The Pop Arena

We dip back into the world of Hanna-Barbera and Yogi Bear, with Yogi's Birthday Party! How old is Yogi? Too young to be having a birthday party, that's for sure.

We kick off the original Nicktoons trilogy with Doug, a show about an eleven-year old boy growing up in the town of Bluffington. It might sound pretty tame on paper, but I'm here to make the case that it was a bigger genre-pushing gamble than you'd think. We'll look at the show's creator, Jim Jinkins, its surprise international appeal, and how the franchise ended up in Disney's hands. Turns out Doug was… very expensive… sorry, I had to…

I mean, huge corporate mergers are just bad, full stop, so I'm not thrilled. Paramount Skydance has been infiltrated by Trump goons, also Saudi Arabia is invested in the merger? I can't imagine a very positive outcome from all of it.

The hour-long premiere episode of The Nick Hit List has been found! We can finally dig into how the show worked, the pop music landscape it was working with, and meet the show's forgotten co-host, Shondi Jones!

Today we take a look at an episode of Oh Yeah! Cartoons, the animation anthology show with cartoons that could potentially become future Nicktoons. Here's two shorts that didn't. First, Planet Kate, a short with a lot of mysteries, but perhaps not enough of anything else. Next, Fathead, a fun caveman cartoon, but wouldn't it be easier to just syndicate other caveman cartoons that already exist?

After some very special episodes of Rocko's Modern Life, it's time we looked at a normal, mid-season episode and get a firm foundation as to what the show was like, and more importantly, what audience it was speaking to. Because I'm not sure these jokes about how expensive TVs are and how slow traffic is really made with children in mind.

I did do a little something about them in prep for The Dark Knight Rises way back when, but they've since been shelved, don't think they hold up.

In this season finale, we finally learn the origins of Yakko, Wacko and Dot, their history at Termite Terrace, their relationship with cartoon character Buddy, and ask the question, "what would the Looney Tunes look like in the post Ren & Stimpy 90s?"

Thank you! I'm glad people still enjoy it fifteen years later.

We take a look at Blue's Clue's first movie, Blue's Big Musical! We touch on what makes Blue's Clues so special, what this extra long story does different, and I stake my claim that this is the best preschool show to come out of the 90s!

Before we get into Doug, Rugrats, and Ren & Stimpy, we should take some time for context. Just what was the Nicktoons project? What was the state of children's television animation going into the 1990s? Who was Vanessa Coffey and what motivated her to step up? And what about the five pilots that didn't get greenlit? Welcome to the Nicktoons Era.

It's a "special double-length episode of a Butch Hartman show where our young boy protagonist tussles with a future version of themselves from an evil timeline" double feature! We take a look at The Ultimate Enemy, the Danny Phantom double-length episode where Danny confronts Dark Danny. He's evil! Just because!

It's a "special double-length episode of a Butch Hartman show where our young boy protagonist tussles with a future version of themselves from an evil timeline" double feature! We take a look at Channel Chasers, the Fairly OddParents special that plays exactly like a series finale but is not, in fact, a series finale.

Danny Phantom: "The Ultimate Enemy" - Nick Knacks Sample Platter https://www.patreon.com/posts/danny-phantom-144686437

The Goosebumps Halloween Annual returns with a viewer-chosen selection, Escape from the Carnival of Horrors! The first book in the Give Yourself Goosebumps gamebook series, we take a journey through an evil carnival that is 50% space-themed for some reason!

Of course, that comment predates Nicktoons by about eight months, so I don't know what he thought about those. If I had to guess, he probably didn't care for Ren & Stimpy.