Freakazoid!

Freakazoid! started out as a serious show. Steven Spielberg liked Bruce Timm's Batman: The Animated Series and asked him for a new superhero. Timm and his writing partner Paul Dini came up with a manic teenage hero, and Timm pictured an adventure show with some jokes, "almost like Spider-Man." Then the meetings started. "Every time we'd have a meeting with Steven, the concept would kinda change, and it kept leaning more and more towards zany comedy," Timm said. He left early. Tom Ruegger, who had developed Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs, rebuilt the show "from the ground up," and writers John McCann and Paul Rugg came on to write longer stories. Nobody from the auditions worked for the lead, so Rugg demonstrated the voice at a recording session. "Then they played it for Steven Spielberg and he said 'Yep! Fine, sure, great,' and then I panicked," Rugg recalled. He voiced Freakazoid for the whole run.

The setup: Dexter Douglas, a geeky 16-year-old at Harry Connick Jr. High in Washington, D.C., has a computer with a flawed Pinnacle Chip, and his cat, Mr. Chubbikins, walks across the keyboard and types the secret key sequence that activates the flaw. Now "Freak out!" turns Dexter into Freakazoid, who has enhanced strength and speed, all the Internet's knowledge, and no ability to fly, so he runs around with his arms out making whooshing noises. His enemies included the Lobe, a genius with a giant brain for a head (David Warner), and Candle Jack, who kidnaps anyone who says his name out loud. The show broke the fourth wall constantly: it ran a fake commercial for a Freakmobile toy, credited "Weena Mercator as the Hopping Woman" when no such character existed, and had Freakazoid, Wakko and the Brain argue over whose show was Spielberg's favorite, until Spielberg admitted he had no idea who they were.

Freakazoid! premiered September 9, 1995, one of five cartoons on the first Kids' WB lineup. It drew an older audience than its target, and the network kept moving it around. "They put it at eight o' clock in the morning, 3:30 in the afternoon... we couldn't even find it, and we wrote the thing," McCann said. Kids' WB canceled it in February 1997, partway through its second season; the series ended at 24 episodes. The theme song won Richard Stone and Ruegger a Daytime Emmy, and Cartoon Network reruns from 1997 to 2003 made it a cult hit.