Nicktoons is an American animated comedy series created by Fred Seibert (the creator of Oh Yeah! Cartoons.) for Nickelodeon. The show premiered on August 11, 2016 to go with the 25th anniversary of Nickelodeon animation and Doug, Ren and Stimpy, and Rugrats. It started a run of premiering new episodes on Saturday Nights starting August 20 of that year.
Premise:
The show focuses on the adventures of your favorite Nicktoon characters including Doug, Ren and Stimpy, The Rugrats, SpongeBob SquarePants, Arnold, Rocko, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Avatar Aang, Avatar Korra, Invader Zim, Timmy Turner and Comso and Wanda, Jimmy Neutron, CatDog, The Angry Beavers, Danny Phantom, Lincoln and the Loud Sisters, and More!
Production and Sytle of the Show:
The idea to make a huge crossover between Nicktoons dates back as early as 2005. Around that time, Nickelodeon was in production of a movie called "The Nicktoons Movie", it would've featured characters from SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Riveria, Back at the Barnyard, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Danny Phantom, Tak and the Power of Juju, Kappa Mikey, and Wayside. The movie would be an adventure buddy comedy and would've featured guest stars like Drake Bell and Jamie Lynn Spears, and was scheluded for a Christmas 2007 release, but the flim was cancelled but it was gonna be released the same day with the Alvin and the Chipmunks film and felt like the flim would be too similar to The Simpsons Movie, which came out in July of that year. The idea still stucked with them. In 2010, they were planning to do a mockuentary animated flim where an interviewer would interview the Nicktoons from 1991 to 2011 and learn about the origins, characters, and plans for the future of Nickelodeon, and it was scheluded to be released in summer 2011 to go with 20th anniversary of Nicktoons, but was scrapped. In 2015, Nickelodeon annouced that they would be making a series based on their animated shows. A sneak peek of the show was shown on June 2016 in the form of a short called Nicktoons-A-Munich. The short was used as a promotion for the 2016 Rio Olympics and was a parody of the Hanna Barbera cartoon, Laff-a-Lympics and the Robot Chicken short, Laff-a-Munich.
The show has three segments instead of two segments you see in other cartoons. The three segments formula is a throwback to show from the 1990s like some of Cartoon Network's first shows such as Dexter's Laboratory and Johnny Bravo (which p.s. Butch Hartman worked on those shows before heading to Nickelodeon in 1998). The humor is also something they nailed down too. The humor and comedy is pretty much slapstick, being a throwback to toons like Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Earthworm Jim, and even Ren and Stimpy and the early seasons of SpongeBob. The humor is pretty clever since is relies on irony and the misery of other characters, like The Simpsons. The show even uses realistic pictures like The Amazing World of Gumball. Another thing that makes the show very unique is self awareness. Every character in the show is aware that they're just animated characters with has been done in shows like Animanics and Tiny Toons. Another thing with their self awareness is also with them being aware of their fandom. Examples include SpongeBob refering alot to his internet memes, The Avatar and Korra characters being aware on their shipping fandom, Danny Phantom being creeped out by his fanart, the Nicktoon characters getting annoyed by Dora's lack of paying attention and direction finding, and most one of all......What the Fuck is Uniqua?! This is question that's asked by every single character but Uniqua usually goes The Annoying Orange approach and trolls like how when people ask Marshmallow about his gender. There's also profanity in the show like hell, damn, ass, etc.
Reception:
The show has massive universal acclaim from critics and audiences alike. They praised it for it's use of Nickelodeon's animated characters, humor, animation, and it's feeling to nostalgia. This also was praised by Nickelodeon fandoms for being a bit roasted by the show.