Rugrats

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Rugrats was an animated series, produced by Klasky-Csupo, Inc. for Nickelodeon. The series ran from 1991 until 1994 then from 1998 till 2004. The show is about how babies and young children view life and perceive the events happening around them.

Contents

Characters

The children

  • Tommy Pickles (voiced by E.G. Daily): The most adventurous baby, always getting the group into trouble. Generally considered the babies' leader. Tommy is named after the first son of Paul Germain, one of the show's creators.
  • Dil Pickles (voiced by Tara Strong): Tommy's younger brother, a true baby (i.e. not a toddler like the other children). Introduced in the first Rugrats movie.
  • Angelica Pickles (voiced by Cheryl Chase): Tommy and Dil's cousin who always bosses the "babies" around, being the oldest (about 3 or 4 years old). Enjoys lying to the toddlers, distorting their perception of reality. Acts perfect towards the adults but is generally mean to the babies.
  • Chuckie Finster (voiced by Christine Cavanaugh up to 2002, Nancy Cartwright since): Tommy's loyal sidekick. Afraid of everything, especially clowns.
  • Phil & Lil DeVille (voiced by Kath Soucie): Fraternal twins (boy and girl) that have everything in common. Both enjoy playing in mud and like to eat worms and insects.
  • Kimi Finster (voiced by Dionne Quan): Chuckie's younger step-sister, introduced in the second Rugrats movie, Rugrats in Paris. Kimi is a very happy girl who always is smiling.
  • Susie Carmichael (voiced by Cree Summer): A neighborhood friend who is about Angelica's age. When around, Susie often stands up to Angelica when she taunts the young toddlers. She also has two older brothers, Erwin and Buster and older sister Alisha.

The adults

The pets

  • Spike (not voiced in the TV show, but voiced by Bruce Willis only in Rugrats Go Wild!): The Pickles' brown hound dog. Tommy deeply admires him. (Spike was once voiced in a very old Rugrats episode in which Chuckie had a dream that he and the other babies went into Spike's doghouse. In the doghouse, Spike was drinking tea and spoke with a British accent.)
  • Fifi (Voiced by Grey DeLisel): Purple poodle which Spike fell in love with in the second Rugrats movie. Now, lives with the Finsters.
  • Puppy and Peppy (not voiced): Purple and brown (respectively) puppies adopted by the Drew Pickles and Chaz Finster households. Probable (one is led to believe) offspring of a union between Spike and Fifi.
  • Fluffy (not voiced): Angelica's cat who Angelica loves dearly, but who always causes trouble for the others, particularly Spike.
  • Reptar (not voiced): Not exactly a pet, but rather, a popular movie character. A big green dinosaur reminiscent of Godzilla. Tommy and the other Rugrats love him; Reptar products such as cars, clothes and candy are frequently seen on the show. Reptar was a main character in Rugrats in Paris and had his own theme park called Euro Reptarland. There was a giant Reptar robot there too, which the babies piloted and fought against Jean Claude.
  • Robosnail (not voiced): Reptar's arch enemy. Robosnail is an mechanical snail with snapping pincers. He made a special guest appearance in Rugrats in Paris, controlled by Jean Claude. Robosnail and Reptar fought throughout Paris and he wound up falling into a river.
  • Dactar a big Pterodactl who fights Reptar on TV. He Resembles Rodan from Godzilla.

Setting

The series has a very vague setting. It has been shown that the Rugrats, as it is probably assumed, live in the United States, but the name of a specific city or state is never mentioned. The best guess as to which region of the country in which the series takes place is somewhere in the southwest, since the family has taken trips to both the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, and Stu once mentioned "driving through the desert" while returning home from a one-day trip. There have also been several scenes of desert or arid land around the area where the Rugrats live, but there was episode which featured a snow-storm.

It is also unclear what type of community the characters live in; it could be a small city or a suburb of a larger city. This ambiguity in the setting was probably done intentionally to help give the impression of seeing the world through the naive eyes of toddlers.

One episode does however show they live somewhere in California due to the license plate shown on Grandpa's station wagon. Also in the episode Special Delivery, a post office has the state's bear flag in front of it.

Their whereabouts in California are probably in the locus of Oakland. In one episode, painters remark that black and silver, Raiders colors are awesome.

In another episode in the first season, Didi is shown teaching at a high school in Yucaipa, an actual town about 70 miles east of Los Angeles. It does seem to snow in the wintertime, as in the episode where the babies play in the snow and pretend to go to the north pole.

However, in The Rugrats Movie, it is implied that the family lives close to Interstate 99, so the setting could also be somewhere in central Pennsylvania. This could be a script or drawing goof, as California has a state California State Route 99 serving the east side of the San Joaquin Valley.

Brief history

The series debuted on August 11, 1991 (with "Tommy's First Birthday") as part of Nick's latest move: commissioning its own animated series (known as Nicktoons), along with Doug and Ren and Stimpy. It went out of production in 1994, but after increased ratings when shown in primetime it was revived in 1997, subsequently leading to 3 movies: The Rugrats Movie (1998), which became the first non-Disney animated movie to earn $100 million in the US, Rugrats in Paris (2000), and Rugrats Go Wild! (2003), a crossover with The Wild Thornberrys that was hated by many fans. Despite the fact that The Rugrats Movie did very well at the box office, many fans feel that this was the moment when Rugrats jumped the shark.

In 2001, the show celebrated its 10th anniversary by making a special one-hour episode about what the Rugrats would be like 10 years older. After the special had aired, Klasky-Csupo said that they had no plans to make a series about it. The special became one of the highest rated episodes in Nick's history. Nick eventually commissioned a full series, All Grown Up!, which started its regular run in November 2003 (a sneak peek full episode named Coup DeVille had aired earlier in April). Many fans feel that AGU has taken a step in the right direction, while others feel that it takes away from the show's original premise, and reduces it to something that, at best, vaguely resembles the show that many people grew to love in the 1990s, and pales in comparison to the writing, acting, artwork, and even music of the original show. Still, it is considered the best cartoon Klasky-Csupo has made since 1998. Meanwhile, production on the Rugrats series (along with that of most of the other Klasky-Csupo shows) was eventually shut down, and the last new episode ("Hurricane Alice") aired on August 1, 2004.

In 2005, Klasky-Csupo announced that they were reviving the original Rugrats as a series of DVDs based on classic fairy tales. The first were based on Snow White and Jack and the Beanstalk.

Criticism and Popularity

The first three or four seasons of Rugrats were (and remain) exceedingly popular. Despite the crude animation style which turned some viewers off, the early episodes boasted effective but subtle references to popular culture and occasionally but rarely then-current events (for example, in "Tommy And The Secret Club" Angelica worries about Saddam Hussein breaking into her club; there were also references to Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill and George H.W. Bush at different points in the series). Despite the occasional "gross-out"/potty humor, the early episodes were more reliant on amusing dialogue and imagery than juvenile jokes. After the show's revival (and especially after the first movie), the show, though still making occasional culture references, began relying on more bizarre and outlandish plots, and more reliant on gross-out/toilet humor, especially with the addition of Dill to the cast. Two things which many of the show's older fans also found annoying in particular were the show's increased use of malapropisms (such as "diapey" for "diaper", for the most obvious example) and repetitive plots (the babies hear an adult's conversation and misinterperet their words). The death in 1997 of Grandpa's voice, David Doyle, and his replacement by Joe Alaskey, also created a negative reaction from many fans, as did the replacement of Christine Cavanaugh as Chuckie with Nancy Cartwright in 2002. The characters of Kimi and her family were met with a mixed reaction at best, while the Taffy character voiced by Amanda Bynes in the later seasons was almost universally disliked among fans.

Many Nickelodeon viewers remain fans of the first few seasons of the show, while opinion is largely mixed as to the quality of later (1997-onward) episodes. The show has waned in popularity among adults and older children through the years, though it still remains relatively popular with younger children.

Other spinoff plans

Besides All Grown Up! there were plans for two other spinoffs that never made it to air:

  • The Carmichaels was planned to see Susie move away from California to Atlanta, where she apparently has relatives. There were plans to make The Carmichaels into a series as early as the 1999-2000 TV season, but plans involving the toddler Rugrats had put the new series' plans on ice. Subsequently, when plans for All Grown Up! and Angelica and Susie's School Daze (below) came up, concerns for continuity led to this idea being shelved for good. The "Kwanzaa" ep (2001) serves as the show's pilot.
  • Angelica and Susie's Pre-School Daze was planned to be about the titular characters going to pre-school. 13 eps had originally been ordered, and slated to premiere late 2002, and was also intended to feature new looks for the two characters. The most recent official word on this series was in this press release for All Grown Up!, when it was announced that it was reduced to just 4 episodes. There were also complications involving the planned new animation designs for the characters. The Pre-School Daze ep (made for 2002, aired 2004) serves as the show's pilot, and used the regular Rugrats look (as did the other episodes involving the preschoolers that actually aired before that ep in the US). Klasky-Csupo finally completed the 4 episodes of the series [1].

However, the Rugrats as babies live on in the direct-to-DVD feature animation series Rugrats: Tales From The Crib.

Trivia

  • The Pickles are a mixed Jewish-Christian family. Many fans say the Pickles are somewhat based on Klasky's real family (for example, as in the show, she is from southern California and in real life she is a Jew and married to a Christian). There are two episodes that reflect the Pickles' Jewish heritage, one episode deals with the Passover holiday and the other with Hanukkah (in addition to episodes about Christmas, Easter, etc.). These episodes have been praised by Jewish groups and are re-run every year on Nick at the appropriate holiday times and can also be purchased on VHS or DVD.

See also

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations from:


Nicktoons
Doug | Rugrats | The Ren and Stimpy Show | Rocko's Modern Life | AAAHH!!! Real Monsters | KaBlam! | Hey Arnold! | The Angry Beavers | Oh Yeah! Cartoons | CatDog | The Wild Thornberrys | SpongeBob SquarePants | Rocket Power | Pelswick | As Told by Ginger | Invader ZIM | The Fairly OddParents | ChalkZone | The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius | My Life as a Teenage Robot | All Grown Up! | Danny Phantom | Fatherhood | Avatar: The Last Airbender | Catscratch
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