The Disney Afternoon’s two-hour block was broken up into four half-hour segments, each of which contained an animated series. As each season ended, the first series shown in the lineup would typically be dropped while the remaining three would move up a time slot, and a new one would be added to the end. The Disney Afternoon itself featured unique animated segments consisting of its own opening and “wrappers” around the cartoon shows shown.

In 1990, the Disney Afternoon was created, packaging four of Disney’s top-rated animated shows into an after-school block of television for broadcast syndication. Even though the original four shows – Adventures of the Gummi Bears, DuckTales, Chip ‘N’ Dale Rescue Rangers, and TaleSpin – were already airing on weekend mornings as part of the then-prevalent syndicated packages, The Disney Afternoon name provided an easy catch-all term to describe the network’s high-quality, historic foray into the TV animation field.

Some of the early cartoon series on The Disney Afternoon came from already in-circulation cartoons, such as Adventures of the Gummi Bears, which aired on NBC from 1985 to 1988 and then moved to ABC in 1989. DuckTales premiered in 1987 as Disney was focused on incorporating animated series into its portfolio in the era of cartoons; it was Disney’s only syndicated cartoon series until accompanied in 1989 by Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. These two shows had been packaged together as an hour-long cartoon block from 1989 to 1990, until both shows were incorporated into The Disney Afternoon in September 1990.