Old Nick Appreciation Thread

[FrackleFan2012]

Well, I grew up in the late 90's and early 00's. I still have the Rugrats VHS's with me though our family got rid of our VCR player a few years ago. I also love The Amanda Show. I love the commercial bits they did throughout the show.

 

[mupcollector1]

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.

I remember it was just days before my middle school graduation and I was staying up late to see the revival of Ren & Stimpy and just being shocked seeing Upward and Onward. And being, "THAT'S THE EPISODE?" lol Yeah I didn't like the Pitcher/Catcher gags, the log sawing and the other innuendos. Stimpy's Pregnant was pretty back and the whole thing of Stimpy being a mother, it's already been done in the famous Spumco Christmas Special "Son of Stimpy" (aka Stimpy's First Fart). I kind of like the Games Animation episodes more then Adult Party, sure it's not the same and they are more surreal and badly drawn though there's a couple I like. Hermit Ren was good, any episode with Wilber Cobb lol That old geezer cracks me up. lol "That's right, I killed the Dinosaurs with my bear hands, I ran then over with my truck!" lol That was from the episode where Wilber Cobb was educating Ren & Stimpy .......poorly on his knowledge of the Dinosaurs and he was coming up with all these bogus theories on how they became extinct like "TOO MUCH TELEVISION!, No wait, they drank out of a dirty dog bowl, no wait, they all thought they were Superman and jumped off a building!" lol I also liked the Haggis McHaggis episode, the scene where he reunites with his faithful German Sheppard Dog, well he sees him anyway buying the doll of him (which I think is spoofing John K's George Liqour doll sold around the time) and the dog looks at the doll with loving eyes, then it cuts to this scary drooling psycho dog that rips the doll to shreds. That's what I really missed about Ren & Stimpy and even John Kricfalusi's early work like his webcartoon (I can't mention the name on here), it was that scary psycho aspect of his work. I loved that! There used to be a Spumco Ren & Stimpy Archive Head Quarters website which can only be found searching old Ren & Stimpy fan site links and going to archive.org's time machine. But I used to go on that site a lot, they was all these details of footage that was cut and the difference between the unfinished Spumco stories animated by Games like Ren's Brain, Untamed World 2: Lair of The Lummox, etc. Man, I can chat about Ren & Stimpy for hours. lol


By the way, I wanted to mention Rocko a little bit. I bought season 1 on DVD and I was so amazed that it's uncut, there's so many hidden gags in the show. lol Even the banned episode "Leap Frogs". Rocko was a great show, I preferred Rocko instead of Camp Lazlo. Rocko was totally more cutting edge.

 

[mupcollector1]

Well, I grew up in the late 90's and early 00's. I still have the Rugrats VHS's with me though our family got rid of our VCR player a few years ago. I also love The Amanda Show. I love the commercial bits they did throughout the show.

Wasn't there one with his Sumo Wrestler that keep singing "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy!" lol I'd love to see that one again. Though I much preferred All That, Kenan & Kel and Cousin Skeeter.

 

[Drtooth]

I kind of like the Games Animation episodes more then Adult Party, sure it's not the same and they are more surreal and badly drawn though there's a couple I like. Hermit Ren was good, any episode with Wilber Cobb lol That old geezer cracks me up. lol "That's right, I killed the Dinosaurs with my bear hands, I ran then over with my truck!" lol That was from the episode where Wilber Cobb was educating Ren & Stimpy .......poorly on his knowledge of the Dinosaurs and he was coming up with all these bogus theories on how they became extinct like "TOO MUCH TELEVISION!, No wait, they drank out of a dirty dog bowl, no wait, they all thought they were Superman and jumped off a building!"

The earlier Games ones were good to tolerable. The longer the show went on, the worse those episodes became. It's like they were trying too hard to be the John K episodes and failing completely at it. Ren always had to have a nervous breakdown and they were no where near as deep and funny as they were with "Stimpy's Fan Club" or "Space Madness." I especially dislike Aloha Hoek (except for Dom Deluise of course), especially the bizarre ending where they're Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble as Russian Spies. That wasn't funny, that was kinda disturbing. They couldn't even get the nonsequitors right. There was something intangible about the Spumco episodes that they just couldn't capture. Still... I freaking love Stimpy's Cartoon Show. And Wilbur Cobb.

By the way, I wanted to mention Rocko a little bit. I bought season 1 on DVD and I was so amazed that it's uncut, there's so many hidden gags in the show. lol Even the banned episode "Leap Frogs". Rocko was a great show, I preferred Rocko instead of Camp Lazlo. Rocko was totally more cutting edge.

Lazlo suffers from not having the same writing cast and the fact the characters are kids. Rocko was a show about crazy adults. Looking back on it, we all have to be surprised it was a kid's show. Ren and Stimpy, Angry Beavers, and CatDog clearly worked on some Looney Tune principle, but if you look at every Nickelodeon cartoon ever made, most of the shows had children as the main cast. Rugrats, Doug, Fairly Oddparents, Hey Arnold. A writing teacher I once had was talking about how kids like reading about other kids most of all, and if you look at the more successful shows, they star kids. But Rocko seemed like a crazy cartoon sitcom where he had to deal with cartoony, exaggerated adult things. It seemed like it could have been made to adults but was sold to kids as a kid's show. That's why they tried to get phone sex jokes in there. Lazlo just follows the "kids watching kids" thing. It is about kid's summer camp, after all.

 

[mupcollector1]

I love Stimpy's Fan Club, that and Fake Dad and the Carbunkle Cartoon animated episodes are my favorites . I like know by heart almost every single line from Ren's psycho rants in Stimpy's Fan Club and Sven Hoek (even the cut lines).

According to Joe Murray's book, he did say that Camp Lazoo was indeed a kids show and Rocko was an adult project and was pitched to Nickelodeon because they did say they wanted more risk but it feel apart when advertisers couldn't sell their product. In the words of Krusty the Clown of The Simpsons "That's showbiz for yeah, one moment your on top, the next you some smo working in a box factory" then Bart replies "Boy, showbizness is kind of cruel isn't i..." and Krusty slams the door on Bart. lol Until the day Hollywood is all ran my artists I suppose.

Yeah I think that's probably why most cartoons now a days feature kid like characters so it would easily be aimed toward kids. I remember reading a Nickelodeon submission policy forum for people who wanted to pitch to the network, one of the guidelines is to create either kids characters or animal characters with an inner child which was interesting. Though a lot of the 90s Nick shows were very cutting edge which I loved because I can enjoy these shows as an adult still. Like Doug and Hey Arnold, the characters are kids but it deals with subject matters of romance and anxiety, stuff even adults can relate too. Kenan & Kel and All That were basicly homages to classic vaudeville golden age character comedy with modern twists. Kenan & Kel was Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, straight man and comic. While all that takes kind of a G / PG rated SNL and Monty Python's Flying Circus kind of sketch show. Both had their edgy adult humor yet they had a very surreal element to them which makes it silly enough for anyone to enjoy. I miss family shows like that. There's something about classic character comedy where you can practicably do just about anything and not be too vulgar or political with it. Not that I don't have a heart of R rated / Mature Adult Comedy and Satire which I love when it's done right, but I also like that classic screwball slapstick innocence that's rarely seen today. Now a days, go see a G or PG rated movie and it's just juvinille toilet humor and modern slang "Like whatever!" and all that modern stuff which would be out of date years from now. But character comedy is just timeless, and I like that sort of thing

Though I wanted to respond to the Aloha Hoek episode for a second. That's the one when they were living inside a dead whale right? Full of maggots and bugs. lol Personally I think that's a bit more creative then what John K did with Upward and Onward, the premiere of Adult Party when it's Ren & Stimpy living in a homeless person's mouth. Sure it's a little more surrealistically funny but it's limited for gags in my opinion. It's like Games did several versions of episodes like that, Ren & Stimpy on an island or I'm not sure if it's the same one where There's a father crab that's a spoof of Moe of the Three Stooges that lives in a tree. But yeah, I see what you mean.Games episodes, the plots are just surreal and no story structure like in the Spumco episodes. Games would make the episodes just plane dumb for the sake of it which I think some are funny and some weren't that great. Though I did like the ending with Ren flying away with the giant fly into the sun. lol But bad ones I remember was the Out West revival where Ren & Stimpy are Albert and Ewants Kids, Farm Hicks I think the episode was called. I liked the gag where they smash their teeth and need to swallow rocks just to chew their food just like what chickens do. lol But the rest, UGH! There's an episode where they have a meat truck and they have a meat puppet show, instead of an ice cream truck. lol Chicken in a Drawer was good with the old man with a stick up him, A Chuckie Cheeses parody I believe. But Yeah, I can totally see how it's just a bunch of John K's ex-employees trying to copy the Spumco stuff poorly overdoing the Meat jokes and stuff. I read that after Ren & Stimpy got canceled, Bob Camp appoligized to John K for taking over Ren & Stimpy and asking his job at Spumco back and John didn't give it to him. On the DVDs, John K gets to talk to some of the ex-Spumco crew members like Bill Wray (I love his paintings ), I think Jim Gomez (who has a puppet movie that I can't say the name of, Billy West is in it) but Bob Camp and Billy West weren't in the commentary unfortunately. It would have been nice. And of course the late Michael Pataki (The original George Liqour, he passed away last year, John K is working on "Cans Without Labels" which is probably the last thing Michael did of George. It's an indie short, John raised money online for it and he's going to use Toon Boom software to make it. I'd love to see it, I've seen his pitch on a Comic Con video. Looks funny and kind of back to his roots.

 

[mupcollector1]

By the way, I wanted to ask about Doug. There's two versions, the classic Nickelodeon one which I love and the Disney one where Billy West isn't in it. I only seen the movie, anyone seen the Disney version? Is it as good?

 

[minor muppetz]

One thing I've been wondering about regarding the Rugrats episode "Pickles vs Pickles": At the end after Drew apologizes to Angelica for trying to get her to eat broccoli and promising not to do so again, Angelica gets out a picture of the basic food groups, crosses out broccoli (and had crossed out other foods or food groups) and says, "works every time". What is this supposed to be implying? Is it implying that Angelica had some type of osmosis/hypnotism that caused her parents to have nightmares? Is it showing that if she refuses hard enough they'll change their minds?

Considering how often Angelica's parents spoil her, it's often surprising when there are episodes where she either gets denied something or gets grounded (seems Tommy's parents punish her more). Besides "Pickles vs Pickles" where they send her to her room for refusing to eat her broccoli, there's "Runaway Angelica" where Drew finally punishes her (and is glad he was finally able to do so) leading to her running away from home, the episode where Angelica thinks she's invisible (due to the adults ignoring her after Drew scored "49 and a half" on a "is your child a spoiled brat?" quiz), "Cuffed" where Drew and Charolette refuse to let Angelica have the toy handcuffs they intend on giving to charity, "Chuckie's Wonderful Life" where Drewcatches her with a CD she stole from Chazz and states she won't get desert for a week, "Jonathan Babysits" where Charolette incorrectly thinks Angelica made the house dirty and punishes her for one or two weeks, the episode where Angelica uses one of Stu's inventions to make her voice sound like Charolette's, where she's not allowed to have any more candy after having a cavity, and the episode where Angelica pretends Cynthia is lost because Drew refuses to buy her a new Cynthia and where she's not allowed to have candy as well.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

One thing I've been wondering about regarding the Rugrats episode "Pickles vs Pickles": At the end after Drew apologizes to Angelica for trying to get her to eat broccoli and promising not to do so again, Angelica gets out a picture of the basic food groups, crosses out broccoli (and had crossed out other foods or food groups) and says, "works every time". What is this supposed to be implying? Is it implying that Angelica had some type of osmosis/hypnotism that caused her parents to have nightmares? Is it showing that if she refuses hard enough they'll change their minds?

I'd go with the latter. She's a spoiled brat and her parents probably give into her because they just don't want to deal with her whining and acting up. Or she's that manipulative and they are scared of her *shrugs*

 

[fuzzygobo]

For everybody that was nostalgic for 90's-era Nick, I'm sorry you weren't around in the days of Danger Mouse, Turkey TV, and Eureka's Castle.

Old Nick? I'm talking ANCIENT Nick!

 

[minor muppetz]

For everybody that was nostalgic for 90's-era Nick, I'm sorry you weren't around in the days of Danger Mouse, Turkey TV, and Eureka's Castle.

Back in 1999 when Nickelodeon had a weekend-long 20th anniversary marathon, I had seen it pointed out that none of the channel's really early shows were included (You Can't Do That on Television would be the earliest, but all the episodes shown were ones with Alanis Morresette, which I think are from 1985), and I was disappointed because I'd just started learning about the early history of Nick and wanted to see some of the shows. But now I think I care a lot less about a lot of '80s Nick shows that ended before I knew of the channel (I think I'd like to see Turkey Television, though).