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John K.
John K.

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Cartoon Cavalcade 3 - Format

In the 1986 story bible Ren and Stimpy were just part of a show that featured 3 main character groups. Ren and Stimpy were part of 'Your Gang'. There were 2 other series: Billy Bunting of the Apes and Dave the Time Tarsier. The show was sort of a throwback to late 50s and early 60s TV cartoons like the Huckleberry Hound Show and Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Ren and Stimpy were the characters I most wanted to do but I had pitched them to Saturday Morning networks before and they thought I was crazy and that the characters were bizarre. That's why I sort of buried them among all these other characters that weren't quite as weird.

You can see that some of the format elements ended up in the Ren and Stimpy show like the fake commercials and the end segment where the characters cry because they won't see you again until next week.

This format was way too ambitious and would have been very hard to produce so it was lucky that Nickelodeon settled on just Ren and Stimpy out of all the characters in Cartoon Cavalcade.

Comments

This was GREAT! Thanks for showing us this gestation period for your early show! I would have actually loved to have seen this format as well! A note about the Jackie Gleason Show reference at the beginning, when you and the Bakshi crew did that same gag for the beginning of the Mighty's Wedding episode, was that in there from the beginning or was it a rare network note? "You have to show this didn't actually happen."

Julian DiLorenzo

Say, when looking at this illustration of Ren with the baby, I hearing your Peter Lorre voice when youโ€™ve acted out that character. Greatest jobs on your pitch artwork, as usual. Please keep on pushing forward hardest!

Paul Christoforos


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