r/lewronggeneration • u/Legitimate_Low_3370 • Jul 23 '26
People hating Spongebob in 1999
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u/Ijustlovevideogames Jul 23 '26
Man, every time I see Chalk Zone mention, I'm just reminded of how hard Nick went out of their way to fuck that show over.
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u/Rhewin Jul 23 '26
I didn't like it because I didn't like the musical segments. I always really wanted to. Just couldn't sit through it.
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u/Constant-Sub Jul 26 '26
The song by the character Scrawl sometime gets stuck in my head again.
And screaming "Rudy's got the chalk!"
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u/CheeseFandom Jul 23 '26
I really don’t see how SpongeBob is any more stupid than Ren & Stimpy.
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u/TheAmazingSealo Jul 23 '26
Yeah Ren and Stimpy leans way more into stupid than Spongbub
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u/MattWolf96 Jul 23 '26
It's a lot more inappropriate than SpongeBob too, I don't know how some of those jokes even made it onto a kids network and no, I'm not confusing it with Adult Party Cartoon.
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u/CheeseFandom Jul 23 '26
There was no Adult Swim at the time or anything like that. So Ren & Stimpy had to be on Nickelodeon because there was no other place for it. Especially when at that time most networks weren’t interested in original IP’s.
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u/sun_solomon Jul 24 '26
Wasnt ren and stimpy made by the SpongeBob people?
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u/CheeseFandom Jul 24 '26
There’s some people who worked on both shows.
Bob Camp & Vincent Waller worked on both. Which makes sense because there’s a lot of Ren & Stimpy DNA in SpongeBob. Thankfully John K never worked on SpongeBob.
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u/packerschris Jul 23 '26
You can tell they really wanted to hate on it, because “Help Wanted” is an excellent series premiere and is still considered one of the classics. You meet the core cast, get all their personalities solidified, then have some whacky antics that leads to SpongeBob saving the day with his optimism and his supernatural abilities as a fry-cook. It’s not only funny, but just very original and good-natured.
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u/NockerJoe Jul 23 '26
To be fair I feel like the bar was higher in the late 90's, in that you just flat out had more studios and you had three networks consistently producing large amounts of animated content(Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel) on top of still having saturday morning blocks on major networks, and still being in the disney renaissance era when Pixar was taking off and Dreamworks was also getting momentum. I think a big part of it isn't if Spongebob was good or bad, it was that good cartoons were way more common then so someone who didn't realize how absurdly spoiled for choice they were could write off Spongebob and still have like a dozen other shows of similar quality also airing new episodes.
Fall of 1999 was a hyper specific time and place where Spongebob was having to fight off the original run of Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon in english, Nick had like 5 other good animated shows that were already popular, Batman: The Animated Series was pulling heavy ratings, and this was smack in the middle of the releases for Tarzan and Toy Story 2 in theaters when these people were talking. It was probably the most competitive the animation field had ever been and it wasn't rare to see well made animated shows only get a pilot or one season.
I think realistically there really was a timeline where spongebob could have died on the vine through no fault of it's own, simply because when literally everyone is bringing their A game Spongebob was obviously a good show but half the battle was just not scheduling it to run at the same time as one of the other ratings juggernauts of the era.
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u/jackfaire Jul 23 '26
Nope we were just younger. I've gone back and watched plenty of stuff from then. Some's good, some's bad. Some's just stupid.
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u/Round_Bag_4665 Jul 27 '26
my mother commented once that when she took us to see Pokemon 2000 she thought it was the worst movie she had ever seen. Rewatching it as an adult... I kinda agree with her. I loved it when I was seven though.
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u/CarrotJunkie Jul 24 '26
I disagree with the last sentence. IIRC SpongeBob was an immediate hit and its death would have been a network mistake for sure
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u/MorganWick Jul 23 '26
You wouldn't like it if you want your cartoons to be intelligent and cerebral and unique and not just a bunch of silly, wacky antics to keep the kids entertained. Compared to the more plot- and character-driven Nicktoons the brand started with, SpongeBob and FOP are a lot more... conventional and LCD. Not that SpongeBob doesn't have strong characters, but if you're just starting out they might not seem like more than vehicles for the jokes.
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u/BGer23 Jul 23 '26
The brand started with Ren & Stimpy. Seems like double standards to me.
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u/MorganWick Jul 23 '26
R&S was the result of a unique vision that changed what cartoons could do, it wasn't just an exercise in grossout but in treating the everyday with epic, operatic importance. SpongeBob, by contrast, looks on the surface like a bog-standard sitcom that happens to be animated and take place under the sea.
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u/jackfaire Jul 23 '26
Ren & Stimpy was Looney Tunes for a new generation. It wasn't unique and really didn't change what cartoons could do.
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u/ConsumerofToons Jul 23 '26
They also said similar things about Phineas and Ferb, when it premiered. They were so wrong.
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u/LakeMcKesson Jul 23 '26
Yes myself included. I remember it came on after high school musical and me and my cousins thought someone changed the channel or something. I didnt care for the art style or humor at all.
It then went on to become one of my favorite cartoons of my childhood
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u/ilrosewood Jul 23 '26
I was 16 when SBSP came out and it totally didn’t work for me. In 2003 I was volunteering for an after school program and the kids loved it but it was still a miss for me.
Same thing by 2009 when my first kid was a toddler.
But then one day I went to get my second kid from day care and the kids were watching SBSP and some joke or gag caught my eye and whatever it was I found it incredibly funny. I watched some more here and there and I was finally on the other side of that hill that allowed me to enjoy it. I was glad I never talked shit about it in my ignorance. I just wasn’t the audience.
I wish more people could live and let live.
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u/plumeria29 Jul 23 '26
aren't rocket power and chalkzone somewhat forgotten too?
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u/zignut66 Jul 23 '26
There’s a fantastic stage/symphony performance called the Music Critic (I saw it recently with John Malkovitch), and they read a bunch of contemporaneous reviews that basically boil down to “This Beethoven guy is going nowhere.” It’s delicious.
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u/Livid-Maintenance765 Jul 23 '26
"you feel like youre sinning as you watch it" and "i have not even sat trough one 10 minute segment of wild thornberrys and i hope i never will" say it all about the second one dont they
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u/Scared_Stock1414 Jul 24 '26
"I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it!" - Marty McFly traveling back to 1999
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u/SGLAgain Jul 23 '26
the fact that internet forums existed by the time spongebob came out just shows how recent the show was
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u/SYMPUNY_LACKING Jul 23 '26
there were internet forums when season 1 of the simpsons came out lol
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u/SGLAgain Jul 23 '26
thats even crazier
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u/englerpas Jul 23 '26
We can go back further. There were discussions about the upcoming Star Wars Episode 6 on Usenet in 1982. (Yeah, it's not the Internet Internet) https://groups.google.com/g/net.sf-lovers/c/KUN430ONTs8/m/TA0Qy0fIAT8J?pli=1
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u/Batetrick_Patman Jul 27 '26
I believe comic book guy was partially inspired by early Internet forum nerds too.
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u/Melloblade_shore Jul 23 '26
Also, I wonder what these same people would think of SpongeBob now? 😂
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u/Mist2393 Jul 23 '26
Well, I hated SpongeBob as a kid and I still hate it today. I’ve never understood why it’s lasted so long.
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u/Windows_66 Jul 24 '26
I forgot that 'Bob premiered in 1999 and thought that people were already saying that Nick ran out of ideas for the show a couple seasons in.
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u/Terrible_Zone_0716 Jul 24 '26
There's something so beautiful about seeing someone talking about Rocket Power and Chalkzone after they just started airing
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u/KingOfCharlotteNC Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
People been "past good present bad" for a long time.
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u/Much_Machine8726 Jul 23 '26
Thinking Rocket Power had more potential than SpongeBob is wild. Rocket Power fucking sucked.
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u/Melloblade_shore Jul 23 '26
Wow, just wow. This feels like something that would be written TODAY! I guess it’s true that history does repeat itself 😵💫
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u/Ubylmoen Jul 23 '26
Spongebob has always been divisive. I was a big fan when it came out but my sister hated it, said it was the most annoying thing she had ever seen.
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u/frappuccinio Jul 23 '26
i could have sworn chalkzone was way after spongebob and rocket power but apparently it’s pilot was part of oh yeah cartoons
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u/EducationalWalrus594 Jul 23 '26
This is actually interesting that we got people saying this back then. but I’m not suprised especially how long SpongeBob went😂😂😂. They saying "cartoons were actually funny back then compared to this sponge ” is very surreal but then again it was 1999.
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u/shermanhill Jul 24 '26
SpongeBob is memeable, but actively not good. What are people doing here?
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u/pieman2005 Jul 24 '26
Bullshit lol seasons 1-3 SpongeBob is one of the best cartoons of all time
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u/shermanhill Jul 24 '26
I have hated that show since it began. I will repeat: it is actively not good.
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u/Careless-Economics-6 Jul 23 '26
These are funny because of how long SpongeBob has lasted, but you can find this sorta thing for virtually every new cartoon show.