We're All Permanent Muppet Babies

the golden age of cinema created some of our most beloved cartoon characters. looney tunes weren't created for saturday morning, they were the primetime animated sitcoms of their time, placed before movies to show off our refined ability to dissociate from reality by the 1960s, television had taken hold, which means we had to produce enough content to fill up a multi-channel broadcast schedule. thus came hanna-barbera, finding new ways to cheapen the artistry of animation, so commercial-laden programming blocks could sell merch and technically edible products to keep our troughs filled as the baby boomers started having children in the 70s and 80s, there wasn't just cable television to compete with what was before, but the advent of home video. this allowed for competition from 24/7 networks like nickelodeon, dedicated to keeping children plugged in forever. how could we make sure bugs bunny and scooby doo stayed relevant? we turned 'em into children. a cutaway gag in muppets take manhattan turned into the unexpected phenomenon, muppet babies, leading to similar excursions from all our favorites. now you could get them started extra young, to make sure these symbols would never erode even if by the 90s and naughts fred flintstone lost relevance as the head of the flintstones, his face on the product line became a defacto colonel sanders. the screen, the television, the computer, the phone, it only exists to remind you of what you can consume just like it's hard to forget your family and friends and experiences from your developmental years as a child, it's even harder to forget your stoneage family and friends and experiences spent watching ted turner justify his purchase of the mgm and warner bros libraries we're all permanent muppet babies, just liked we're all permanently a pup named scooby doo. we'll spend our lives constructing our tombs as a reflection of the reflection we spent staring at in increasing fantastic fidelity