On Aug. 11, 1991, three animated series premiered on Nickelodeon—and after Rugrats, Doug and the way-existential Ren & Stimpy, kids' TV was never the same.
If you were watching the first Nicktoons slate during its original run, you might have a few rug rats of your own running around by now.
But there's also no preferred demographic when it comes to nostalgia for Doug, Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show—which all premiered on Aug. 11, 1991—and kids of every age are welcome to revisit just how envelope-pushing that trio of shows was upon arrival.
At the time, The Simpsons was barely two years old and the landscape was not yet littered with subversive cartoons, so Nickelodeon had a wide-open space to fill with animated programming fit for children but also smart enough for adults.
"Doug, to me, was a show that was so missing for kids. Really, since Charlie Brown," Nickelodeon Animation School cofounder Vanessa Coffey, who shepherded all three series into existence, told Entertainment Weekly in 2016. "It was speaking directly to them, to their feelings, their fears, their lives."
But once that show about middle-schooler Doug Funnie was in the works, they decided to skew younger.
Namely, as Rugrats creator Gabor Csupo put it, "We started to draw crazy-looking babies. And the more outrageously funny they looked, the more we liked them."
And that's how Tommy Pickles, Chuckie Finster and twins Lil and Phil DeVille were conceived.
Then, a dog and cat named Ren and Stimpy were rescued from an otherwise off-the-mark pitch for a show called Your Gang.
Coffey "liked the fact that they looked so weird," Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi told EW. "And they looked much weirder originally before I toned them down."
While Doug, Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy as a unit didn't make it past a few seasons, each had its own unique pair of legs and their cultural impact endures—not least because these shows walked so SpongeBob SquarePants could run.
Read on for some very grown-up secrets behind your favorite Nickelodeon cartoons:
Doug Funnie was the alter ego of Doug creator Jim Jinkins, who was drawing cartoons chronicling his own thoughts long before he found out Nickelodeon was looking for ideas to turn into animated original series.
"Doug is an exaggerated version of my memory of being a kid," Jinkins told Entertainment Weekly in 2016. "Doug is me. I had a real crush on a girl named Patti, and my best friend’s name was Tommy, but he’s Skeeter, and Roger was an older guy down the street."
Animator Arlene Klasky was working on The Simpsons—which had just premiered on Fox in 1989—and her husband Gabor Csupo had just left the show when they got a call from Nickelodeon.
