Psychology of Cartoons Part 1: Scooby-Doo
> Catena Ex Situ

• In Little Bear, the Bear family celebrates not Christmas or Hanukkah or even Kwanzaa, but “Winter Solstice.” This implies that the Bears are, in fact, pagans. It is also curious that the adult bears wear clothes while Little Bear is free to roam naked. Perhaps there is a coming of age ritual (a breeching?) in which younger bears are finally allowed to wear clothes as part of their symbolic transition into adulthood.
  -Contributed by The Editor
• Several of The Backyardigans can be associated with a different continent:
  • Pablo the penguin (family Spheniscidae)→ Antarctica
  • Tasha the hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) → Africa
  • Austin the kangaroo (genus Macropus)→ Australia

  Tyrone is either a North American moose or a European elk (Alces alces). Uniqua is most likely either a mud salamander (Pseudotriton montanus) or an axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), both found in North America. Thus, Tyrone must be associated with Europe.
  -Contributed by The Editor

• Handy Manny can be viewed as one man’s quixotic battle against the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
  -Contributed by The Editor
• I’ve finally figured out a common trait in lovable cartoon dogs: a relatively large nose.
  • debonair dog Brian Griffin has a massive fan base (which I am part of)
  • Scooby Doo has enormous fame, not to mention his face on lots of merchandise
  • Muttley (popular in Britain at least) has a capability to do anything without getting in trouble. i.e. people will feel sorry for him more often than not.
  • Augie Doggy and Doggie Daddy (of Quick Draw McGraw) have a pleasant un-harmful air to their appearances.

  -Contributed by UCH

• This is more of a question than an observation. Exactly what time period does Batman: The Animated Series take place? Look at the cars (Batmobile excluded) all of them are from roughly the mid 40′s and all the gangsters wear pinstripe suits and use tommy guns. (Including some of the villains look at Scarface and Two-face) But for all these antiquated references the people of Gotham city still use cellular phones, satellite communication, the latest in biological engineering and lasers, not to mention the multitude of nifty gadgets the super villains use.
  -Contributed by Dante Wyrmfoe

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I’m a big fan of the classic Disney Winnie the Pooh shorts.

Well, except for the later one where the characters started to look all Don Bluthy.

And that one they did in the 1980s with Jim Cummings instead of Sterling Holloway; the animation in that is almost unwatchably poor, and Rabbit sounds a little off.

But and the Honey Tree and and the Blustery Day are brilliantly conceived, witty, well-animated, and charming.

The latest lucrative incarnation,  My Friends Tigger & Pooh, if that is it’s real name, leaves quite a bad taste in the mouth.

• First of all: Tigger (a one-note sidekick character if there ever was one) is given top billing.
• Secondly: There’s some sort of Blue’s Clues/Scooby-Doo knock-offery nonsense about super sleuthing by super sleuthers. Despite being wholly inappropriate and out of character, I’m not even sure “sleuth” is a real word.
• Thirdly: Christopher Robin has all but been ousted in some sort of phantasmagorical coup d’état and replaced by a girl named Darby.

It’s this last point which is the rub. I imagine Disney created Darby in order to have an original, and therefore unambiguously copyrightable, work. However, this leads to philosophical quandaries, as Xen has noted:

The Hundred Acre Wood does not exist. This is self-evident to most of you, but let me clarify. Those of you familiar only with what Disney has done with the intellectual property may be unclear on the fact that Christopher goes from the real world into the imagined world of the Hundred Acre Wood in a way quite reminiscent of darling Alice into Wonderland. To reiterate, the Hundred Acre Wood is a projection of Christopher Robin’s imagination and is therefore contingent on him to exist. If he does not perceive it, it simply is not.

…

This tomboy should have her own imagined world in which to walk and work through a repressed sexual encounter or first awareness of her own mortality. The Hundred Acre Wood is personal and off-limits to persons not stuffed with cotton and psychoemotional detritus.

It’s a good point about fictional characters intruding on other fictional characters’ meta-fictional fictions. Seems kind of creepy and unfair. Xen also goes into detail about how each Hundred Acre Wood denizen symbolizes a different aspect of Christopher Robin’s personality, but I’m certainly not going to spoil any of that.

Fear and Trembing in the Hundred Acre Wood
> Catena Ex Situ

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• A discovery while viewing Underdog- It’s rather baffling to observe that Underdog, his alter-ego Shoeshine Boy, Sweet Polly Purebred, Riff Raff & Tap Tap the Chisler (an evil Underdog look-alike) are the only anthropomorphic dogs in an otherwise all-human city. And no one bats an eye over this!
  -Contributed by Brendan S.
• There was one major exception to the “nobody dies” rule in G.I. Joe. I refer to, of course, the memorably haunting two-part “alternate universe” episode. A group of Joes went through a dimensional portal to a world where Cobra had taken over. This episode contained several shocking scenes (like a Cobra Commander statue replacing the Statue of Liberty), but none more so than scenes of the Joes coming across their own skeletons, or rather those of their counterparts from that dimension. In that universe, the entire Joe team had been killed, and we saw the remains to prove it. One other note: being an 80′s cartoon, that episode’s obvious underlying message was, “this is what will happen if the Commies ever take over the U.S.” A similar theme, with aliens replacing terrorists, was later taken up in Exo-Squad (easily the most disturbing “children’s” cartoon I’ve ever encountered.)
  -Contributed by Christopher H.
• One thing that always bothered me was that back when Scooby‘s villains were just people in scary costumes: why did they have super strength? I mean, you would see them pick up insanely heavy objects like sofas or filing cabinets and throw them like they were pillows, or they would smash through wood or metal doors, or even walls with their bare hands. They should have been very seriously injured, but they just kept on going like it was nothing.
  -Contributed by Tim M.
• The only problem I have here is the origin of Sancho Panda. I understand he’s a parody of Sancho Panza from Don Quixote but Pandas have never been found in Spain where the show takes place. Plus, I’m not too sure of this, but Coyotes aren’t exactly numerous in Spain either.
  -Contributed by Dante W.

Like most from the archives, this article is at least six years old, so some of the references are rather dated. It’s another reminder that comments and additional examples are always highly encouraged.

Contributed by K.M. L.

There are, I have noticed, 3 distinct target age groups (excluding adult cartoons, which are their own genre) that almost all cartoons fit into. There’s the preschool group (e.g. Caillou, from Cinar); school-age, the definite majority (which is just about everything on Nickelodeon); and teen/ young adult cartoons (Daria and The New Ripley’s Believe It Or Not). The preschool-age cartoons’ animation is colorful, bright, and simple enough for kids to understand. Plots aren’t complex at all; rather, they are entertaining and they are good for holding the short extension span of this age group. Characters are friendly, and rarely do we find a villain. After all, no kid under 4 will watch something that gives them nightmares.

In the drama category we find the introduction of villains, as in Batman Beyond. Usually this type of cartoon involves a superhero, a mad villain, and his minions. The animation is sharp and the colors are dark for night and not much brighter for day. In some shows in this group there is also a love interest for the hero, although that’s pretty rare. Well, most 9-year old boys aren’t interested in seeing if the hero gets the girl! (At least, not those I know…) Episodes should be viewed in order, as the plots become more complex in this type of cartoon. One could almost say that these subgroups split the school-age cartoons into two age groups- kindergarten through third grade, and third grade through sixth.

By sixth grade, we get into the young adult cartoons. Here, more than ever, characters are created with the audience in mind. A fine example of this is Daria. These type of cartoons take on a more anime-like appearance, with pointed chins and almond eyes for female characters and strong jaws and similar eyes to the girls for male characters. Plots are at their most emotional, focusing on issues important to typical teens (boyfriends, family, friends, school). Some involve a group of friends working to achieve a common goal, like Scooby-Doo, where the goal was to solve mysteries.

Almost all cartoons can be fit into one of these three categories, and some fit into two. There are the rule-breakers, the rare shows, and the foreigners. Still, they all fit into this somewhere. And if it doesn’t fit, it’s probably an adult show.

Contributed by The Editor.

When Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? first came out, it was firmly established in each episode that the ghosts, monsters, etc. were always fake. But, in subsequent incarnations of the show, the preternatural began to become much more commonplace. Compare the rubber ghosts of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? with the “actual” ghosts of The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. It appears that adding the “actual” ghosts was another attempt to add new life to the franchise, following the disasterous addition of Scrappy-Doo to the list of characters. It is also worth noting that in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, all of the monsters are fake. Even though this series was produced after The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, it takes place before it, when the monsters were still people in costumes.