Weakness for cartoons.

I have to admit my guilty pleasure. I am addicted to cartoons. There is nothing I enjoy so much as sitting down and watching some animation with my morning cup of coffee. It's one of my weekend rituals.

Sadly, cartoons aren't up to the standards they once were. Instead of the giggle inspiring shorts that so many of us grew up with, most are now half hour advertisements for toys and games. A lot are produced in Japan or Korea, and the stories don't necessarily translate. The ones that do still seem to "feel" odd.

I think the best example of a "proper" cartoon is still Bugs Bunny. Take one wacky character (or a string of them) and put them into the bizarre situations and wait for the laughs. Who could resist the bumbling antics of that loud mouthed rooster Foghorn Leghorn? Who didn't laugh at the pitiful attempts of Wile E. Coyote to capture and devour the lucky and blissfully uncaring roadrunner?

And just what was it that kept Acme in business all of those years?

Another old favorite was Scooby Doo, in its various incarnations. The newest versions don't have the charm of the old ones, but they are still good. Many a day, a Monkees tune will run through my head, having been one of the pieces used for a chase scene.

There are a couple of good cartoons airing on Teletoon these days. I am actually particularly fond of "G.I. Joe: Renegades". It's more of a serial than a cartoon, with each episode subtly linked to all of the others. Still, they stand well enough alone. The characters are richly filled out, even with all of their little personal mysteries. Seeing those histories brought out as the group melds is part of the charm.

Cartoons are also great educational tools. Just look at the pictures produced during World War II. Private Snafu was funny, making every mistake that a G.I. possibly could, and managing to still get across the messages that the military wanted the soldiers and civilian population alike to see.

A new one, Canadian I might add, is "The Future is Wild". It's the tale of a group of teenagers who are travelling in the distant future on a mission to save mankind from a major ice age. It uses the platform of animation to put across real science, to show what life on earth could evolve into over the span of millions of years. It uses humour to entertain, but the information is solid, or at least as solid as a panel of experts in biology, geology and botany can make it.

I don't think we should ever let ourselves outgrow the wonder that is animation. Imagine how dull and ironically two dimensional life would be without cartoons.