vintage kids' cartoons with infantilist content: innocent fun, or easter eggs from ABDL animators?

Stumbled across this on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq_yu0WNedc

It's a compilation of vintage kids' cartoon featuring scenarios in which the characters are forcibly infantilized. You'll probably recognize several of them, including Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Donald Duck.

The poster, based on his notes under the video, is ABDL and points to these cartoon as early influences on his tendencies. I remember watching a good many of these same cartoons as a little kid 35-45 years ago - although at this point, I don't recall what I thought of them back then. Looking at them now, they sure seem to push an awful lot of the right buttons for ABDL folk - humiliation, loss of control, forced diapering, being mothered, age regression, and so on.

So what's the deal with them? Did the animators just find these to be comical subject matter for kids' cartoons? Or do you suppose some of the animators were ABDL themselves, and were sneaking this content in there as easter eggs for future generations of ABDL people?

On the one hand, it's an awfully common cartoon trope for it to have all been done by ABDL animators. OTOH, it's an awfully common cartoon trope, period. If it wasn't put out there by ABDL animators, why was this sort of scenario such a fascination for so many non-ABDL people?

For me, I don't think these cartoons influence me at all. When I watched them, I don't ever remember thinking about wearing or using diapers.

My guess is "the animators just find these to be comical subject matter for kids' cartoons".

I can honestly say that the media I consumed as a child may not have contributed to my being an AB at large, but it certainly coaxed it out and I took notice. When I was 5 or maybe 6, my favourite VHS was a Tom and Jerry VHS, it contained the old episode Baby Puss and I watched that tape so much that I wore it out. I also took notice of regression and diapers whenever they appeared in the other cartoons that I watched and as this was an established trope in the 90's, they appeared in an awful lot of those cartoons. If you ran the numbers, I think you would find just as much covert AB content in cartoons over the years as you would covert furry content. I think we are born with this interest, but certainly, something we experience must bring it out more, because before the age of 5/6, before seeing some of those cartoons, I don't ever recall wanting to be a baby again at all.

In answer to the question at large, I don't think these scenes exist because there was an AB animator or an AB in the writing room. I think it's safe to say that there are likely ABs in just about any industry you can think of, including animation, but even if there are, they're never going to cop to it.

Having watched many of the old cartoons that focus on infantilizing characters and dudding them up in diapers, it just seems like the scenario was played for laughs. It's a comedy of the absurd or a comedy of contrast. For instance, there's a Flintstone episode called Baby Barney, where Fred gets Barney to act as his Baby nephew to win the favour of an Uncle or something. Barney in that show is usually the straight man, the fall-guy, the voice of reason to Fred's hard-edged and harebrained schemes, so seeing him parade around in a diaper and babble is so against type that it's funny. Also it should go without saying, but in an era as relatively conservative as the 60's, the idea of a grown man dressing in a diaper and acting like a baby as part of some front was way outside of the norm, so much so that to the average viewer, it could easily be seen as an absurdly funny scenario. Bottomline, it was played for laughs in those days and I can sorta see how to the average person could find it funny, it's just a really silly concept, especially if it happens to an upright, no-nonsense character or if the character in question frequently objects to it, like Barney does numerous times in that episode.

The greater question and I think you touched upon it in your opening, is why this caught on as such a popular comedic scenario? Why this was continually implemented in cartoons to the point that it became an established trope, one that modern cartoons will still bust out every now and then? I'd love to find out the answer to that one myself

I think it's just a funny "button to push" so to speak, kind of like a LOT of things that used to be in cartoons, but that you would probably not see in modern cartoons; kinda like how some episodes had material that later led to them getting banned, but at the time of the first few initial airings of those episodes probably nobody noticed it.

I certainly dont think I noticed the Lesbian reference in Cow and Chicken for example (the episode Buffalo Galss), or all the sexual innuendo in Disney cartoons/movies, but hey it's there.

While MANY children's shows and movies have subtle jokes meant to appeal to the adults that are inevitable watching the shows; be it by personal preference or while caring for children, I personally think those particular jokes were just meant to be funny for the kids, not a play to the ABDL community.

I grew up with these cartoons as a kid and they always made me feel funny "down there". That night I was probably dreaming about diapers and wanting them. The funny thing is that you never see cartoons like that being made today. Yes, there might be Bart Simpson in a diaper, etc., but these early cartoons are definitely regressive. I often wondered if of the cartoon staff, at least one of them was an adult baby.

Being diapered and babyfied has been a standard established cartoon humor trope since the 1930's.

my cousin, bobby, and i watched these and all the other cartoons every saturday morning. i remember telling him i wish mom would diaper us so we wouldnt wake wet every morning. he would tell me "it aint gonna happen.!" and he was right--mom and aunt mary never diapered us after we were 2 & 1/2.

I see a lot of people saying the characters turning into babies is not something that would happen in a cartoon today. Not only is it still a thing a la Steven Universe, which explores the premise way more than the old cartoons who would just use it as sight gag. Though I definitely took notice of those old cartoons, that one with the youth machine though.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uq_yu0WNedc

Bugs Bunny was dressing up like a baby long before the creators of baby loony tunes were probably even born