The ABC Weekend Special was a weekly 30-minute anthology TV series for children that aired Saturday mornings on ABC from 1977 to 1997. It featured a wide variety of stories that were both live-action and animated, so it totally counts as a Saturday Morning Cartoon in my opinion.

Many people confuse The ABC Weekend Specials with the ABC Afterschool Specials, so let's get this straight right now - Similar to the ABC Afterschool Special that had started five years previous, the ABC Weekend Special differed in that it was primarily aimed at younger viewers following ABC's Saturday Morning cartoon lineup, whereas the ABC Afterschool Special was known for its somewhat more serious, and often dramatic storylines dealing with issues concerning a slightly older teen and pre-teen audience.

Basically, if it felt like you were supposed to learn something about life and/or adolescents from it? It was an ABC Afterschool Special.

Unfortunately, to further complicate matters, they took a bunch of the ABC Afterschool Specials that had been aimed at slightly younger audiences and re-packaged them into episodes of The ABC Weekend Specials.

The ABC Weekend Specials were a huge downer to me, as they signified the End Of The Cartoons. Oh sure, I could probably flip around the dial a bit and find some syndicated cartoons, or over on ABC they always had re-runs of Jonny Quest and The Jetsons if there wasn't a sporting event of any kind that they could air. The ABC Weekend Special meant I had to go get dressed :(

[Poll #1794448]

NOTES: This year had both "Animal Crack-Ups" and "I'm Telling", both of which were live-action shows but I felt important to include here as part of the over-all Saturday Morning Experience.

Alf Tales was a spin-off of the popular Alf cartoon, which was a prequel spin-off of the live-action-and-puppet sit-com Alf. Of the three, this was the weakest link. For some unknown reason, Alf and his Melmakian friends would reenact Earth Fables and Stories each week. Weird.

I'm going to go ahead and dub this "Best Cartoon That Nobody Has Ever Seen", based purely on the people involved (even though I've never actually seen an episode). You've got a young pre-Ren-And-Stimpy John K. working on this show, the man who was quoted as saying something like "If you can close your eyes and still tell what's going on in the cartoon, you've done it wrong; you may as well just produce it as a Radio Show" (paraphrased because I can't be bothered to Google).

Was this a favorite of yours? Leave some memories or reflections on the subject in the comments below, and then maybe even go and vote for it in our Best of 1988/1989 Poll!