One of the greatest cartoons of all time and in my opinion the original acid trip cartoon. The show focuses on the adventures of Ren an emotionally unstable Chihuahua and his good friend Stimpy a good-natured dim-witted cat. This show was just out there, there was never a coherent story it was just these two characters being put in various situations each episode. In one episode the two are joining the army, in the next episode the two are astronauts trying to beat the Soviet Union in the Great Space race, and then after that episode the two are homeless bums trying to make a quick buck. Even the places that they lived at were different each time and the animation was incoherent in every other shot. It’s as if the episodes got moved from studio to studio and at the end they decided to just combine everything to make the episode. As I said before the show was an acid trip. If you guys thought Adventure Time was an acid trip than Ren and Stimpy is the kingpin of acid trips. This show makes Adventure Time look normal. Every time the show came on you felt as if you were having a sugar rush. Everything was random, crazy, made no sense whatsoever, incoherent, and just flat out insane. And that’s what made it so good. The show was unlike any other show being shown at time. It didn’t care that it was random or made little to no sense. It was a show that took all of our crazy thoughts and ideas and bought them to life not caring what anyone thought.
Now you’re probably wondering, if this show was so crazy and insane as I’m making it out to be, why was it so popular? Well for two reasons. One, it creative the boundaries. This show came out in 1991 back when children’s TV shows were starting to become common. At this time nobody really knew what you could and couldn’t get away with in a children’s TV show. Ren and Stimpy showed us what we could and couldn’t get away with by giving us some disgusting scenes, adult jokes that we never picked up on as kids, and mature and disturbing subject matters you never thought you would here talked about on a TV show. There was also a rumor going around that Ren and Stimpy were gay for each other which I have to admit there were a few questionable scenes. Second, the show gave birth to adult animated satirical shows. Ren and Stimpy is said to be one of the shows that started the golden age of animation in the 90s allowing shows like Bevis and Butthead and South Park to be created and even helped Nickelodeon catch a few eyes and sponsors. Even Hanna-Barbera credit the show as the inspiration for 2 Stupid Dogs. At the end of it all Ren and Stimpy will go down as being seen as project of the 90s to see what we could and couldn’t get away with in a children’s TV show. But it will also go down as being one the most memorable cartoons of all time and one of the best cartoons of all time in my mind. If you didn’t like this show growing up you’re an idiot.