Facts About '90s Cartoon Network Shows We Just Learned That Made Us Say 'Really?'
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- Looney Tunes: Speedy Gonzales
- Warner Bros.
1Speedy Gonzales Was Banned Due To Stereotypes, But Fan Protests Brought Back The Character
Speedy Gonzales, created by Warner Bros. in the 1950s, quickly became one of the most loved characters in the company's roster of cartoon stars. But Speedy, as a Mexican mouse who donned a sombrero and spoke with an accent, was entrenched in ethnic stereotyping.
The character's extraordinary speed conflicted with depictions of him and his friends as lazy, and in 2002, Cartoon Network pulled all of Speedy's appearances from the network, claiming the mouse was offensive.
Speedy's many fans quickly came to his defense, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, which advocated putting the beloved mouse back on air. For many Mexican Americans who grew up watching Speedy, the mouse is a cultural hero, and in 2016, Warner Bros. announced it would work on a standalone movie for the mouse. A Speedy feature film has yet to be finalized.
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- Captain Planet and the Planeteers
- TBS
Captain Planet and the Planeteers featured five teenagers from around the world who carry special rings that imbue each with extraordinary powers to defend the environment. When those powers of earth, fire, wind, water, and heart are combined, the kids can summon Captain Planet to help them fight villains who seek to harm Earth. While the show originally ran on TBS, it was frequently rerun on Cartoon Network.
Most of the episodes pit the Planeteers against enemies who target the environment, such as Duke Nukem, who plans to generate an atomic power plant meltdown that would rival Chernobyl. But in one instance, the Planeteers fight against misinformation and fear-mongering in an episode about HIV/AIDS, making it the first children's program to discuss the disease.
In "A Formula for Hate," which first aired on November 21, 1992, high school basketball star Todd Andrews finds out he has HIV. One of the show's regular villains, the aptly named Verminous Skumm, finds out about Todd's diagnosis and spreads misinformation, claiming Todd could infect others simply by touching. Bullying and various other machinations follow, but Captain Planet and the Planeteers finally come to Todd's rescue.
The episode ends with a talk by the spirit of the earth, Gaia, who explains the reality of how HIV/AIDS is spread, and encourages viewers to treat those suffering from the disease with kindness and dignity. Guest voices in the episode include Neil Patrick Harris as Todd and AIDS health advocate Elizabeth Taylor as his mother.
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3In One Episode Of ‘The Powerpuff Girls,' Almost Every Line Is A Beatles Lyric
The Powerpuff Girls delighted children and adult fans, but one episode, titled "Meet the Beat-Alls," contains inside jokes that likely only older fans can truly appreciate. In the episode, villains Mojo Jojo, HIM, Fuzzy Lumpkins, and Princess join forces and defeat the Girls when Lumpkins uses a large rock to smash them.
Surprised at their efficacy, the four villains decide to become a "rock super group" called The Beat-Alls and wreak havoc on Townsville. The group implodes when Mojo Jojo meets a female chimp named Moko Jono who breaks up the band.
One intrepid Beatles fan has cataloged every reference to the Beatles and their music in the episode.
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Danny Antonucci worked primarily in creating adult animation shows when someone reportedly dared him to create a program for children. Antonucci pitched the idea of Ed, Edd n Eddy to Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, choosing the latter because he refused to cede creative control to Nickelodeon.
The show follows the three Eds as they regularly try to swindle their classmates out of money to buy jawbreakers - often ending up in surreal situations in the process. The show debuted on Cartoon Network on January 4, 1999, and ran for six seasons, ending with the film Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show in 2009.
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- Powerpuff Girls: Super Smash-Up
- IDW Publishing
The Powerpuff Girls existed not only as an animated series on Cartoon Network, but also as a graphic novel series released by IDW Publishing. In one of the comics, the Powerpuff Girls are joined by fellow Cartoon Network characters in a story that rivals any DC or Marvel ensemble cast.
In the ultimate crossover graphic novel Powerpuff Girls: Super Smash-Up, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup join their father, Professor Utonium, for a tour of their friend Dexter's lab. Dexter reveals he has figured out a way to travel to other universes, and chaos ensues as the story navigates through multiple cartoon dimensions.
Cameos from other Cartoon Network stars include characters from Courage the Cowardly Dog, Johnny Bravo, Ed, Edd n Eddy, Cow and Chicken, and more.
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- Captain Planet and the Planeteers
- TBS
6One 'Captain Planet' Episode Attempted To Deter Kids From Having Too Many Kids
In the episode of Captain Planet and the Planeteers entitled "Population Bomb," Wheeler (who wields the fire ring) tells his friends he wants to have a bunch of children when he grows up. He then hits his head while windsurfing and has a bizarre dream in which he ends up on an island overrun with anthropomorphic mice. The overpopulated island terrifies Wheeler, and he rethinks his desire for a big family.
The title of the episode is a direct reference to the 1968 book of the same name by Stanford University entomologist Paul Ehrlich, who argued humans would starve from overpopulation within the next few decades.
The end of every episode of Captain Planet includes a 30-second recap of the environmental issue and what humans can do to help. For this episode, audiences are told, "So when it is your turn to have a family, keep it small."
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Like many Cartoon Network programs, Dexter's Laboratory regularly crossed the line between kid-friendly and adult cartoons. The episode "Rude Removal," however, went way over the line and never aired on Cartoon Network due to an incredible amount of profanity.
In "Rude Removal," after another fraught interaction with his older sister, Dee Dee, Dexter invents a machine called the Rude Removal System that will split a person into two halves, one rude and the other polite. The machine backfires, and both Dee Dee and Dexter get split in two.
The polite versions of the siblings speak with posh English accents, while their rude versions have New York accents and use a lot profanity. The episode was supposed to air in 1997, but despite the bleeped words, it was never released.
When Adult Swim added the episode to its website, the swear words were muted, but eventually even Adult Swim took down the profane episode.
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The gross humor of Cow and Chicken crossed the line in the 1998 episode "Buffalo Gals." After airing once on February 20, 1998, the network pulled the episode and has never released it since. "Buffalo Gals" is suffused with clumsy jokes about lesbians that many believed were cruel and stupid rather than funny.
In the episode, a group of female bikers break into Cow and Chicken's home and try to convince Cow to join their club. Their favorite pastimes are playing softball, hating male characters, and "munching on carpet."
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- Dexter's Laboratory
- Cartoon Network
Christine Cavanaugh was one of the most prolific voice actors of the 1990s, helping to create some of the most memorable characters in popular culture. She provided the diminutive voice for Babe the pig in Babe, created the nasal Chuckie Finster in Rugrats, and voiced Oblina in Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.
Cavanaugh also helped create the memorable voice of Dexter in Dexter's Laboratory. According to show creator Genndy Tartakovsky, Dexter had a foreign accent because all well-known scientists had accents. Cavanaugh voiced Dexter for the first two seasons and part of the third before retiring.
She also lent her voice-acting chops to smaller roles in The Wild Thornberrys, Disney's Aladdin, The Powerpuff Girls, and other animated favorites. She passed at age 51 in 2014, but is remembered for putting her personal stamp on many of the most loved characters in animation.
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Communications mogul Ted Turner founded Cartoon Network in 1992, and purchased the rights to many classic animation programs and characters from MGM, Fleischer Studios, and Hanna-Barbera. Turner then challenged programmer Mike Lazzo to generate interest in the 1960s cartoons with a 1990s audience.
Lazzo wanted to create new programming, but with a practically nonexistent budget, his only option was to use Cartoon Network's catalog of Hanna-Barbera characters. Lazzo chose the awkward Space Ghost, placing the character and his bizarre 1960s foes in a late-night talk show setting.
When Space Ghost Coast to Coast premiered on April 15, 1994, it became the first in a long line of original Cartoon Network adult programming, helping to launch some of the network's most popular shows, including Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021, and The Brak Show.
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- Family Guy
- FOX
11Seth MacFarlane Was An Animator And Writer On Multiple Cartoon Network Series
Seth MacFarlane is probably best known for his hit show Family Guy, but his work in animation began far before Peter Griffin was introduced to Fox audiences. MacFarlane grew up obsessed with cartoons and enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design after high school.
Hanna-Barbera offered MacFarlane his first job out of college after seeing his senior thesis film, Life of Larry. He joined the Hanna-Barbera crew, which was making content for Cartoon Network, and worked as an animator and writer for both Johnny Bravo and Cow and Chicken. Throughout his time with Hanna-Barbera, MacFarlane continued to work on Life of Larry, eventually renaming it Larry & Steve, which became the basis for Family Guy.
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Johnny Bravo, which first aired on Cartoon Network on July 14, 1997, became one of the network's earliest popular original shows. The character of Johnny Bravo originated in a cartoon short created by Van Partible, whose full name, Efrem Giovanni Bravo Partible, provided Johnny's last name.
Partible came up with the original concept while in animation school at Loyola Marymount University. He began with the idea of three Elvis impersonators who fought misdeeds, but to make it easier on himself as sole animator, reduced them to one Elvis-like character. This short cartoon, called "Mess O' Blues," was Partible's senior thesis.
He never intended it as anything more than a project, but one of his professors showed the short to a friend working for Hanna-Barbera, and the company asked Partible to create a formal pitch, making Johnny Bravo less of an Elvis impersonator and more of a 1950s James Dean character. Bravo still uses some of Elvis's lines, however, such as "thank you, thank you very much."
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