>>91136109Personally, I think that the age of the viewer matters a lot more in cartoons than it does in other types of media, and this might be a reason why it's hard to appreciate Ed, Edd n Eddy.
The fact that you don't like Arthur might make it easier to make this point. Arthur was a great introductory show for kids learning how to follow a storyline. Until about age four or five, I think most toddlers have trouble following a ten-minute storyline. Before that, kids generally watch shows with shorter sketches (Sesame Street and Between The Lions come to mind). Although both of those shows tend to have themes for the episodes, it's not hugely important that the audience follows the plot to be entertained. Arthur generally moves at a slow pace, the situations are generally pretty realistic (If you don't consider the fact that the characters are all animals), and the main character tends to be relate-able, so for a lot of kids, it was their first structured television show.
We should also consider that Arthur aired on PBS, which meant that you didn't have to have cable to watch it. If you were born in 1998, most households -probably- had cable or satellite TV at that point, so you had many more options. I was born in 1994, so when I was growing up, there were still plenty of kids with cable TV, but we still talked about Arthur a lot because it was a show that was available to everyone. Maybe 60 percent of the class had seen Blues Clues, but everyone had, at some point, seen Arthur. Basically, by the time you were at that -very- specific age that Arthur caters to, you probably had more options, and most of your friends probably had those options too. Arthur is a simple show. But it's heartwarming, and for a lot of people, it's the first television show that they understood and that made them feel that way, which gives it a whole lot of sentimentality. In comparison to other shows, Arthur might fall short, but when I was a kid it was extremely culturally relevant.
