In the 1950s, as television sets began filling American homes, parents quickly learned that the devices could be used to babysit their children—a welcome, if questionable, leap forward in the evolution of parenting. Sticking your kids in front of the TV was particularly popular on Saturday mornings, giving tired adults a break after their long workweeks (or providing the kids with a distraction so Mom and Dad could sneak off to the bedroom and make more kids, this being the baby boom).
Television programmers, desperate to fill what was considered a lackluster time slot, took note of the younger audiences and sought to find suitable material for them. Cartoons proved popular and, as luck would have it, were easily licensed from movie studios that otherwise had little use for these decades-old films that sat collecting dust in their vaults.
