What A Cartoon! - Invader ZIM - "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy" & "Hamstergeddon"

I'm late to this podcast but as fans of dark children's animation I think you guys should give Grim Adventures another shot. It may have started out feeling derivative of other gross out comedy cartoons but it really comes into its own and they end up getting some serious blank checks from cartoon network to do horror and jokes that still surprise me that they were even allowed on tv at the time

Christian Kiddle

Unrelated but MST3K was mentioned a few times this episode and it's been mentioned often in the past. I'm sure it's been discussed but MST3K episodes ever?

Djinn and Tonic

To be fair, I was also annoying but in different ways

Bob Mackey

i feel like Bob was being a tad harsh to his old college anime club members. teenagers are annoying. its not a big deal you dont need to prove you're smarter than them 20 years later. really enjoyed the podcast otherwise, i just dont think your discussions on the "cringe humor" of this show were very constructive

Marcy Coral

For me, Zim is very tied to the heyday of TV-on-DVD, just as much as Futurama and Family Guy were. It was a show I had heard of but never saw on TV, but clearly the Internet hype was there, because when those DVD sets came out, my friends and I jumped on them immediately and loved them. That late nineties/early 2000s period of TV is really interesting to look back on, if only because there were so many weird shows (especially animated ones) that were being aired, unceremoniously cancelled, and then given a second life on home video (or in Adult Swim reruns.) Just a few years before then, and a series like Invader Zim might have vanished off the face of the earth following cancellation. I guess I never really about it back then, but now it does strike me as odd that while DVD sales helped revive both Futurama and Family Guy, it didn't lead to new Zim stuff at the time. Thanks to your research, now I know that it didn't happen for dumb corporate reasons!

Christmas Ape

Interesting! I don't think ZIM was well-known this side of the pond (at least for us who didn't have cable), but that style of humour is still overly prevalent here

Adam Elmahdi

Props to Bob for not laughing when Henry says "Peepi gets big"

nina matsumoto

Invader Zim feels like the last cartoon of the 90s, even though it premiered in 2001. There was such a jaded cynicism pervasive in the 90s that this show exhibits in spades. And yes, 9/11 seemed to squash a lot of that as it seems you either had to get patriotic with your media or just cut the satire. I missed Zim when it debuted as I wasn't paying attention to Nickelodeon at the time. I was on anime message boards though and Gir and his various looks was a frequent avatar of many a user and eventually I decided I had to see what this show was all about once the first DVD volume dropped. I bought it, watched it, and kind of moved on. I liked a lot of what I watched, but I did feel there were a lot of jokes aimed at a younger audience so I after I consumed the content on that DVD set I felt sated.

Joe Hodgson

I'm sure someone else also pointed this out, but the episode where Zim steals organs from the kids is actually a different episode than the episode where he steals the eyes from a kid. That episode is a different plot where he brainwashes the kid into being his best friend IIRC. Both of them are a shock that Nick let them through though.

Anita Bonkit

This may be part of the many unfounded rumors surrounding the show, but I had heard that Invader Zim was supposed to be the headliner for a late night animation block that Nickelodeon was developing around the same time as Adult Swim. The story goes that when plans for this Adult Swim-esque block were dropped, Zim was the one remnant, and that’s why the show was weirder and grosser than anything else on the network at the time.

Robert Denby

You guys should definitely give Jimmy Neutron a shot. The humor on the show is genuinely hilarious, and probably has some of the best background gags I've seen in an animated series. I'd recommend watching Maximum Hugh, The Mighty Wheezers or Jimmy for President if you want to get a sample of the show in a nutshell. I actually missed out on watching Invader Zim because as a kid, I had a weird point of contention that the show was mimicking the Fairly Odd Parent's visual style (specifically the characters having thick outlines and blocky heads). Watching the show 2 decades later I realized how wrong I was and enjoyed the show greatly! I feel the show takes advantage of some of it's "random humor" by emphasizing the tragedy or uncanniness of a scene. One of my favorites is when Gaz drops food on the floor in the middle of a building, and ants suddenly group around the dropped food the moment it hits the ground. Wish the show lasted longer to we could see what kind of jokes in that style the writers and artists could have made then.

JoesShockingToons

I was about 15 when Zim started airing, and as a quiet loner who loved scifi and horror, it was exactly my kind of show. The humor was dark, mean, spontaneous, there simply wasn't anything like it. Despite it being one of the prototypes of what I would call "ZOMG!" internet humor, it never affected how I felt about the show since the writers clearly knew how to do it correctly. Also, while we're still on the topic, I thought Enter the Florpus was better than the Rocko movie. While I also loved Rocko as a kid, I simply didn't think Static Cling was very funny, and it felt like a pilot for a new season that didn't get made. Florpus, on the other hand, was the satisfying finale that I didn't get for Invader Zim.

During the time, seeing Nicktoons Network make a bigger deal out of Invader Zim than their main parent channel was like an amazing thing for me. Before the network became known as a graveyard channel for failed shows, Their "Animation Capital of the World" era felt special seeing how they treated their Nicktoons lineup, with Zim kinda getting the red carpet treatment. And with the type of show Zim was, it lead to the network experimenting with shows for an older demo like their annual Nicktoons Network Film Festival. That too skirted the Nick censors with certain films that aired on the program, like a fully subtitled French film about a mental asylum patient and his doctor having a heated debate about the state of the world which was surprising to see on a Nickelodeon network but surprisingly Zim's success on that network helped paved the way for that. While its a bummer seeing what the network has become due to channel rot and seeing it memed from time to time due to them greenlighting Kappa Mikey, that era of Nicktoons Network will always have a special place in my heart

WaitWhat

i remember enjoying zim when it was airing, even though i didn't latch onto the "DOOOOM"-filled way of speaking that many of my goth-adjacent friends unfortunately continue to mimic. this might be an epic monkey tacos coincidence but isn't it a little strange that of two of frank conniff's post-MST projects each featured a voice from 'angry beavers?' by the time richard horvitz took on the role of zim, nick bakay had been voicing salem on 'sabrina the teenage witch' for a few years... great episode!

Eric Schuman

"There would not be a Nostalgia Critic...if it wasn't for this stuff" Zim was one of the first cartoons I felt like I was Too Old for, and I've always wondered if I was being unfair by blaming it in large part for the wackety-schmackety penguin-of-doom lolrandom internet "humor" that sprung up in its wake, but nope, that was probably the right call!

Shaxbert

Around the same time, (spring/Summer of 2001) my mom got us a home computer to use and one of the things I’d do during this time was go to the Nick website, and doing daily activities would get Nick online tokens or whatever they were called and could use them to get digital trading cards, which included both front and back so while you got the artwork on front (usually a screenshot) the back would feature stats and first appearances of the characters within the series. And it was through these cards I realized there were episodes that hadn’t been released yet specifically a card of Zim & Dib in their spacesuits from the episode Battle of the Planets, & Nightmare Bitters in her final form from then unaired Halloween episode. Again, the Halloween episode would (surprisingly) air in the fall of ‘01, while battle of the planets wouldn’t air until April ‘02. Needless to say I did have the full collection at one point. (Cont in reply). On the topic of DVD’s I was able to pick up all 3 volumes of Invader Zim, and Vol 3 meant a lot to me as it not only had the back half of episodes that aired on Nick maybe once or twice, they also had all the unaired episodes, and for one of them I’m curious if they knew the writing on the wall. In the episode “Backseat Drivers from Beyond the Stars” Zim ends up hacking into the Irken Armada ship and remote piloting them to Earth only for Dib to hack into it, when Dib explains how he did Zim only responds with “Damn that!”. When I first watched this episode I was shocked and amazed, and expletive in a kids show? I also know that while this episode would eventually be aired I can’t remember if it was on Nick proper or on the spin-off Nicktoons channel.

Kiefer Fulsom

Hey y’all, I have a lot to say about this series, apologies for the long comment but I split it up with the majority and important stuff as a reply on this. I can say growing up I loved this show as it premiered in a very interesting time in my life. The show debuted in spring of ‘01 and I can say I was a day one viewer, I was probably 10-11 so the perfect demographic but also in 4th grade elementary (small town, middle of America Okla) and had just been diagnosed with ADHD. I also remember the following Monday talking to the kids on the playground about it and while they liked Invader Zim, none of them have a crap about Fairly Oddparents. As far as Hamstergeddon goes, I definitely watched the episode as it aired and recall that while it wasn’t completely taken off the air ala 9/11 I do remember it being one of the episodes that wasn’t aired as much as others but it was on TV. (Continued in replies.)

Kiefer Fulsom

They a big jimmy neutron fan out there name rob paulsen he use the Carl Wheezer voice anywhere and everywhere.

Cossover

Great episode guys! I didn’t grow up with the show, per say, as I was a literal baby when it premiered, but when I did eventually discover it as a middle schooler, I couldn’t get enough of it! I personally think the true genius of this show is its amazing voice cast pulling off all these ultra random lines. Even without the visuals, I feel like Horvitz and the crew nail the insane way of speaking that the writing demands they perform in. Also, its satire (while a tad simplistic) is quite biting. Like, all good cartoons, the poop jokes and screaming roped me in as a child, but it’s the ultra cruel pseudo-satire intrigues me most as a young adult. Like you mention in the episode a bunch, shows about how much America and its culture sucks could not be made even a few months after this show debuted. I find that little time capsule bubble of things super fascinating! Long live the monkey cheese!

Tashmon Dimps

great listen as always. this was a cartoon that I feel slipped through the cracks on my mom's radar of things I was allowed to watch. she didn't like me watching anything "weird and gross", so Ed Edd n Eddie, Ren and Stimpy, and Catdog were on her list. I was one of the kids who watched this at the premiere in grade school side by side with Fairly Odd Parents and I think it being paired with the wacky fairy show caused her to just tune out and think "this is fine" not knowing that I was watching episodes involving organ harvesting and restaurants called 'Bloaty's Pizza Hog'. It felt like a secret little thrill to be able to watch it even if young me wasn't entirely into the dark/goth stuff. but I loved the style and the notion that something like this could simply exist alongside the likes of Rugrats and Hey Arnold. As an adult I've been a bit hot and cold on the series but the 2019 movie won me back over and I since got the DVD volumes just to have them and the special features. The EPIC TACOOOZ Gir type stuff is still the material I'm cold on and shows the series' age a bit - but I can overlook that for everything else that gels with me in the show. Vasquez being as young as he was and given the keys to a cartoon kingdom truly is of a different era in television that I feel we'll never go back to in an age where even Netflix is finding this shit is too expensive for their tastes and canceling animation left and right. Even Craig McCracken has to bend over backwards to get something made. One final note on the OddParents/Zim debut is that while their contrasts in style is evident, I always did find OddParents to be weirdly mean spirited in its own way that I always found offputting and only makes more sense with the more that comes out about Butch Hartman. Zim's cynicism and cruel streak was at least a feature, not a bug, and built into that world with something to say about how our own world can feel at times. Whereas OddParents was the kind of show where Timmy's friends or parents could be amicable towards him one episode then rooting against him in the next. It also just has this smarmy annoying tone that it never really earned. I was definitely relieved that the Butch Hartman fall from grace could finally let me have my "Well I NEVER liked his stuff!" day in the sun

Blake R.