Old Nick Appreciation Thread

[Drtooth]

So.. anyone wanna talk about a classic Nicktoon that isn't Rugrats?

I really hate how on later episodes of Ren and Stimpy (the John K being fired episodes) try too hard to make Ren lose all control of his sanity in a vapid attempt to recreate the original episodes. There's really quite a lot of depth and structure in Ren's insanity in the older episodes. Take Stimpy's Invention, for example. Sure, it looks like Ren, having the Happy helmet on, is insanely happy... but he's sentient, can't do anything about it, and basically forced to be happy against his will. You can tell he's in great pain, which explains his line delivery, and over powering the Happy Helmet just enough to grab a hammer and destroy it, giving a murderous glare at Stimpy and strangling him for putting him through such a well meaning, yet horrific state.

Then you have Hermit Ren, where he tries to go Space Madness mad again, and it's disturbing in all the wrong ways. Even worse when he's forced into an inorganic breakdown in Aloha Hoek.

 

[minor muppetz]

When it comes to Ren and Stimpy, I find it unacceptable that John K., the CREATOR, got fired. I feel that the creator of a series should be entitled to NOT get fired, unless maybe he went to jail or something like that. The creator can quit, the network can cancel the show altogether, but the creator should not get fired at all.

 

[Drtooth]

John K (or anything remotely linked to him) has a history of going well over budget. That's the reason why they had so many clip shows in Mighty Mouse The New Adventures. The internal drama with angry letter writing grannies was an excuse to get him kicked out so they could find cheaper ways to make the show. He is supposedly impossible to work with (apparently Billy West hated him), so I can imagine there were other internal problems.

So we got a sliding scale of worse through the productions of the episodes and a recycled, rejected Tiny Toons cartoon as one of the better ones.

Though, frankly, I don't see ANY of that working as a Tiny Toons short. They look very out of character in that storyboard. Especially Hampton. That should really have been a Hampton/Furball cartoon in the style of the Porky/Sylvester haunted house toons.

 

[minor muppetz]

I've noticed over the years that on Rugrats characters might mention something kids wouldn't exactly know but vaguely or even deliberately not say what they are. I know, I could have just asked my parents or somebody else, but at the time I didn't think to ask older people to explain obscure references I saw on tv shows or movies (maybe I thought they wouldn't know... I know when I was younger whenever I asked the name of a Muppet character I didn't know the name of other people never knew the answers, either... And there have been times I asked something and somebody gave some joking answer that I always suspected wasn't the real answer and have learned the real answers by now).

For example, in the "Garage Sale" episode, after Didi and Stu disagree on whether to sell Stu's disco suit, Angelica asks what disco is, but instead of explaining it Did just says "it's something that happened a long time ago and it's never coming back (like Stu had thought), so don't you worry". This one I didn't really care that I didn't know (though I dislike how prideful Didi sounded about disco never coming back).

And in "My Friend Barney", when Didi's feet become sore from running a 10K with Betty, Betty remarks "I told you it was a K", Didi remarks "but you didn't tell me what a K was". For years I had wondered what it was, too.... And later I read that in the original script Didi actually said something like "But you didn't tell me that a K was a running marathon". That would have been better for 12-year-old-me to have heard.

And while not really important or even something anybody could explain to me if I asked, in the episode where Grampa has a bowling tournament, there's a running gag where Grampa keeps trying to tell the story of a previous match he had lost to his opponent, only to be interrupted each time. Then at the end when they ask to hear the story he no longer feels like telling it. I've read that he actually did get to tell his story in the original script, and I'd like to see the details.

 

[beaker]

The fact there is no choice or mention for Rocko's Modern Life(the best Nick show ever) on there, makes this whole thread full of fail

Seriously, Rocko's Modern Life. As much as I still kinda like Zim, nothing compares to Heffer, Filbert, Rocko and the gang.

 

[beaker]

It might had been mid 80's when I started watching Nickelodeon too. Because I don't remember that silver ball & muti-color lettering logo. There logo has always been orange to me.

I didn't have cable til about 1994, so that's when I started watching Nick. In the early through late 80s and into the early 90's it was all about network cartoons(back when saturday morning and after school was all about cartoons)

I feel bad for kids today with the ADHD bad animation flash style junk...tho now and then they do have quality stuff(like Avatar/Korra)

Actually my tv cartoon viewing was about late 70s through early 2000's with Recess. Let's just say I had a very long childhood(and Im happy people still think Im in my early 20's) The early 90's had a lot of amazing cartoons, but I love Pepper Ann, Invader Zim and Recess. But to me nothing beats Muppet Babies and that whole era of 84-90.

 

[minor muppetz]

The fact there is no choice or mention for Rocko's Modern Life(the best Nick show ever) on there, makes this whole thread full of fail

I assume there's a poll limit. I voted "don't care" because I have so many favorites that aren't options (as well as some favorites that are).

Actually my tv cartoon viewing was about late 70s through early 2000's with Recess. Let's just say I had a very long childhood(and Im happy people still think Im in my early 20's)

It's interesting, I know of a few people who are at least five years older than me, and yet they seem to have grown up on many of the early-1990s Nickelodeon shows as well.

 

[mupcollector1]

I grew up with 90s Nickelodeon. Best time to be a kid, plus The Muppets were on there too. Ren & Stimpy was great, my 2nd favorite show ever (The Muppet Show being my first of course ). I got to meet Billy West at my local Comic Con and got my Ren & Stimpy DVDs signed, what an honor I even got to meet the guy who does the voice of Rocko of Rocko's Modern Life and got my season 1 DVD signed. Anyone know that the complete Rocko's Modern Life is coming to DVD this February It's totally on my list. But yeah I also loved Angry Beavers and KaBlam, they were a couple of my favorite shows that I watched all the time. Kenan & Kel and All That were my opinion the best live action shows they had. Nick Arcade was pretty good, Legends of the Hidden Temple was great. I loved the talking head. lol Weinerville I LOVED, I want the DVDs when they come out. Boney cracked me up where he would tell a rotten story to the kids and make then cry and run away "NOW GETT OUTTA HERE! I'm Boney, I'm Boney, Leave Me Aloney!" lol The last good show Nickelodeon had in my opinion was Invader Zim. Huge Fan! As soon as the original DVDs were released, I bought them as soon as they came out, the bonus features disc and house was hard to get but I got it The writing was amazing, it wasn't just the comedy but the strong sci-fi story writing that was involved. But what's so Ironic about Zim and Dib is they are basicly quite simular. They are both social outcasts and society doesn't except them so they want to do something courageous that would grant them acceptance. But what's interesting is their goals are ironicly against each other from the very begaining. I don't think Dib ever found out that Zim wasn't really a true invader of his Irkin species and Zim never took the time to see Dib's acceptance in society. There was never a proper ending to the series, just a Christmas special and a few unfinished episodes where the audio sound track was made but no animation. I noticed that there's this fan team that's animating Invader Zim episodes online but what's funny is that they got Andy Berman do revive the role of Dib, plus other fans created this Invader Zim Convention, DoomCon I think it's called and they got the original team to go there. Richard Horvitz, Andy Berman, Jhonen Vasquez, and the rest. Plus Rocko's Modern Life's cast is doing live script reading shows in California.

I currently have a DVR so I'm getting a chance to watch some of these shows again. Especially Doug and Hey Arnold which I haven't seen in ages. lol Most of them are coming out with DVDs and iTunes but I'm still waiting for KaBlam, that to me was the hippest show to start off the Friday nights on Snick. Everyone here remember Snick right? Where Nickelodeon started showing the more risky cartoons and shows like Are You Afraid of The Dark and Roundhouse (I haven't seen much of that) And Clarissa Explains it All (I rarely seen this show too, though I've became a huge fan of Sabrina the Teenage Witch since it has Nick "Angry Beavers" Bakay as Salem. Plus I love Cats )

Funny thing about Nickelodeon is every time there was an adult cartoon on the channel, they would become a huge hit then get canceled. Ren & Stimpy....well got taken over and John Kricfalusi got fired because he never meet his due dates and Nickelodeon thought that his psycho dark humor was a bad influence to children especially the banned episode "Man's Best Friend". Plus there's tons of stuff that got edited out of the original shows permanately. Even the DVD set Ren & Stimpy UNCUT isn't really uncut, stuff I probably won't get away with mentioning on this forum. lol Especially one of the episode names. lol Rocko got canceled because of advertisers having a hard time selling toys during the Rocko timeslot because they were attracting more College students then kids so Nick wanted Joe Murray to tone the show down and Joe stuck with his art and said to them he's sticking with the original agreement so they canceled the show. Apparently Nick was in fact searching for risky cartoons due to the success of Ren & Stimpy at the time. Angry Beavers ended because Nick didn't want to fund another season so The Angry Beavers teams recorded the audio sound track for the final episode. The audio is from a podcast Richard Horvitz was a part of plus it floats around YouTube. It's really funny but it was never made because the whole thing was a satirical mockery of Nickelodeon canceling the show. The Beavers discover they aren't real, they are fictional cartoon characters which is one of the guidelines in creating a show for Nick they couldn't break and that was the characters admitting they aren't real. So Norbert and Daggot start calling each other Nick and Richard (inside joke) and at the end they sadly say goodbye. Daggot asks Norbert since the show isn't on the air anymore and they aren't going to get paid for reruns would that mean they can get away with saying anything, Norb says yes, Daggot says "There's one thing that I've always wanted to tell you. SHUT UP!". This alone might not sound like a great joke but then again, it's an inside joke. Because there's an episode where Daggot told Norbert to Shut Up and a parent called up and complained. So Nickelodeon had to get Richard Horvitz to dub Daggot saying "Hush Up!" over the episode. lol And finally the ending of Invader Zim. Zim got canceled because of "The Bloody Gir Controvery" Jhonen Vasquez who's a dark cartoonist in his own right with his work of underground comix, he wanted an episode where Gir the Robot had blood coming out of his head and Nickelodeon said NO! It went back and forth, even a jam or jelly gag and they said no. They sent Nickelodeon a concept drawing and they said NO! So the Invader Zim team snuck the graphic design image they made into the last few episodes of the show in weird places like when ever there's a night sky, the Bloody Gir Image would be slightly visable, or if there's a worm hole or an explosion it would be a flash frame. But the most odvious was the Halloween episode, when one of the pipes come toward the screen like it usually does in the original opening, the image does flash on the screen. The Zim team got caught, and the show got canceled unfortunately. But I love that about these cartoonists on how they rebel against what was a threat to their artistic vision and creation. It's like the old saying, going down with your ship and as an artist I couldn't agree more. I'd probably would have pulled something like what the Angry Beavers team did myself. lol

Anyway sorry about the long post, I'm a HUGE classic Nickelodeon fan. My best friend is too, in fact that's how we became friends over a decade a go.

 

[mupcollector1]

He is supposedly impossible to work with (apparently Billy West hated him), so I can imagine there were other internal problems.

I'm not sure if there's really any hatred between Billy and John. There was a Howard Stern episode where Howard was trying to prank Billy by getting John K over to discuss what happened with the Ren & Stimpy take over. Billy didn't seem to have any bitter feelings and vise versa. There was a bit of depate over Billy being asked on the creation of Ren & Stimpy and Billy answered the question on a certain TV talk show on the inspiration of the characters voices without mentioning John K. It was quite an episode, Billy's wife calls on the show very upset with Howard Stern and basically Howard trying to turn up the heat and Billy does seem a bit uncomfortable in the episode. When I meet Billy, I mentioned that I seen this episode and he replied that Howard is a something or other, I didn't catch what he said because it was quite loud and busy at ComicCon. lol But Billy answered with a smile on his face so I don't think there's any bitterness at all.

All I know was Billy turned down Stimpy's revival for Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon and I can certainly say I don't blame him. I didn't like Adult Party. Ren Seeks Help was the only one I really liked. I thought that was truely John K's final greatest work before his stuff became all weird for the sake of weird and surreal and no longer psychodrama which I loved about the early Spumco web cartoons and Ren & Stimpy cartoons. Eric Bowza who took over for Stimpy did a good job but it's not the same. Firedogs 2 was also good but shouldn't have been a sequal to the first season classic which didn't relate to the episode in anyway. It was just Ralph Bakshi as a Ren & Stimpy character. I loved Ralph's character who's this giant harry Lummox kind of a cross between Kawalski from Fake Dad and George Liquor and John Kricfalusi's character of his dad in Visit to Anthony. Kind of like that, this Big harry guy who's HUGE and would crush anyone with his bare hands and turn then into dust in seconds. Very tough character but Ralph's version of the fire cheif would have an insecure side where he would turn to Ren and say "Do you love me Tommy?" and Stimpy says "Sure, Ren loves you." "NOOOOO! I WANT TO HEAR IT FROM TOMMY'S LIPS!" lol Though I think Ralph could have been a new character instead of replacing Harris Pete's Fire Cheif which he revived in the few seconds in the opening. But the rest of adult party is just discusting in my opinion. Very sexist, just sexual humor through out and just not like what The Ren & Stimpy Show was and what it stood for which is to me not so much the toilet humor but the psychodrama and a bit of a surreal humor to it like Log and Powdered Toast Man.

 

[Drtooth]

All I know was Billy turned down Stimpy's revival for Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon and I can certainly say I don't blame him. I didn't like Adult Party. Ren Seeks Help was the only one I really liked. I thought that was truely John K's final greatest work before his stuff became all weird for the sake of weird and surreal and no longer psychodrama which I loved about the early Spumco web cartoons and Ren & Stimpy cartoons.

Part of it was because Spike kept telling him to push things. The "Pitcher/catcher" stuff specifically. Personally, I saw the one where Stimpy was pregnant, and Ren went from lovably nasty to absolutely as disgusting and unlikable as a character can get. I respect what they were trying to do, but they went too adult. The best bits of Ren and Stimpy were cleverly hinting at things. Of course, I didn't dislike it as much as some of the more terrible of the Games Animation episodes. The ones that were trying too hard to be weird and were just disturbing instead of funny.