Old Nick Appreciation Thread

[minor muppetz]

Hey Dude. UGH! I think I said this before... I had a Nickelodeon VHS called "Mushfest" that had a 11 minute Rugrats cartoon, an 11 minute Doug cartoon, and a big fat full half hour of Hey Dude in the middle. Guess what cartoon I bought it for? Yeah. The one at the end of the full half hour of Hey Dude. I didn't mind watching the Rugrats episode... it was pretty fun. The one where the cool kid Angelica falls in love with that becomes a big brother mentor for the babies... the one where Chuckie confesses he's afraid of the guy on the Oatmeal box.

I was talking about that video in another post (though I never owned it... Couldn't remember the video's title at the time). Only saw it in stores a few times, and yet all these years I thought it also had a Clarissa Explains it All episode as well. It seems both the Hey Dude and Doug episode weren't broadcast very often, at least whenever I watched the show (and I can't remember any Hey Dude episode, but I think I vaguely remember that episode... Two of the characters date, though I can't remember if they became a regular couple).

I don't know about now, but it seems like Nick was always determined to have one sketch comedy show on the channel. You Can't Do That on Television ended production in 1990 (continuing to be shown in reruns until 1993) and around the time it ended production Welcome Freshman began and was initially a sketch comedy show (with all the actors playing the same character in each sketch). Then the show switched formats from a sketch comedy show to a sitcom around the time Roundhouse debuted, and when Roundhouse went off the air All That premiered.

There's one promo I remember well. I can't find it on its own on youtube (only as part of a fan-made compilation of Nickelodeon promos), which promoted "Actual Reality". It begins with an announcer saying "First, there were video games", showing a kid (or teenager?) playing video games. Then it switched to that kid wearing some virtural reality device on his head, the announcer adds"Then there was virtural reality, making it feel like you were there". And after that the kids house falls apart and he's at an outdoor basketball court and starts playing basketball with friends, as the announcer promotes actual reality, which really just promotes actually being outside and doing things. Back then, I was confused. I thought "Actual Reality" was an actual product, and that it didn't really show what actual reality was. In fact that commercial was also the first time I had heard of virtural reality. Aside from the Virtural Boy (which hardly had any real virtural reality-based games anyway) was it ever common for kids to actually have virtural reality devices, because I don't ever remember having any, and nobody I ever visited had any.

 

[Drtooth]

I was talking about that video in another post (though I never owned it... Couldn't remember the video's title at the time). Only saw it in stores a few times, and yet all these years I thought it also had a Clarissa Explains it All episode as well. It seems both the Hey Dude and Doug episode weren't broadcast very often, at least whenever I watched the show (and I can't remember any Hey Dude episode, but I think I vaguely remember that episode... Two of the characters date, though I can't remember if they became a regular couple).

I could have lived with a Clarissa episode, even watched it the full way, but Hey Dude... ugh... that was so boring. That's the show they aired on Sundays when I had to visit a boring aunt. Like I said, VHS and watching it at other peoples' houses were the only way I could see Nick shows, and it's the same way I feel about Noozles over Danger Mouse. You miss the show you want to see, but see the show you want to miss.

But as for Doug... anyone else find it funny that while the show was on Nickelodeon there was NO Doug merchandise, but as soon as Disney picked them up there was a lot of Doug stuff? I have the bean bag plush of Doug. He looks good and all, but his hair doesn't translate as well as it should.

 

[mr3urious]

Like I always say, the ONLY Nicktoon I ever truly hated was Rocket Power. That was just a cynical cash in on the "ExTREEEEEEEEEEEME" craze.

I do honestly like a few episodes, like when the "shoobies" (tourists) steal their lingo and bungle it hilariously, leading the kids to create their own. This also backfires as the shoobies steal it, too.

I have to admit, while I didn't find As Told By Ginger that interesting, I did like the episode where the mother dates the guy with a bunch of rowdy sons that obsess over Meatball subs.

What about the tear-jerking "Hello Stranger", which was nominated for an Emmy?

 

[minor muppetz]

But as for Doug... anyone else find it funny that while the show was on Nickelodeon there was NO Doug merchandise, but as soon as Disney picked them up there was a lot of Doug stuff? I have the bean bag plush of Doug. He looks good and all, but his hair doesn't translate as well as it should.

It seems that during the early '90s when Nickelodeon was becoming more and more popular the various Nick shows, with the exception of Ren & Stimpy, were very under-merchandised. I think I read on wikipedia that Nick considered not over-licensing its shows to be the "hip" thing to do.

There was a LOT of Ren & Stimpy merchandise back then. There were talking Ren & Stimpy plush (I had the Ren), farting Ren & Stimpy plush (I had the Stimpy), at least two albums, a number of video games, clothing, several VHS tapes, and I recall seeing some toys once (can't remember if they were action figures or PVCs). It seems all the other shows got in ways of merchandising were VHS releases, and even then, there were a lot more Ren & Stimpy videos, while the average Nick show that got a VHS release only got two (or three, if the show had a Christmas episode), in addition to some shows popping up on multi-show compilations like the Snick videos (which there were two of) and the Mushfest video. Though there were more than three Rugrats videos, even before Rugrats started to explode in popularity.

When I got the internet in 1996, I found a great Rugrats fan site, and sometime before the series returned with new episodes in 1997 I read that there had been dolls of Tommy, Chuckie, and Angelica, but I vaguely remember seeing those in stores (I think I saw the Tommy). Then there started to be a lot of Rugrats toys. I was surprised when I found out that they even made toys of the adults (wait, did they make toys of Boris, Minka, and Howard? I can't remember if I actually knew). I saw a Stu Pickles doll (I think it was a doll.. It had a plush or beanbag body and plastic head/hands) at my cousins house, thought it looked familiar but couldn't quite pinpoint who it was (and I didn't think about asking) until I saw that my cousins also had a Didi doll.

It seems that in different eras Nickelodeon has a different show that gets marketed and promoted all the time. Not sure if Pinwheel or You Can't Do That on Television or anything else got that kind of treatment in the 1980s, but in the early 1990s it was Ren & Stimpy, in the late-'90s it was Rugrats, and in the early 2000s (the full 2000s?) it was Spongebob. Not sure if I've skipped any big "IT" shows (part of me wants to think iCarly was one of these types of shows, but I'm not sure... I've heard that Nick is airing a Fred show, wonder if that will get this kind of treatment, though it seems Fred's popularity had been lowering even before the Nick show).

 

[HeyButtahfly]

Maybe that's why I thought they were the same.

I realised that I haven't posted my thoughts on Nick Jr. Now I'm not going to talk much about the Nick Jr. shows. I often did watch them (when I didn't have school), and not just to see Muppet Babies, The Muppet Show, and Muppet Time. Though most I don't remember much or have much to say about.

There are some Nick Jr. programs where my memory is really low. I don't even know how many were originally broadcast on Nick and how many were reruns (and if they were foreign shows that Nick merely has the american rights to... Well, I don't know that!). Shows like that Elephant Show, David the Gnome, Noozles, and The Little Bits. I know I tolerated Gulla Gulla Island, really liked Eureeka's Castle and Allegra's Window, and fairly liked The Busy World of Richard Scary, Brother Bear, and some other show which I think involved some old forrest creature (a bear? a groundhog? a fox?) who told stories to his grandkids. I also liked The Little Big Room insertials.

I LOVED the Elephant Show-- and Fred Penner's Place! But no one else my age seems to remember them. They were both originally Canadian shows and I read somewhere that Fred Penner ran in first runs until the mid-90s in Canada. The Elephant Show wasn't picked up by Nick until a couple of years after the series had been completed.

I loved David the Gnome when I was preschool age. (Apparently I once missed it because I was at a morning Dr. appointment and I cried and cried to my mom). Funny thing is, I watched it a couple of years later and it did NOT hold my attention at all. Little Bear is extremely boring, too, IMO but I was also far from being a preschooler when it debuted.

Eureka's Castle-- another favorite. Oh how I've missed that show! I did like Allegra's Window later on but it was different because I was pretty little when Eureka was on, but by Allegra I knew I was too old for it even though I enjoyed it. I really liked Gullah Gullah Island because it debuted when I was just the right age for it.

I still LOVE The Busy World of Richard Scarry. I actually bought a DVD set of the series not too long ago.

 

[Drtooth]

It seems that during the early '90s when Nickelodeon was becoming more and more popular the various Nick shows, with the exception of Ren & Stimpy, were very under-merchandised. I think I read on wikipedia that Nick considered not over-licensing its shows to be the "hip" thing to do.

And the strange thing is, Doug was supposed to be the hit of the three first cartoons. Ren and Stimpy's appeal just got in the way, and then the Rugrats had a late bloom of popularity, like you said.

I guess Disney just got the rights to doing the Doug show, so they spared no expense in getting every single dollar of that investment back. Thoug, for the life of me, I kept hearing stories about Doug action figures but never actually saw them. Just a very large plush Skeeter with a plastic head. And I swear it was life sized. I would have bought it, but it was too big for me to find a place for it.

 

[minor muppetz]

Although it seems Nick under-licensed many of its early shows, it seems Nickelodeon licensed itself to a number of products. Just today I remembered Gak. Anybody else remember that? It was like playdough but, I think, slimey instead. I think there was also a Nickelodeon product called Gunk.

And then I remembered a drawing screen thingy that you could hook up to the TV and see what you were drawing. I think the Nickelodeon one had a frame you could put over the TV screen as well. I had seen commercials for a different product like that, which I also can't remember the name of. I had that one, but not anymore (I even recorded what I drew with it on occasion, which I eventually recorded over). I decided not to get the Nickelodeon one because of a line in the commercial. At the end of the commercial, a kid was shown taking the frame thing off the TV and the image was still there (I think), and the announcer said "turn your TV into a masterpiece". I thought it meant that you could only use it once, and that it really did affect your TV set. While I knew the term "masterpiece", I didn't know what it meant.

When it comes to early Nickelodeon merchandise, I recall Pizza Hut had some kind of promotion around 1991/1992. I can't remember what products were actually offered, all I really remember was the box artwork (which I just found on google, but still haven't been able to find what was sold). I also recall reading that the first issue of Nickelodeon Magazine was available at Pizza Hut, sometime before the magazine began regular production. And I recall a few years later Pizza Hutt sold plastic Eureeka's Castle puppets.

In 1995 there was a collection of Aaaaahh Real Monsters action figures. It featured not only the main characters, but several monsters I don't recognize. I'm not sure if they actualy appeared on the show (maybe they were in one episode each, maybe they were background designs used a lot) or if they were created for the toy line (like a number of TMNT bad guys). I remember seeing them in stores and wanting them, but around this time I was losing interest in toys. I eventually got one of those obscure characters, after doing a google search I think I found his name was Wharf. I also remember seeing Real Monsters plush toys a year later.

I wonder when it became more common for Nicktoons to be licensed as much as any average successful kids show. Though it seems when Cartoon Network's "Cartoon Cartoons" premiered those were undermerchandised as well.

 

[minor muppetz]

Here's some classic Nickelodeon bumpers:

 

[Hayley B]

I remembered Nickelodeon had this Shopping Spree for Toys R Us. I remembered wanted that so bad as a kid.

 

[galagr]

I watched some Rokko's Modern Life as a child, I just didn't get many of the jokes. Nowadays when I watch it, I get at least one laughing fit per episode. I'm surprised some of those jokes got past network censors.

Kenan and Kel, Oh My gosh, that show was great. I can still remeber the Dr. Franks' house of Waffles joke:
Kenan: Kel, get me some beans, a tortilla, and half a pound of guacamole, and meet me at Dr. Franks' House of Waffles. ( looks at camera ) That's Dr. Franks' House of Waffles, when you're in the mood for some delicious waffles, just open your mouth and say Aaa.
C'mon ( insert nickname here )!
Kel: Kenan! Did they pay you to say that?! Do they have guacamole at Dr. Franks' House of Waffles?! ( looks at camera ) That's Dr. Franks' House of Waffles, when you're in the mood for some delicous waffles, just say...... AAAAH HERE IT GOES!

It's okay, I'm surpised I remember that too. Ahh, 90's humor, how I miss you.