I hadn’t heard of this until I saw your post, my friend.

I’m learning about new stuff, too.

Anyway, yet another violent film series got a cartoon spin-off:

Re: US censorship. The 60s had several adventure series that had realistic violence, which led to a big brouhaha at the end of the decade. Jonny Quest featured real guns and bullets, a few fisticuffs and lots of explosions. Space Ghost and the Herculoids were rather tame, by comparison, fighting monsters and robots, mostly. Batman, however, in the Batman/Superman Hour (or the solo Adventures of Batman half-hour rebranding), featured actual fights, with punches and kicks. That especially got targeted and the networks invoked restrictions on content, including requirements for real educational value. One of the results of that was the watered-down Super Friends, with most plots focusing on ecological disasters (also a central point to Yogi's Ark). Filmation dealt with it with moral lessons and language lessons, in The New Adventures of Zorro. Much of the decade featured either clones of Scooby Doo or jokey/slapstick cartoons, with a lot of bad humor. Superheroes tended to be more like Dyno Mutt and Blue Falcon, never actually touching the villains, but ensnaring them in nets or traps or Dyno Mutt doing the honors (by accident, often).

By the 80s, they pulled back somewhat on requiring educational content, though restrictions on violence remained. Cartoons like Thundarr got around that by having robots, monsters or things that just made them 'disapepar." Flash Gordon had Ming's soldiers all be robots, though you saw Hawkmen and Arborian ships "disintegrated" in battle and they were living men. Zorro had sword fights, though no stabbing; usually a disarming, or trapping someone under an awning or curtain.

Syndicated cartoons faced fewer restrictions, which is part of why Battle of the Planets got away with some violence, but not the heavy violence of the original Kagaku Ninjatai Gatchaman (Science Ninja Task Force Gatchaman). 7-Zark 7 was added to help bridge gaps in footage and assure us that any ships destroyed were robot-piloted. Also, they claimed they were set on other planets, with stock space voyage footage, of obviously inferior quality (as with the scene of the G-Force team in their rec room). They adapted the multi-part story where Red Impulse (called Colonel Cronos) sacrifices himself to save the Earth, just as Ken (Mark) learns that he is his father, was narrated that Cronos escaped, at the last minute. Berg Katse's (Zoltar) shift between genders was explained as being Zoltar's sister or another Spectra agent. The human Jinpei is an android, to avoid the issue of a young child in danger, regularly.

The 80s included restrictions on toy advertisements, which led to things like cartoon adaptations of toy lines, but without being allowed to show ads for the same toy line, during the commercial breaks. The use of lasers in GI Joe was because they couldn't have bullets. Part of why I could never get into it was no one was ever seriously hurt. Pilots always ejected before missiles hit their aircraft and no one ever died from a laser hit. It was better education to watch Jonny Quest and see people shot and killed by firearms, to hammer home that they are dangerous. GI JOE and its ilk made you believe no one got hurt when you fired a weapon at someone. Syndicated Japanese shows, like Star Blazers and Robotech could feature death, though somewhat toned down. Can't reinforce drunken behavior, though.

Looney Tunes got hit with all kinds of requirements for cuts, changed cartoon titles, stopped showing some. By the 80s, gunblasts were edited out and titles like "Prince Violent" became "Prince Varmint." Of course, you only saw the older, more problematic (racist) cartoons in syndication packages, though even some of those were sanitized of the really big offenders. You might still see a blackface gag, or Inky & The Minah Bird, but you damn sure weren't going to see "Coal Black an; de Sebbin' Dwarves," or "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips." The legacies of Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett are somewhat troublesome for those cartoons. Tom & Jerry, after being bought by Turner, had some bits censored, from the early ones, where Tom is owned by an African-American woman, voiced in a stereotypical style, plus some blackface gags (but not all). Quite frankly, I never minded losing the racist elements. Some of the other stuff was debatable, in varying degrees.

Here's another show I loved:

I was an unashamed Teddy Ruxpin fan.

I was also a fan of Rainbow Brite.



I had no qualms watching girls cartoons as a kid -- Strawberry Shortcake, Glo Friends, My Little Pony, watched them all.