Ah yes... animation.

A sneaky entertainment medium that has been in the dark for too long.

Too long, in fact, that people were starting to doubt whether it was going to happen at all.

There was the Comic-Con 1985 spectacle, music and music video requesting, a bunch of trailing advertisements, and then another Comic-Con cycle with Comic-Con 1986.

Seriously. Isn't all this teasing a bit much?

Even Alexander was somewhat vexed and that may be because the whole process was really, really long-winded.

For most of his other endeavors, the progress is as snappy as a snap...

Yet there was animation... playing hard to get.

Playing hard to get into broadcasting networks to the point that it could only opt for syndications.

To no fault of its own, lobbying was just that difficult.

Pilots of shows get rejected at an alarming rate and when one has got no priors, it's really hard for decision-makers in major networks to have confidence in you.

Especially when said shows are somewhat straight-out derivations of an existing creation and your dumping an entire season of it.

Maybe it's two seasons entirely, considering that it's two animation projects that are being lobbied.

Of course, even though Alexander considers the projects as animation, for all intents and purposes, it just can't escape being lumped with something else.

As a bit of a recall...

It was the 13th of September. For 1986, that's a Saturday.

And still quite early in the morning.

Consequently, Greg was talking about not watching cartoons, was he not?

Putting all those together, something should come up...

Saturday. Morning. Cartoon.

Saturday Morning Cartoon. Saturday-Morning Cartoon.

A colloquial term for the original animated series programming that was typically scheduled on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the United States, famously by the "Big Three" television networks.

So yeah... shouldn't it also be called Sunday Morning Cartoon?

Either way, it adds up, doesn't it?

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Anyhows, what even is this Saturday Morning Cartoon?

Any house for that matter... actually has their own interpretation and tradition on it...

They might have been cheap...

They might have been corny...

And they might have been designed to just sell merchandise...

But that does not take away how much they meant to the people who grew up with them.

For many people across the world, they will never forget the joy that Saturday Morning Cartoons brought to them, and how important it was to their childhood.

A simple time when all you needed was a bowl of cereal and your favorite cartoon.

On that note, there's still quite some time and with cereals being a big part of it... so Alexander conscientiously prepared for it...

Taking part in nuances like this shouldn't be too bad.

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In any case, Saturday morning cartoons have been an integral part of the American television scene...

Saturday morning is just unlike any other time of the programming week in that the viewing audience is more monolithic than any other.

At no other time do so many stations broadcast such similar material for such an extended period of time, all aimed at the same audience: children.

Several generations of children have planned their weekends around the ritual of pouring huge bowls of sugar-saturated cereal and gathering about the television for the week's dose of animation.

Of course, Alexander didn't need to be reminded of that again... he's already making bowls of it, after all.

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Continuing on... the earliest incarnation of the Saturday morning cartoon came about almost as an accident.

For you see... back in 1949, producer Jerry Fairbanks sold NBC on the idea of a new series of cartoons developed especially for television.

His product was a low-budget project titled... Crusader Rabbit.

This simply-animated series followed the adventures of an intrepid rabbit and his tiger sidekick.

"I don't recall anything special about Saturday morning at that point except that the networks had some vague idea that they wanted programs for kids." Fairbanks said so.

However, statistics don't lie.

Even going back to the radio years showed that the peak tune-in hours for children were between 10 a.m. and noon on Saturday mornings and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays.

Setting aside the other time slots, Saturday didn't seem so bad.

Hence... Crusader Rabbit was the very first cartoon created exclusively for television and the first to take advantage of this window of opportunity to market to children.

By and large, ever since then, Saturday morning has been a haven for television animation since 1950.

At a time when televisions were rounded instead of flat, unseemly large and heavy, had antennae on top to pick up one of three or four networks, or the local independent station... and the little knobs for which you physically had to go over to change channels... getting your cartoon fix was a lot harder.

The "Saturday-morning cartoon" format arose as advertisers and networks realized the potential of an all-but-captive audience of schoolchildren who could camp out in front of the TV and veg out on three to four hours of animated goodness...

Enjoying a morning off from both school and church... while Mom and Dad were catching up on sleep lost during the work week.

Most parents don't even mind. It offered them relief from the children in the form of an electronic pacifier. Sometimes they even take part in it.

Since then, Saturday morning cartoons made important and lasting changes to the landscape of American popular culture.

One distinct change wrought was a subtle but irrevocable shift in the makeup of the week.

Sunday may be a day of rest, but Saturday is a day of entertainment.

In a very real sense, Saturday became an unofficial holiday, an event manufactured by advertisers and programmers to take advantage of a captive audience home from school with little to do... except, perhaps, park themselves in front of a television set.

Thanks to the advertising and marketing blitz that accompanies the cartoon takeover of Saturday morning, the characters and memories border on the legendary with those who grew up watching them.

How could Alexander and the whole of Creed Entertainment miss out on that?

As a matter of fact, Alexander's focus was always on that.

Although almost more than ninety percent of all Saturday Morning Characters slipped into television oblivion...

The ones that succeeded catapulted themselves into the popular imagination!

Of course, popularity is good but some are more interested in the ludicrous returns that can be had...

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Even at the crux of it... and whilst trying to chow down on some cereal...

Alexander looked at the cereal box and thought... aren't these boxes technically Saturday morning cartons?

With a whole lot of Saturday mornings to come, which among the long list of cereal-making companies should he choose to partner with? Kellog's Fruit Loops? Fiber, non-fiber, hi-fiber?

Or should they just enter the cereal market themselves? Probably not.

Also, was he just addicted to starting companies from nowhere or what?

Drew can't help but snicker at that. "Milla, prince charming seems to be looking more and more intently at the cereal box. I hope he doesn't fall in and out of love."

"Well... he... he's probably thinking deeply on a whole lot of business stuff." Milica acted like she didn't care for the taunt as she looked at a milk-filled bowl of her own. "At least, he prepared some things for me and that is good enough."

Knowing how Alex is, that is really good enough already.

"Excuses, excuses..." Prompting Drew to snicker some more as she teased with a bowl of her own. "Hmm.... he also prepared some for me though. What do you think about that?"

Milla thought about it and all she could come up with was...

Uhm...

Cause she didn't know what was that about.

So... uhm, indeed.