The 1990s were a golden age of television animation. But cartoons are a business,
and even the most beloved shows are sometimes cancelled to make room for
more profitable programming. Here's the real reason these '90s cartoons were cancelled.
In the 1990s, Fox became the only place on broadcast TV where primetime animation could
find an audience and flourish creatively. Following the success of The Simpsons, the
network debuted another, very different show about a cartoon family in early 1997: King of the Hill.
Created by Beavis and Butt-Head mastermind Mike Judge, the low-key but hilarious series centered
on Hank Hill, an extremely uptight family man from the town of Arlen, Texas, who loved beer,
football, and selling propane. He often struggled to relate to his weird tween son, Bobby.
"Teaching my boy the facts of life is my job."
"You got that right."
"Mm-hmm."
King of the Hill earned all kinds of Emmy attention and was a consistent
hit with viewers: It remained on the Fox lineup for well over a decade.
But after 259 episodes, King of the Hill was out of gas:
Its final episode "To Sirloin with Love" aired just before the start of the 2009-2010 TV season.
King of the Hill helped further popularize network cartoons,
but ironically the show was forced to step aside for a new animated series.
Shortly after Fox announced its final order of King of the Hill episodes,
it gave a full season pickup to The Cleveland Show, a spinoff of the hit cartoon Family Guy.
Before a slew of blockbuster X-Men movies hit the silver screen, kids got to know Professor Xavier's
crew of superpowered mutants on Fox's Saturday morning staple X-Men: The Animated Series.
Based on the Marvel comics that date back to the '60s, the show was mostly serialized,
with viewers required to turn in each week to see how multi-part storylines played out.
X-Men: The Animated Series debuted on Fox in 1992 and eventually moved to its
weekend morning time slot, where it aired until 1997. That's a bit longer than the
network or producers had envisioned. The show was only supposed to run 65 episodes,
a standard production run for an animated show in the '90s. Fox ultimately wanted a total of
76 episodes… and once those 76 episodes were finished, so was X-Men: The Animated Series.
"I miss you. I never knew how much I would."
"We all miss her, Scott. The question is: How do we move on without her?"
Doug premiered in 1991, and it was one of the sweetest,
gentlest cartoons of its era. It was told from the point of view of awkward tween Doug Funnie,
who makes up for his painful shyness with a wildly active fantasy life.
"This wasn't so hard. Maybe if I kept at it."
"Yeah."
Nickelodeon ended production on Doug in 1994. Shortly after that, Disney purchased ABC and
launched the "One Saturday Morning" programming block. According to Doug creator Jim Jinkins,
Disney aggressively pursued his animation studio Jumbo Pictures
because it wanted Doug. In Slimed: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age, Jinkins asked,
"So, should I stay with Nickelodeon, who is through with me [...] or get bought by Disney,
where we get to create 65 new half hours of Doug, a feature-length movie, Doug Live! for their
theme park, toys, books, additional funding for development and production on many new series?"
In 1996, Brand Spanking New Doug hit ABC.
More focused on the business side of Doug, Jinkins wasn't around to maintain quality,
and the show arguably went downhill when others stepped in. Casting director Wendy Litwack said,
"Doug suffered when it changed to Disney because of network intervention."
The new Doug came to a conclusion at the end of its third season, followed by a big-screen movie.
Hey Arnold! joined the Nicktoons lineup in 1996,
and quickly became one of Nickelodeon's most popular and enduring shows. For five seasons,
fans eagerly tuned in to watch the many adventures of this group of highly independent city kids.
"Steel mill? We're at the steel mill?"
"Sure, where'd you think you were?"
"This train isn't haunted?"
In 1998, Nickelodeon renewed Hey Arnold! and ordered a feature film, which creator
Craig Bartlett began working on after the fifth season: It was a straight-to-video project called
Arnold Saves the Neighborhood, but it was also released to theaters as Hey Arnold! The Movie.
The movie flopped in 2002, earning only $13 million at the American box office.
That marked the end of Hey Arnold! in any form...
until Bartlett returned to Nickelodeon to produce Hey Arnold: The Jungle Movie in 2016.
Roseanne Barr ruled ABC in the late '80s and early '90s. Roseanne, the sitcom based
on her stand-up comedy act, finished the 1989-90 season as the #1 show on network TV.
In the fall of 1990, the network tried to capitalize on her popularity with a Roseanne
Barr show just for kids: a Saturday morning cartoon called Little Rosey.
Little Rosey revolved around an eight-year-old version of Barr.
Nobody from the Roseanne sitcom voiced their animated kiddie counterparts - not even Barr.
ABC tried to interfere with the production early on, requesting
that Rosey's friend group include more boys. It was reportedly a difficult show to make,
and ratings weren't so great. No wonder Little Rosey only lasted one season.
"Mrs. Canker, I want you to know I'm sorry I kicked the ball into your yard.
We don't do it on purpose, and we don't like to bother people."
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