When I was a kid (1970s), I really enjoyed watching cartoons, some of which must have been made decades before I was born. Examples include, Tom And Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Speedy Gonzales, Top Cat, Hong Kong Fooey, Scooby Doo, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, Sylvester The Cat, Mickey Mouse, etc, etc.
Yes, most of those short cartoons were in their heyday in the 1940's- 1960's,
Tom & Jerry and
Bugs Bunny since the earlier part of that period and
Road Runner and
Speedy Gonzales somewhat later.
Scooby Doo wasn't that old at the time, dating back only to around 1969-1970 (remember the Mystery Machine with its flowery hippy-style custom paint job?).
Hong Kong Fooey was new, made somewhere around 1973 or 1974. I don't remember
Wait Till Your Father.....
Top Cat was made around 1961-1962, but if you remember was billed in Britain as
Boss Cat, because when the BBC originally screened it in the sixties there was a brand of cat food here by the same name, and "We can't be seen to be advertising, don't you know." At the end of the original American opening sequence (after the workman's lunch-pale incident) T.C. hails a passing cab, jumps into the back seat, and as it drives away pulls down a shade in the rear window with "Top Cat" on it. The BBC cut that scene out and replaced it with the still "Boss Cat" caption. Of course, I didn't know that at the time, and didn't see the original opening sequence until I was in America about 15 years later, but I remember as a kid how that rather plain caption seemed at odds with the rest of the fast-paced opening titles, not to mention why the show was apparently called
Boss Cat while at every other point in the song and the dialogue he was "Top Cat" or "T.C." There was also that mysterious jump in the closing credits as well as T.C. is getting ready for bed, which always seemed odd to me as a kid. It was where there was a couple of seconds of "Top Cat" splashed across the credits and the BBC just cut that part out completely, resulting in not only a jump in the action but also in the music!
Then there were our home-grown cartoons which always had a completely different feel:
Mary, Mungo & Midge,
Rhoobarb & Custard, etc. And the more animated ones like
The Clangers, the
Trumpton/
Chigley/
Camberwick Green series, then later
The Wombles.
