Collect Saturday Morning Fever: Growing Up With Cartoon Culture Narrated By Timothy Burke Shown As Softcover

Hey Hey, You're Gonna Have A Good Time!

It's predawn Saturday morning, You and your brother are the first ones up, gathering pillows and blankets and the TV warms up

to the weekly Farm Report.
Then, just as the sugar cereal kicks in, you begin your descent into the happyspazzy TV world of Space Ghost, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Hong Kong Phooey, The Herculoids, and for the hardcore Saturday morning junkie, liveaction shows like Jason of Star Command.

Little did you know that this cherished world was also the battleground where greedy toy advertisers, network flacks, cutthroat cartoon companies, opportunistic politicians, and concerned parents struggled for the attentiondeficit souls of America's youth.

Brothers Tim and Kevin Burke bring us a loving, insightful, and hilarious examination of all aspects of Saturday morning television, Tune in and get ready for some fun,
As an animation junkie who grew up during the prime years of 'Saturday morning cartoons', I've been meaning to read this book for years, I finally found a copy, and I've discovered that this isn't the book I should have been looking for,

The brothers who wrote this book wrote a highly personalized and opinionated screed about Saturday morning cartoons, mostly from the seventies, It was interesting and nostalgic reading, and I agree with many of their stances on childoriented programming, but all the same this was not the book for me.
Ironically, I discovered the book that I should have been looking for in this Saturday Morning Fever's introduction: Saturday Morning TV, by Gary Grossman.
Fun book! Among other things, it's a nice stroll down memory lane as I was a big fan of Saturday morning cartoons growing up, Some of the information is a bit datedthe book was published back inbut their thesis is sound, If anything, the lack of societal collapse since the kids who grew up watching cartoons during the 's and's came of age drives home their point even more with each passing year.
Despite the concerns of parental groups at the time, the kids turned out just fine, I'm a huge cartoon nerd, so I figured this book would be pure indulgence, For much of the book, it's a well researched history with lots of obscure references here and there, which was informative and at times entertaining, It took a while to get to the cartoons themselves, but I appreciated the background on the void that was precartoon Saturday mornings,

After an indulgence of cartoons from the midtolates and earlys, the author just seems less interested in the sheer volume and variety of animation coming out afterward.
Obviously past his childhood prime, but quite topical considering the subject, If you're looking for a focus on the lates,s ands, this book won't speak a lot to them, instead focusing on a few serials again and again I entirely realize this wasn't the focus of the book, just that it seems this part was most glossed over.
He recoups for some mids series that were more relevant for his current students, but it still felt uninspired after the highlights of the earlys.
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Enjoyable, but wish it would have been more,
This book takes a little too long getting to the meat of the matter, . . the particular cartoons themselves. Before you get to read about the origins of Scooby Doo, Fred Flintstone, and Superfriends, there are several chapters of filler talking about the general history of Sat.
morning toons. This might be good, but the author's attempts at humor are dry in a bad way, and it feels like walking up hill waiting to hear about particular shows.
If you see it at the library, don't read it from start to finish, just go straight to the chapters on your fave toons, Interesting stories to a point, but there was quite a few factual errors, More opinionated then I thought it would be, Half the book was about the cartoons and programs themselves with interesting bits of info on the shows then the other half was an opinionated rant about political correctness and culture wars.
Not what I was looking for in that regard, The authors seemed to contradict themselves throughout the book saying firstly that these cartoons are cartoons and that's it, Get over it. Then in the end they spend pages ranting about how political correctness should have been more prevailant in the shows themselves,

They're cartoons, get over it, A book about Saturday morning television and the culture surrounding should be right up my alley, but I was disappointed, The authors couldn't decide if they wanted to sound hip or academic, so they attempt a style that tries to be both, but is actually neither.
Some decent info inside, though, so that bumps it up tostar territory, but there's a better book waiting to be written on this subject, What a blast from the not so distant past, . . remembering mornings spent in front of the TV, Low production values, incredibly unrealistic plots, the same handful of episodes in constant rotation, . . such things don't matter to kids, Well done and well researched, Didn't realize many of the facts presented in this no superheroes in the earlys for example, Very informative for a fun era for those who grew up during the "golden era" and what ended up happening Checked the book out of my local library.
It wasn't exactly what I expected, The book takes way too long to get to the meat and bones of the subject matter, the cartoons themselves and it feels too politically preachy in several places.
It was like attending a concert by a nostalgia act and having to stand through long lectures on political issues after each and every song, Hey man, I'm just here for the toons, Timothy Burke is a professor in History, .