Nicktoons - WikiHQ

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Nicktoons is a 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 (Viacom, now known as Paramount) 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" (which consisted of the Warner Bros. owned post-1948 Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons that would feature the cartoons melded with Nickelodeon idents and bumpers, the shorts would later move to Cartoon Network in the late 1990s), 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's senior vice president of programming). 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

right|thumb|298px|Various characters from Nicktoons aired in the 1990s, during the peak of the brand's popularity, and the early 2000s. Clockwise from the top: Arnold from [[Hey Arnold!, Dog and Cat from CatDog, GIR from Invader Zim, Chuckie from Rugrats, Norbert and Dagget from The Angry Beavers, and Reggie from Rocket Power. Rocko from Rocko's Modern Life is in the center.]]