Has the Quality of Cartoons Gone Down?

I have this thought a lot.

Cartoons certainly aren't what they used to be anymore. 90s cartoons have a much different feel to them than modern cartoons, but that's probably just a generation gap and new fads moving in.

Do I think the quality of cartoons has gone down? Yes. Do I think all modern cartoons suck? Heck no. There are some amazing cartoons out there. However I fear a lot of cartoons are worth about as much as it cost to make them if not less. There are a lot of cartoons that are cheaply made using a low quality rendering style and not backed up with proper story, or the animation and rendering isn't utilized in a way that it looks good, but just cheap.

"Movie spin-off" cartoons like the Monsters VS Aliens TV series, the Kung-Fu Panda TV series, Penguins of Madagascar TV series, and so on, are cheaply animated with poor if not completely dry stories. Many will complain the newest episodes of Spongebob aren't anything like they used to be. They're dry formulaic without any fun spices added to it to mix it up and make it interesting.

I do think a lot of cartoons are just mass-produced as cheap as possibly in an attempt to draw money out. The CGI cartoon of the newest TMNT series however used the cheap rendering and animation in a way that it's stylistic and actually looks nice. It still isn't perfect and I wouldn't put it up there as super great must-watch, but it's a step up from Nickelodeon's other CGI knock offs.

However there is still great quality in a lot of new cartoons. Gravity Falls has rich story, 80s and 90s references, a fun style, and great animation. Steven Universe has a fun style, great animation, and gets a lot more deep than some other cartoons. I'd possibly get strangled for not mentioning Adventure Time. I can't say much as I haven't watched a ton of it, the style personally doesn't do much for me, but the animation is fun, the characters are dorks, and it's weird, outside the box, lots of fun.

There is hope yet for cartoons. But I do believe the cartoon realm is very much littered with cheaply made cartoons just looking to make cheap money.