Cartoons, are they unnecessarily targeted towards adults?

 cartoons were made, written and targeted for a child audience. But reviewing some of the movies and television shows that have come out in the last few years it seems like we have moved into an era of Adult Cartoons. The Cartoon network even has programming called adult swim where cartoons are deliberately made for a target audience in their twenties or older.

There is the Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad; these are just the main cartoons on regular television, this doesn't touch on cable television programing that has cartoons geared toward adults, or movies like Shrek.

The Road to El Dorado, rated PG has a love scene in the movie, a movie specifically made for children. Cartoons should not feature two unmarried people in a compromising situation.

Below is three different examples of cartoons then and now, you make the decision which is better for Children to watch.

The older scooby doo's involved solving mysteries; hunting ghosts, goblins, all of which end up being flesh and blood crooks. Scooby Doo, the scared dog, and four high school friends; Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, and Norville 'Shaggy' Rogers, who traversed the globe looking for monsters.

Was it with the real to life scooby doo movies that we moved away from this older scooby doo? When did Daphne develop breasts that stood out and wore daisy dukes? When did Velma decide that she wanted a relationship with Shaggy? Did the sex appeal always exist but the older cartoons focused more one a story line and less on what was PC.

Actually it was the huge hit that WB had in bringing back the old Scooby Doo episodes as reruns on Saturday morning that revived the old show, but the new one while it has the same characters with different voices has gone in a different direction that the original creators of Scooby Doo might not have intended.  

 Were cartoons in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's more violent because they depicted a Coyote that had it out for a road runner? Dropping an anvil on the road runner never seemed to slow him down. What about that Waskly Wabbit, and the hunter that just couldn't seem to get him? Is depicting violence of a Coyote wanting to eat a road runner, or a hunter wanting to shoot a rabbit or duck worse then showing two gay characters making out? What harm can come to children who see that hunting is an admireable ambition of men, that coyote's do in fact eat other wild animals.

Family Guy pushes the envelop every week with more and more riske behavior, is that what cartoons are really about? What about the beer swilling Homer Simpson, for many this is a better form of entertainment than the older cartoons because Family Guy and the Simpsons while their episodes can border on grotesque and gross do not generally have any violence to them, and showing children violence is worse than showing them sex.

On September 12, 1964 Hoppity Hooper was born, a frog, voiced by Chris Allen, a fox "Uncle" Waldo P. Wigglesworth, and a bear named Fillmore, whose signature civil war cloths and trumpet helped make the show. The main premis of the show involved the three on misadventures investing their time in get rich quick schemes. Although the series came to a close on September 3, 1966 ABC continued to air reruns until 1967 at which point it was picked up for syndication and played throughout the 70's and 80's.

Whereas SpongeBob SquarePants is relatively new. Airing for the first time in 1999, an absorbent, yellow and porous star of cable television. SpongeBob SquarePants, epitomizes an uneducated America. With humor that borders on filth it is targeted towards children but makes references that children shouldn't be able to get. The original run of the series was put on hold in 2002 so that the movie could be made.

In the sixties and seventies, and even in the eighties cartoons could be educational, humorous, but generally made for children to enjoy. In the 90's and today while children still watch these cartoons they are definitely filled with innuendo made for adults, and what does that say about the intelligence level of adults if they are still consuming on a regular basis cartoons?

Even Disney has fallen under this spell, for instance why is it necessary for the fire truck in the movie Cars®, who is referred to as a male, cry when his flowers are destroyed by the hotshot race car. Cars® has a lot of good moments, but they take away all of that when they have to have a feminine male car, falling into the politically correct mode and trying to show kids that feminine men are alright, and firemen who loose their flowers cry too.