I see where you're coming from, but why did 'corporate-inspired' awful junk work through the 70s and 80s then? We watched tons of it and I can say, in retrospect, that it was mostly thrown together tripe with few redeeming qualities (though some of it elicits nostalgic feelings for me). About the best of it were the Japanese conversions, though cheaply dubbed and often spliced to the point of near incomprehensibility, they tended to go a bit deeper with character development.
Here are some cartoons I recall watching either Saturday mornings or some other time during the week (albeit from Canada):
Scooby Doo
Saturday Supercade (?) -- shows based on early arcade characters like Pacman.
FatAlbert
Voltron
Strawberry Shortcake
Transformers
The Real Ghostbusters
Dungeons and Dragons (the one where they were stuck in some D&D world).
Battle of the Planets (G-Force?)
GummiBears
Smurfs
DuckTales
Robotech
ThunderCats