>>124808306I'm not talking about specific cartoons, but overall trends.
Educational shows want you to learn something academic or moral. Aspirational shows make you want to be someone. For example, you're not really going to learn much science from Star Trek, but it may inspire you to go into science because it lionizes space exploration.
Frankly, this was a push by academics and educators into children's entertainment whose theories simply don't mesh with reality. (As NDT loosely put it, children succeed in spite of these kinds of teachers, not because of them, even if they are well-intentioned.) Cartoons became less adventurous, less heroic, and it created a new source of revenue for charlatans known as consulting firms who operate quackery known as focus groups, which can get any kind of result they want to fit a narrative based on what kind of questions they ask.
I think that's the reality behind "corporatization" as others have said. Of course cartoons are made and paid for by corporations, but suddenly there was this outside influence from interests who know nothing of animation or entertainment. They got in through children's cartoons, and spread their tendrils from there.
