Kids cannot follow stories. They don't know what the hell is going on in a cartoon. They like to see funny visual things happening.
From 20 years of experience hiring artists out of the schools, I know-they get worse every year. They're absolutely ridiculously retarded now.
I influenced the BG style by not being able to draw perspective. The BG artists developed cool graphic painting styles to make my bad backgrounds look like they were that way on purpose.