One of the early "new" cartoons that I watched was GI Joe. It aired at about the same time as Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After Thundar or He-man or Smurfs. These cartoons had a different look, with more detail and less cartoony looking graphics than previously. More things happening onscreen, though not necessarily sharper graphics. If you compare GI Joe with say, The Flintstones, you can't really say one is superior graphically than the other, it's mostly a different style that hadn't been seen before. It was only years later that I realized that GI Joe has been around for decades and that TMNT is based on a comic book.

The GI Joe Cartoon started out with a five-episode special, done a couple of years before the series. This format was also followed by Transformers and TMNT for their introductions. In GI Joe, the characters are introduced in the first episode, and we get the basic premise: Destro has developed a Mass Driver (teleportation device) and hijacks a GI Joe satellite to relay the energy beam from the Mass Driver. The next three espisodes are three separate challenges, as different groups of Joes try to retrieve the three rare fuels that the Mass Driver needs so they can build their own Mass Driver. Episode five is the grand finale, as the Joes narrowly defeat Cobra.

The next GI Joe special was much the same, with an intro episode, three episodes of challenges, and a grand finale episode. New characters were introduced for both sides, and one of the problems in my mind is that sheer number of Joes and Cobra characters. It's great for the toy makers, but it's hard to involve a lot of characters in a story without making most of them rather redundant or not needed for the storyline. Back then though I don't think I noticed much.

Now that I look it up, looks like TMNT came quite a bit later than GI Joe. GI Joe started in 1983 while TMNT started in 1987. Anyway, what I remember about the first TMNT special (of five epsiodes, strange how that fits neatly into a week of shows) was that it was hilarious. The wise-cracking anthropoidal turtles are comedic geniouses, at least in this series. Once you've seen a few dozen episodes though, the jokes got old and the show wasn't as interesting. The four turtles don't change, I don't recall any new characters added for the heroes' side, and the villains' lineup was relatively static also. Unlike GI Joe which seemed to have a batch of new characters every season.

I also liked the old Transformers, while they were on Earth and disguised as everyday (or not so everyday vehicles). Autobots were cars, Decepticons were a variety of things, although airplanes seem to be the most common. The Autobot base was a giant robot. Destructicon was a Voltron clone, composed of five construction vehicles (rather ironic, now that I think of it). The Dinobots were then introduced so that the Autobots had their own Voltron clone. Once again, new characters introduced each year, along with the action figures, which were rather flimsy.

Transformers, Next Generation, or whatever it was called, was nowhere as good as the original. The setting is the Transformer homeworld of Cybertron. All the old characters are either dead or transform into futuristic devices. Optimus Prime is dead. And the most annoying thing is the scene transition, which is some sort of futuristic animation that takes a second or two to run, and really adds up over the course of an episode.

GI Joe had the same problem. Once the original series was over, another company produced a new series. Lots of new characters, lots of other characters dropped. Now the bad guys are some sort of biotechnological race bent on the usual world domination. But it just wasn't as interesting. The high tech weapons and vehicles were a big draw for me, as well as the old characters. I don't recall if TMNT had another series, but it probably would have sucked too. There's only so much change I can stand.