The Jetsons was first produced in the 1960’s by Hanna-Barbera Productions and had two additional seasons in the 1980’s, although it is set in the future it still used the cultural and social attitudes/stereotypes from around that era, and viewed some of the attitudes/stereotypes from another perspective, for example in the future using a outside treadmill to walk their dog. One of the stereotypes used in The Jetsons can be with Judy Jetson who is described and portrayed as a “typical teen girl whose interests include clothes, boys and revealing secrets to her digital dairy”. One of the cultural influences in the Jetsons is the era its based on depicted in a futuristic setting that used a lot of Googie style, an iconic American architecture from around the 40’s to 60’s that used a lot of geometry, glass, neon, space, motion etc, themes for example buildings suspended on adjustable poles and pneumatic tubes for people to use as transportation.
However a good comparison to The Jetsons is American Dad. Fox Television, Fuzzy Door Productions and Underdog Productions first produced American Dan in 2005 and continues today with a total of 12 seasons. Compared to The Jetsons American Dad is set in a modern-day setting, but it uses and challenges some stereotypes, for example one stereotype they use is that for example Jeff a hippie does drugs and is a high school dropout, however one stereotype that they challenge can be that American-Asian’s are inoffensive, one of the characters called Toshi only speaks Japanese and his friends believes that he is agreeing with them or talking about similar things, however he could be rude, offensive or talking about how he want to kill another character. One of the cultural and social attitudes used in American Dad is that some of the adults and older generation don’t know how to fully use or dislike technology, for example Stan the farther of the family at first does not agree with texting because it inhibits ‘real’ conversation. A majority of The Jetsons humour was sitcom style although American Dad is also a sitcom its jokes can be crude, for example a character called Klaus, a German Olympian stuck in a goldfish’s body, claims his “grandfather was a conductor at Auschwitz” but on a “kiddy train at the zoo. You know, it’s a big town, there’s other stuff there”.
Both of American Dad and The Jetsons have commercial value in home release, crossovers and rumoured movies, however only The Jetsons currently have commercial value in other products, for example several video games on a range of consoles that include NES, Game Boy and Intellivision, and many comic books published by several companies that include Marvel and DC. Furthermore the Jetsons had a crossover with Family Guy, another animated series produced by Fox, additionally Fox also produces a show called The Cleveland Show and all three series have crossovers with each other and all have similar themes and stereotypes.
bibliography;
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055683/?ref_=nv_sr_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jetsons
Animations and Research 