I think of this all the time, and my family discusses it every couple of years with the new cartoons that come out.
Themes songs seem to be going down hill. They're no longer upbeat and ENJOYABLY catchy as they used to be. I emphasize enjoyably cause plenty of songs are catchy, but what songs wont kill your brain as your brain repeats it for hours.
My examples for good songs are(in my personal opinion):
1) The first themes song for Pokemon and even the pokerap ( my parents who hate the show love the song, its so groovily catchy you can just sing and dance to it)
2) The Powerpuff Girls, i would sit and jam to both the theme and the credit theme.
3) Batman Beyond, if you've heard the theme song then i dont need to explain just how freakin awesome it is. When we watch it on dvd we never skip through the credits.
4)Fairly Odd Parents, this song is so catchy and just plain beautiful to me, i love to sing along to it. How can you not?
5)Dexters Lab, the credits where you hear the words to the song, its so simple yet just so great
you cant help but sing along once youve got it.
6) Superman, the cartoon theme song really got you pumped for superman, whenever we heard it we rarely changed the channel
7) Batman, the original batman, not the new japaname batman song is just so cleverly dark and give you chills and you just cant change the channel ^^ God Batman is freakin awesome.
8) The Justice League, Now this is another theme song that when we're watching the dvd we never skip the credits. Talk about jammin, its just so cleverly put together. (Da da da daaaaaaaa, da da da daaaaaaa, da da da, da daaaaaaaa!)
(Our hero shows knew how to work an electirc guitar^^ lol) These are just a few examples.
But what do you think? Do you agree and have some examples that you would like to share or are you all for the new cartoons and have some of those that you'd like to put up to bat?