"They don't make them like they used too", my friend sighed. She was talking about cartoons. You see, I had recently purchased the SMURFS DVD and was watching it at home with a friend. Us both being a kid of the 80s, we soaked up all the joys of watching the cartoon and for that brief moments we found ourselves transported back to the past. We were the spoilt brats that we were back then.

My friend was a strong supporter of cartoons of the 80s, whichever cartoon they may be, SMURFS, SNORKS, Atom Ant, Yogi Bear, etc, you get my point. She insists that cartoons then always had moral values attached to them. Cartoons then were advocates of non violence, she says.

"Look at all the cartoons they have now, ANIME, Power Rangers, SpongeBob Squarepants, blah blah blah, they are all meaningless and some of them promote violence. Worse still, some of them seem to have adult related themes. What will the kids nowadays learn?" my friend lamented.

True, cartoons now differ from cartoons back then. However, if you look at it, they aren't so different after all. Take SpongeBob Squarepants for example, I recently watched this episode where SpongeBob gave up his entire savings and even his house just to get the new state of the art - Spatula. Yes, spatula. I watched it together with my friend's little tyke, a 7 year old. The state of the art spatula was fantastic, had a mind of its own and was multi functional. So, anyway, SpongeBob later realise that he still has affection for his old spatula, that old spatula that stood by him in the past and they eventually went back to work together. What is the moral of the story? Treasure what you have for you will never know, new things in life might not be the best things for you.

We didn't think much of the cartoon after that, why should we anyway. It was just another cartoon to us. My friend's little tyke on the other hand, obviously learnt the moral of the story. You see, last week was his birthday and when I asked him if he wanted a new bicycle, this little angel replied to me, "Nah, I think I'm gonna keep mine. It's still good. Just like how SpongeBob kept his old spatula."

So, yes, it's true that they don't make them like they used to. They may have different characters and don't appeal to us older folks anymore. But they still carry the same good old message to the kids. Go on. What are you waiting for? Pick up the remote and watch a cartoon. You might learn a thing or two. You'll never know.