[Leo656]

I'm just going out on a limb here without trying to speak too loudly for anyone else. But I think it's more that many people look back on those shows and can appreciate the moral life lessons they impart, but just plain hate the artwork, animation, the cheeseball humor, and the fact that everything had to be so G-rated.

Like, you know me with MLP. I love FiM. I can't stand the 80s cartoon, though. I know what it was trying to be but what it IS is a piece of sh*t, even if it's well-intentioned.

Now, I definitely don't think MOTU was. And hard as I am on FW TMNT at times, I don't think that show was, either. I think those two cartoons and The Real Ghostbusters pretty much make up the Holy Trinity of 1980s cartoon shows, and underneath them you'd probably have Thundercats, G.I. Joe and Transformers. Maybe Voltron up there with those. After that, though... man, there's a lot of stuff that's objectively crap. When people say, "That era hasn't all aged well," they're not entirely wrong.

But I DO feel like MOTU and TMNT gets unfairly lumped in with the other stuff... it's definitely not QUITE as good as it was when you were 6, whether you love it or hate it. It's definitely easy to see a lot more of the scotch tape and chicken wire holding those shows together. They all had lots of issues with jerkiness, stilted writing, budget issues, errors, etc. TMNT got off the lightest because it was so late in the era that it's honestly more of a "90s cartoon", but it still had a lot of issues. I don't think they're anywhere near as offensive as some people seem to, but I think people fall into this trap of saying "Man, ALL that stuff we liked back then was crap," and even the better shows get thrown in with the less-great ones.

Now, to be blunt, if a person truly can't just overlook some of the things that make the MOTU cartoon dated and take it for what it is, I kind of think they're a bit of a joyless prick, I confess. No, it's not as polished as anything made after 1989 was, but I feel like to some degree it's like listening to a record of your favorite band's music from when they were in college, recording in their basement: "Please Lower Standards Before Listening." Because anything else wouldn't be fair to the material. There's definitely a sincerity to it that is very real, and very absent from most of the other "toy commercial" cartoons. I've tried to get into stuff like Joe and Transformers, even as a kid. Never felt it. Not that they weren't good, it's just that I never felt the "heart" I did in MOTU or TMNT. Stuff like Transformers always felt very blatantly like they were trying to sell me toys, while MOTU and TMNT were trying to teach me about life and being a good person. It hit different. Even The Real Ghostbusters was often full of little moral fables, they just weren't as blatant about it as MOTU was, with someone literally telling you what you were supposed to take away from the episode and all that.

I don't know. I don't think anyone really fails to see what those shows were trying to do, or resents it, or anything. I think some people really truly can't "go backwards" and enjoy things from before a certain time. My wife HATES watching things in black & white, for example. That's her "line". Sometimes she puts up with it, but grudgingly. So when someone looks at MOTU and says, "Man... I just can't get over the recycled animation," or "There's the same three people playing twenty different characters," or "These Dad Jokes are tiresome"... I get it. I don't agree with it, but I can kind of see what they don't like about it. I just don't feel anywhere as strongly about it, and selfishly I wish they could get over it and see the good in what's there.

BUT. Some people can't. I don't like it, but if it's how they feel it's how they feel. I don't think anyone has any issue with the show(s) "teaching kids moral lessons" or anything, though. Just that they're cheap and occasionally shoddy, production-wise. I don't care, you don't care. BUT, some people care, it is what it is.