LogFAQs > #945923561

Pikachu_Vought posted...

Is it me or cartoons are dramatically dumbed down now?

No.
If anything, modern cartoons are de-coupled from the moral guardians of the 80s, or at the very least are coupled to different moral guardians.

Mark Evanier has written a few items about how the D&D cartoon was heavily constrained by various advisory boards.
https://www.newsfromme.com/pov/col145-2/

The kids were all heroic all but a semi-heroic member of their troupe named Eric. Eric was a whiner, a complainer, a guy who didn't like to go along with whatever the others wanted to do. Usually, he would grudgingly agree to participate, and it would always turn out well, and Eric would be glad he joined in. He was the one thing I really didn't like about the show.

So why, you may wonder, did I leave him in there? Answer: I had to.

As you may know, there are those out there who attempt to influence the content of childrens' television. We call them "parents groups," although many are not comprised of parents, or at least not of folks whose primary interest is as parents. Study them and you'll find a wide array of agendum at workand I suspect that, in some cases, their stated goals are far from their real goals.

Nevertheless, they all seek to make kidvid more enriching and redeeming, at least by their definitions, and at the time, they had enough clout to cause the networks to yield. Consultants were brought in and we, the folks who were writing cartoons, were ordered to include certain "pro-social" morals in our shows. At the time, the dominant "pro-social" moral was as follows: The group is always rightthe complainer is always wrong.