Cartoon Cartoon-cember Part 26: What a Cartoon!/ Cartoontistute

The last shows I wanted to talk about for Cartoon Cartoon-cember are “What a Cartoon!” and Cartoontistue. These two shows played a big part in creating Cartoon Network especially “What a Cartoon!”. “What a Cartoon!” was Cartoon Network’s project in helping them find shows to air on the channel. The project consisted of 71 short cartoons with each of them based on an original storyboard drawn and written by its artist or creator. A lot of the cartoons were good, funny, and would go on to become hit shows on Cartoon Network. The original cartoons on Cartoon Network besides Ed, Edd, n Eddy all got their start here. Shows like Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, Courage, and The Powerpuff girls all got their start on the show and would later go on to become some of the most popular and remembered cartoons in the 90s and early 2000s. Another short I liked was the bomb squad with the police cat and shark and them having to keep their office safe from bomb terrorist where the cat would usually get hurt by the bombs, that was a funny show in my opinion I honestly think it would have made a good season run if just for its slack stick bomb comedy. Another short I liked were the two intelligent cave man living among a tribe of Neanderthals while trying to invent and teach things to make the tribe better but usually fail. The show featured cartoons done by a lot of veteran animators such as Fred Seibert, Don Jurwich, Jerry Eisenberg, Ralph Bakshi, and the legendary animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. It also featured up and coming new animators such as Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, Rob Renzetti, Butch Hartman, John Dilworth, and even Seth MacFarlane who actually showed his pilot episode of Family Guy on the show all of who would go on to do big things for the network and the world. “What a Cartoon!” was a huge success for the network and helped put them on the map.

Many years later Cartoon Network tried to do the same thing again with a new show called Cartoonstitute. Much like What a Cartoon the point of the show was to help Cartoon Network find new shows from up and coming animators as well as veteran animators and this project was actually going to be bigger. “What a Cartoon!” had 71 shorts Cartoonstitute was going to have over a 100 shorts to show from animators all over the country. But sadly only a few of the cartoon shorts were finish at the time of the deadline and the project was scrapped soon after the deadline came. The project only got to show 4 episodes before it was cancelled but out of those 4 episodes the two that managed to be greenlighted for the network was Regular Show and Uncle Grandpa which was a spin off of another show called Secret Mountain Fort Awesome and no I’m not going to review those 2 shows because one I’ve never seen them and two I have no intention of seeing them just play it by eyes and see if it’s something you would have watched as a kid. While Cartoonstitute may have fallen short “What a Cartoon!” was a huge success and helped Cartoon Network get its name out in the world. The network may be struggling now but one can’t deny that back during the 90s and early 2000s Cartoon Network was your place for finding the best cartoons on the planet and it’s because of this I’ll always be thankful for the channel and network. Thanks for reading, happy holidays, and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.

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