@SeraphimDawn  
Look up the “nightmare fuel: Western Animation” page on TVTropes.com, some are quite dark. “Adventure Time” is so dark at times, it’s rated TV-PG, yet still considered a children’s show oddly.

@shyflutter  
I wish children cartoons can be this dark again.

gotta find a compilation of those questionable g1 scenes. I know there’s quite a lot of it

@Background Pony  
Extreme Ghostbusters pushed it even further, that show was damn dark!

You know, for kids!

@Background Pony  
Some others had some dark/edgy moments to actually. (Heck in the finale of “David the Gnome,” did you know the main protagonists die?) Even the original campy TMNT cartoon was considered pretty dark at times in it’s first season, and it used to be a li’l more “violent” to, until parents groups complained, and they had to tone it down. Not to mention some of the things that happened to some characters like Baxter Stockman were pretty bad to. One episode ended with him stuck in the web of giant spider, with NO hint of him ever escaping, while screams for help. (Not even when he came back in a later episode, so apparently he got away somehow, but it was still pretty creepy.)  
Not to mention the scene of his mutation into a fly man was pretty freaky.
 
I also remember they had an episode of Heathcliff/Cats & Co. where Riff Raff was cheating on his girlfriend Cleo. You’d never see that in a modern cartoon.

@Beau Skunky  
Inhumanoids and Real Ghostbusters are the only two I can think of that really pushed what they were showing, everything else was pretty watered down. On the other hand, I haven’t watched half the programs from that era for god knows how long, so I’m not positive.

@Background Pony  
Perhaps we do. I think kids should be exposed to more darker materials.

@Beau Skunky  
S02E13: The Prince and the Ponies

@Background Pony  
Dude, alot of ’80s cartoons were pretty dark, or edgy.  
Which episode was this from anyways?

This is what would happen if magical sentient ponies were real.

@Background Pony
 
I personally wouldn’t mind more chained up ponies in G4

@Background Pony  
You talk as if you wanna see this kind of thing in G4.

Bondage! Glorious, glorious bondage…

Why G1 is still watchable.
 
Fucking hardcore for the 80s.