The 1980s are remembered fondly as a golden age of cartoon programming. The rising cultural influence of high-fantasy properties such as Lord Of The Rings and Conan The Barbarian, sci-fi like Star Wars and Star Trek, and overseas animations like Super Dimension Fortress Macross collided with a period of low restriction on advertising in children’s television. The result was a boom of energetic and fantastical children’s animation that blended fantasy, science fiction, and anime influences with the music, fashion, social talking points and overall culture of the 1980s.
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Each show was profoundly aware of its unique combination of audience, aesthetic, and central concept (some might say gimmick). They spared no extreme in pushing these aspects to their most outrageous limits with flashing lights, glitter, space, swords, and glittery flashing swords from space, all while still finding a moment here and there for our heroes to turn directly to the camera and deliver some relevant moral or public safety announcement to their young audience. Now, in the nearly 40 years since the 1980s came to a close, some of these cartoons have been revisited in ways that have managed to outdo even the unabashed, gleeful energy of the originals.
3. Ducktales
The original Ducktales TV series, premiering in 1987, was loosely based on the Donald Duck Universe of comic books produced by Disney and centered Donald’s three nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, on their adventures with the wealth-obsessed Uncle Scrooge McDuck. The 2017 reboot has stayed close to the characters, plot, themes, and tone of the original, including an eclectic rogue’s gallery, lighthearted episodic adventure format, and tendency to reference classic literature. However, far from being a pure repeat, Ducktales (2017) has taken full advantage of advances in animation and evolutions in pop-culture tropes around treasure and adventuring, creating a faster-paced show that gives its action scenes the adrenaline befitting of an adventure series while allowing more time for dialogue and emotional arcs around the show’s central themes of family, friendship, and the harder consequences of discovering old family secrets.
2. Voltron: Legendary Defender
Voltron, originally the much darker Japanese anime series Beast King GoLion before being drastically recut and rewritten for American markets, was many people’s first introduction to the concept of Mecha. While the series has had several attempts at continuation since the end of its original 1984-85 run, the 2016-18 Voltron: Legendary Defender went far beyond simply trying to continue or reimagine the original story, instead rebooting the universe entirely to create a new Voltron canon that blended elements from the original show’s Japanese and Americanized versions, as well as from other mecha anime and space fantasy of the 1980s and onward. Featuring vertigo-inducing, masterfully scripted and directed space battles and hand-to-hand combat, a vibrant interplanetary setting full of detailed alien cultures, and the ability to shift hard into emotional angst, Voltron: Legendary Defender is a love letter to mecha anime and space epics alike.
1. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
The original My Little Pony series, running from 1986-87, followed a group of pastel ponies in their encounters, friendly and otherwise, with the various magical creatures of the enchanted land of Ponyland, often with some life lesson at heart of the story. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic which ran from 2010 to 2019 follows the same formula — and keeps going. By the end of the series’ 10-year run, the Kingdom of Equestria had moved beyond the prior series’ scatterings of magical enemies-of-the-week and occasional return allies, to encompass a full map, multiple cities, countless races of creature including Kirin, Zebra, Changeling, and Griffon and centuries if not millennia of history between those races, a government, seasonal cycle, holidays, mythology, music, and even the occasional god. This rich and interconnected world, built over 10 years on the base of an episodic fantasy show about cartoon horses, is the only possible choice to round out this list.
