1980's USA Cartoon Style

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I really didn't know what else to name this semi-realistic art style. It was mostly used in some old action-and-adventure-oriented TV shows for children in the US, but it also showed up in some animated movies & films in the US in the past.

Everything looked illustrated in these cartoons, but not in the same way things look in the Disney Animated Canon. Most humanoid characters looked very human-like and heavily detailed without looking photo-realistic or US-comic-book-style, and the setting was usually more similar to real life (even though some things looked slightly animésque since the animation was likely outsourced to Japan) than to a world that ran on cartoon physics.

This style really contrasts with the style of "more cartoony" cartoons - the ones that usually feature more slapstick & juvenile humor - where human and humanoid characters look less human-like & more stylized. The styles also differ because "cartoonish" cartoons usually have visible heavy black borders around characters & objects. This thick-line animation was quite popular in the 1950s - 1970s, eclipsing more naturalistic styles from earlier years. It was phased out in the early 1980s, when more naturalistic styles became dominant again, but it once more became the standard for US animation starting in the late 1990s.

I know this all sounds a bit vague and confusing, so I'll just make a list of animated works with this style to help clarify things:

Alvin and the Chipmunks (1983)
Captain N: The Game Master
Captain Planet and the Planeteers
Dungeons & Dragons cartoon
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983)
Jem
Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures (only applies to the 2-D portions of the series)
The Legend of Zelda
The Magic School Bus
My Little Pony 'n Friends
The Real Ghostbusters
Spider-Man: The Animated Series
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987)
ThunderCats (1985)
The Transformers (1st cartoon)
Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?
X-Men: The Animated Series

So, yeah, go ahead and discuss this cartoon style below, or add more examples to the list.

The X-Men animated series was great! One of my favorite superhero cartoons ever. I've tried watching later X-Men cartoons and they were kind of dull. I also liked Captain N. I know I've seen the other shows you listed at least once (or more), but certainly not at the top of my favorite cartoons.

I'm not sure that I would count X-Men among this particular style of cartoons; it's my observation that it belongs in the early 90s 'cartoon renaissance', which also included Batman TAS, Animaniacs, Ren & Stimpy, and later Gargoyles. The animation in action cartoons of this timeframe was more fluent, and there was more sophisticated use of light and shadow. Same with Carmen San Diego and Biker Mice From Mars, Creepy Crawlers, Mighty Ducks, etc.

I actually quite like 80s action cartoons, even if many of them were pushing a toy line. To keep the kids engaged, the producers of the shows really put some effort into the world-building, even if they generally didn't have a very strong series-wide arc and character development and were more episodic. There were some episodes that would reference earlier episodes, and there were many two-parters (sometimes even three or five-parters) that hinged on cliffhangers. I think this was the first time in American cartoons that this was used so extensively, when before it only happened on live-action shows.