You can’t check the names of most of the Nickelodeon Nicktoons without hearing the theme songs in your head. There’s a handful of rad cartoons from that early era that need to be remembered! Let’s dive into some trivia, shall we?
1. Rugrats was the first official Nicktoon. Not only that, but it was the first Nicktoon that got a feature film!
2. Originally, Craig Bartlett, who created Hey Arnold! had developed three shorts through Claymation that were picked up for Sesame Street. This is what caught Nickelodeon’s attention and sought him out to help animate his vision.
3. In the pilot for the Nicktoon Doug, Doug writes in a journal and calls it a diary. Later in the series, he would start to call it a journal and get offended if anyone called it a diary. Teenage years, am I right?
(Nickelodeon)
4. There is one ‘banned’ episode of Rocko’s Modern Life that, while it aired in many places, certain local providers in different places wouldn’t run it. It was based on Mrs. Bighead attempting to make her husband jealous so she attempts to seduce Rocko. Of course, it never went to a weird place towards the end but parents found it too adult for children.
5. The real reason that Timmy Turner from The Fairly Oddparents has a pink hat is because Butch Hartman’s blue marker ran out and so he switched it to pink instead. It became canon and was explained that Timmy’s parents expected to have a girl and so he had all pink clothes from birth.
6. Hey Arnold! was the first of the Nicktoon to actually hire children to voice the children on the show.
(Nickelodeon)
7. Klasky Csupo, which was a big name in Nicktoons animation, had wanted Aaahh!!! Real Monsters to get its own feature film but the original script pitches showed that the movie would’ve been considered too much for young audiences. While the show was already a bit of a moodier and darker vibe, the script was seen as far too ‘dark’ for young people.
8. CatDog was the very first Nicktoon to get aired five days a week. I can’t even imagine how exhausted those animators were!
9. E.G. Daily, the voice actor who voiced Tommy Pickles from Rugrats, was pregnant and went into labor while recording dialogue. She was such a trooper that she finished her lines before finally deciding to go to the hospital to give birth!
(Nickelodeon)
10. Rocko from Rocko’s Modern Life was originally yellow but was changed to a beige color because the toy production company that Nickelodeon worked with stated that there were already many yellow character toys being produced and it would cause confusion.
