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I was just thinking about this the other day. If it wasn't for the MASSIVE amounts of fan porn these shows generate, they'd be totally forgotten. It doesn't have anything to do with the quality of these shows vs. the 80's ones. But it does have to do with the times they aired.
In the 80's, you had only a handful of channels on the air. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and maybe a few pre-Fox UHF channels. And with cartoons being aired only in the early morning, after school, and Saturday mornings, kids didn't have much of a choice on what to watch like in the 2000's or today. So the shows that were on get a nostalgic zeitgeist from the adults of today. And for one GI-Joe or Transformers, there are a dozen 80's cartoons that are now forgotten. Remember Foofur? Rose Petal Place? Kissyfur? Bionic Six?
Thanks to Regan, most 80's cartoons were 30 minute ads for toys.There was a lot of synergy going for those cartoons. You played with the toys, watched the show, ate the cereal, slept in the themed bed sheets. It was very blatant advertising, which stuck in kids' minds up to adulthood. BTW, such aggressive marketing was toned down in the 90's to be more subtle, but it's there. Only more insidious.
In the 90's, the US government decreed that there should be a certain amount of "educational" entertainment in children's programming blocks. Say hello to boring shit like Magic Schoolbus & Captain Planet and say goodbye to your favorite toy ad masquerading as a cartoon.
Last is Disney Afternoon. A massive 2 hour block of quality cartoons that just about every UHF station ran in the afternoon. That pretty much squeezed the last of the 80's style toy ad cartoons out of the afternoon timeslots.
