10 items
The manic variety cartoon that slipped jokes for adults past kids and a geography lesson past everyone. Yakko, Wakko and Dot burst out of the Warner Bros. water tower alongside Pinky and the Brain, Slappy Squirrel, and a cast of oddballs — fast, smart, and endlessly quotable.
Adult Swim's gleefully nonsensical cartoon about three anthropomorphic fast-food items — a milkshake, a box of fries, and a wad of meat — sharing a house in New Jersey. It made no sense on purpose, and it accidentally shut down Boston.
Nickelodeon's animated epic about the last Airbender and a world where people bend the four elements. The show's serialized storytelling, humor, and character arcs (especially Zuko's redemption) proved surprisingly mature and acclaimed for kids' television. It ran three seasons from 2005 to 2008 and spawned an enduring fandom.
Football-headed Arnold navigating urban life with his boarding house family. Nickelodeon's unusually melancholy animated series about childhood loneliness, gentrification, and the quiet moments between the gags.
The Disney Channel animated series about high-school cheerleader and part-time crime-fighter Kim Possible, her clumsy best-friend sidekick Ron Stoppable, and his naked mole rat Rufus, foiling villains like Dr. Drakken and Shego. Catchphrases 'What's the sitch?' and 'So not the drama' became part of the language; created by Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle.
The unhinged Nicktoon about a psychotic chihuahua and a dim-witted cat — gross-out close-ups, surreal violence, and adult humor that sailed clean over kids' heads (and past a lot of censors). One of the original three Nicktoons, and the one that pushed hardest at the edges.
Rocko the wallaby and friends stumbled through suburban absurdism in a show that smuggled adult satire past Nickelodeon's censors. Crude, weird, and weirdly brilliant — the launching pad for future SpongeBob creators.
Nickelodeon's 1991 animated series gave the world the Pickles household — a group of talking babies narrating their daily adventures and misadventures with brilliant, absurdist humor. Rugrats proved that cartoons for kids didn't need to be dumbed down; the show's clever writing and wild imagination made it appointment TV for 90s kids and their parents.
![Video thumbnail — Arcade Longplay [117] The Simpsons Arcade Game](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/S9DE-KyZnLc/hqdefault.jpg)
Konami's 1991 four-player brawler let you play as Homer, Marge, Bart, or Lisa on a mission to rescue Maggie. The Simpsons Arcade captured the early cartoon's charmingly off-model animation style, placing you in Springfield with familiar locations and gag-filled bashing. Ported to home computers (Commodore 64 and MS-DOS) back in 1991, it later returned to modern consoles via a digital re-release in 2012.
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.