Cartoons to Binge Watch this Halloween
October is already here, after what honestly felt like just a quick blink in the middle of August, at least for me. The burning heat of the summer was progressively replaced with gusts of wind and falling, crunchy leaves whose fall honestly still is a mystery to me, I can’t figure out when time passed so fast! I’m sure not everyone must feel the same way though, and if these two starting months of autumn proved to be a challenge for you, or brought along unnecessary stress, then you will be glad to hear that Halloween is approaching at a fast pace! If it’s among your favorite holidays as well, then you will be even more thrilled to enjoy it alongside your young ones, and you will absolutely love what we have prepared for you today!
Cartoons to binge with the whole family!
If you thought that Halloween is only about buying or creating your own scary or funny costume, to go door to door trick or treating in the evening, then you have missed out big time! Still, unless you have left all the house decorating and yard decorating and dog dress-up on the last few hours on Halloween day, then you should have plenty of time left to spend with your family. And what better way to spend the said time with your cheerful household as you await the big moment of heading out into the street filled with mini monsters rather than snuggling all together on the bed or couch in front of the TV, enjoying popcorn as you binge-watch some funny, Halloween-themed cartoons?
Here are our top five picks for this Halloween:
- Super Monsters
- Over the Garden Wall
- Scooby Doo
- The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
- Courage the Cowardly Dog
Now, you might spot a sort of pattern there in the way we have enlisted the cartoons, and you’re right: we have arranged them in a descending order, from youngest audience possible to oldest. That means that your little toddler might enjoy Super Monsters more than they might enjoy Scooby Doo for example. It also means that the content in Super Monsters is more suitable for younger audiences rather than what Courage the Cowardly Dog might show. But don’t worry, it’s nothing outrageous, they’re still cartoons meant for children. To help you pick the best ones you can binge watch this Halloween, we’ve carefully reviewed them all according to what you might be interested in knowing about them (and I might have even asked a younger sibling to tell me her impressions of the cartoons, since the different point of view can always be a helpful thing, and because we’re really resourceful like that).
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Super Monsters
Super Monsters resembles a lot your typical “toddler cartoon” found on various TV programmes like Nickelodeon or MiniMax or NickJr nowadays (although they belong to Netflix) in terms of design at least. The characters are children as well, much like their intended audience. The children turn into adorable, chubby-cheeked creatures or characters like Cleopatra or Dracula or werewolves and witches. They don’t look scary at all, they honestly look more like creatures you would want to hug rather than someone you would want to run away from.
The show is about a group of preschoolers who are able to turn into ‘super monsters’ once the sun sets down, and each episode contains new lessons for the young audiences to learn from, most of them regarding friendship, conflict solving and so on, all through children’s point of view. In my opinion, it’s a pretty educational show for the little kids, since it teaches them a lot about everyone’s differences and how to get along and the little ones learn quicker from someone their own age and who maybe shows something they also went through, rather than from whatever explanations an adult might offer.
It has a great dose of humor and fun adventures, and the effects are really pretty and captivating for the younger ones without putting them through any danger of suffering from strong lights. The characters have a simple vocabulary as well, but it also supplies fun new information like facts about various animals for the children to enjoy learning about with no issue.
In conclusion, the cartoon is suitable for anyone age 0 and up, since it’s attention-grabbing and fun for all audiences.
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Over the Garden Wall
Over the Garden wall is a super short cartoon about two brothers who venture out in the “Unknown” and realize that they are lost. The cartoon is about their journey through the Unknown and the friends they make on their way back home, with the help of a blue sparrow named Beatrice, and a horse named Fred.
It’s an overall simple, surreal cartoon, at a first glance, and the animations are cute and stunning and easy to follow as well, but what makes it stand out from the rest is the soundtrack, which gives it a sort of vintage feel. For adults, it might come with a lot of nostalgia, hinting back at older movies or cartoons, while for children it will prove to be really calming at times, and it really creates the whole show’s atmosphere.
Given that it’s such a short cartoon, if you sit down to binge watch it, chances are that it won’t take you longer than little over an hour, given that the episodes are like 10 minutes long or so and because there are only a few episodes of it, seven in total by now.
It’s also a show that adults can get behind, as it offers more levels of understanding rather than just the fun adventures for kids to enjoy, as it’s been classified as a “slapstick for kids, existential dread for adults” by The Guardian, so make what you may from it.
I do think that, however, younger audiences might not be so captivated by it if they don’t have a lot of patience for how the story unfolds, so I’d rate it age 4 and up, since it looks a lot like it falls in the category of shows like Adventure Time, for example, and might require a viewer with a better attention span than a baby who maybe only gets interested in the colors and shapes displayed around.
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Scooby Doo
I honestly don’t think that there is anyone out there who has never watched a Scooby Doo episode in their whole life, and it’s for a good reason: it’s a super popular and widely appreciated cartoon. It’s also been on the air for so long now that the show has gone through lots and lots of adaptations, and it even had movies made, be those with real actors or cartoon movies as well.
However, its success comes from something we all appreciate and look for in a cartoon that we mean to show to our kids: the level of fun. Regardless if kids perceive Scooby Doo’s humor as the fun part, or the exciting mystery-solving as the main attraction, they all find themselves captivated by one or more aspects of the show. The animation is always really easy to follow, so kids don’t have a lot of issues staying focused on it either.
For a family binge-watching session, the show works for both kids and adults to stay entertained by, and the monster elements aren’t very scary for the little ones either. However, I’d definitely recommend this for older audiences than the starting age for Super Monsters, in comparison. I remember getting into watching Scooby Doo when I was around four years old and thinking it was fine for most of the time, but the effects could occasionally make the monsters look scarier than they really were, so I’d say a parent’s judgment is needed for this one, depending on their child’s age, but as an all-time classic, it’s definitely a great choice for a binging session, especially on Halloween!
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The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy were my personal favorite while growing up, although admittedly I got into watching the cartoon when I was a little older and already in school, so I was no longer an easily impressionable toddler anymore. However, looking back at it now, I realize that sometimes it would make a few mature references (which I’ve found that no kid picks up until later on in life anyway, when they stumble upon all of those Disney conspiracy theories and whatnot on the internet, but that’s another story) or that it would get a little startling for little kids now and then, but honestly I would rate this as the absolute most fitting Halloween cartoon ever. The atmosphere set by the intro alone was amazing, and the fact that one of the main characters was the Grim Reaper himself was just another touch of awesome in the already fun show.
Billy’s naivety and clumsiness is hilarious, Mandy’s badassery is enviable and a real model in life and not to mention Grim’s entertaining struggle to more or less babysitting the two kids through the shenanigans they go through — overall the show is the farthest thing from boring that you can ever find, and I would gladly go back to watching it now as an adult as well, partly for the nostalgia, and partly just because of how cool it all was.
The animation is a bit more peculiar sometimes when it comes to introducing new creatures and characters, but overall they aren’t too scary and the songs they tend to sing will make the child like them anyway. I definitely recommend this for children age 5-6 and up though, since younger ones might not be able to stay focused on the action and because of the silly-looking creatures that might ensue. Also, Billy tends to get naked frequently for some reason, I suppose that stuck with me all these years. Toddlers tend to take their clothes off a lot though, I guess? Are they even toddlers? Where are everyone’s parents in these shows?
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Courage the Cowardly Dog
Courage the Cowardly Dog gets placed last on the list for a good reason. If your family, and especially your child, is a big ‘’scary things’’ enthusiast, then you will all enjoy this creepy show. Notice I said enjoy, though, not like, because honestly, this show was the creepiest thing I have ever seen. I still can’t figure out how kids actually liked and wanted to watch the cartoon though, it seemed to appeal to a lot of the friends I have while they were young as well, but as we got talking about what we remembered from the show and just sharing good and bad times overall, we all really just came to the conclusion that the show scared the life out of us. Yet, for some reason, we all kept watching it? We really couldn’t come up with one single thing or moment that we liked in the cartoon, it was all just sharing creatures or characters that gave us nightmares for it.
Because of that, I’m putting it last on my list for anyone age 10 and up, although that’s a stretch too. My 10-year-old sister would get scared by some of the characters in that show, but apparently my generation had no issue with staying to watch that when we were like six years old or something and then none of us dared to complain about nightmares, since it meant that our parents would forbid us from watching it again. Maybe it was curiosity that drove us to watch more of it? Maybe we really just related to Courage a lot? He was an amazing character, very resourceful and lovable, but I’m telling you — he was not the only one who was scared by all those creatures!
The interesting thing about the cartoon though, was how it managed to change its style various times in various episodes depending on context. It was mostly your usual cartoon, but sometimes it would adopt a 3D design, or use different animation techniques that only added to the creepy and surreal factor, and if the creators aimed to really confuse and frighten their audiences, while also gaining a solid fan base for some mysterious reason, then they really did hit their target.
Honestly, I think I’d go back to watching it, if not for the nostalgia then maybe to try to find out what lured us little kids in so much in this show, so I think adults can enjoy this trip down the memory lane as well if binging a cartoon becomes an option on Halloween.
