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This show has a wiki of its own: Jimmy Neutron Wiki.

Nickelodeon_Jimmy_Neutron_Premiere_promo_(2002)

Nickelodeon Jimmy Neutron Premiere promo (2002)

Premiere promo

3-list-jimmy-neutron-characters
Jimmy Neutron cast and crew

The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius (or just The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron and often shortened as Jimmy Neutron like the film) is an American computer-animated television series and the sixteenth major Nicktoon created by John A. Davis and Steve Oedekerk for Nickelodeon. The series was made as a follow-up to the theatrical motion picture Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. This is also the first computer-animated Nicktoon. The series was animated by DNA Productions in Dallas, Texas, as was the movie. The show concluded in 2006.

Premise

The show is about Jimmy Neutron, a 10-year-old boy genius who gets in and out of trouble by inventing extraordinary gadgets and fighting evil enemies along the way. His main catchphrase seems to be "Brain Blast!", which usually comes after Jimmy comes up with an idea, accompanied by a visual of the activity in his brain. He's often joined by his friends Carl Wheezer, Sheen Estevez, Cindy Vortex, and Libby Folfax, and Nick Dean, along with two new recurring ones, Betty Quinlan, and Bolbi Stroganovsky (the replacements for the characters Courtney Tyler and Zachery Jones from the film), and together these friends make up Team Neutron and are off on new and fun adventures, whether it's discovering something about history or fighting evil villains.

At the end of the first season, the show started to evolve more into a comedic adventure show, with Libby's new look (received in the episode, "Beach Party Mummy" (despite being both aired and produced a few episodes later)) standing out most of all. Soon enough, the protagonists started getting more character development and coming out of their shells. Villains such as Professor Calamitous started appearing more as well, and there would be darker and more serious stories (such as "Sheen's Brain", "Win, Lose and Kaboom!", and "The Trouble with Clones"). The plot lines of the first season was mainly targeted for children ages 7-10 while the succeeding seasons of the show had plot lines that were more appropriate for older audiences mainly between the ages of 8-15.

Characters

Main article: List of Jimmy Neutron characters

Episodes

Main article: The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius episode list

Shorts

Main article: Jimmy Neutron interstitial shorts

Broadcast history

  • Nickelodeon (original run, July 20, 2002-November 25, 2006; reruns, November 26, 2006-December 15, 2012)
  • NickToons (January 6, 2003-October 2, 2021)
  • TeenNick (January 9, 2019-July 25, 2020)

Production

The development of Jimmy Neutron first begin in 1995, when John A. Davis decided to make CGI short about a boy called "Johnny Quasar", a nine year old boy genius. When he realized that Johnny's name sounded too much like Jonny Quest, he changed it to "Jimmy Neutron" when he was discussing it with his wife.

Later, he met Keith Alcorn and Steve Oedekerk, who decided to help him redo the series from scratch. They had many inspiration from different sources such as:

  • Sheen was based off of Japanese fanboys and named after the Estevez family of actors (Ramon and Carlos to be exact). Since no one could do anything Japanese, they made him Mexican.
  • Hugh and Judy were based off bumbling fathers and housewives from the 1950's.
  • Retroville was designed to resemble the 50s.

In 1998, the trio showed a 13 minute pilot for the series called "Runaway Rocketboy!" to Nickelodeon. Nick liked it so much, that they decided to make it into a movie and release the show later (due to the trend of CGI in animated films).

Several changes were given to the show when it was being developed; one prime example being Cindy's outfit and hairstyle. At one point, they had plans to give Jimmy a sibling (a little sister, who was a music and art genius, opposite to his math and science genius), but it didn't do well with fandom, so they canned the idea.

Home media

Main article: The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius videography

Paramount Home Video released five VHS tapes and four single-disc DVDs for the series from May 2003 to November 2004. While the first DVD, Confusion Fusion, featured the same episodes on the first two tapes, When Pants Attack and Time Warp, the latter three DVDs included episodes not featured on their adjacent VHS releases. Select Jimmy Neutron episodes also appeared on the Jimmy Timmy Power Hour DVDs and the Nick Picks DVDs. Three manufacture-on-demand two-disc sets collecting select episodes from each season were made available exclusively on Amazon.com from September 5, 2008, to June 4, 2021. A Complete Series set was released by Shout! Factory on October 26, 2021.

Reception

In its early days, the series was falsely accused of ripping off Dexter's Laboratory (a show from rival network Cartoon Network). But overtime, people saw how the show developed its own identity and have praised it for its character development, wonderful stories, continuity and animation. To this day, it is considered one of the last great Nicktoons ever made and one of the most iconic ones, as well.

Cancellation

Although the producers originally wanted to make a fourth season, all plans for this season were scrapped due to DNA Productions' closing as the result of the lackluster performance of The Ant Bully. Four scripts were written for the season, but two of these scripts were not revealed. The new season was planned to be more serious and darker than the previous. The premiere of the season, entitled "Deep Impacts," would be the return of Evil Jimmy, who would have struggled with Jimmy in their definitive last encounter during a battle on the moon. Another episode entitled "Three's a Crowd" was planned to be part of this season to explore the relationship of Cindy and Betty. Nick Dean was also set to return as part of the main cast, Cindy and Jimmy would have become an official couple, new and old villains would have returned and appeared, and the League of Villains would have made more appearances. It was thought of that the series, in terms of year runs, would have been the third longest running Nicktoon series behind SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly OddParents, but such a production and assets to O Entertainment and DNA Productions would have been too costly.

External links

This show has a wiki of its own: Jimmy Neutron Wiki.

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