Cartoons that networks wanted to be "the next big thing", but wound up flopping

[Ace]

Nickelodeon... way too many times to count but I'm talking the period in the late 00s/early 10s had many shows that were treated well when they began (and actually started with some success) even getting some merchandise and DVD releases which for one reason or another didn't work out. Usually after a year or two.

especially their CGI shows come to mind like Barnyard, Penguins of Madagascar, Fanboy and Chum Chum in the late 00s/early 10s which even felt like second fiddle to Spongebob in terms of airtime and marketing for a short time.

Nick Jr. had some short lived well hyped shows too. Wow Wow Wubbzy, Ni Hao Kai Lan. etc.

 

[CassieTheDragon]

Nickelodeon... way too many times to count but I'm talking the period in the late 00s/early 10s had many shows that were treated well when they began (and actually started with some success) even getting some merchandise and DVD releases which for one reason or another didn't work out. Usually after a year or two.

especially their CGI shows come to mind like Barnyard, Penguins of Madagascar, Fanboy and Chum Chum in the late 00s/early 10s which even felt like second fiddle to Spongebob in terms of airtime and marketing for a short time.

Nick Jr. had some short lived well hyped shows too. Wow Wow Wubbzy, Ni Hao Kai Lan. etc.

Wow Wow Wubbzy was pretty damn popular back in the day, but it's definitely forgotten these days

 

[AngusTinMan16]

When you get down to it, every Nicktoon since Invader Zim, because of the channel’s guidances toward wanting to be another SpongeBob.

Also, there’s The New Woody Woodpecker Show in 1999. It was meant to be a comeback for the crazy cartoon bird since his theatrical cartoons went dormant in the early 70s. Unfortunately, it came under when Fox Kids was on a steep decline since the world New World/Fox affiliate situation in 1994.

 

[Daikun]

I remember when Disney XD wanted to make their own Regular Show clone with Pickle & Peanut. Suffice to say, it did not work.

 

[JMTV]

For CN, I would say OK K.O.!. I have never seen a new show that just premiered on the first week airing over 40 episodes in one week. The show had potential and great but the target demo didn't seem to be interested. Sure, Summer Camp Island also aired on a binge-watch marathon but that one had enough episodes while K.O didn't but that binge strategy didn't mean that CN tried it to be the next big thing. It's basically a burn-off.

Yeah, OK KO is one of other examples of Cartoon Network was trying so hard to make that show as their next big hit (I remember OK KO use to have a video game and mobile app), yet ended up flopping like a dead fish. Which is a shame since I do love love OK KO to bits.

And to be fair, it's not really the show's fault. If it wasn't for the AT&T merger, and if the show were to come out a year earlier instead of 2017, I think the show could've stand a chance to succeed.

 

[Markus Nelis]

ALVINNN!!!!! didn't do that bad, considering it lasted for almost a decade with new episodes.

Maybe internationally. In the US it didn't seem to work out. Even Nick doesn't want to acquire new seasons tells that it started to bomb. Beginning did great numbers but it saw it's decline.

 

[Pooky]

The PJs?

I was thinking of it for the "disproportionately forgotten" thread because it seems to me to be the least well remembered of all the c.1998-2002ish wave of post-King of the Hill/South Park animated sitcoms even though I remember it being a bigger deal at the time (certainly here at the time, at least for Sky viewers) and lasted longer than most of them, but looking it up it seems like it wasn't all that successful on Fox, then moved to WB where it was even less successful (with two episodes and a behind the scenes special not airing until years later elsewhere), so maybe it belongs more here? It did win 3 Emmys though, which may explain why it lasted for over 40 episodes, that or the sheer amount of time needed to plan and produce Stop Motion animation.

 

[MTAF1976]

Catdog. Nick had internally considered it to be their next big thing. It was intended to be what Spongebob actually became. They greenlit 100 episodes of Catdog before one had even aired! However, Catdog under-performed expectations and they only ended up making 68/100. It wasn't a complete failure but it was 100% a disappointment for Nick.

 

[Darklordavaitor]

Catdog. Nick had internally considered it to be their next big thing. It was intended to be what Spongebob actually became. They greenlit 100 episodes of Catdog before one had even aired! However, Catdog under-performed expectations and they only ended up making 68/100. It wasn't a complete failure but it was 100% a disappointment for Nick.

I was thinking of this specific example. You're right, CatDog was hardly a flop, but it was hardly the Rugrats killer Nickelodeon poised it to be in 99-early 2000. Still, they tried hard and you could find merchandise for it everywhere at the point, far surpassing the easily much more popular Hey Arnold!

 

[Goldstar!]

One cartoon that comes to mind is Cubix. When Kids' WB acquired this Korean import, the network was clearly banking on this show to be the next Pokemon, right down to 4Kids adding a tagline "Robots for Everyone" to the show's title hoping that this would become a catchphrase like Pokemon's "Gotta Catch 'em All!" Hoping to capture the same audience that responded to Pokemon. However, while Cubix didn't exactly flop (it ran in the U.S. for 2 seasons), it didn't catch on the way that Pokemon did, and later on the series moved from Kids' WB to 4Kids TV.

Meanwhile, an anime series that debuted on Kids' WB during the same season as Cubix, but was given the 11:30 AM time slot (which was generally considered to be a "loser" slot for Saturday morning cartoons) ended up doing what Kids' WB had hoped for Cubix to accomplish; it ended up being the breakout hit of the season. That was a little show known as Yu-Gi-Oh!. The following season, Yu-Gi-Oh! was bumped up an hour earlier on Kids' WB's schedule from 11:30 AM to 10:30 AM (EST).

 

[Pooky]

I saw a comment recently that what stopped us thinking The Jetsons or Top Cat were flops was not so much their second lives in Saturday Morning and syndication reruns so much as that Hanna-Barbera kept talking about them and acting as if they had been hits. I'm not entirely convinced by that (The Jetsons for sure genuinely captured the public's imagination at some point, to the extent that new episodes, two TV films and a theatrical film were eventually made), but it's food for thought. I sort of feel like that's how Nick is with Catdog, I don't think it ever quite hit like they hoped it would, but they acted like it did back then, and they still do now in merchandising, to the extent that it feels like it was a bigger hit than, say, Real Monsters or Angry Beavers, when they were actually probably about on par.

Makes me wonder if we'd have eventually considered Capitol Critters or Fish Police or something a beloved hit if they'd astroturfed it enough afterwards.

 

[Dantheman]

I saw a comment recently that what stopped us thinking The Jetsons or Top Cat were flops was not so much their second lives in Saturday Morning and syndication reruns so much as that Hanna-Barbera kept talking about them and acting as if they had been hits. I'm not entirely convinced by that (The Jetsons for sure genuinely captured the public's imagination at some point, to the extent that new episodes, two TV films and a theatrical film were eventually made), but it's food for thought. I sort of feel like that's how Nick is with Catdog, I don't think it ever quite hit like they hoped it would, but they acted like it did back then, and they still do now in merchandising, to the extent that it feels like it was a bigger hit than, say, Real Monsters or Angry Beavers, when they were actually probably about on par.

Makes me wonder if we'd have eventually considered Capitol Critters or Fish Police or something a beloved hit if they'd astroturfed it enough afterwards.

Didn't they also continue to use, and/or plan to use, the Jetsons characters in stuff (Astro getting his own segment in Space Stars, the original plans for Partridge Family 2200 A.D. being a Jetsons spin-off focusing on a older Judy and Elroy Jetson), so the Jetsons was still out there, in some way?

 

[Pooky]

Yep, also merchandising and comic books.

 

[CassieTheDragon]

I saw a comment recently that what stopped us thinking The Jetsons or Top Cat were flops was not so much their second lives in Saturday Morning and syndication reruns so much as that Hanna-Barbera kept talking about them and acting as if they had been hits. I'm not entirely convinced by that (The Jetsons for sure genuinely captured the public's imagination at some point, to the extent that new episodes, two TV films and a theatrical film were eventually made), but it's food for thought. I sort of feel like that's how Nick is with Catdog, I don't think it ever quite hit like they hoped it would, but they acted like it did back then, and they still do now in merchandising, to the extent that it feels like it was a bigger hit than, say, Real Monsters or Angry Beavers, when they were actually probably about on par.

Makes me wonder if we'd have eventually considered Capitol Critters or Fish Police or something a beloved hit if they'd astroturfed it enough afterwards.

I honestly don't see CatDog (98) talked about that much anymore. Granted, i'd imagine it's still very well-known, but many people may have forgotten it. Honestly it was never that popular in the wider public to begin with. I mean, it was a moderate hit, but not a hugely popular show, like, say, The Wild Thornberrys. That was popular enough to get a movie, even though I also feel like it's largely forgotten outside of a couple of memes with Nigel.

This is what separates Dragon Tales from Maya and Miguel, and The Wild Thornberrys from The Angry Beavers. Dragon Tales and The Wild Thornberrys were huge Cash Cow Franchises in the late 90s/early 2000s, and neither Maya and Miguel nor The Angry Beavers were.

 

[Darklordavaitor]

I’ve actually seen more than a couple of people around my age wear CatDog onesies, so it seems to do okay with Nickelodeon’s recent-ish 90s nostalgia push and indicates that it’s not entirely forgotten. Clearly not on the level of Rugrats, SpongeBob or even Hey Arnold!, and fitting enough for this thread, but I think it was around the level of The Wild Thornberrys, which was also heavily marketed but I don’t recall many kids talking about it at the time.

It helps that CatDog is a pretty iconic design, something you won’t easily forget. I still see people ask how they went to the bathroom today.

 

[CassieTheDragon]

I’ve actually seen more than a couple of people around my age wear CatDog onesies, so it seems to do okay with Nickelodeon’s recent-ish 90s nostalgia push and indicates that it’s not entirely forgotten. Clearly not on the level of Rugrats, SpongeBob or even Hey Arnold!, and fitting enough for this thread, but I think it was around the level of The Wild Thornberrys, which was also heavily marketed but I don’t recall many kids talking about it at the time.

It helps that CatDog is a pretty iconic design, something you won’t easily forget. I still see people ask how they went to the bathroom today.

For what it's worth, it seems to be much better remembered than Dragon Tales, which was WAAAAAY more popular in the day.

I'm wondering if PBS Kids itself is an example of a similar thread where "shows were popular but are now forgotten". Besides Arthur, The Magic School Bus and Clifford their animated cartoons aren't as remembered and I don't see much merch for them.

 

[Darklordavaitor]

For what it's worth, it seems to be much better remembered than Dragon Tales, which was WAAAAAY more popular in the day.

I'm wondering if PBS Kids itself is an example of a similar thread where "shows were popular but are now forgotten". Besides Arthur, The Magic School Bus and Clifford their animated cartoons aren't as remembered and I don't see much merch for them.

I’ll be honest with you, I think that’s more of a thing for preschool programming than it is with cartoons meant for older kids. Arthur and Magic School Bus skewed a little older than most of PBS Kids’ shows so they’re a bit of an exception, but I’ve noticed that most preschool series of that vintage are seldom pushed today aside from eternally evergreen works like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Even Nickelodeon, with their massively successful nostalgia push, rarely ever touches the Nick Jr side of their library aside from the occasional Blues Clues nod.

 

[CassieTheDragon]

I’ll be honest with you, I think that’s more of a thing for preschool programming than it is with cartoons meant for older kids. Arthur and Magic School Bus skewed a little older than most of PBS Kids’ shows so they’re a bit of an exception, but I’ve noticed that most preschool series of that vintage are seldom pushed today aside from eternally evergreen works like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Even Nickelodeon, with their massively successful nostalgia push, rarely ever touches the Nick Jr side of their library aside from the occasional Blues Clues nod.

Blues Clues and Dora are both very fondly remembered though.

 

[Dr.Pepper]

I totally remember CatDog being hyped out the wazoo. I was a fan so I totally bought into it. I think the reason why it didn’t pop into my mind was because it still was successful and not a total failure.

 

[Fone Bone]

Yeah, Catdog was one of the more successful NickToons of the era. They were starting to get diminishing returns from the concept (they had not had another hit like Ren And Stimpy or Rugrats since either of those shows) but Catdog was their second most successful show after those two before SpongeBob came along. The Fairly Oddparents, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and The Loud House wound up more successful than Catdog. But all those shows I mentioned were probably the only Nicktoons that actually were. And yes, I'm aware both The Wild Thornberrys and Hey Arnold got movies. I still think it's true.