Let’s face it folks, they don’t make animated cartoons like they used to. In this modern age of CGI and fast food merchandising, cartoons have been nothing but toy commercials since the early eighties. Since “Down But Not Out” is all about bringing recognition to mostly forgotten pop culture artifacts, I want to discuss for a little but about one of my favorite obsessions: vintage animation.

The basic reason why cartoons from the late twenties to the mid sixties are and always will be infinitely superior to the inhumane rubbish that kids these days stare at is quite simple: they were made by cartoonists that liked what they did. This is completely gone now. I won’t go into detail here, for that check this out:

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/01/crackpot-executive-beliefs-1.html

One big reason why old cartoons kick so much ass is the unbelievable creativity that went into each one. There are absolutely no rules in these cartoon worlds, and the second that any sort of logic starts to creep in an anthropomorphic piano chews it up and spits it back out. One simply needs to watch any old Betty Boop or black and white Popeye cartoon and compare it to Tiny Toons to see what I mean. Even Mickey Mouse started out funny until he was “Disneyfied” in his later years and turned into one of the blandest cartoon characters in history. Quick, try to tell me one personality trait of Mickey Mouse. See? Anyway, in his black and white days it was quite common for Mickey to pull on a cows udders to make music, yank on a cats whiskers to use as a makeshift guitar, or stomp on small insects just for the hell of it. Basically what I’m saying is that these old cartoons followed no structures at all, which makes them surreal masterpieces to today’s jaded viewer that thinks “Pinky and the Brain” is an animated masterpiece.

Back to cartoon character personalities, that’s another concept that has been abandoned. Today a personality is simply a voice and maybe a catch phrase or two. The Daffy Duck of the thirties and forties is a psychotic force of nature that would take pages of text to fully describe. The same way with Bugs Bunny and pretty much every other character from the Warner Bros. cartoons. Even after Disney tried to do everything he could to make cartoons as boring as possible, his characters still have tons more personality than Spongebob or Peter Griffin. Trust me; nobody is going to remember those two in fifty years.

Hell, I could go on and on about this, this is really just the tip of the iceberg. Do yourself a favor and go to the dollar store and but a few Betty Boop or Warner Bros. cartoon DVD’s. Hell, even the lamest old cartoons eclipse anything we call animation these days. Old cartoons are like ice cream for the eyes. Today’s cartoons are like moldy lemons for the soul.