Agh, I miss those childhood days of looking forward to waking up early Saturday morning to catch the best cartoons on TV in my star wars pajamas, favorite stuffed animal with me, hot cocoa, toast and my cocker spaniel (1987-2005) waiting patiently by my side for dog food or some stimulating activity outside the family room. I watched all those shows you guys mentioned earlier. I was a big fan of MASK, Voltron, Silverhawks, GI Joe, Transformers and Visionaries in the 80s. In the 90s it was Batman ToS, Captain Planet, EXO Squad, Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, Tailspin, Darkwing Duck, Gargoyles and more.
Like others here, in the late 90s, I started to move on to watching anime after cartoon popularity began to wane a bit here in the west. My first foray was into Robotech in the early 90s then a bunch of more adult anime like Ninja Scroll and Akira came afterwards. I collected a ton of anime in the early 2000s when the DVD boom started and busted after companies began going under after 2005. I can't tell you guys how bummed I was when I found out Bandai Entertainment didn't make it -- because for me that meant the end of bringing Gundam to the west dubbed and able to own from an affordability perspective.
Thanks to Cartoon Network's Toonami/Adult Swim time slot, I think a lot of us got exposed to some cool anime shows that have made us all lifelong fans of animation in general. Shows like Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell, I have to tip my hat to.
I prefer to watch anime dubbed, so I don't really keep up with all the simulcasts on Crunchyroll these days so I'm a bit out of touch with pop anime culture. I catch new anime nowadays on Netflix when something is released there and will buy an anime blu-ray rarely, but that's about it. But again, thanks to my childhood growing up in the 80-90s, I'll probably remain a lifelong fan of cartoons.