Nicktoons 20th Anniversary

We celebrated the date August 11th, 1991 earlier this week by marking the anniversary of The Ren & Stimpy Show. But that same second Sunday morning in August also marked the beginning of Nicktoons itself and the start of a creator driven cartoon explosion. Since today is 20th anniversary that symbolic second Sunday of August, I thought another post to mark the occasion was due.

Long gone – but not forgotten – is the cool Nicktoons ID intro and several character bumpers created by J.J. Sedelmaier. His collaborator Craig Yoe recalled how it came to be:

“20 years ago Nickelodeon’s VP of Creative, Scott Webb had seen an MTV ID that J.J. Sedelmaier of J.J. Sedelmaier Productions (still knocking out great animation) and I had done and drafted us to do an opening and closing for their new cartoon block, Nicktoons. Webb’s assignment was to “do an intro so cool that it will become as famous as the beloved Looney Tunes one”. Oh, sure, no problem there! We came up with the bit below joined by animators Doug Compton, JP Jacquet, and John Dilworth and with the music/sound design of the long missed Tom Pomposello. It debuted with Nicktoons, won some awards, but was quickly shit-canned by some suit who had other ideas and some political pull and, well… that’s all folks!

Sedelmaier just posted the original Nicktoon bumpers on his site. Click the image below to see them: