Wednesday, August 11, 2021

The Louds Are Moving Away FOREVER?! 😱 The Loud House Movie | Netflix Futures

The Louds Are Moving Away FOREVER?! 😱 The Loud House Movie | Netflix Futures


Lincoln isn’t ready for the family vacation to end, so he tries to convince the entire Loud Family to move to Scotland PERMANENTLY. If his blue convincing suit can’t do the trick, maybe the promise of never having to share a bathroom will? The Loud House Movie comes to Netflix August 20. Click HERE for more information!

Watch The Loud House & The Casagrandes on Nickelodeon and Paramount+!

Subscribe to the official The Loud House & The Casagrandes YouTube channel!: https://at.nick.com/LoudCasaSubscribe


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44 Cats | Season 2 - The Basketfur Game [FULL EPISODE]

44 Cats | Season 2 - The Basketfur Game [FULL EPISODE]


Ahead of a game against Boss, Blister and Scab, former basketfur champion Will offers to train the Buffycats and teaches them that sport must be practiced with loyalty and honesty.

Visit the official 44 Cats show website at 44cats.tv to find out more about the show and its musical stars, as well as watch exclusive video clips, play pawesome games and download purr-tastic activities!

More Nick: Italy’s Marco Verratti Joins 44 Cats Charity Campaign Ahead of UEFA European Football Championship!
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The Loud House | Shorts: King of the Chair | Nickelodeon UK

The Loud House | Shorts: King of the Chair | Nickelodeon UK


Trying to not repeat history, the Loud siblings promise not to destroy Dad's new chair.

#TheLoudHouse #TheLoudHouseShorts


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How High (Lyric Video) | Kally’s Mashup | Nickelodeon Latin America

How High (Lyric Video) | Kally’s Mashup | Nickelodeon en Español


¿Pueden creer que Storm escribió esta canción para Kally? ¡Tiene muchísimo talento! Canta junto a la estrella pop de Un Cumpleaños Muy Kally con este lyric video de “How High”.


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Evaluna and the Cast of Club 57 React to Her Photos | Club 57 | Nickelodeon Latin America

Evaluna y el cast de Club 57 reaccionan a sus fotos | Club 57 | Nickelodeon en Español


¡Awww! Mira cómo Evaluna, Riccardo Frascari, Sebas Silva y más del elenco de Club 57 reaccionan a fotos de su infancia y de años anteriores en el set, y descubre cuál es la historia detrás de cada imagen. 

¡Club 57 volverá muy pronto con la segunda parte de esta increíble temporada!


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LAST DAY IN TIKTOK HOUSE 👑 WINNER CHOSEN 👑 | Next Influencer Season 2 Ep. 10 FINALE | AwesomenessTV

LAST DAY IN TIKTOK HOUSE 👑 WINNER CHOSEN 👑 | Next Influencer Season 2 Ep. 10 FINALE | AwesomenessTV


ARE YOU READY for the LAST DAY IN THE TIKTOK HOUSE?! Before announcing the WINNER of Season 2, Owen is going to EXPOSE the influencers' secrets to each other. Watch the DRAMA GO DOWN on the SEASON FINALE of Next Influencer Season 2 on AwesomenessTV's YouTube Channel!

THE CAST WILL ENTER THE CHAT DURING TOMORROW’S WATCH PARTY. What questions are you asking them tmrw?!?! Don’t hold back 😬😅

Next Influencer TOP 3 WINNERS REVEALED 🚨FINALE SPOILER 🚨| VIBE ROOM: Season 2 Ep. 10 | AwesomenessTV


Today in the Vibe Room, we’re joined by the TOP 3 WINNERS of Next Influencer Season 2, and they are not holding back on ANY of the DRAMA! Fair warning, we will be going IN on the finale, so if you want to avoid any spoilers, hit the link below to watch the FULL EPISODE first! We're spilling tea in the Vibe Room every Sunday at 7AM PST/10AM EST on the AwesomenessTV YouTube channel!

Next Influencer Season 2 REUNION TEASER: DRAMA'S GOING DOWN | AwesomenessTV


DRAMA'S 👏 GOING 👏 DOWN 👏 Season 2 of Next Influencer may be over, but that doesn't mean the housemates still don't have THINGS TO SAY! 👀 FIRST PART airing this Saturday at 7am PST / 10am EST on AwesomenessTV! CATCH UP on Next Influencer Season NOW! - http://bit.ly/nextinfluencer

Where Are They Now?! Next Influencer Season 2 Relationships Timeline + REUNION Sneak Peek | AwesomenessTV


SO MUCH happened during Season 2 of AwesomenessTV’s Next Influencer that we NEED to catch-up on all the relationship drama that went down before the reunion. Here’s a TIMELINE of every relationship! FIRST PART airing this Saturday at 7am PST / 10am EST on AwesomenessTV! CATCH UP on Next Influencer Season NOW! - http://bit.ly/nextinfluencer

→ about AwesomenessTV's Next Influencer Season 2! ←
Hosted by season one winner and TikTok star Owen Holt, AwesomenessTV’s Next Influencer Season 2 follows a group of content creators competing in a series of challenges to prove they have what it takes to become the next big influencer. One contestant will win a prize package that includes a talent contract with AwesomenessTV! Find out if these TikTokers have what it takes to become the #NextInfluencer! 

→ about the VIBE ROOM! ←
Secrets, scandals, and all the TikTok drama you can handle — it all goes down in the Vibe Room as Owen Holt & Markell Washington spill the tea on on your favorite content creators and get the inside scoop on what really went down behind the scenes of the most popular AwesomenessTV shows from the cast members themselves!

→ PREVIOUS EPISODES ←

Watch more AwesomenessTV's Next Influencer! - http://bit.ly/nextinfluencer

→Cast Credits ←
Owen Holt - @itsowenholt
Colie Nuanez - @colie.nuanez
Matt Taylor - @mattheperson
Rave Vanias - @ravevanias
Michelle Wozniak - @michelle.1
Ace Akers - @aceakers
Eileen Padilla - @bbyeileen
Eddie Preciado - @eddiepreciado
Ace B. King - @acebking
Maddie Cole - @maddieebrookee
Jake Clark - @itsjakeclark

Supervising Producer: Tara Cole @itstarajayne
Producer: Ian Midura @lowkeygrandpa
Director: Vitaly Kibenko @ownthelight
Assistant Director : Candace Stephens @candaceleestephens 
Producer: Omid Afshar @omidafshar
Development Producer: Nick Haddad
Director of Photography: Dima Kovalchuk @dimakovalchuk
COVID Safety Officer: Paige Borninkhof 
Line Producer: Lauren Brookes, Allison Drye
Production Coordinator: Tina Poston
Camera Operators: 
Valentin Sevostyanchuk @valentinsevo 
David Yanez @misteryanez 
Leo Akagi @officialkeisuke
Sound Ops: @soundninjas 
Set Medic: Brandon Peltier
Post Production Supervisor: Dima Kovalchuk @dimakovalchuk
Editor: Trever Jones @treverjones
Editor: Leo Akagi @officialkeisuke
Assistant Editor: Frank Felipe @frankfelipe
Assistant Editor: Christian Acosta @chrisdnlacosta
Assistant Editor: Claire Chung @claireguagua

#TikTok #AwesomenessTV #NextInfluencer

Scenes in this episode were filmed adhering to then-current Local, State, and/or Country mandated COVID-19 safety guidelines and restrictions.

→ about AwesomenessTV! ←
Welcome to AwesomenessTV, the destination for Gen Z reality TV shows with your favorite TikTok and digital influencers. Featuring Brent and Lexi Rivera, Nate Wyatt, The Merrell Twins, Noah Beck, Larray, Alex Warren and more, see them in ways you’ve never seen them before! Like in Twin My Heart, a dating show where the Merrell Twins help their closest friends find love. And AwesomenessTV’s Next Influencer, a reality competition show where up-and-coming TikTokers compete at the chance of becoming the next big ATV star. Also, our My Dream Quinceañera channel gives you a real look at planning the Quince of your dreams with rising LatinX influencers! Here you can feel free to express yourself, have fun and get real with us. And we’ll gossip with you daily on The Daily Report 😉. New shows everyday to have an awesome day!

SUBSCRIBE FOR NEW VIDEOS DAILY!: http://bit.ly/subscribe2AwesomenessTV

→ follow AwesomenessTV! ←


Originally published: August 07, 2021 at 03:00 BST.

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Outright Games to Release ‘PAW Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls’ on Consoles and PC in Summer 2021

‘Paw Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls’ launches this summer on consoles and PC.

Save the city with the world's most famous team of rescue pups.


London, 10th May 2021 - Bigger city, bigger adventures and the PAW Patrol™’s biggest rescue mission yet! Outright Games, the leading global publisher of family friendly interactive entertainment, in partnership with Nickelodeon, today announced the upcoming release of PAW Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls. Fans can join the PAW Patrol as they head to the big city and meet a new pup pal in this brand-new video game based on the franchise’s first full-length feature film PAW Patrol: The Movie, a Spin Master Entertainment production in association with Nickelodeon Movies, which will be distributed by Paramount Pictures and released into theatres on August 20. PAW Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls will be available this Summer on PlayStation®, Nintendo Switch™, Xbox and Steam priced at $39.99 / £34.99 / €39.99.

Update (7/27) - PAW Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls will be released on August 13, 2021!

Check out the full game announcement trailer here:


When the PAW Patrol learns that Mayor Humdinger has taken over a buzzing metropolis, they must save Adventure City from his selfish scheming! Fans become the pups – including Chase, Skye, and a brand-new pup pal– and use their unique abilities in high-stakes rescue missions. Deploy next-level gadgets and vehicles to explore the city and have even more fun with minigames like ‘Pup Pup Boogie’. With solo play and local co-op modes, this fun-for-all 3D platformer gives young gamers and their families the chance to join the PAW Patrol on their bravest mission yet.


PAW Patrol is a global pre-school entertainment brand, and is consistently ranked as a top-rated preschool series, topping charts since it first aired in 2013. The global phenomenon reaches over 170 countries through the animated series, toys, apparel, games and live attractions. Children who love PAW Patrol will be treated to more action-packed adventures with the first full-length feature film PAW Patrol: The Movie coming to the big screen on August 20.


With this new video game PAW Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls, Outright Games continues one of its longest and most impactful partnerships with Nickelodeon, having previously released top selling games in the franchise including PAW Patrol: On a Roll and PAW Patrol: Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay.


‘We are beyond delighted to be making not only the third PAW Patrol video game as part of our enduring partnership with Nickelodeon, but the first based on a feature length film set in this incredible world,’ said Terry Malham, CEO of Outright Games. ‘The pups are incredibly special to us as they are to millions around the world and it’s a great honour to be able to create such fun interactive entertainment for all the fans to enjoy.’


PAW Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls launches Summer 2021 on PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PC Digital priced at $39.99 / £34.99 / €39.99 with information coming soon.

KEY FEATURES

  • TO ADVENTURE CITY! – Explore all-new locations from ‘PAW Patrol: The Movie’.
  • BE THE PUPS – Including Chase, Marshall, Skye, and new city girl Liberty.
  • MISSION PAW – Save the day in amazing rescues and bonus missions.
  • COLLECT THEM ALL – Unlock reward badges for collecting all the pup treats.
  • PLAY MINIGAMES – Like ‘Pup Pup Boogie’ in solo or local co-op mode.








About Outright Games:

Outright Games is a global video games publisher with a focus on quality family entertainment to a worldwide audience. Founded in 2016, Outright Games has established its place in the market delivering engaging interactive games of beloved entertainment licenses globally. Outright Games brings stories and characters to life with titles including favourites such as Jumanji: The Video Game with Sony Pictures, PAW Patrol: Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay with Nickelodeon, Ben 10: Power Trip with Cartoon Network, and Dragons: Dawn of New Risers with NBC Universal. With an Outright Games title there will be fun for all the family to enjoy. For more information please visit: www.outrightgames.com

Find out more:

Website: Outright Games
Twitter: @Outright_Games
Instagram: Outright_games

About ViacomCBS Consumer Products:

ViacomCBS Consumer Products (VCP) oversees all licensing and merchandising for ViacomCBS Inc. (Nasdaq: VIACA, VIAC), a leading global media and entertainment company that creates premium content and experiences for audiences worldwide. Driven by iconic consumer brands, VCP’s portfolio includes a diverse slate of brands and content from BET, CBS (including CBS Television Studios and CBS Television Distribution), Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures and Showtime. With properties spanning animation, live-action, preschool, youth and adult, VCP is committed to creating the highest quality product for some of the world’s most beloved, iconic franchises. Additionally, VCP oversees the online direct-to-consumer business for CBS and Showtime programming merchandise, as well as standalone branded ecommerce websites for Star Trek, SpongeBob, South Park, and MTV.

Find out more: http://www.nick.co.uk/

About Spin Master Corp.:

Spin Master Corp. (TSX:TOY) is a leading global children’s entertainment company creating exceptional play experiences through a diverse portfolio of innovative toys, entertainment franchises and digital games. Spin Master is best known for award-winning brands PAW Patrol®, Bakugan®, Kinetic Sand®, Air Hogs®, Hatchimals®, Rubik’s Cube® and GUND®, and is the toy licensee for other popular properties. Spin Master Entertainment creates and produces compelling multiplatform content, stories and endearing characters through its in-house studio and partnerships with outside creators, including the preschool success PAW Patrol and nine other original shows along with multiple short-form series, which are distributed in more than 190 countries. The Company has an established digital presence anchored by the Toca Boca® and Sago Mini® brands, which combined have more than 40 million monthly active users. With close to 2,000 employees in 28 offices globally, Spin Master distributes products in more than 100 countries. For more information visit spinmaster.com or follow on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @spinmaster.

About Paramount Home Entertainment

Paramount Home Entertainment (PHE) is part of Paramount Pictures Corporation (PPC), a global producer and distributor of filmed entertainment. PPC is a unit of ViacomCBS (NASDAQ: VIAC; VIACA), a leading content company with prominent and respected film, television and digital entertainment brands. The PHE division oversees PPC’s home entertainment and transactional digital distribution activities worldwide. The division is responsible for the sales, marketing and distribution of home entertainment content on behalf of Paramount Pictures, Paramount Animation, Paramount Television Studios, Paramount Players, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and CBS and applicable licensing and servicing of certain DreamWorks Animation titles. PHE additionally manages global licensing of studio content and transactional distribution across worldwide digital distribution platforms including online, mobile and portable devices and emerging technologies.

About Drakhar Studios

Drakhar Studio is a video game development studio for both mobile devices and Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo consoles. Founded in 2011 in Spain, Drakhar Studio started with small games for Android and Apple until in 2016 it launched its first game for consoles: Ginger Beyond The Crystal. Since then, Drakhar Studio has specialized in the development of video games for publishers and film and animation producers, standing out for its high level of quality, fun mechanics and special care in the artistic aspect.

For more information, please visit : www.drakharstudio.com

###

🎮 Cloud Gaming Alert 🎮 | Outright Games is coming to Stadia!


🎮 Cloud Gaming Alert 🎮 

This August 13th we're coming to the cloud for the 1st time with @Stadia! 

#DragonsDawnOfNewRiders 
#GigantosaurusTheGame 
#IceAgeScratsNuttyAdventure 
#PAWPatrolMightyPups 
#PAWPatrolTheMovie 

🎮 Cloud Gaming Alert 🎮 | Outright Games is coming to Stadia! | Outright Games


🎮 Cloud Gaming Alert 🎮 

This August 13th we're coming to the cloud for the 1st time with  @Stadia ! 

#DragonsDawnOfNewRiders 
#GigantosaurusTheGame 
#IceAgeScratsNuttyAdventure 
#PAWPatrolMightyPups 
#PAWPatrolTheMovie 


Originally published: June 10, 2021.

H/T: TameCheetah 4079; Additional source: Amazon.com.

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'The Loud House Movie' Trailers | Hungarian Versions | Nickelodeon & Netflix Hungary

Watch the Hungarian (Magyar) version of Netflix's The Loud House Movie! The Loud House Movie is released on Netflix globally on August 20. Click HERE for all the details!

A Lármás család: A film | Új film | 1. előzetes | Netflix


A Lármás család: A film | Új film | 3. előzetes | Netflix


A Lármás család: A film | Új film | 2. előzetes | Netflix



Originally published: July 13, 2021.

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Nickelodeon to Simulcast MTV's 2021 VMAs

The 2021 VMAs return to New York City airing LIVE from Barclays Center on Sunday, September 12 at 8PM ET/PT, airing across MTV’s global footprint of linear and digital platforms in 180 countries and territories, reaching nearly 400 million households in nearly 30 different languages. The show will simulcast across Nickelodeon, CMT, Comedy Central, Logo, MTV2, Paramount Network, Pop, TV Land, VH1 and The CW Network, making the show available to an expanded broadcast audience for the second consecutive year.


Beginning today (August 11), fans can vote for their favorites across 14 gender-neutral categories, including “Video of the Year,” “Artist of the Year,” “Best Collaboration” and more by visiting vma.mtv.com through Friday, September 3, 2021 – thanks to Burger King®, the presenter of this year’s award voting. Voting for “Best New Artist,” Presented by Facebook, will remain active into the show on Sunday, September 12, 2021. Nominations for social categories including “Best Group” and “Song of Summer” will be announced at a later date. For a full list of 2021 MTV Video Music Awards nominations, click here.


Originally published: August 11, 2021 at xx.xx BST.

Original source: uDiscover Music.

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Nate Burleson Reaches New Multiplatform Agreement with CBS Across News, Sports and Entertainment

NATE BURLESON REACHES NEW MULTIPLATFORM AGREEMENT WITH CBS ACROSS NEWS, SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Burleson to Join CBS THIS MORNING as Co-host in September; Will Continue as Analyst on CBS Sports' THE NFL TODAY

Agreement Calls for Select Yearly Appearances on ViacomCBS' Nickelodeon

Burleson to Remain with NFL Network Contributing to Various Shows and Platforms


NEW YORK - CBS today (August 11) announced a new long-term, multiplatform agreement with versatile announcer and former NFL player Nate Burleson across CBS News, CBS Sports and ViacomCBS' Nickelodeon. The announcement was made by Neeraj Khemlani, President and Co-head, CBS News and Stations, and Sean McManus, Chairman, CBS Sports.

Beginning in September, Burleson will join CBS THIS MORNING as co-host with Gayle King and Tony Dokoupil, anchoring the Network's flagship morning program, 7:00-9:00 AM, ET weekdays. Burleson recently appeared on CBS THIS MORNING as a guest host during the week of May 17, 2021.

Burleson joined CBS Sports in 2017 as analyst on THE NFL TODAY, the CBS Television Network's NFL pregame, halftime and post-game show. He will continue in his analyst role alongside host James Brown and co-analysts Phil Simms, Bill Cowher and Boomer Esiason on Sundays during the NFL season.

The agreement also includes select yearly appearances on Nickelodeon in a variety of capacities. Burleson made his successful Nickelodeon debut earlier this year with the special kids-themed production of the NFL Wild Card Game.

Burleson's role with NFL Network, where he most recently served as a host on the Emmy-nominated Good Morning Football, will expand to include a larger variety of programs and platforms. Throughout the year, Burleson will appear on various NFL Network shows such as NFL GameDay and NFL Total Access, and on-location coverage of events such as Super Bowl week, NFL Honors and training camp, as well as maintain a larger presence on NFL Media's social media and podcast offerings.

"Nate is an extremely gifted broadcaster, interviewer and storyteller, whose deep curiosity and enthusiasm is the perfect fit for mornings on CBS," said Neeraj Khemlani, President and Co-head of CBS News and Stations. "His wide range of experience and interests - from news to sports, from music to poetry, and from fashion to cryptocurrency - provides a unique perspective that will deepen the show's connection with our viewers. He excites audiences in every arena, and we're fortunate to have Nate joining Gayle and Tony at the table in September."

"We are so pleased that Nate will be expanding his role across the ViacomCBS family, bringing his passion for news, sports, entertainment and kids' content all under one umbrella," said Sean McManus, Chairman, CBS Sports. "Nate is a very special talent with the unique ability to connect and engage with a variety of audiences, ages, newsmakers and athletes. We know his star will shine bright on CBS THIS MORNING and during his projects with Nickelodeon, while he continues to elevate us all at THE NFL TODAY."

"I am absolutely thrilled to be joining the incredibly talented team at CBS THIS MORNING. This is an extraordinary opportunity, and I look forward to the challenge of upholding the standard set by the legends who came before me," said Burleson. "Life is about being ready for the right opportunities, and I have been preparing for this moment since my first day on television. Having a chance to inform, enhance or simply brighten up the morning for our viewers is an honor. The sport of football and I will always be inextricably intertwined. I feel so fortunate to join CTM while continuing to play a role at the NFL Network, and of course, spending Sundays with the team on THE NFL TODAY."

"When Nate guest-hosted earlier this year, his energy was infectious in the studio, and his versatility spanned all aspects of the show," Shawna Thomas, executive producer, CBS THIS MORNING. "He's comfortable and insightful, no matter what the conversation topic. On top of that, he already knows how live television works, and he's used to those morning hours from his time on the NFL Network. I'm looking forward to working with him and seeing the show evolve with him at the table."

About CBS THIS MORNING:

Each weekday morning, CBS delivers two hours of original reporting, breaking news and top-level newsmaker interviews in an engaging and informative format that challenges the norm in network morning news programs. The broadcast has earned a prestigious Peabody Award, a Polk Award, five News & Documentary Emmys, three Daytime Emmys and the 2017 Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Newscast. The broadcast was also honored with an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award as part of CBS News' division-wide coverage of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

About THE NFL TODAY:

THE NFL TODAY, the CBS Television Network's National Football League pre-game studio show, debuted in 1964 and serves as the prototype for all NFL studio shows that have followed. Hosted by James Brown alongside Boomer Esiason, Bill Cowher, Phil Simms and Nate Burleson, THE NFL TODAY airs each Sunday of the NFL season at noon ET leading into the Network's THE NFL ON CBS coverage.


Originally published: August 11, 2021 at xx.xx BST.

Original source: CBS News.

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On This Day in 1991: 'The Ren & Stimpy Show' Premiered on Nickelodeon

On This Day in 1991: 'The Ren & Stimpy Show' Premiered on Nickelodeon


On this day 30 YEARS AGO The Ren & Stimpy Show premiered on Nickelodeon!

Nicktoons Facts: Ren & Stimpy premiered on August 11, 1991 as one of the original Nicktoons, alongside Rugrats and Doug. It ran on Nickelodeon for 5 seasons and spawned the spin-off Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon in 2003. Ren Hoeck and Stimpson J. Cat are set to return in a brand new series on Comedy Central.

From The Ringer:

The Malevolent Madness of ‘The Ren & Stimpy Show,’ 30 Years Later

Three decades ago, a neurotic chihuahua and his dopey partner burst onto TV sets alongside ‘Doug’ and ‘Rugrats.’ It would prove to be a lot more chaotic than its compatriots—and, for a variety of reasons, tougher to keep going.

Thirty years ago this week, a rising but not-yet-ubiquitous kids network by the name of Nickelodeon launched its first original animated series. Introduced on August 11, 1991, under the brand of “Nicktoons,” Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show would quickly become hits and change the course of animation, television, and popular culture at large. To mark the anniversary, The Ringer is looking back at Nick’s best-ever characters and the legacy of the network as a whole. Throughout the week, we’ll be publishing essays, features, and interviews to get at the heart of what made Nick so dang fun—and now so nostalgic.

“See this button? Don’t touch it. It’s the History Eraser Button, you fool!” What we got here is a shrieking, abusive Chihuahua named Ren Höek berating a doofy Manx cat named Stimpson J. Cat. They’re best friends whose wacky, violent escapades comprise The Ren & Stimpy Show, which debuted on Nickelodeon on August 11, 1991, alongside Rugrats and Doug in a cataclysmic 90-minute block that ushered in the Nicktoons era and changed North American animation as we know it. What an explosive cocktail Rugrats, Doug, and The Ren & Stimpy Show turned out to be. Orange juice, Sprite, and flaming gasoline.

“So what’ll happen?” Stimpy mewls, intimidated and yet mesmerized by the History Eraser Button. Any given episode of this belligerently surrealist series might find our heroes playing nature-show hosts, or rubber-nipple salesmen, or cheese miners, or hitchhikers terrorized by circus performers, or dalmatian-painted firemen, or Canadian weiner farmers. This is Season 1, the third of six episodes, wherein Ren and Stimpy are intrepid interstellar explorers in a fan-favorite segment entitled “Space Madness,” to which Ren has succumbed. (He refers to a bar of soap as “my beloved ice cream bar” and gnaws on it at great, visceral length.) Now he’s making Stimpy guard the History Eraser Button in the hopes that he—and maybe you—will go mad, too.

What does happen if you push that button, though? “That’s just it!” Ren shrieks, gleeful, taunting. “We don’t know! Maaaaybe something bad! Maaaaybe something good! I guess we’ll never know! Because you’re going to guard it! You won’t touch it, will you?” First thing to know about The Ren & Stimpy Show is that the voice acting is phenomenal. For the first two seasons, Ren (who despite the Dutch last name shrieks in a hybrid Mexican German accent, so the line comes out “That’s just eeeet!”) is voiced by Quebec-born (and now-disgraced) series creator John Kricfalusi. Whereas Stimpy (a stentorian and lovably dunderheaded Phil Hartman type) is handled by voice-actor megastar Billy West, who also did Doug on Doug, Fry on Futurama, and Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in the original Space Jam. Ren and Stimpy, above all, are stupendous, indelible voices. Plus, Kricfalusi left the show during Season 2, so West handled both Stimpy and Ren for the last three seasons, and probably thousands of impressionable kids watching Nick at home never even noticed. I sure didn’t.

“Oh, how long can trusty cadet Stimpy hold out?!” We’ve got an old-school boxing-announcer type bellowing now. “How can he possibly resist the diabolical urge to push the button that could erase his very existence?” The Ren & Stimpy Show is set in the repressed-cornball ’50s and ungroovy ’60s, late in animation’s fabled Golden Age, and serves as both a loving tribute to and vicious parody of various cartoon classics, from Looney Tunes to early Disney to the Hanna-Barbera empire (Yogi Bear and the Jetsons aesthetic especially) to live-action slapstick kings like the Three Stooges, all filtered through 50 years or so of howling suburban repression and the blackest, bleakest Gen X humor that Nickelodeon could bear.

“Will his tortured mind give in to its uncontrollable desires?” The old-school announcer is now on-screen and terrorizing our beleaguered cadet directly: The shot where he’s pummeling Stimpy with his butt cheeks, Stimpy’s blue nose bouncing just inches from the History Eraser Button, is a very Ren & Stimpy visual construction. Maybe you had to be there. Maybe it’s better in the long run if you weren’t.

Anyway, Stimpy pushes the button. He and Ren both spontaneously combust. The segment ends. The whole History Eraser Button saga takes 90 seconds. I loved this show when I was 13. Hundreds of thousands of impressionable kids did. Thanks to relentless early-’90s reruns, it’s the six episodes of Season 1 especially that are forever burned into my brain: “Fire Dogs” is the best segment for the horse alone, though Ren thundering, “You bloated sack of protoplasm!” in “Space Madness” is another highlight, or at least that’s the funniest thing to yell across a crowded junior high lunchroom. But after Kricfalusi got fired—less for explicit content (including a banned Season 2 episode in which Ren beats a guy half to death with a boat oar) than logistical issues (he kept blowing his network deadlines)—The Ren & Stimpy Show managed just fine for three more seasons, grinding to a respectable halt in December 1995. Not a SpongeBob-caliber cultural phenomenon, per se, but hardly a catastrophe.

No, things didn’t go to shit until long after. First, in 2003, Kricfalusi returned to shepherd a truly disastrous reboot called Ren & Stimpy: “Adult Party Cartoon” for Spike TV that was supposed to go six episodes but got canceled after three. Then, in 2018, BuzzFeed published a harrowing exposé under the subhed “The Disturbing Secret Behind an Iconic Cartoon: Underage Sexual Abuse.” In the opening paragraphs of the piece, Robyn Byrd, a former artist at Spumco, Kricfalusi’s animation studio, describes how the animator first got in touch with Byrd when she was 13 and he was 39; they first had sex when Byrd was a high school junior, and she later moved in with Kricfalusi while she was still a teenager. Another Spumco employee, Katie Rice, recounts the continuous sexual harassment that began when she was 14 and Kricfalusi was 41. Through an attorney, Kricfalusi, who beyond a minor internet presence mostly dropped out of public view thereafter, provided BuzzFeed with a statement that began, “The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing Ren and Stimpy, his most prized creation. For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend.”

The original Ren & Stimpy Show (well, most of it) is now streaming on Paramount+; another reboot is still going forward at Comedy Central, at least according to Billy West himself. Kricfalusi is reportedly not involved with the reboot and won’t profit from it. Byrd responded to the news with a Change.org petition entreating Viacom to reconsider. “John K. stands to re-enter the spotlight if his characters become famous again,” she wrote. “Despite his uninvolvement, he will likely receive creator credit, and his presence is easy to find online. This man used Ren & Stimpy to lure young people to his studio and into his confidence, only to abuse them, stunt their careers, and molest young girls. He WILL DO IT AGAIN. Not only that, but seeing his characters come back to life will re-traumatize many of his victims.”

So that’s the pocket history of my favorite cartoon when I was a kid. This show is a vital piece of Nickelodeon history, of ribald ’90s pop-culture history, of modern animation history. The question is whether any real-world equivalent of the History Eraser Button exists. The other question is whether Ren & Stimpy itself oughta press it.

Maybe you don’t have 90 seconds to watch that whole clip from “Space Madness.” Do you have 10 seconds, though? Here’s a fabulous encapsulation of the Ren & Stimpy vibe in 10 seconds.

That’s Ren. Obviously. In the early ’90s, this was a great comedy bit whenever you happened to pick up a remote: I’ll watch some TV. It’ll help me to RELAX. It is hard to remember a time when plain old television was the malevolent force that would one day demolish polite society, but a lot of cable TV back then genuinely did seem to radiate pure evil. Hell, just cartoons on cable TV seemed capable of triggering the apocalypse.

Ren and Stimpy had plenty of impolite company. The Simpsons premiered in December 1989 and soon found itself in a high-profile ratings war with (deep breath) The Cosby Show. (Meanwhile, Simpsons guru Matt Groening praised The Ren & Stimpy Show as “the funniest cartoon on TV.”) Beavis & Butt-Head got their own MTV show in 1993: It was another abusive relationship between toxic buddies, another gleeful pair of malcontents mercilessly clowning their own network’s other programming. (“She’s pinching a loaf.”) From Animaniacs to Tiny Toon Adventures to the occasionally animated Pee-wee’s Playhouse—a cheery Saturday-morning staple from 1986 to 1990, although darkened, in the public’s overactive imagination, by Pee-wee Herman’s 1991 p**n-theater arrest—the best cartoons from this era vacillated between honoring the past and threatening to incinerate it.

And so, at 13, I had the vaguest sense that Ren & Stimpy was riffing, in part, on the stiff late-’50s and early-’60s sitcom The Donna Reed Show and other benign staples of Nickelodeon’s famed Nick at Nite block, an oldies outpost first unveiled in 1985. I had the vaguest sense these guys were an existential threat to everyone and everything, raging against their own network’s cuddly future-nostalgia machine. (“Space Madness,” if nothing else, flaunted the show’s willingness to kill/obliterate its main characters six years before South Park.) But mostly I just liked it when Ren called Stimpy an “eeeeee-diot.” It is objectively hilarious that Rugrats, Doug, and The Ren & Stimpy Show premiered on the same day and are forever enshrined as the Nicktoons empire’s big bang: Rugrats is a twee show about literal babies, Doug is an even twee-er show about endearingly awkward preteens, and Ren & Stimpy is sheer malign anarchy.

Rewatching this show in 2021 induces its own vicious strain of Space Madness. At the time, as a not-so-endearingly awkward preteen myself, the thing I liked most about Ren & Stimpy was that other, cooler kids liked it. My buddy Jason did a killer Ren impression, shrieking callous insults (“You fat, bloated eeee-diot!”) and evocative nonsense (“A plethora of exotic mandibles”) with the sort of clueless and treacherous zeal only a 13-year-old boy could manage. Were we sadists? Did our enjoyment of this Nickelodeon program mark us troubled, as dangerous? One time, we were watching the “Ren’s Toothache” episode during a sleepover and Jason’s dad walked in the room right as Ren was pulling the nerve endings out of his mouth with pliers (for the Nerve Ending Fairy), whereupon Jason’s dad said, “That’s not real—that would be incredibly painful” and walked right the fuck back out.

As a father now myself, I’m too squeamish to let my 10- and 8-year-old boys watch anything as relatively harmless as The Simpsons or SpongeBob SquarePants, even as I realize that I still remember all the words to “Happy Happy Joy Joy” or the Log song. I’ve gotten overprotective. I am overcompensating for all the weird, disturbing, outlandishly hostile chaos I more or less snorted right up my nose right off the top of my color TV. When I say that “Fire Dogs” is my favorite Ren & Stimpy segment “for the horse alone,” what I mean is that a lady throws a horse out the window of a burning skyscraper, and he plummets screaming to the ground and breaks his back legs, whereupon he crawls around moaning “Ohhhhh, ohhhhhhh, it hurts, I can’t stand it.” Funniest thing I’d ever seen in my life in 1991. How much more perverse is that than any classic Looney Tunes bit, though? Or is it just that Ren & Stimpy—from the dazzling art direction, to the top-shelf voice acting, to the singular nightmarish pandemonium—was the prettiest and gnarliest and bravest and looniest cartoon marketed to kids since?

I do not want to talk about Ren & Stimpy “Adult Party Cartoon,” a truly horrendous feast of vomit and ultraviolence and hapless mid-2000s Spike TV–ass edginess. Not linking to any of it. Nope. Arguably, it’s the rare failed reboot that legitimately tarnished the original cartoon’s legacy, or at least it sucked so bad that certainly nobody would ever attempt to remake this show again. Right? Right? Nope. But bringing Ren & Stimpy back now, in the wake of the revelations about Kricfalusi, struck many animators as its own heartless act of perversion. “Viacom (Nick especially) has passed on SO many great pitches from young people, POC, and womxn,” Byrd wrote in her petition to shutter the reboot. “Why recycle this material when there are so many of us with new ideas. Ideas that aren’t ugly, racist, and problematic. … This property is NOT WORTH the trauma it will create for so many.”

The fact of the matter is that I love The Ren & Stimpy Show dearly, and I am eternally grateful to it for being one of the only things that made sense to me in the seventh grade. Moreover, the original show should take it as a compliment, truly, that I can hardly bear to watch it now, 30 years later, and I in fact do not need to ever watch it again, nor do I want to deal with new, even edgelord-ier iterations of it. But forget me, and forget all that: The real-world trauma swirling around this show now is too much to bear. Let somebody else make something else. It’s the best thing for everybody; it’s the best thing for Ren and Stimpy themselves. No need to erase it, per se, but some history is history for a reason.

###

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On This Day in 1991: 'Doug' Premiered on Nickelodeon

On This Day in 1991: 'Doug' Premiered on Nickelodeon


On this day 30 YEARS AGO Doug premiered on Nickelodeon!

Nicktoons Facts: Doug was created by Jim Jinkins and premiered on August 11, 1991 as one of the original Nicktoons, alongside The Ren & Stimpy Show and Rugrats. It ran on Nickelodeon for 52 episodes before being acquired by Disney and spawning the feature film, Doug's 1st Movie.

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Like NickRewind on Facebook, subscribe to the NickRewind YouTube channel and follow NickRewind on Twitter and Instagram for exclusive digital content from all of your throwback favorites like Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, iCarly, Victorious, Kenan & Kel, CatDog, Doug, Rocko’s Modern Life, The Amanda Show, Clarissa Explains It All, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and so much more!

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H/T: @WalterSalmon13, @NSwitchOwner.

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On This Day in 1991: Rugrats Premiered on Nickelodeon

On This Day in 1991: Rugrats Premiered on Nickelodeon




On this day 30 YEARS AGO, we met these lovable Rugrats! 🍼💚

Nicktoons Facts: Rugrats was created by Arlene Klasky, Gabor Csupo and Paul Germain, and debuted August 11, 1991 as one of the original Nicktoons, alongside The Ren & Stimpy Show and Doug. It ran for 172 episodes, and spawned three movies and two spin-off series, All Grown Up! and Pre-School Daze. The series recently made a comeback in a brand new CG-animated series, with the original voice cast reprising their respective iconic roles. The all new Rugrats series is available to stream today on Paramount+!


What’s in a Nicktoon? How Nickelodeon Developed Its Eclectic Animation

Throughout the ’90s, Nick showcased a wide variety of animation styles, yet everyone recognizes the network’s common signatures. Why?

Thirty years ago this week, a rising but not-yet-ubiquitous kids network by the name of Nickelodeon launched its first original animated series. Introduced on August 11, 1991, under the brand of “Nicktoons,” Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show would quickly become hits and change the course of animation, television, and popular culture at large. To mark the anniversary, The Ringer is looking back at Nick’s best-ever characters and the legacy of the network as a whole. Throughout the week, we’ll be publishing essays, features, and interviews to get at the heart of what made Nick so dang fun—and now so nostalgic.

What makes a “Nicktoon”? Which character best embodies the Nickelodeon style? The furious chihuahua with bloodshot eyes? The adorable squirrel in an oxygen suit? The green-skinned greaser loitering in a middle school parking lot? The lovestruck bully with blond pigtails and a stark black unibrow?

The art and animation styles varied, sometimes tremendously, from series to series. Yet we know a Nicktoon when we see one. We know the wacky Klasky Csupo signatures in Rugrats, but we also recognize Jim Jinkins’s softer touch in Doug. Most importantly, we understand the harmony in both approaches. In an interview, Hey Arnold! creator Craig Bartlett tells me there was no style guide. The early Nicktoons were, for the most part, distinguished by the network’s promise to the animators. “They let the shows be defined by the show creators,” he explains, “and that created more detailed and textured worlds.”

Nickelodeon launched its animation studio in rebellion against Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, and Disney. “We had a theory,” early Nickelodeon president Geraldine Laybourne told the Los Angeles Times ahead of the launch of the first Nicktoons, “that there were a lot of animators who had private projects they had been working on in their heads for years, but because the networks are so driven by presold characters there was no outlet.” This was a bit of promotional bluster but also a radical pledge to a new generation of cartoonists, not to mention a new generation of kids; it was perhaps the most profound statement on American television animation in the past century. Bartlett says Laybourne was true to her word.

The network launched Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show on the same day in August 1991. They were, respectively, a low-key sitcom about a nice preteen boy at a suburban school, a vivid psychedelia about adventurous toddlers, and a loud and crass slapstick comedy about deranged animals. The tone and focus were all over the place, and so, too, was the animation. Doug was smooth and sparse, Rugrats was lumpy and asymmetrical, and Ren & Stimpy was coarse and chaotic. Nickelodeon lacked a house style, and strangely enough, that was the network’s great distinction from the onset. Bartlett credits Laybourne and Matt Groening for the wider commercial turn toward “creator-driven cartoons” following Groening’s breakout success with The Simpsons on Fox in the late 1980s. Earlier in the century, the Looney Tunes could cross over into each other’s stories, as could The Flintstones and The Jetsons of Hanna-Barbera, a prehistoric and futuristic sitcom, respectively. Those house styles enforced certain uniformities in the TV cartoon landscape that dominated for half a century before Nickelodeon. Meanwhile, the original Space Jam, released in November 1996, grossed more than a quarter billion dollars at the box office but could only reinvigorate the Looney Tunes for so long. For millennials, “Nickelodeon” became the new shorthand for “cartoons.”


But the network existed for more than a decade before developing its first original cartoon series. It was always a kids’ channel, but in the most broad and expansive terms; Nick also produced game shows with preteen contestants, live-action sitcoms and dramas, and a flagship variety show (All That). During its bedtime block, Nick at Nite, it syndicated midcentury sitcoms such as I Love Lucy and Bewitched. By the turn of the century, Nickelodeon was a multibillion-dollar business but remained a genuinely strange destination, a grade school oasis unlike any other network, past and present. There seemed to be 1 trillion cable channels, but just one dedicated to taking a 10-year-old seriously for several hours at a time. Nickelodeon was a national playground staging a long contest to see who could be more rough and imaginative in the sandbox: the kids watching the cartoons or the animators producing them.

We can think critically (and even cynically) about “branding” and we can discern the splashy marketing—the bright orange logo, the torrential green slime—as a clever and definitive force in forging so much nostalgia for Nickelodeon. But the animators were geniuses, each bearing a peculiar signature in the network’s collective dissent against symmetry and tidiness, and Nickelodeon did in fact empower the animators like no other television studio ever before. There was a fashion statement etched into the lumps of Tommy Pickles’s head. John Adkins, a contributor to the popular newsletter Animation Obsessive, notes the influence of Russian animator Igor Kovalyov and his early cartoon short, “Hen, His Wife,” produced in the then–Soviet Union; Kovalyov later joined Klasky-Csupo in the U.S. and cocreated Aaahh!!! Real Monsters for Nickelodeon. “Those Klasky-Csupo shows look very similar to the stuff coming out of Russia in the early ’90s and late ’80s,” Adkins says. Bartlett, who worked on the earliest seasons of Rugrats before he created Hey Arnold!, also credits Peter Chung, who directed the pilot for Rugrats.

“He invented that whole perspective,” Bartlett says. “He put the camera on the ground, he did these panning backgrounds and other stuff in the original pilot that was insane.” In its nine seasons on Nickelodeon, Rugrats preserved the Eastern European ruggedness and alt-comics quirks that were eventually muted in The Simpsons, which became smooth, round, and symmetrical after the show’s prime-time breakout from The Tracey Ullman Show on Fox.

In the 1990s, there was “an artist’s market,” Bartlett recalls, beyond just Nickelodeon. Disney developed new characters for the Disney Channel and even bought the rights to Doug from the show’s creator, Jim Jinkins. Cartoon Network revived and remixed the old style and franchises from Hanna-Barbera, and the network’s afternoon block, Toonami, led a larger push to incorporate anime into American cartoon programming. Kids’ WB licensed Pokémon, Fox licensed Digimon, and Toonami introduced wide audiences to Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z. Nickelodeon responded to the trend with Avatar: The Last Airbender, but otherwise stuck to its sitcom instincts.

Adkins refers me to a strange meme, The Cabala of Doug, purporting to trace Doug’s descendants, such as Hey Arnold! (“Football Doug”) on Nickelodeon and even The Proud Family (“Black Girl Doug”) on the Disney Channel. “Nick had a lot more shows with a humanist angle,” Adkins says, drawing a contrast with action cartoons like Thundercats and Transformers, which dominated TV a decade before the original three Nicktoons, but featured more machines and aliens than people. The Nicktoons styles never clashed but rather reinforced one another—potty humor and formative pathos in equal proportion. It was middle school.

The artist’s market expanded, the networks traded talent, and sometimes the distinctions blurred. Cartoon Network’s Cow and Chicken, created by the Ren & Stimpy alumnus David Feiss, could’ve passed for a Nicktoon. The Fairly OddParents and Danny Phantom, created by Dexter’s Laboratory alumnus Butch Hartman, could’ve blended in with The Powerpuff Girls. But Nickelodeon unleashed these animators from the old conventions and constraints. In the ’90s, Bartlett says, “Nicktoons were way out front.” It was a kids’ network that took artists seriously; a revolution in our childhoods. 

###

From Decider:

‘Nicktoons’ at 30: How This Animated Block Came To Capture The Early ‘90s Adolescent Zeitgeist By Outmaneuvering Disney

By the early ‘90s, what began as a small-time Ohioan provider of cable edu-tainment had been rechristened as Nickelodeon and cannily self-billed as the “First TV Network for Kids,” an anarchic playground on the airwaves in which the only rule was that there were no rules. They’d gotten a foothold in the industry through emulation and opposition, communicating the gist of their programming by positioning it relative to something already known, either as a kid-ification of grown-up cool or a reprieve from the lameness. The young station’s core mission statement, of giving school-aged tube-watchers a refuge that wouldn’t condescend to their intelligence or drown them in sentimental syrup, was summarized alternately as “MTV for kids” (the ubiquitous splat logo was designed by the same guy who did the spaceman for MTV) or “the anti-Disney” for its emphasis on an edgy irreverence over the chipper model behavior that adults would try to spoon-feed their offspring as they vegged out. 

The Canadian import You Can’t Do That On Television gave the fledgling Nick one of their first hits by repackaging the hip rib-elbowing of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In for pre-adolescent millennials and lubricating it all with the green slime that would become the brand’s trademark. Game shows like Double Dare invited the viewership to scramble through kooky obstacle courses that lent an antic, physical dimension to the living-room staples they’d seen Mom and Dad watching. Soon enough, sketch institution-to-be All That would come along and mint a generation of stars while giving Nick its Saturday Night Live or, perhaps more accurately based on the cast and featured performers’ diverse racial makeup, In Living Color. These shows filled a surprisingly wide niche by making kids feel like any and all entertainment could be for them, the furthest thing from baby stuff.

But visionary network president Geraldine Laybourne believed that the key to Nickelodeon building an identity of its own would be original animation; as any parent can attest, the easiest way to get a child to pay attention to something is to put it in a cartoon. She sent development executive Vanessa Coffey to Los Angeles with a simple mission to “go out and find stuff that you like.” The documentary The Orange Years lays out an informative if somewhat adulatory recounting of this era, and in it, Coffey recalls her aspiration to foster some art for art’s sake in a commercial landscape dominated by merchandising concerns. “Basically, it was if you had a toy, then you could get a show,” she says. “Transformers, G.I. Joe, My Little Pony — commercials, basically, for toys. And after a while, I just didn’t want to do that anymore… I wanted them to be creator-driven, original pieces.” After two weeks, she commissioned eight pilots, and Laybourne gave the green light to a series order for three.

When the freshman class of Nicktoons made their grand debut thirty years ago today on August 11, 1991, there was a pleasing incidental logic to the way they comprised a demographical family unit. If the first three series were siblings, that makes the baby Rugrats, which chronicled the imagination-fueled adventures that a gaggle of toddlers had whenever the ‘growed-ups’ weren’t looking. The middle child was Doug, pitched to tweens like its mild-mannered protagonist and alter ego of underwear-clad superhero Quailman, who was also dealing with universal issues of bullying, mood swings, and crushes. And as the burnout eldest brother somewhere between barely graduating high school and dropping out of college, there was the giddily gross The Ren and Stimpy Show, a knowing bid to secure the post-pubescent set featuring a sociopathic chihuahua and an idiot cat. As an early promo touted, “You won’t find them in Never Neverland. They’re not squishy and sweet, and they don’t make you go goo-galoo. They’re the Nicktoons!”

This miniature animation renaissance captured the moment’s zeitgeist to an extent that the polite old hat of Disney or Hanna-Barbera no longer could, each trailblazing show oriented in its own way around the truisms that kids like making a mess and engaging in light hooliganism. This would be expressed as text on some occasions, as in the Rugrats pilot that climaxes with a chain reaction of sloppy, sticky chaos in the home, a frequent occurrence around the Pickles residence. Ren and Stimpy moved through their demented universe as pure forces of untamable destruction, nothing but trouble for the two-legged horse, amphibious stand-up comic, and caricatured Scotsman in their neighborhood. The sloganeering of Chuck E. Cheese comes to mind, as a place where “a kid can be a kid.”

But that spirit of lamp-breaking, slime-pouring rambunctiousness would be articulated more holistically through the off-kilter aesthetics, Laybourne having encouraged each showrunner to cultivate a distinct look instead of adhering to a uniform house style. Though Doug generally worked in a cozy minimalist mode, leaving some backgrounds white and scenery rudimentary, creator Jim Jinkins embraced weirder faces — green or blue skin, stick-figure hair, noses nearly stretching into the forehead — in his character designs. Rugrats took that a step further, in keeping with Hungarian-born animator Gábor Csupó’s belief that infants more often looked like irregular mutants than little cherubs. De facto leader Tommy, neurotic second banana Chuckie, twins Phil and Lil, and three-year-old tyrant Angelica all have oversized potato-shaped heads and off-center mouths, the adults’ features warped twice over by the tot’s-eye vantage point. Ren and Stimpy turned this slight tendency for alienation into something like a competitive sport, distending and distorting in close-up splash shots that went into filthy detail on the caliber of snot, pimples, and bloodshot eyeballs seldom seen outside the Garbage Pail Kids.

The insouciant attitude may have lured kids to channel-flip onto Nickelodeon’s frequency, but it was the high quality of writing across the board that kept them around. Cleverness-to-smartassery enjoyed greater purchase in this universe than most, trafficking at times in an irony that betrayed the Gen X personnel behind the scenes. Beyond the misheard or misunderstood idioms that would launch Rugrats‘ little ones on their weekly escapade, there was a higher wit evident in a quick survey of the cast’s adults: well-meaning yet absentminded inventor Stu makes sense to kids as a kooky screwup doing his best, but his granola-eating wife, her second-wave feminist sister, Stu’s yuppie brother Drew, and his corporate-raider wife all come straight from the pool of stock ‘90s archetypes. Though these characterizations would be lost on the intended audience of grade schoolers, catering to the adults wasn’t so intrusive for a show focused on just how limited a youngster’s perspective on the world around them could be. Ren and Stimpy went as far as they could in the opposite direction, burrowing into its own stupidity until it burst out the ass-end. Loading up the scripts with sexual innuendo and off-color double entendre scandalized parents, delighted the stoners, and most importantly, made kids who may not have grasped all of it nonetheless feel like capable media consumers. Even if they didn’t get why naming a fast food joint “Chokey Chicken” was funny, they knew they were seeing something forbidden, and as such, exciting.

The triple success of this initial slate gave way to a gold rush of beloved programs including Rocko’s Modern Life, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, and the unimpeachable Hey Arnold!. As is the case with any boom period of creativity flourishing under benevolent corporate negligence, however, the fun had to end eventually. The talking heads interviewed for The Orange Years triangulate this point at the advent of SpongeBob SquarePants in 1999, when the higher-ups got a taste of just how lucrative this enterprise could be and shifted in favor of an assembly-line approach to production. That narrative conveniently omits the fact that Laybourne departed Nick in 1996 for greener pastures at her one-time sworn enemy Disney, the same year that the Mouse House acquired Doug and lost the show’s soul, in the fandom’s consensus estimation. The truth is that the good days were in fact not so good; it came out in 2018 that Ren and Stimpy creator Jon Kricfalusi had abused his authority to sexually prey upon underage women. 

The Nickelodeon empire endured and expanded, now a colossus bearing little resemblance to the laissez-faire madhouse it once was. All the same, the incalculable influence of those three flagship titles is splattered all over the face of modern animation, Doug‘s gentle nature having cleared the way for the wave of emotionally mature fantasies now thriving on Cartoon Network. So revelatory was the Nickelodeon philosophy of TV that any time a show has the bright idea to treat children like they’re not morons here to be sold to, it can’t help following in those orange footsteps.

###

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Classic Rugrats Comic Strips for August 2 - 11, 2021 | Nickelodeon

Classic Rugrats Comic Strip for August 2, 2021 | Nickelodeon


Classic Rugrats Comic Strip for August 3, 2021 | Nickelodeon


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Classic Rugrats Comic Strip for August 5, 2021 | Nickelodeon


Classic Rugrats Comic Strip for August 6, 2021 | Nickelodeon


Classic Rugrats Comic Strip for August 7, 2021 | Nickelodeon


Classic Rugrats Comic Strip for August 8, 2021 | Nickelodeon


Classic Rugrats Comic Strip for August 9, 2021 | Nickelodeon


Classic Rugrats Comic Strip for August 10, 2021 | Nickelodeon


Classic Rugrats Comic Strip for August 11, 2021 | Nickelodeon


Stream all new CG-animated Rugrats series, exclusively on Paramount+!



Rugrats, provided to Creators Syndicate by Nickelodeon, based off the popular animated television series has been created for children and family's to laugh and enjoy together.

Follow these comics and their take on real episodes of the show and their own spin on hilarious adventures.

Read more Rugrats comic strips!: https://www.creators.com/features/rugrats

More Nick: First Look: Nickelodeon's All-New Animated 'Rugrats' Reunites Members of the Original Voice Cast to Reprise Roles!

Originally published: August 3, 2021.

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