It is not very often that you can have a coffee table book that brings with it good memories for everyone that opens it, but It’s Saturday Morning! Celebrating The Golden Era oF Cartoons 1960s – 1990s does just that. You see the cover and it just feels comfortable, bringing you back in time to a much simpler animated era. The book starts with a nice lengthy forward by Howie Mandel where he talks about the cartoon era and how he fits into it with a nice behind the scenes look at what went into making most of these cartoons. After that we get a few pages of an introduction where the author really captures what it was like growing up with a Saturday morning lineup each week, with a nice part that talks about the “inventive weirdness” that makes it a wonderful read. This is one introduction that lend itself to being read a few times and being dissected for information, it will make you think back to the Saturday morning cartoon era and revisit them in your mind in a new way.
The rest of the book is set up with sections dedicated to some of the best cartoons of the Saturday morning lineup, broken down into decades starting from the 1960s an ending with the 1990s. You get some photos of the show, some behind the scene photos as well as a nice write-up giving you more information about the show that you watched as a child (or adult).
In between these in-depth dives into the cartoon we are greeted with “After These Messages…” which gives us a quick glimpse (with photos) of some of the commercial that you might see while watching these cartoons, in a time before the DVR existed. You should remember a bunch of them showing up on your holiday lists.
The book had a lot of great memories for me, during a simpler time in my life and it will make many people feel the same. Saturday morning cartoons were a bit like a babysitter, as parents could accomplish a lot as you sat down in from of the television enthralled for hours at a set time during the week and they directed impacted our lives. These shows also dominated a lot of our conversations at school during lunchtime and recess. There were a few shows we would have liked to seen represented, so we are holding out for a volume 2.
With concept art, archival images, and all-new interviews, It’s Saturday Morning! celebrates the shows, characters, songs, and commercials that made Saturday mornings a pop culture event.
Broadcasting into family living rooms from the 1960s to the 1990s, this wildly creative art form wrought a beloved rite of passage. From the hours of 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., parents could sleep in while their children plopped on the couch to consume cartoons galore. From The Bugs Bunny Show, The Jetsons, and Jonny Quest to The Smurfs, He-Man, and Animaniacs, this window of time promised pure entertainment and an experience that united generations.
With concept art, archival images, and all-new interviews, this collection is a celebration and exploration of the shows, characters, songs, and TV commercials that made Saturday morning cartoons a pop culture event. This highly produced package is perfect for artists and illustrators, pop culture fanatics, or anyone who loves a heaping portion of nostalgia.
This is a pick up for any cartoon fan, and it begs to be read over and over as you find tons of information about some of your favorite cartoons from 1960s to 1990s. While I am a 70s baby, this book covers a bunch cartoons I grew up with, but it also contains different eras and my parents enjoyed reading it as well. While my kids are a bit younger than the 1990s we have some reboots of these cartoons already (think Alvin and the Chipmunks) so this is a great look at how some of them got started.
The quality of the cover and interior paper on this oversized book is high and the amount of photos are plentiful and well placed, making this a book that can handle a lot of reading, which is good as you will want to thumb through it over and over.
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
YouTube
RSS