Well, they are technically animated cartoons. "Cartoon" means a drawing, e.g. an editorial cartoon in a newspaper, or the following image:If you're referring specifically to a film made of a series of sequential drawings that simulate movement, then that is, by definition, an animated cartoon. (Such as:
) Calling it just a cartoon is shorthand for "animated cartoon" -- so calling it animated is no more or less a shorthand. They're complementary ways of abbreviating the proper label. Society may ascribe artificial connotations of maturity or worth to the respective halves of the term, but either one is as technically accurate as the other. They just refer to different aspects of the work: the fact that it's a moving image vs. the fact that it's a drawn image.
I think that's less true in common practice nowadays as other terms supplant the usage of "cartoon" in most other contexts, outside the specific phrases "political cartoon" and "cartoonist". Nowadays I think when "cartoon" is used unmodified, "animated" is connoted in the absence of explicit context to the contrary. Like "razor" shifting in unmodified form from implying "straight razor" with "safety razor" requiring context to vice versa, or "sound film" turning to just "film" with "silent film" now requiring specification; it's turned over the years from abbreviation to etymology, and isn't really shorthand now anymore than goodbye is shorthand for "God be with ye" nowadays.
)
