Jimmy Neutron
Boy genius with the impossible ice-cream-swirl hair, a robot dog named Goddard, and a lab under the clubhouse. "Gotta blast!" carried a movie, three seasons of the TV show, and every kid who ever wished their science-fair project actually worked. It was Nickelodeon's first cartoon drawn entirely in CGI — and it looked like nothing else on the channel.
The film Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius hit theaters on December 21, 2001, from Nickelodeon Movies and Paramount, and did remarkably well — $102.9 million worldwide and a nomination for the first-ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, which it lost to Shrek. The TV series followed: created by John A. Davis and animated by DNA Productions, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius premiered on Nickelodeon on July 20, 2002 and ran three seasons and 64 episodes through November 25, 2006. It was the network's first series based on a film, and its first fully CGI cartoon.
The show settled into the heart of the 2000s Nickelodeon lineup — Jimmy, Carl, and Sheen bouncing between school and outer space, with three crossover specials pairing the show with The Fairly OddParents. The franchise outlived its own run: Planet Sheen, a spin-off following Jimmy's hyperactive friend, aired from 2010 to 2013, a measure of how thoroughly the boy genius had lodged himself in the network's identity.
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The Fairly OddParents
Timmy Turner's fairy godparents Cosmo and Wanda granted every wish—and every wish went catastrophically wrong. Nickelodeon's absurdist comedy about a miserable kid with unlimited magical wishes became a juggernaut that somehow survived 16 years, backseat-driven by evil babysitter Vicky and Mr. Crocker's obsessive screams.
SpongeBob SquarePants
The absurdist sponge working the fry cook line at Bikini Bottom, living under the sea with his starfish best friend, and radiating genuine optimism. SpongeBob SquarePants premiered on Nickelodeon in May 1999 and became the network's biggest hit — a cultural juggernaut that turned early episodes into an endless meme quarry.
Shrek
The grumpy ogre who just wanted to be left alone, dragged into a quest to rescue a princess and discover his own capacity for love. Shrek arrived in May 2001 as a subversive fairy-tale comedy from DreamWorks, won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and spawned a franchise that defined early-2000s family cinema.
Aaahh!!! Real Monsters
A Nickelodeon animated series about three monster students learning to scare humans in a monster academy beneath a city dump. Created by Klasky Csupo, the studio behind Rugrats, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters delivered gross-out humor and distinctively ugly-cute character design that defined 90s kids' animation.