80's cartoons

[FZeroOne]

Terrahawks was a Gerry Anderson production - theres a seperate discussion area on this forum if you want to swap memories!Part of the reason you don't see productions like the ones you mentioned is that in many cases they were co-productions between Western production companies and Japanese animation studios. Ulysses 31 was a French/Japanese co-production, for example.Often the object was to sell a related toy-line (as in the case of Thundercats), although there were exceptions such as the fondly remembered Mysterious Cities of Gold; Thunderbirds 2086, though, was an actual Japanese animated series that has a very interesting history!These days, with the massive growth in the popularity of anime, its usually more effective simply to buy the rights to Japanese series and then adapt - a term that causes some shudders among anime fans! - them to Western markets. One Piece and Gundam Wing are two examples of this.

[AndyThomas]

Also, the modern day toy tie-ins are invariably CGI, particularly for toys - the Action Man equivalents and the modern Transformers series, although some are still what we'd think of as traditional looking animation (or some mix between the two). These days they've really locked in the cartoons being on screen to the merchandising of course, it's a well oiled machine now. I think one of the key differences between now and then is the sheer volume of programming - we had a far more limited choice of what we could watch growing up, whereas now you might struggle to find a show the majority of kids have seen. It's a brave new world...

[FZeroOne]

Something I should have mentioned earlier is that, in a sense, a lot of new animation for TV is, to a degree, a co-production - many shows make use of Korean animators (possibly part of the reason for the increasing use of an "anime" look on some shows); the new G.I. Joe animated series is actually animated by the famous anime studio Gonzo.