Nicktoons
Nicktoons is the brand name used by Nickelodeon for their original animated series. All Nicktoons are produced partly at the Nickelodeon Animation Studio and list Nickelodeon's parent company in their copyright bylines.
Since its launch in the late 1970s, Nickelodeon's schedule incorporated animated series produced by other companies. The channel did not invest in its own original cartoon series until 1989 when producer Vanessa Coffey visited Los Angeles to accept pitches from local animators. Geraldine Laybourne, the channel's then-president, greenlit three pitches for full series. On August 11, 1991, the three cartoons premiered as part of a 90-minute block, becoming the first branded Nicktoons. In contrast to the merchandise-based cartoons that dominated the 1980s animation industry, Vanessa Coffey and Geraldine Laybourne agreed that the Nicktoons should be creator-driven: based on original characters designed by animators.
The first Nicktoons debuted to financial success, convincing Viacom to invest in original animated shows for its other network MTV. Until 1998, Nickelodeon's animation division operated out of a rented office complex in Studio City, California. Production moved to an individual building in nearby Burbank on March 4, 1998. Among the first shows produced at this new facility was SpongeBob SquarePants, which by 2004 had become the most profitable Nickelodeon program. In 2002, a cable channel also called Nicktoons was launched, followed by multiple international versions. Several original shows have premiered new episodes on the channel.
In the early 2010s, Nickelodeon debuted the first two Nicktoons based on preexisting television franchises, as opposed to new characters: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Winx Club. These two revamped shows were developed at Nickelodeon Animation Studio following Viacom's purchases of both properties. In 2019, Nick Animation debuted its first streaming-exclusive Nicktoon, Pinky Malinky, which was released on Netflix rather than television. Several months later, the studio announced a multi-year deal to produce animated content for Netflix, including new properties and spin-offs of previous Nicktoons.
History
1979–1988: Early efforts
Nickelodeon's first original animated program, Video Dream Theatre, was left unaired. It was produced over a half-year period in 1979, when the network hired its future president Geraldine Laybourne to make two pilots for the show. Video Dream Theatre used animation to visualize children's dreams in different styles, such as color Xerox. According to an interview with Laybourne herself, Nickelodeon did not broadcast the show because it was deemed too frightening; she commented, "the trouble with kids' dreams is they're really scary. It's a lot about abandonment, it's a lot about suffocation. They don't make very good stories."The network did not have its own original animated series, and mainly aired animated shows from other companies. Two years before the launch of the brand, the network had a compilation show titled "Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon", The network continued to only broadcast externally produced animation until almost a decade later, when animator Ralph Bakshi pitched an original animated series called Tattertown. In 1988, a half-hour pilot episode was produced, overseen by Debby Beece. Nickelodeon declined to pick up a full series, and the pilot "Christmas in Tattertown" premiered on December 21, 1988, as a standalone Christmas special. The network's next attempt at an original animation was Nick's Thanksgiving Fest, which was composed of two shorts. According to Linda Simensky, the Thanksgiving shorts "gave Nickelodeon executives the confidence they needed to get the animation department started".
During production of Nick's Thanksgiving Fest in 1989, Geraldine Laybourne held a meeting at her house to develop a philosophy for the channel's original cartoons. She played tapes of current animated shows, which her colleagues viewed as merchandise-driven and overly commercial. The group decided that Nickelodeon should aim for the opposite of their contemporaries, producing cartoons that would keep their creators in a key creative role rather than prioritizing an efficient "assembly line" process.
1988–1998: First Nicktoons and success
Geraldine Laybourne laid out a set of rules for the network's cartoons, most importantly wanting to "put the creator back, front and center." She approached her fellow executive Vanessa Coffey to find artists in Los Angeles interested in pitching original cartoons. Coffey had experience working in animation and was the producer for Nick's Thanksgiving Fest in 1988. Laybourne gave Coffey "pretty much free rein to look for properties".Vanessa Coffey rented an apartment in Los Angeles for two weeks and accepted hourly pitches. She mailed animators a call for submissions, which she summarized as "I'm looking for ideas, I'm looking for concepts. The less developed, the better. I want drawings, not a big pitch." As Coffey accepted pitches, she decided that she did not want a "consistent look like Disney", specifically searching for projects that had completely different styles from each other.
Of the pitches she accepted, Coffey decided to approve eight six-minute pilots at a cost of $100,000 each. Laybourne would eventually select three pilots to expand into full series, which were Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show. meant to fill a programming block of an hour and a half. The first Nicktoon that Coffey approved was Jim Jinkins' Doug, followed by Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo's Rugrats. The final pitch that went to series came from John Kricfalusi, who presented a variety show titled Your Gang with a live-action host presenting different cartoons, each cartoon parodying a different genre. Ren and Stimpy were pets of one of the children in Your Gang. Coffey was dissatisfied with most of the pitch but did like Ren and Stimpy, singling them out for their own series. Both Coffey and Laybourne allowed the three shows to enter development. Between the pilots and series' production, Vanessa Coffey was named Nickelodeon's Vice President of Animation.
In fall 1992, Nickelodeon fired John Kricfalusi. Coffey and Laybourne asserted that Kricfalusi was in breach of contract for not delivering on time, creating inappropriate content, and going over budget. Kricfalusi suspected the real reason was that the network was uncomfortable with more crude humor. After Kricfalusi and Nickelodeon missed several promised new-episode delivery and air dates, the network—which had purchased the rights to the Ren & Stimpy characters from Kricfalusi—negotiated a settlement with him. Production on Ren & Stimpy moved to Nickelodeon's animation department, Games Animation, and the show was put under the creative supervision of Bob Camp. Coffey soon stepped down as animation vice president for Nickelodeon to pursue her own projects. She was replaced by Mary Harrington, a Nickelodeon producer who moved out from New York to help run the Nicktoons division after Kricfalusi was fired.
At the time, the Nicktoons were produced primarily out-of-house at Jumbo Pictures and Klasky Csupo, with Nickelodeon's executives overseeing development. Hoping to concentrate production under one roof, Nickelodeon greenlit its first fully-in-house series, Rocko's Modern Life, in 1992. A budget freeze in 1995 at Viacom resulted in Ren & Stimpy being canceled that same year and the network passing on the final 13 episodes of their option for Doug. Jinkins sold Jumbo Pictures to Disney in 1996, moving Doug over to ABC and Toon Disney as a result. Nickelodeon retained the rights to the 52 episodes produced between 1991 and 1994 as a part of the agreement. Rugrats was cancelled by the network in 1994, but would later be revived as two holiday specials about Hanukkah and The Passover before being revived in 1997 and airing until 2004. From that moment on, relationship between Nickelodeon and Klasky-Csupo would later continue until 2006, with 1994’s Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, 1998’s The Wild Thornberrys, 1999’s Rocket Power, and 2005’s Rugrats Pre-School Daze.
1998–2008: New studio and building new brands
In 1996, Albie Hecht, then-president of Film and TV Entertainment for Nickelodeon, met with Nickelodeon artists to brainstorm an idea for a new Nicktoons studio. Nickelodeon's new facility, named Nickelodeon Animation Studio, would eventually open on March 4, 1998; Hecht said, "For me, this building is the physical manifestation of a personal dream, which is that when people think of cartoons, they'll say Nicktoons."In June 1997, Nickelodeon began a five-year, $350 million investment into original animation. As part of this effort, the company doubled its animation staff and produced many new pilots, including one for SpongeBob SquarePants. Before commissioning SpongeBob SquarePants as a full series, Nickelodeon executives insisted that it would not be popular unless the main character was a child who went to school, with his teacher as a main character. The show's creator, Stephen Hillenburg, recalled in 2012 that Nickelodeon told him, "Our winning formula is animation about kids in school... We want you to put SpongeBob in school." Hillenburg was ready to "walk out" on Nickelodeon and abandon the series, since he wanted SpongeBob to be an adult character. He eventually compromised by adding a new character to the main cast, Mrs. Puff, who is a boat-driving teacher. Hillenburg was happy with the compromise and said, "A positive thing for me that came out of it was in a new character, Mrs. Puff, who I love."
According to Nickelodeon writer Micah Wright, the series pickups for both SpongeBob and CatDog were announced on the same day in 1997. Nickelodeon's senior vice president, Kevin Kay, confirmed to the animation studio's creative team that it had greenlit 100 episodes of CatDog and six episodes of SpongeBob. Nickelodeon believed CatDog had the potential to be its next breakout hit, and their order represented an investment of $50 million into the series alone. Stephen Hillenburg was doubtful that his show would last, and he stated in 2009: "I was thinking if we could make a pilot, then we'd have one episode and have accomplished that. Then I thought if it did go to a full season that we'd get twelve chances to write stories and that might be it... that we'd make twelve shows and get canceled."
In 1998, Nickelodeon premiered Oh Yeah! Cartoons, which was intended as a "character laboratory" to test out cartoon characters. Creator Fred Seibert described the show as an experiment into a seven-minute format that Nickelodeon generally avoided; he said, "they were very willing to try an experiment to see how it would work." The series eventually yielded three half-hour spin-offs based on segments from the show: The Fairly OddParents, ChalkZone, and My Life as a Teenage Robot. 1998 also marked the release of the first feature film based on a Nicktoon: The Rugrats Movie, which became the first non-Disney animated film to gross over $100 million at the North American box office. On December 8, Nickelodeon's movie division greenlit theatrical adaptations of Hey Arnold! and The Wild Thornberrys, less than a month after Rugrats opened in theaters.
At the turn of the millennium, Nickelodeon noticed that a new competitor, Cartoon Network, was attracting some of its 11–15 year old demographic. Desiring a cartoon suited for older viewers, Nickelodeon producer Mary Harrington contacted Jhonen Vasquez for a series pitch after reading his Squee! comic books. Vasquez pitched Invader Zim, which satisfied Nickelodeon's requests for "something 'edgy'."
In the early 2000s, Nickelodeon briefly continued its strategy of adapting Nicktoon franchises into theatrical features. Executives at the company's movie division decided to reconsider this approach after several films were met with poor financial and critical reception. According to the Chicago Tribune, Nickelodeon believed the Hey Arnold! movie "didn't just fail but actually tarnished one of the company's best selling points: its trustworthy brand name." Aside from SpongeBob SquarePants films, Nickelodeon Movies stopped producing animated theatrical features based on their shows.
In February 2005, high ratings from Butch Hartman's two Nicktoons convinced the network to sign a multi-year deal with Hartman. As part of the agreement, Hartman developed original animated and live-action concepts for Nickelodeon and its sister channel, Noggin. In a statement, Hartman said, "Working with everyone at Nickelodeon over the past several years has been hugely satisfying and I look forward to forging the same kind of terrific creative alliances with the folks at Noggin".
Nickelodeon also sought out a new action-adventure cartoon after commissioning several anime-inspired pilots that "didn't go anywhere", according to a New York Times article. By 2002, Nickelodeon had rejected multiple Japanese series, considering them derivative or too mature for the channel's target audience. In response, Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino pitched Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Nickelodeon ordered six episodes of the show. Avatar premiered in February 2005 to high ratings, after which Nickelodeon increased its order to 13 episodes and again to 20.