yes, actually, there were four. Four ads over nine months. Four different ads for meats, vegetables, milk or cheese. And milk, cheese, and I think meats maybe had zero. So vegetables somehow was basically carrying that. And I would guess all four of Those were different V8 ads or fruit juice ads.

[Chuck]

Who was the guy? It was like the dairy counselor or something. The guy that danced around and sang about cheese.

[Josh]

I think it was time for Timer. Was he like a big circle with real long, skinny legs and a cowboy? That was Timer.

[Chuck]

Okay. Yeah, that was. What was that? Was that the Dairy Council?

[Josh]

I know. He was actually a response to the government actually doing something in the late 70s which we'll talk about, which was to kind of counteract this stuff. Yeah, it was a good thing.

[Chuck]

Okay.

[Josh]

He talked about eating proteins and stuff rather than sugar.

[Chuck]

God, what a very weird. He looks like Twinkie, the kid. A little bit.

[Josh]

Yeah. I couldn't put my finger on it, Chuck. You're absolutely right. That's who it was.

[Chuck]

All right, so the writing's on the wall. These studies are coming out, and people are saying, like, really? Four ads for good food and 7,000 plus for sugary stuff? And so people started getting upset. Not just about the ads, though, but about the content. Cartoon violence is a real thing. Every time there was an adult in a cartoon, there were buffoons and morons.

[Josh]

Or they had, like, an evil plot that the kids had to foil.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. Like, they were bad people. Like Scooby Doo kids were. They were always foiling the adult's evil plans.

[Josh]

Exactly.

[Chuck]

They were never going against fellow Whatever. I mean, how old were they even?

[Josh]

They were late teens, Maybe even post high school. Yeah, I think they were bumming around college. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was right before college.

[Chuck]

Okay. Consumerism, of course, was very much glorified in the cartoons and the ads. And by the late 60s, you know, jumping back a bit, there were groups that were forming the Action for Children's Television got together. They were lobbying the fcc. Obviously, they regulate the media on. Not cable, as we'll see, but just regular tv. And they were saying, like, hey, this stuff is. We gotta pull this back some. Like, we're getting out of hand with what we're feeding children four hours at a time every Saturday.

[Josh]

Yeah, yeah. This was, like you said, the late 60s. It started to really kind of pick up in the 70s. Because the reason why is more and more research was funded studying what effect television had on kids. And Saturday Morning cartoons were a deep focus of those studies, too. There was a 1975 study from the National Science Foundation. It was a meta analysis. Yeah, yeah. And they said Saturday morning cartoons are creating conflict within families because kids are going to their parents saying, I want this. The parents say no, and the kid gets upset and starts arguing. And that's internal family conflict, familial conflict. And one of the surveys found that kids, I think a third of kids reported arguing sometimes when their parents said no, a sixth of them argued, quote, a lot. So the reason why Saturday morning cartoons in particular were causing this conflict is because there were so many ads for so many kids products that kids saw every Saturday that it increased the frequency of kids asking for stuff, which increased the frequency of being told no, which increased the frequency of arguing in conflict.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. Parents didn't like that. Of course, they also didn't like that. They learned that. And they did studies on this, too. And they found that young kids, or kids in general basically couldn't tell the difference between cartoons and ads, because sometimes it was the literal characters from the cartoon selling you something. Sometimes it was kids playing with toys and showing you the action of the toys. And kids just love watching that. And the old, you know, the younger you were, you really couldn't tell the difference. Once you got a little bit older, you could tell the difference just by the length and be like, well, those are the short cartoons, right?

[Josh]

Exactly. Yeah. Cause these ads were all like, there would be a mini cartoon within the ad. You know, like, Frank and Barry would almost fall into a pit or something like that, and Count Chocula would have to come turn into a bat and rescue him or something like that. And then they both end up eating their cereal. That, like, if you're a little kid, you're like, this is great. This is some weird short that they just put in the middle of the show. But it's not an ad.

[Chuck]

And I'm hungry all of a sudden.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chuck]

For that cereal.

[Josh]

Mom, I want some Count Chocula.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

That was actually captured really well in a Simpsons Just almost an aside where Itchy and Scratchy are up for a cartoon award. And one of the other. One of the other cartoons in the running for best writing in a cartoon series was Action Figure man, the how to Buy Action Figure man episode where it just shows a little kid and goes, mommy, I want it. Oh, wow, he's pointing to the action Fig. Like, not even an ad. That was the episode.

[Chuck]

That's really funny.

[Josh]

Yeah, they nailed it on that. They nailed it. Like Snagglepuss.

[Chuck]

They always do. So the long and short of all of this past few minutes is that kids didn't know that they were being sold things, and parents didn't like that. I think the authors of the paper were fairly kind when they said, certainly most advertisers do not deliberately set out to confuse or mislead children, nor to promote unsafe, unhealthy, or socially undesirable behavior. Which was very naive, I think, but maybe they were just trying to soft sell it.

[Josh]

Right. So you put all this together. That, again, started in the 60s as kind of agitation. And also, this is where. This is the climate that Sesame street grew out of and probably made Saturday morning cartoons look even worse because it showed you could make kids shows that didn't poison their minds.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Josh]

And then it picked up in the 70s, and by 1978, the Federal Trade Commission said, hey, we need to do something about this. We're not going to do anything about it, but we're going to make some recommendations through their staff report on television advertising to children. They said we should ban all television advertising for any product whatsoever that's directed at very young children.

[Chuck]

That's a big one.

[Josh]

Right. So you can kiss my buddy goodbye. Right. Ban advertising directed to older children for sugared products. Which makes sense. But the thing they predicated this concern on just cracks me up because those things can pose serious dental health risks. Like, that was the extent of the concern with sugary products back then. You could rot your teeth, right?

[Chuck]

Yeah. I mean, that's what you heard. That'll rot your teeth. Not like just eating tons of sugar is not good for you.

[Josh]

Right. I remember having, like a. We did a module that included a play and some other stuff in third grade that was sponsored by Crest. There's a big Crest, like, cut out, stand up. And like, we just. In class, we just did this whole thing about brushing your teeth with Crest brand toothpaste. It was like that, pervasive.

[Chuck]

We make holes in teeth. Do you remember that?

[Josh]

Yeah, I do, but I can't place it.

[Chuck]

It was. Oh, man. I mean, I think it was Crest, but it was, again, a cartoon that Crest was running. And it was the cavity, something that they had to fight. And that was what they would chant. We make holes in teeth.

[Josh]

Yeah. That might have been one of the things that kicked this off.

[Chuck]

Yeah, probably so. And then the final requirement was advertisements directed to older kids for other sugared products that they could, you know, put on TV would be balanced by ads for other nutritional products or Health disclosures at the end of the sugared product ad.

[Josh]

That's where Timer came from.

[Chuck]

Yeah, okay, I gotcha.

[Josh]

That's also where Bod Squad came from. Don't drown your food. Remember that one?

[Chuck]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh]

There was. The cool thing about Schoolhouse Rock is they'd already been doing this for half a decade by the time other networks started to do something about it by running these cute little cartoon PSAs. So essentially they were 10, 15, maybe up to 30 second commercials that the networks had to run that were cartoons too. So they appealed to kids, but they. Rather than telling kids to buy Fruity Pebbles, they were telling kids to brush your teeth or to exercise your chompers with things like carrots and apples. That kind of stuff.

[Chuck]

Right. Should we take a break?

[Josh]

Let's talk about the rest of these. There's some other stuff that you just kind of take for granted I didn't realize came out of an actual deal between the networks and the ftc.

[Chuck]

Yeah, there was also. And all this stuff I didn't remember necessarily in the moment, but once I started reading about it and studying it and obviously watching on YouTube, it like, washed over me. NBC had one to grow on from 83 to 89, and that was just usually some famous person sort of giving some life lesson advice. And they'd be like, well, that's one to grow on. What else besides. Well, Nancy Reagan, of course, and just say no to drugs. Who can forget that?

[Josh]

Yep. Betty White taught you who to call in an emergency.

[Chuck]

Yeah, call Betty White.

[Josh]

Right, exactly. Because Betty White could handle basically anything. She was just that kind of person.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

There was also the more, you know, with the star that went over your head. That was the 90s on NBC and all of the NBC stars at the time, because, remember, NBC ruled the airwaves.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Must see TV Thursdays.

[Chuck]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh]

They had their stars basically doing 30 second spots which were PSAs and about how to. How to, you know, maybe get into teaching, maybe stay in school. All just. Just little life lessons like that. There were a bunch, actually about abusive parents and how not cool it was for a dad to beat up on a mom. Oh, yeah, yeah. Real like kind of rugged and raw stuff here or there, but presented in these vignettes that kind of got through to kids. Although you can tell they were geared towards slightly older kids.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. And then, of course, your beloved GI Joe talked about Stranger Danger and always finished with the famous line, now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

[Josh]

And you've seen those parody videos of that before, right?

[Chuck]

I don't think so.

[Josh]

Oh, there's about 30 or so, maybe more parody videos that are just totally off the wall but hilarious where they just take out the sound and put in their own sound and vocals and edit the stuff up, kind of mix it up so that they're just. It's just amazing. Look up GI Joe PSA parody videos and you'll thank me later.

[Chuck]

Or just watch probably any episode of the Family Guy.

[Josh]

Yeah, probably. Probably.

[Chuck]

He did a lot of this stuff.

[Josh]

Yeah, he did.

[Chuck]

Shall we take a break?

[Josh]

Yeah.

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[Chuck]

All right, we'll be right back with more on Saturday morning cartoons. All right. Oh by the way I remembered it was the cavity creeps.

[Josh]

Oh, great memory.

[Chuck]

Yeah, it just popped back. So before we left, we talked about, you know, some of these things they were doing to offset the effect of cartoons. It's called pro social programming. And it came about because of an actual deal that was made.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chuck]

There was a FTC hearing in 1978 where Kenneth Mason of Quaker Oats was up there because, you know, they were like, hey, Captain Crunch is rotting our kids teeth out, and you make it. And he actually, like, he didn't think they were the problem. He thought the content was the problem. But he did come out and had a statement basically, where like, he said, you know, I think we do need to change what's going on in our cartoons and change the way our society is using this medium to communicate with kids. So it took a lot of nerve, I think, for. For that guy to say that. But he didn't blame the ads, like I said. So they struck a deal, basically. Hey, you can keep these ads if you add this other programming that we were talking about before.

[Josh]

Yeah. And apparently the way that I took it, he was, it was a very crafty thing to do by blaming the content because it took the onus off the sugary product advertisers. And everybody started looking at the cartoons themselves. And the cartoons were probably like, hey, hey, we're not nearly as bad as Fruity Pebbles, but okay, we'll start doing something about it. And the, the, I guess cartoons themselves started to get a little more pro social. Like this is where Fat Albert came from, I believe. But then also, those PSAs that we were talking about.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Josh]

That was the advent of them.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. But this is late 70s, I think that was 77, 78. Ronald Reagan would come along in the 1980s and sort of just deregulate the United States as a whole and said, fcc, stand down and don't worry about this stuff. They didn't officially. I mean, there were recommendations anyways and not laws. So a recommendation is only good if you sort of follow up on that. And the FCC started not to in the 80s. They kind of didn't try in some cases. I think between 1980 and 1990, they actually saw a rise in the number of violent acts per hour on Saturday morning cartoons from 18.6 to 26.4 per.

[Josh]

Hour, which is pretty nuts. But it gets even more nuts when you compare it to what was on primetime, what the adults were watching.

[Chuck]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh]

Between 1980 and 1990, it pretty much held steady at just five to six acts of violence per hour, as opposed to the 26 per hour on cartoons.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And, you know, it's cartoon violence, but it's still. It's not all Roadrunner falling off a cliff. Like, a lot of it was, you know, depiction. Like, you know, there was a Rambo cartoon, like I mentioned.

[Josh]

Right. Yeah. But there is research, and I'm not taking a position on either way because people have said, like, violent video games cause violence.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Josh]

This is like the predecessor to all that stuff. Violent cartoons cause violent kids. One of the, I guess, arguments of that is that even if it was cartoon violence, like Roadrunner, it still desensitized kids to the consequences of violent acts.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Josh]

Because it was accompanied with humor.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. So the 80s are kind of the most unchecked time, it seems like. And the 90s come along and finally they were like, all right, we gotta do something. Congress steps back in. And the Children's Television act of 1990 required the FCC to enforce those original FTC's recommendations in 1978 and said, you got to reinstate restrictions on advertising during children's television and enforce the obligations of broadcasters to meet the educational, inform, informational needs of the child audience. And a couple years later, NBC was like, all right, I'm done. It's not even worth it anymore.

[Josh]

Get this. Yeah. Although one good thing that came out of this is this was the origin of Saved by the Bell, because NBC went all in on slightly older kids teen programming on Saturday mornings, and the flagship of it was Saved by the Bell so much, they showed two episodes of it a morning. New ones.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And I mean, this is also where you got things like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. And of course, Pee Wee's Playhouse was a little bit before this. Or was it in the 90s?

[Josh]

Was that the German pronunciation? What did I say Pee Wee's Playhouse.

[Chuck]

Did I? Pee Wee's Playhouse.

[Josh]

Perfect. Yeah. I think that was like 85 or something like that.

[Chuck]

Okay. I never watched Pee Wee's Playhouse. I know we've talked about this, but I guess I was 14 by then. Not that you. I mean, I could watch it today and probably really love it because Pee Wee defies age groups. But it was just one of those things that maybe at the time I didn't know about it and didn't think it was for me or something. I don't know. I have no excuse.

[Josh]

Yeah, I wasn't into him either, for sure. But I did get to see his live version of the Pee Wee's Playhouse.

[Chuck]

Oh, you Went to that.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Amazing.

[Josh]

So there were a few other consequences of this. But the big one, the upshot was that the government, Congress essentially nanny stated Saturday morning cartoons out of existence because of these rules. They just weren't profitable anymore. There were certain restrictions on advertising. You could only show so many ads during kids programming. Like there was. There was just a lot that took away the profit drive that made Saturday morning cartoons so attractive. Right.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

There were a lot of other factors too, that put the writing on the wall, not the least of which was the rise of cable tv, which you mentioned was outside of the purview of the FCC for a long time. And from what I can tell, even today, networks are required to show three hours of educational programming geared toward. Geared to kids. So if you ever are up on a Saturday or a Sunday and you were watching Saved by the Bell reruns, like, I don't know, some people do, it would say it would flash like a logo that says ei. And it would say this program has been labeled educational and informative. That's because of a government mandate that they have to run three hours of shows, educational shows, I guess a day, maybe, maybe a week. Because I only remember seeing it on certain times of certain days. But there were mandates that said you have to show educational programming and that's why you see that today. But cable, that didn't apply to. And so not only did cable not have to show and take up valuable real estate with educational programming that nobody wanted to watch unless it was Saved by the Bell. There were also cable networks that were geared exclusively to kids. That wasn't just on Saturday mornings. These were 24 hour a day children's programmings like Nickelodeon and the beginning, the first iteration of the Disney Channel.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And stuff like the WB and CW2. Those weren't exclusively kids, but I feel like most of that was. And like through teen years, basically, you also had the rise of like, even though I love my Atari and stuff like that. It wasn't anything like what was to come with at home gaming. That certainly put a dent in things because now kids could just get up on Saturday morning and play whatever new system was out. DBRS came along and then, you know, so you didn't have to crowd around the TV at a certain time together. They all just started getting out of it. I think I mentioned NBC got out in 92, CBS got out in 97, and ABC. Wow. ABC hung on to Saturday morning cartoons till 2010.

[Josh]

Yeah. Yep. For sure.

[Chuck]

Not bad.

[Josh]

No, I think WB and Fox had only stopped just a couple years before. But again, it seems like the whole thing peaked and ended by the late 90s, very early 2000s. And from what I saw, the last Saturday morning cartoon block shown in the United states happened on September 27, 2014 on the CW. And the last cartoon show that was shown in the history of Saturday morning cartoons was Yu Gi oh Zexal. Which is nothing I was ever into. But I know there are a lot of kids who just, like, drooled with nostalgia. And that was the last Saturday morning cartoon ever shown. There's a little piece of trivia for you.

[Chuck]

Wow, did they have a lone bugler play Taps afterward?

[Josh]

They should have, for sure.

[Chuck]

Man, what an end of an era. For sure.

[Josh]

Yeah. But also, I mean, when I look back or look at all of this info, and I'm like, I was smack dab in the most manipulative stretch of Saturday morning cartoons. And it makes me wonder, like, what had I been watching in the early 70s, or had I been watching in the 90s or 2000s after, like, all of these restrictions? How different would I be?

[Chuck]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh]

Like, I can recite a specific Fruity Pebbles ad that they used to show around Christmas. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck]

Can you now?

[Josh]

Yes. So I think Fred. No, Barney. Was pretending to be Santa. Cause he wanted to slide down the chimney and get Fred's Fruity Pebbles. And he said, ho, ho, ho, I'm hungry. And then he slid down and he found Santa was already there. And he goes, santa, my Pebbles. And Fred goes, your Pebbles, Barney. And this would get in my head as an earworm. And it does still sometimes today where like, for days it'll just be going on a loop in my head.

[Chuck]

That's so funny.

[Josh]

And I can even top that, Chuck.

[Chuck]

Okay.

[Josh]

As I was thinking about it today, I was highlighting, like, my notes for today and I started drooling. So, like, that's how. That's the Pavlovian response that was trained to me for Fruity Pebbles. Thanks. From the early morning cartoons in the 80s.

[Chuck]

Oh, I love Fruity Pebbles. Not as good as Captain Crunch peanut butter. To me. That's my all time favorite. But boy, I love some Fruity Pebbles.

[Josh]

Did you ever have that ET Cereal that I mentioned earlier?

[Chuck]

I don't think I ever had that. I mean, we didn't. We weren't, you know, we didn't get a lot of that stuff.

[Josh]

If you could afford Cap' N Crunch peanut butter, you could afford E.T.

[Chuck]

Yeah, but Cap' N Crunch peanut butter was a rarity. And oftentimes it was the generic brands of all that stuff. So instead of Fruity Pebbles, it was like Fruit Stones or whatever.

[Josh]

Fruit tonsil stones.

[Chuck]

Yeah, exactly.

[Josh]

Gross. Yeah. Yeah. As far as peanut butter cereals go, E.T. was the best, I think.

[Chuck]

Oh, it was peanut butter.

[Josh]

Yes. And it was not peanut butter and chocolate. It was just peanut butter. Because remember, Reese's pieces were ET's favorite, of course, candy. And it had like a. A glossy coating to it too, that somehow made it even more sweet. Peanut butter. It was so good.

[Chuck]

Was it ET's head or something?

[Josh]

No, I don't remember what it was, but it was. I don't think it was. It may have been Ease and T's. I'm not sure.

[Chuck]

I was just about to ask if it was Ease and T's.

[Josh]

It may have been, but on the box it was obviously just a big picture of et.

[Chuck]

I bet you they could bring that back and people would like it.

[Josh]

I would buy all of it.

[Chuck]

I think it. I'm looking now, buddy. I think it's E's and T's.

[Josh]

It's so good, Chuck. It was so good. That. And remember the lemon lime Bubble Yum, where it was like a lemon center wrapped in lime? Outside those two things are like. That was the pinnacle of my childhood as far as eating stuff goes.

[Chuck]

Yeah. I was a grape Hubba Bubba guy generally. I found that they had the best tensile strength for the biggest bubbles, for sure. But I would also do Hubba Bubba or Bubblicious and Bubble Yum too.

[Josh]

Yep, yep. Bubble Yum probably had the least bubble blowing ability. Hubba Bubba definitely had everybody else beat.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

One last question. Did you have a license plate that you got out of a honeycomb box that you put on your bike?

[Chuck]

Oh, you bet your sweet bibby I did.

[Josh]

Me too, buddy.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

I don't remember what it said, but I'll bet it was bitchin and Pro America.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I didn't even like honeycomb cereal. So they got you to buy stuff just because you wanted the prize.

[Josh]

That's awesome. And I'm sure you learned all about the license plate being in the box of honeycombs on Saturday morning cartoons.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And oh man, nostalgia's coming hard now. But if you weren't sitting down for Saturday morning cartoons, you would just have your bowl in front of you. Of course, if you were at the kitchen table eating cereal, what were you.

[Josh]

Doing reading the back of the cereal box? You got it so good. Which is probably another ad for something else too.

[Chuck]

Yeah, or like a puzzle or a Word find or something.

[Josh]

Yeah, if you're lucky.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

We should probably stop because I'm getting dizzy, I'm about to faint, I'm drooling. Now, if you want to know more about Saturday morning cartoons, I have a great little piece of advice for you. Some saintly humans have put entire three four hour blocks of Saturday morning cartoons, complete with ads, the original broadcasts on YouTube and all sorts of other video playing sites. And if you want to just lose yourself, go watch some of it. You will love it.

[Chuck]

Amazing.

[Josh]

Chuck said amazing. Which means it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck]

I'm going to call this grossest cockroach story ever. Hey guys. Not to be a 1 upper, but I believe I might have the worst cockroach story on earth.

[Josh]

Yikes.

[Chuck]

A few years ago, I let my little three legged best friend Trip look at he's got a little tripod dog. I love those out on the front porch. Because he loves laying on the porch at night to listen to the bugs. He's the best dog one could dream for. But on this night, he let me down for the first time ever for not protecting me. As I opened the door to let him out. As I turned around to walk back inside, I felt something hit my head and start crawling. Quickly ripped off my hoodie and threw it to the ground. I searched and searched, but ultimately couldn't find the culprit. After a few minutes of searching, I decided to open the front door to see if Trip wanted to come back in. Right as I began to call out for him to come inside, a roach the size of a a Milano cookie buzzed around from inside the house and flew directly into my mouth.

[Josh]

Oh my goodness, yes.

[Chuck]

All the way into my mouth. I quickly spit it out and tried my best to smash this thing into oblivion. But saliva only made him stronger, I guess, as he evaded me with ease and flew off into the warm summer night sky. I think about this far too often and wouldn't doubt if it only added to my ongoing anxiety. He had mentioned at the beginning that we help with anxiety for Buck and that his wife appreciates that. So part of the reason for Buck's anxiety might be recounting this roach story for real. Again, thank you guys for the years of joy, knowledge and laughs. May your mouths be free of Paraplanita Americana for forever and longer.

[Josh]

Nice. Thanks Buck. That was a good email.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Good writer.

[Josh]

I can imagine. I can imagine that there are some people out there listening that are like, what does he mean, a flying cockroach? Yes, indeed there are flying cockroaches. We call them palmetto bugs and they're giant and they're flying and they're cockroaches. And apparently if you're Buck and you got your mouth open, a Milano sized cookie cockroach is going to find his way right into that gaping hole.

[Chuck]

Horrific.

[Josh]

I think I already said thanks again Buck, but that was such a good email it's worth saying again. So thanks again Buck. And if you want to be like Bach and and send us an email, send it off to Stuff podcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck]

Stuff.

[WebMD Host]

You should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hear insightful, entertaining discussions on today's important health and wellness topics on the Health discovered podcast from WebMD. Through in depth conversations with experts, Health Discovered covers everything from tips for healthier living to the latest on therapy and mental health. My goal is to really destigmatize mental health treatment and looking at it from a whole health perspective, physical health and mental health can be intertwined. Listen to WebMD Health discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck]

This is an iHeart podcast.