Toon Time

Saturday mornings were the best. No school and no real need to get up early, but that was why we did. Thousands of us, leaping out of bed at the first sign of sunlight and even before it emerged from its dark slumber during those winter months; ready to start the day the right way by filling up unfeasibly large bowls of sugary cereal and flavoured milk – taking time only to search in the cardboard box for the free toy or sticker that invariably was inside the food and not down "between the bag and the box" that our parents so desperately hoped might be true – before turning and heading for the sitting room to catch the morning cartoons.

Oh, what a plethora of great kids fodder there used to be. All dated now of course, but there was such an eclectic mixture, depending on which channel you watched of course. Popeye sandwiched between Transformers and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles; Real Ghostbusters followed quickly by Chip 'N' Dale: Rescue Rangers who then made way for She-Ra: Princess of Power. Oh, the days, the days.

For me, it was "Spiderman and his Amazing Friends". What a cartoon! Not only did you get Spidey swinging about and wisecracking, but he had a couple of friends there too. Firestar and Ice-Man. They might as well have called them Chalk and Cheese or Ying and Yang. I mean, what villain could ever survive a little hot and old treatment? Why they didn't just freeze Moleman, Dr Droom and the like and then immediately hit them with a blast of blistering, nova-like temperature heat to cook their respective gooses I'll never know.

Maybe some superhero moral code.