How did Nickelodeon Revolutionize Television?

did you feel like it transformed your summer? I mean, this is when you can't do that on television. Was on and I just thought it was the funniest show in the world. It almost felt like it was written by kids, four kids. But Double Dare was really what caught fire with the other kids in the neighborhood. And we didn't know how TV worked, so we just assumed one day like Double Dare would come to town and they'd call us on the phone, and we just have

to be prepared for that moment. So every day, honestly, every day, we'd like quiz each other on trivia questions and then we'd like create these ridiculous physical challenges. We had a creek behind our house, so we'd get all money and like roam through it and we'd like climb trees and whatever we could come up with. And uh, you know, we practiced hard because we knew one day that call was going to come and it had to so so so did it finally come for you? I mean,

of course not. You know, that hasn't reduced my enthusiasm for Nickelodeon. And today we're talking about everything from the channel's early history to how it became synonymous with slime, to why it really got into the cartoon business. So let's dive in. Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Manes Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof blasts wearing a spa on recreation

of quail Man. You know, the Quailman costume from from Doug. Of course, that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now you remember quail Man, right mano vaguely. He was the kind of the imaginary superhero persona that Doug was always doodling in his little journal. You remember this. So I like Doug, but I was really more of a hey, Arnold guy myself. I'll be honest, I'm with you on that. But you know, it's tough to choose a favor from

so many of the iconic shows from Nickelodeon. The network's golden age gave us so many memorable characters. In fact, I'm not sure if you knew this, but Nickelodeon is actually going through a bit of a resurgence right now, and that's thanks largely to the nostalgia that people feel for those early shows. Yeah, it's funny to me because my son was at camp and while they were waiting at pick up, like, they were all watching Rocco's Modern Life, and I could believe it. It feels like a TV

show that was so many generations ago. Well, and actually, if you you look at the Hollywood headlines from recent years, I mean it's kind of crazy how many old Nick shows are currently set for revivals and reboots. So I was just making a list of these. You've got Hey Arnold, Rocko's Modern Life, Doubled Air, which is awesome. Clarissa explains, it all. Are you afraid of the Dark Invader, zim Ren and Stimpy and the Wild Thornberries. I mean, the

list just goes on and on. Yeah, that's got everything on there except Dog for some reason. Yeah, but you know that that is, of course a notable emission. But maybe today's show will drum up some interest and a Doug come back. And you know, with Nickelodeon being back in the limelight, now feels like a pretty good time to take a closer look at the network's history and trying to get a sense of what made those Nick

shows so special in the first place. And also I think we both just want to know how they got into the slime business to begin with. That's right, But I do feel like we're getting a little ahead of ourselves because Nickelodeon wasn't always the network that Slime built. In fact, in its earliest days, it wasn't even called Nickelodeon.

Back in the network launched as Pinwheel, which was this low budget channel aimed at preschoolers, and this was during the earliest days of cable tv, and and then after two years of modest success, the network decided to expand its audience and in that process is when it was rebranded as Nickelodeon, which is I guess that that word means kind of like an old movie theater, right, Yeah, so I didn't actually realize that like a Nickelodeon was

this pop up small theater. And and the name actually comes from a combination of the admission price, which was obviously just a nickel, and the Greek word for theater. Apparently, the first of these Nickelodeon's opened in Pittsburgh, and this was way back in and then they popped up all over the country for the next five years or so, at least until the larger movie palaces began to replace them. And it wasn't something I thought about as a kid.

I just I didn't even know the word came from anything. But it does feel like a little bit of a weird name for kids network in hindsight. Yeah, that's true. And and actually people in general tend to be a little confused about the word really means, and that's partly because of a popular song from the late forties includes the line put another nickel in the nickelodeon, which was I guess more of a coin operated jukebox or music

box or piano player. I don't know exactly what it was, but there's actually a third meaning to Nickelodeon, which refers to these old timey movie picture viewers where you turn a crank and through like a viewfinder you'd watch a short vaudeville act or something. And it's actually that last one that the network had in mind when they chose the name Nickelodeon. Nickelodeon's first logo was a cartoon I'm

looking into a viewer. I've never seen this before, but apparently it was shown as an interstitial between shows, and the mind would always turn the crank when the next program was about to start. Yeah, and I can't imagine the mime logos stuck around for all that long though, right Like, it feels like a very outdated idea to even be using a mime in the first place. Yeah, it really was, And the network changed logos a few

times in those early years. Eventually they settled on this big silver pinball with the name of the channel written in rainbow letters, and they stuck with that until the iconic orange splat logo hit the scene. And this was in alright, so everybody can remember that one or everybody that watched TV in this generation. So, so how did that come about exactly? Because it is this strange transition to go from mind a pinball to orange slime. I

wouldn't say it's a very clear cut progression. Yeah, The slime actually debuted on the network's first hit show, You Can't Do That on Television, which we talked about earlier. The series had started abroad in ninety nine, but Nickelodeon did begin airing it until I Guess one in the US, and it featured both scripted and improvised skits with a few adults and a rotating cast of teen actors or preteen actors actually, and those were the first folks that

were slimed by Nickelodeon. So if at that point, so it slime was a recurring part of the sketches, I mean, I feel like that would be hard to write in over and over again. So that's the thing. Apparently, the green slime was Roger Price's idea. He was the show's creator, and he came up with it as kind of a punishment for whenever one of the kids would say I don't know during a sketch. I'm sure you remember that

was a code word to get slimmed. And I always thought it was just like a fun joke, but the phrase really got on his nerve. And then Price also took to dumping water on the actors whenever they said water. But that was just because he thought it was funny. I mean, it was pretty funny. It was always exciting as a kid to see this happening. And of course would pretend to have these kinds of scenes at home where you'd say I don't know and pretend to dump

slime on each other. But it is funny that he came up with this idea just because the phrase got on his nerves. I mean, it doesn't really sound like the type of guy who should be working with kids. Yeah, And I think the network was more or less aware of that, because the show actually had this rule where no parents were allowed on set and the kids weren't

allowed to take scripts home with them either. But to be fair, when the cast started complaining about how frequently they were getting slimed and soaked, Price did start paying out bonuses of twenty five or fifty dollars for each sliming. So these kids, every time they got slimed, they would get an extra payment, and it feels like maybe they would just start saying I don't know, on purpose, just like an extra fifty buck. But it also feels like a lot of effort just to keep the whole Slime

gag going. I mean, it was kind of out of necessity. What's interesting is that you can't do that on televion, and it was pretty much all the network had going for it at this point, and even that wasn't enough because the channel had lost four million dollars and they routinely finished last in ratings among table channels. Wow. I mean, it's kind of surprising to look back because that was such a popular show that it's hard to remember that there was a time where they weren't doing that well.

So so how did they manage to turn things around? So this is so strange, But the thing that actually turned it around was the Slime, or at least I guess this like wild messy attitude, you know that Slime represents. There was no other place on television where kids could see themselves acting up right alongside grown ups or playing games, joking around and of course making a huge mess as well. And people at the network took notice of this appeal.

I mean, this sounds dumb, but that summer I was talking about the reason we all love Nickelodeon so much was that instead of being something dished out and given to kids, it actually felt inclusive, like kids were part of the process or something, and that it was created for you. And honestly, it's it's part of that spirit that we were trying to tap into. Like at Mental Plus, it was super playful without ever talking down and everyone

was welcome. Except now I'm thinking we should have used more Slime in the process, and we missed this opportunity. But but speaking what you were talking about the logo, so obviously Slime was the network surprise breakout star from that show, and and I'm curious, is that where the

Splat logo comes in. Yeah, So, with the channel struggling overall, the network president decided to hire a team to overhaul the Nickelodeon brand and they decided to use Slime as a jumping off point and the first thing to go was the Pinball logo and to replace it, there was this designer named Tom Corey. He came up with a familiar splat logo. He actually saw this as something that was expressive and flexible and Corey used two colors for the logo. He used orange and lime green, which basically

became the networks go to palette from then on. But the reason he chose those was because they're both international distress colors, so of course he hoped they'd command the same attention when were on screen. Okay, I mean it makes a lot of sense, and I do like his point about the flexibility of a logo like that. I mean,

you know, Nickelodeon was using that pretty literally. When you remember watching the channel, you'd see all those I guess those bumpers between shows where that splat logo would come onto the screen like a sticker and then it would reform into like a dog bone or a hat or a blimp or whatever it was, and it was it was just this fun way to communicate the kind of energy and imagination that you expect from a network like this. Definitely, And another thing that came out of this rebranding effort

was the networks association with do Walk Music. So I didn't remember this, but prior to Nickelodeon didn't have many original productions and the only way to communicate that attitude and vibe of the network was through these thirty second

on air promotions. So they've got this flexible logo. Now that's super fun, but they also need an audio hook, and the folks there look and look, and then some research shows up that kids actually respond really well to do you Want music, So that's what they went with. Then a couple of animators were brought in, and pretty soon Nickelodeon commercial breaks were filled with these uh sneaker wearing dinosaurs who just danced around to do wop. It's weird because I know that's been so long, but I

can remember this so vividly. But I'm curious, though, did it? Did it work? Yeah? It's really remarkable. Within six months of rebranding, Nickelodeon had become the number one channel for children's programming, which was the title that actually held onto for decades, even the face of all the new competition

from Disney and Cartoon Network and wherever else. I mean six months that is pretty remarkable, and especially when you remember that none of the nicktoons existed at this point, right, I mean, the network had picked up some I guess some pre existing cartoons to rebroadcast. There was the days where they even had Looney Tune shorts on there the

Danger Mouse Show from England. But you know, if you think about original cartoons like rug Rats and Dog, I mean, those are still a good ways off because we're still talking about the mid eighties at this point, right, That's right, And most of the success Nickelodeon had prior to the nineties really was on the creativity of its ad bumpers and the appeal of slime. Well, I do want to get to those nicktoons of the nineties, but first, I

think we have to talk about Double There. I mean, we just we just have to talk about Double There is big of a part of our childhood as this was, and it was the first hit the network produced in house. But even more importantly, Double There probably slimed more unsuspecting kids and parents than any other show in NICK history. Well, I mean, you know, I'm a huge Double R fan. I'm still waiting for that call. But before we dive in, let's take a quick break. You're listening to Part Time

Genius and we're talking all about Nickelodeon. Of course, this children's media empire built on I guess a sticky foundation of slime, you could say. And and speaking of slime, I don't know about you, Mango, but one thing I've always wondered while watching Doubledare was what that goopy green stuff was actually made of and when If you look online, there are a million different recipes for homemade slime, with ingredients from like corn syrup to what my kids use of,

you know, school glue. But I've always wanted to get my hands on the real deal, you know, like some of that professional slime I guess you call it. I mean, I can't speak for the slime on Double Dare, but I can tell you that you definitely don't want to recreate the first slime DApp here on Nickelodeon. And why is that? Apparently the initial batch of slime for you can't do that on television was just a mix of green latex paint and leftover food scraps from the studio cafter,

so it was disgusting. It was refined later to be this mix of cream wheat food coloring in baby shampoo, which is also disgusting, but way better for all the shows slime dumping needs. And while it's still gross, you know, it's definitely better than straight up garbage, you know. All I remember of cream of wheat when I used to eat it as a kid. Where how tiny those boxes were. So now I'm imagining them having to get like thousands and thousands of tiny cream of wheat boxes just to

make this slime. You know, if you think about, if nothing else, it's interesting to trace this evolution of slime across the different shows. Like I was reading about some of the ingredients that they'd used over the years. I read cottage cheese and vegetable oil were also a key ingredient at one point. And you know, to come back to the idea of double dare the host Mark Summers. He claims the show's slime was made from vanilla putting, apple sauce, oatmeal, green food coloring, and by the third

day anything else that was on the obstacle course. So do they really reuse the same bash across multiple days stuff? Yes, And and bear in mind when the show was at peak production, they were taping like six or seven episodes a day, So you know, imagine these kids slepting through these messy obstacle courses covered in that same week old apple sauce, as you know, the last contestant had. And actually I came across a pretty funny story about it

in this this interview with the show's announcer. His name was John Harvey, and here's what he said. You know, that tank we filled with styrofoam, peanuts or balloons or sometimes water in the obstacle course. It was pretty long, fifteen or twenty ft, and we'd fill it with various crap. One time we filled it, like, I don't know, a third of the way up with baked beans. When you empty that many baked beans into a tank, you want

to get your money's worth. So we shot a week's worth of shows with baked beans at the end of the week, shooting day in and day out under hot lights. It was pretty right. So, I mean, you can just imagine how gross that view with all the studio lies just baking all that squishy food beneath it, And you know, I feel bad for the contestants, but also just think about the poor stage hand whose job it was to empty the tank at the end of the week. That

just feels so gross. Yeah, I feel way worse for that person than I would any of the kids, because you know, the kids love it. No matter how bad it smelled. The worst it smelled, the more excited they were. But I am glad that you mentioned this because Robin Russo was actually the long suffering stage assistant who had to deal with this kind of thing and come up with ways to clean up after these huge messes. And according to her, they actually called in one of those

big vacuum trucks. Those are the ones that are nicknamed honey wagons, and it's what people used to empty things like septic tanks and porta potties. And apparently when the technician had finished sucking out all those baked beans that we were talking about, you know, sucking those through a giant hose, what he said that the crew was He said it was by far the most disgusting thing he'd ever had to do, which is probably the highest phrase you can get on a supergross kids game show. Totally.

I am curious, though, Like, did you get a sense for how Double Dare happened in the first place? Like, I know the network had a slew of game show hits after in the nineties, but Double Dare really felt so different from anything before it on TV. Yeah, it

was very different than anything you'd seen before. So game shows were never really a staple of children's programming in the same way that cartoons or variety shows were, And in fact, the reason Nickelodeon decided to try one of these out it actually had more to do with corporate sponsorship than anything else. So in the mid eighties, the network was approached by a production group that had already signed nabisco On as a sponsor, and so apparently the

game show slant was really more Nabisco's idea. And so as a cookie and snack company, you know, they didn't have any characters or toys to promote through animated pieces, so they figured that a game show might actually be a better way to get their brands on kids TV. So did a n Abiscoe come up with the whole format to like this idea of mixing trivia questions with crazy physical challenges and all those obstacle courses. Now, I mean that that all really came from the show's producers.

They happen to be big fans of the board game mouse Trap and also of Rube Goldberg machines, And actually that was basically the premise that kicked the whole thing off. You know, one of them said, wouldn't it be fun if you made a Rube Goldberg machine, but instead of a ball, it was a person. I mean, the the thing that's so associated with Double Dare to me is is Mark Summers. Definitely. I don't know. He just seems like one of those guys who was born to be

a game show host. And obviously I mean that in the best possible way. Oh absolutely, And I think he would say the same thing. I mean, the guy had been a huge game show fan his whole life. His first job in l A was actually working on Bob Barker's old show that was called Truth or Consequences. Plus the guy is even a member of the Stage Magician's League, so you know, he was definitely a performer who knew how to build this connection with the audience and you know,

knew how to keep a show moving along. But you know, when we're talking about him, there is one aspect of Summer's background that didn't gel so much with Double Dare. I'm guessing you're talking about his O C. D. That is exactly what I'm referring to, and the irony of someone with that condition hosting probably the messiest game show in the world wasn't lost on the host. In fact interview that he did with Oprah a summer set of

the experience. It was like a bad sitcom there. I was hosting a tell of vision show where people were throwing green buckets of goo on each other and I was having a good time. But you take what was going on in that show and multiply it. If you watch the first sixty episodes, I never got a drop on me. The kids would be over there just consumed and whipped cream and chocolate, and I'd be over here.

And at some point the producers came to me and said, you know, you really do have to participate as much as possible, And to Mark Summer's credit, he totally did after that. In fact, I don't think Mark Summers ever let his aversion to messiness interfere with the fun of the show, which is probably a big part of the reason he was brought back to host later incarnations of the show. And even though he seated his hosting duties for the two thousand eighteen version of Doubledare, He'll still

be there for every episode as the new announcer. You know, I do like that every time it gets brought back, we can always depend on those two constant Slime and Mark summers and a giant prop nos for kids to dig flags out of that too, so I know where both had to talk about the dawn of Nicktoons in the early nineties. But before we do, I actually want to take this on one more quick tangent about slime,

and in particular, toy slime. So of course, in the nineties, Mattel and Nickelodeon teamed up for their own line of nick branded slime, and they made a bundle off it because the slime later spawned this whole line of sticky goops with ridiculous sounding names. You've got ghack, Floam, smud zsand, which I've never heard of, but it has two z's at the start of it for maximum wackiness. I guess I feel like you made up most of those things

that I do remember. Ghak, which was it was not only gross looking, but it also made this this weird like farting noise when you squeezed it into the container. So of course this was a hit with all the kids. But you know what's kind of messed up about this name. The name gak actually comes from a slang term for heroin. Did you know this? I mean, I didn't know that, but I assume that's coincidental. Yeah, well, apparently the Rowdy Double their crew gave it the nickname and somehow sneaked

it by the network. Since that's crazy. So obviously we're familiar with some of the slime toys that came out more recently, but I wanted to take a sec to tell you about what's considered the first toy slime as we know today, and that's Flubber or flying Rubber. Yes, and of course we remember this from the absent Minded Professor movies, and so they made a toy version of it, right. Yeah. In in nine, Disney partnered with Hasbro to make something that was supposed to be just as stretchy and bouncy

as the on screen counterpart. Obviously that's impossible, but the whole thing was a disaster. It bounced and it stretched, but it also caused filicky litis, which I guess is this infection of the hair follicles. So right after the toy hit shelves, there were all these cases of kids getting sick with fevers and sore throats and these full body rashes and it was horrible. But that's not even

the worst part. So the company pulls the product from shelves, and it's at least a decade before another toy company even attempts to sell another toy slime again. So I guess you could say abbertaining the good name of slime for an entire generation, and that is just so sad. But I'm really curious, like, what do you do with all that extra slime? They just send it off to the landfill. So that's actually my favorite part of the story.

Hasbro tried to incinerate the stuff, but rather than burning up, the slime just smoldered and let off this toxic black smoke. So then they got the coast guard involved to help them sink the stuff in the ocean, but then it floated back up to the surface again and they had to try something else, and in the end, the company just buried all the remaining tons of unsould flavor and then they paved over it to make a parking lot for the new warehouse in Rhode Island, and it's still

in use today. Oh my gosh. All right, well that was a pretty good tangent. But I think it's finally time for us to talk nicktoons. Absolutely, But first let's take a quick break. Okay. Well, so this is gonna sound weird, but I have to tell you just one more thing about Toys Line, and you've got to bear with me, because I promise this part ties in perfectly to the creation of those Nicktoons you wanted to talk about. All right, well, I'm curious to see how you pull

this off, so so go ahead. Okay. So in the nineteen eighties, the state of Toys Line was looking grim again, and rather than being sold on its own merits like in the glory days of the seventies, Toys Line was now stuck playing second fiddle to other toys. So if you think about it, instead of like buying a little tub of generic slime and pretending it was toxic waste, you'd buy he Man play set that you was slime into a pit, or maybe you'd have like a Ghostbusters

figure that came with some ectoplasm. And obviously this slime had to make sense for the toy. But it's interesting that slime was no longer kind of a big enough draw on its own, and it had to have some kind of franchise pined to it. I mean, I guess that's kind of set, but but I'm curious, what's the

connection with with nicktoons? Right, so I'm getting to that you might remember this, but back in the eighties, Reagan rolled back the regulations about marketing to children, and that basically opened the floodgates for all kinds of programming based directly on toys and games, and this had never been allowed previously. In fact, the shift was so dramatic that between cartoons that featured licensed characters increased on TV by

about three Oh wow. Alright, So so you're saying that, just like with toy slime, you couldn't just have a toy unless it was attached to some side of like a cartoon character or something. Yeah, that definitely helped and the market started going that way. But it was the other way for cartoon companies to like, like, you wouldn't commission a cartoon unless you could build a toy franchise

off of it. And that's exactly why Nickelodeon shied away from making their own original cartoons during the eighties, Like they just didn't have the cash to invest in animation without the money to also produce a toy line to help make it profitable. All right, Well, so then what change, Well, basically, this woman named Vanessa Coffee showed up at the studio and she started pushing the network to bring back original cartoons.

She'd worked in development at Marvel for nearly a decade at that point, and she was doing toy line tie in shows that this was like Transformers or g I Joe. And for a while she was feeling pretty burnt out and worried that she might be over animation entirely. But then it hit her like she still loved telling stories through animation. She just hated feeling like all she was doing was making toy commercials. And so what was Coffee's

roll on on the Nicktoons. She got her start with Nickelodeon by producing their animated Thanksgiving special, and after that they hired her as a consultant to hunt down original ideas for potential shows. And the network still wasn't sold on the idea of like making their own cartoons, but they were curious to see what Coffee could come up with, and she was eager to show them too, And and she later said of the experience, quote, it's not even what Nick needed. I felt like it's what kids needed.

I felt like kids were being sold toys on television, and there was no emotional depth to anything. It felt like there was no substance. I mean, I do kind of like that this. It feels like this was actually a labor of love for her. She was basically a one woman animation department. She was meeting with creators, scouring literary scene for like promising stories, and and then once the execs actually saw the pilot she'd been testing, they

made her vice president of animation on the spot. It's kind of amazing, And her very first task was to fill a ninety minute time slot with three cartoons and the series. We're all supposed to debut in August, and it's pretty amazing when you see that. You know, those nicktoons are all legendary, like rug Rats, Doug Ren, and Stimpy. I mean, she was three for three right out of the gate. What's also interesting is that the shows are rooted in such totally different concepts, and it turns out

that was completely by design. Vanessa Coffee set out to find shows that would form what she referred to as a balanced meal. So us listening to her describe how should put that initial block of programming together, quote, what's really good for you? Would be Doug that's kind of the broccoli that was going to be the emotional, psychological meal. And then I wanted to have a show that was spaghetti and meatballs. That's Rugrats. It's really fun to eat and you get something out of it, but it's not

like vegetables. It's spaghetti and meatballs. And then I want to dessert that's ren and stimpy, which has no actual value and there's absolutely nothing good for you in it. It's just sugar. I mean, I do kind of love that. I'm not sure that most people would recognize this as broccoli, spaghetti, meatballs and pure sugar. I don't know how much of a balanced meal it actually is, but I mean it does make a lot of sense, and it seems so

smart in retrospect. And you know, going back to how distinct these shows were, it's not just that they were different from each other. I mean they were unlike anything else on TV at the time. I mean, you know, not only did they lack that, you know, kind of common book approach and a toy line or anything like that, but the characters they focused on were completely different. I mean there was no crime fighting or warring aliens or

robot invaders and instead you just had ordinary kids. I mean, these were characters the viewers could actually, I don't kind of kind of see themselves in. Yeah. I mean that's a great point. And so many cartoons are just about pure escapism, and don't get me wrong, I I think that should always have a place at the table. But those early nicktoons seemed to offer something so much more substantial.

Like Doug, for instance, it's about a quiet kid moving to a new town and he's dealing with stuff like bullies and school crushes and rug rats, like like, that's just a group of toddlers learning to navigate a world where everything is strange and confusing and so much bigger than them. And I don't know, I mean, like everyone should be able to relate to that. Yeah, And and granted that's that's not exactly true of Running Stimpy, but even there, the show's irreverence and and just kind of

that general anarchist attitude. It's certainly captured a lot of

what it feels like to be a kid. And the other thing I liked about rend and Stimpy was when they'd parody those TV commercials and other real world stuff that kids were probably just starting to get familiar with Like, remember they do those interstitial commercials in the middle of an episode, and then this announcer would come on and try to sell you a great new product called Log and it was literally just a log, but it was pitched as this kind of like this landmark new product

that everybody wanted. So I love LOG and I think I was in seventh grade when I came out, and I remember we'd always use Log as the name you entered at the Buling Alley because it was three initials long, you know, and you just felt clever for referencing it.

But I I do know what you mean about introducing the world of adults two kids, while also I guess taking it down to peg you know, like like even on Doug, which is kind of the most straight lace of the Nicktoons, you had Doug's neighbor, Mr Dink, who was just completely obsessed with keeping up appearances, and he was always showing off latest like very expensive gadget he'd acquired. I mean, that's a pretty of her lampooning of real

life dads everywhere. But what's sad to me is that I've read that things are more committee driven at Nickelodeon now, which is an approach that I guess is more in line with what the other channels are doing, you know, if you think about like Disney or Cartoon Network. And while it's definitely a safer approach for shareholders from a creative standpoint, it feels like a step backwards from when Vanessa was at the Helm right, Like I think part of what made her approach so special was that she

insisted on working directly with content creators. Like none of those shows we talked about were fully formed ideas when she first came across them. In every case, Coffee worked closely with the creators to develop something original and original characters and stories that we feel fresh to kids, and also capture something that was true about their experience. And and that's just so different from what networks are doing now. Like I think Nickelodeon just bought the rights to Ninja

Turtles a few years back. Yeah, and you know, it's kind of a bomber to see them embracing the toy commercial mentality that they really helped buck just a couple decades ago. I know, But if it's any consolation, hey, Arnold already had its revival last year in the form of a new TV movie, and it went over really well with fans. The original creator and writers came back and even if you cast members, So if they stick to that approach, there's a good shot of more classic

shows stepping into the twenty one century unscathed. Well, we'll keep our keep our fingers crossed on that. And and just because I know the Doug revival is bound to happen sooner or later, I I did want to read this quote from an Atlantic article on the impact of those early nicktoons. So if any Nickelodeon producers are listening, here's something to keep in mind for that Doug reboot. And this is compliments of a writer named Spencer Cornhaber,

So here's what he writes today. Doug stands as the purest distillation of Nickelodeon's simple, soulful interest in the inner lives of kids. Like the rest of his generation, Doug Funny wanted to be different, but wasn't. He wished his massive nose was smaller. He wished he could dance, He wished he were smarter. The show constantly portrayed the false relationship between becoming a better person and becoming a different person.

It grappled again and again with the devastating epiphany of adolescence that there are things about you that you just can't change. I mean, I feel like I'm still coming to terms with all those things, Like I've got a big nose. I wish I could dance. I wish I was smarter. But kudos to Doug to figuring out all that stuff so soon, and and also for helping so many other kids figure it out. Yeah, but you dance

so well with your nose. It's just really impressive. All right. Well, now I feel like we've had our broccoli, and I think it's time that we skip straight to dessert and have ourselves a little fact off. What do you think? I mean? That sounds great to me. You know, Christan has actually been collecting scraps from the staff kitchen all week for a bucket of slime. And what do you

say the loser gets soaked. I don't know. I have a couple of things in common with Mark Summers, but but I'm feeling pretty confident, so let's give it a shot. So did you know that Susanne Collins that the the author of The Hunger Games. She actually started out writing for a slightly less dark show. Clarissa explains at all. That's pretty amazing. Actually, I found a fact about Clarissa that's great. There was a weird rule on the set

that no one could use purple. And this comes from Slimed, which is a book about Nickelodeon history, and it was really a big deal. So Mitchell Kriegman, who created and produced the series, didn't want it on his set, or in his office or anywhere. He didn't even want people wearing it to set. But the funny thing is he actually didn't have anything against the color purple. And this is what he told Slimed. Quote. Clarissa is the first

big show I ever ran. And I had this advice from an old pro in the business who said, the first thing you do when you go down there, come up with something arbitrary that everyone's got to do, and stick to it and never explain it. But apparently people did, you know, realize the human and they tried to sneak it onto the show a few times just for fun. That's a pretty great rule. All right, Well, here's a anything about slime in the creators of Ghostbusters actually threatened

to sue Roger Price. You remember, he was the guy we were talking about who started you Can't Do That on television, So they wanted to sue him for stealing their idea for green slime, but the suit was eventually dropped once they found out that Price had been sliming kids for a good five or six years by that point. I don't know if he was just randomly sliming kids or what this was, but if anything, they might have

actually taken the idea from him. So, speaking of slime, did did you know there's a slime ketchup on the market right now. It's this thicker, gross green stuff called slime Sauce, and Nickelodeon and Walmart combined together to put it out. It costs about two fifty a bottle. And I think that's one one idea I'm going to pass on. But that's pretty funny that it exists. All Well, it turns out the rug Rats creators were actually the ones

behind the Simpson's yellow skin and Marge's blue hair. So before Arlene Klasky and Gabor Supo worked on rug Rats, they actually helped animate the Simpsons. And that's pretty esome. So I actually have a Simpsons fact too, and Apparently the creator of Hey Arnold is Matt Greinigg, who's the Simpsons creator. He's his brother in law. And one bit of advice he gave him was design characters so that they can be recognized from a distance or in silhouettes.

And that's actually why Arnold has such a distinctive football head. That's pretty good, all right. Well here's a fun one. John k who designed Renan Stempy, got the idea after seeing a picture of a Chihuahua in a sweater. Now we're always inspired when we see pictures of chihuahua and sweaters. Well, here's what he said about He said, it's a very funny picture because here's a psychonic looking monster in a cute sweater, which basically sums up in that's pretty funny.

So here's one about dog. Did you know he was almost called Brian? Apparently I didn't friendly the creator. I thought the name was too fancy, so he quote geared it down and called him Doug because it sounded quote incredibly average. And I like that The name Brian just sounds to like sophisticated, fancy stuff. You have fancy pants, Brian.

That's uh, that's pretty good. I will say. I love the idea of starting our show with Tristan's tribute to Doug and ending with him too, so I feel like we should leave it there, and I'm going to give you this week's fact off trophy Mango. I can't wait. Thank you so much, and I guess I'll have to uh to get slim. This is a bummer. But before I do, I do want to um let our listeners know we always love hearing fun facts from you guys.

I know there's some great Nickelodeon stories and some great facts that uh we didn't share today, so we'd love to hear those from You can always email us part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com, or you can hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. But as always, thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the

important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army, including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets the

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