The TIime Before CN Knew What It Was
I miss when Cartoon Network had to make old stuff feel cool.
Weirdly obscure Hanna-Barbera shows (my brother and I still blurt out the Paw Paw Bears theme just to confuse everyone around us), 60s anime before I even knew what "anime" was (Speed Racer was never missed in my house), Looney Tunes etc... it was all blended in the mix together.
These screenshots aren't a complete list, just some shows I remember actually watching that disappeared once CN started producing their own stuff. And I love a lot of that original programming, genuinely. And the big names (Tom and Jerry, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Scooby Doo and so on) stuck around for a long time. But there was something special about turning on the TV and landing on something completely off the wall. Even the crappy stuff was an experience to behold.
Now most of this stuff, if it's lucky, ends up on some cartoon TV Land equivalent which basically guarantees no kid is ever going to stumble onto it. The stumbling-onto-it part was kind of the whole thing for me. Also a lot of early Original Cartoon Network shows would make references and parodies of these older shows which made the catalog feel intentional, at least to me.
I know people just stream what they want now, so those days are gone either way. Just feels like something got lost.