The Delbert Cartoon Report

  In celebration of the return of classic Woody Woodpecker and Walter Lantz cartoons to television, I wish to do an opinion piece and try to answer a question that has been bugging me for the last decade or so......does the general public HATE Woody Woodpecker????!!!!!! First of all I can say for certainty that he isn't a forgotten character.  The iconic laugh, one of the first things to come to mind when you think of woodpeckers is Woody.  The original cartoon series lasted from 1940-1972 outlasting Bugs Bunny by 8 years and the original Tom and Jerry by about 14 years (both series debuted the same year as Woody).  Even when the cartoons went into TV reruns whether it was syndicated or Saturday Mornings, Woody Woodpecker continued to grace the theater screens even if the budget got lower and lower as the years progressed.  Woody Woodpecker at one point became the mascot for Universal Parks and Resorts (now Universal Destinations and Experiences), and many of hi...

  I was born 30 years ago.  I would have been way way way too young to remember even a slither of Turtlemania.  Now, 30 years later, as I research and understand the appeal of the Ninja Turtles for about a year now, I've decided to talk about it from the outside looking in since we have a new movie coming out and also the classic series had a bit of a resurgence. As I said, I was born near the bitter bitter end of Turtlemania.  My mania would have been Barney the Dinosaur at the time, and the Y7 crowd was starting to lean towards Mighty Morphan Power Rangers.  That didn't mean Turtles weren't popular anymore; it just meant that pop culture was changing, and Turtles, for the time being, was no longer top dog.  It would return for a while with a new series in 2003 that would last through the decade, and Paramount took good care of them under the Nickelodeon brand for the next decade at least in terms of brand recognition.   That said, my introductio...