You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. The USA Cartoon Express

While not really a Saturday Morning Cartoon line-up, The USA Cartoon Express was still a very big part of my childhood back in the 80’s.

Every weekday I had to try and force myself to get out of bed at 6:30 AM in the Morning, so I could get ready for another long day at school. The only good thing to come from this was that I could watch about an hour of classic cartoons from the 60’s & 70’s just before my Mom had to take me to school. It was think to this line-up of shows that I found out about classic cartoons like Scooby-Doo, Space Ghost, the Flintstones, and many more. And when the 90’s came around they started showing re-runs of cartoons from the 80’s as well. Sadly, when Cartoon Network went on the air in 1996, the USA Network canceled it and replaced it with re-runs of shows like Silk Stockings & Weird Science the Series.

What was your favorite classic cartoon in The USA Cartoon Express line-up? Did you want to take a ride on the USA Express train?

7 thoughts on “Saturday Morning Cartoon: USA Cartoon Express

  1. Kurdt says:

    This block had some pretty good cartoons. That’s where I got my Real Ghostbusters fix, most of the time. It also had that Problem Child cartoon, which I only have very fleeting memories of. For a long time I thought I had dreamed that thing up…

  2. Jay says:

    The most whacked-out cartoons made it onto this show. My sister and I discovered The Hair Bear Bunch on there, as well as Wheelie & the Chopper Gang and Space Ghost.

  3. Jwbalsley says:

    I wonder if different states or different regions in a state have/ had different cartoons, because some of these I don’t recognize. But I also noticed this growing up because other kids would see different cartoons (both having no cable tv) and I would have no idea what they were talking about. Yet I still watched the same networks and things like that. Who knows?

    1. Chris Sobieniak says:

      It sounds like you’re thinking of the days of independent UHF stations J. W. Balsley. It use to be a thing in the 70’s and 80’s for these stations often to have cartoons on during the morning and afternoon hours weekdays (usually 6-9PM and 3-6PM depending on schedule and availability). Prior to the 80’s, it was usually anywhere from the classic “Golden Age” theatricals (WB, MGM, etc.) to off-network reruns of stale Saturday morning gems or one or two unusual foreign properties like some early Japanese cartoons dubbed into English (Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets, etc.). The 1980’s brought about changes somehow in the way toy companies could not put out cartoons based on existing toy lines and thus, we started seeing more original toonage show for 5 days a week in packages usually totaling up to 65 or 85 episodes tops.

      USA Cartoon Express started around the mid 80’s and was something I recall fondly watching around 1985 or ’86 when much of it’s programming consisted of the Hanna-Barbera library, much of which I had never saw before besides The Flintstones or whatever was on Saturday Morning then. As a cable entity of the time, I can see why the old stuff would gravitate to formats like that when the local stations simply had no use for it.

    2. Chris Sobieniak says:

      It really does come down to market and availability in most cases. I grew up in Toledo, OH, and we didn’t have a real “Indie” station until 1985, but often stations from Detroit like WKBD (50) and WXON (20) supplemented fine for anyone willing to stretch their rabbit ears up north to pick up for things not shown locally at the time.

  4. Chris Sobieniak says:

    “Sadly, when Cartoon Network went on the air in 1996, the USA Network canceled it and replaced it with re-runs of shows like Silk Stockings & Weird Science the Series.”

    Actually Cartoon Network started in 1992 (yes, it’s ‘barely legal’ now). It came on to my cable outlet around early 1994 I recall, so that and USA Network were pretty head-to-head at the time, and USA was trying to put out some “original’ programs for the block too like a cartoon based on the movie “Problem Child”. If anything USA Network (much like TNT) simply forgot about kids and went on to the older demographic as they’re the ones with an income to begin with.

  5. Fray says:

    I haven’t thought about this in years! Thanks for bringing back a pleasant old childhood memory! :>)

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