The baby-boomers have been everything -- they were the baby-boomers to start in the 50s, then they were the hippies in the 60s, then they were the yuppies in the 80s -- by the 90s they ruled the world. One might argue that this pattern applies to every demographic over the course of a century -- except it doesn't. My cousins who were born in the early 70s didn't get a title. (eventually they were generation X, but that's not REALLY a designation, it's just a recognition of their angst over not having an identity -- and that doesn't count.) The children of the 80s aren't really anything either, but when the all-powerful baby-boomers were focused on little-kids, we WERE those little kids. So, our cereal was filled with marsh-mellows, our mornings were filled with cartoons, and ninjas were everywhere.
So, there was the baby-boomer thing. Also, there was a lucky confluence of media forces. The Production of cartoons transitioned from studios with strict codes of morality to toy companies who just wanted to sell toys. The result was that creators had almost unchecked freedom so long as they kept the toy brands front and center. Cartoons got really weird and violent and awesome. But, because the creators had, themselves, grown up thinking about stories with strong narratives, the commercial aspect of their programs was just the McGuffin. (By contrast, the people who were writing Pokemon grew up watching Transformers, so they were much more comfortable with the shilling aspect of cartoons than they were with the story part -- they didn't bother with heart or content . . . so Pokemon sucked.)
I have more to say about the 80s, so in that spirit, I'll have a sequel . . .
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