Rugrats is a nicktoon on Nickelodeon. Produced at Klasky Csupo, Inc. of Los Angeles, the show is about how babies talk and view life and perceive the events happening around them. Each character is personified with his or her own individual charm.
Characters
- Main article: List of Rugrats characters
Episodes
- Main article: List of Rugrats episodes
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.
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 flag in front of it.
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.
Brief History
The series debuted on August 11, 1991 (with "Tommy's First Birthday") as part of Nickelodeon's latest move: commissioning its own animated series (known as Nicktoons). It went out of production in 1994, but after increased ratings when shown in primetime it was revived in 1997, subsequently leading to 3 films: The Rugrats Movie (1998), which became the first non-Disney animated film to earn $100 million in the US, Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (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. Nickelodeon 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.
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 prompted this idea to be shelved for good. The "Kwanzaa" ep (2001) serves as the show's pilot.
- Angelica and Susie's 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). Latest news: Klasky Csupo has finally completed the 4 episodes of the series [1].
However, the Rugrats as babies will live on in direct-to-DVD feature animation series Rugrats: Tales From The Crib.
Parody
The Rugrats intro was parodied in an episode of Animaniacs
Trivia
- Rugrats was the most popular show on Nickelodeon before SpongeBob SquarePants.
- The Rugrats received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in a ceremony on June 28, 2001. It was placed at 6600 W. Hollywood Bl., near Cherokee Ave. outside a toy and costume shop.(Klasky-Csupo press release)
- The Rugrats had a daily comic strip that ran from 1998 to 2003.
- The Pickles are a mixed Jewish-Christian family. Many fans say the Pickles are somewhat based on Arlene Klasky's real family (for example, as in the show, she is from southern California and in real life she is Jewish 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 Chanukah (in addition to episodes about Christmas, Easter, etc.). These episodes have been praised by Jewish groups and are re-run every year on Nickelodeon at the appropriate holiday times and can also be purchased on VHS or DVD.
See also
External links
- Nickelodeon's Rugrats site
- Klasky-Csupo's Rugrats area on cooltoons.com (Studio site)
- Rugrats daily comic strip at Creators Syndicate
- Rugrats at the Big Cartoon DataBase
- Unofficial Rugrats homepage by Steve
- Rugrats at the Internet Movie Database]]