A Proper Introduction

Welcome to my new blog! It’s not well known right now but I hope it will gain traffic in the months to come. For those of you who don’t know me, name’s Stephen – currently 22 years old and still watching cartoons. Yep, you heard right. Oh the humanity! But seriously, it’s not a big crime as other people claim it to be. There’s just a part of me that never wants to grow up (and not in that freaky Michael Jackson way), and for one reason or another my interests have never left animation even as I progressed in age. That’s why I made this blog.

The Cartoon Couch Potato is a whole new endeavor for me, this is my first time ever blogging. The idea came for a blog like this mainly after watching a cartoon on YTV called Weird Years. After I discovered this show and how it’s terribly underrated (a full post on this show will follow down the road), I thought I needed a place to spread the word about lesser known cartoons, more so on Canadian ones that never seem to make it to a US market. After looking through some animation related blogs I found a crucial area missing out of the whole deal. There were blogs about animation as a whole (including illustration and comics), from the “golden age” in the 1920’s/60’s, ones covering popular big budget movies, but nothing solely focused on television; let alone anything from the 1980’s till today. There’s a whole generation of exploration no one has seemed to sail as far as I can see, and I’d like to make that first maiden voyage.

I was a couch potato kid, and spent most of my time in front of the tube growing up in the 90’s (and I’m actually skinny as a rail, take that modern stereotypes!). I watched nothing but cartoons from the networks that aired them here (in Canada FYI), and kept a steady mind remembering all of them and who made what. In later years with the help of the Internet and Youtube, I was able to discover a lot of lost gems I couldn’t put a name to as it had been so long since they had first aired. Usually as people grow up, watching animated programs or cartoons as some would call it, is looked down upon. It’s sad to think that a good majority of people out there only see animation as entertainment for kids, and as they grow up they don’t really pay attention to the shows they used to watch or keep track of new ones coming out. You get caught up in life (high school/college, romance, full time job, other coming of age stuff) and watching cartoons just isn’t on the “to do list”. While growing up has sure zapped away my free time from a lot of the things I enjoyed as a kid, I never really stopped watching animated shows. While the standard male in his young 20’s is watching sports and/or an automotive network, or some boring news channel or music video network that doesn’t even play music videos anymore, I’m watching Teletoon or YTV seeing if there is anything good on.

I think for my age, and the fact I have a large memory bank of cartoon titles in my head and know a lot about many shows that aired in the past 25 years, I thought I needed a place to rant about them. I mean surely, I’m not the only one – there must be others out there that enjoy animation on the same plateau as I do. That’s why this blog was made – to dig up, explore, celebrate, and review all those cartoons you remember but thought everyone else forgot about. To show the lost and forgotten work of many brilliant men and women that were lucky enough to turn their ideas into animated properties. And while television animation is the main attraction this blog will also shed light on movies, comics, and other professions in the animation industry.

Are you, were you, a cartoon couch potato? Relive those days here and revive the kid in you.