Why did Nickelodeon murder itself?

Ah, Nickelodeon... one of the iconic fantasies of the 1990s and one of the heroes of the animation renaissance is falling flat. They had their groundbreaking Nicktoons such as Rugrats, the creative cartoon shorts that would appear as bonus on their VHS and DVDs and the classic bumpers with the orange logo. It seems that Nickelodeon got everything they knew to stand out from the competition. There was a charm on everything Nickelodeon-related, ranging from cartoons, game shows, sitcoms, merchandising, advertising and brand presentation. Nickelodeon used to be the king of cartoons. However, over the past decades, the brand has been steadily declining. Why is this? Let's go back to time...

In the late 70s, Nickelodeon used to be called Pinwheel. It was sold to Warner Bros. and rechristened as Nickelodeon in 1979. That was an experimental period when management was seeing what would work and what would NOT and what kids would like to see. You Can't Do That on Television was Nickelodeon's breakout success. It was a sketch comedy and variety show that was made on Canada, but Nickelodeon acquired the intellectual property. It was fun, creative and coined the iconic slime that would be forever associated with the network. Moving to the early 1980s, Nickelodeon unveiled their new logo: the orange splat with their brand written in the balloon font. They also created new jingles and IDs to give it a fresh look, to greatest success. Nickelodeon was dominating as the number one children's network and didn't stop experimenting, with the addition of Nick at Nite, Nick Jr. and the Kids' Choice Awards. In 1986, Warner Bros. decided to sell Nickelodeon to MTV Networks which would later become Viacom.

Nickelodeon continued its creative streak in the early 1990s with more original programming: Hey Dude!, Salute Your Shorts, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Clarissa Explains it All and The Adventures of Pete and Pete. There was so many to pick from and it all focused on kids who finally had a network to call their own. Yet, Nickelodeon's most groundbreaking feat they ever achieved was their own original animated programming: Nicktoons. The network originally used to be against in-house animation production, believing it to be too expensive. Their thoughts were not unfounded as their first Nicktoons called Doug, Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show were as expensive as Hanna-Barbera's The Pirates of Dark Water and Warner Bros.' Steven Spielberg-produced cartoons such as Tiny Toon Adventures, but all three of them paid off. They all unlocked a new era for Nick which grew over the time: Rocko's Modern Life, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, KaBlam!, Hey Arnold!, The Angry Beavers, The Wild Thornberrys, CatDog, SpongeBob Squarepants, As Told by Ginger, Chalkzone, Invader Zim, The Fairly Oddparents, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Danny Phantom, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Catscratch, El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, The Mighty B!... Nickelodeon was ruling the animation landscape in the 90s and the first half of the 2000s and was also pushing foward with their live-action comedies and game shows such as All That!, The Amanda Show, Kenan & Kel, Legends of the Hidden Temple, GUTS, Double Dare, Drake & Josh and iCarly. They were the powerhouse of the 90s and first half of 2000s and created a legacy of entertainment that stood out from everything else. They had variety, talent, magic, creativity, momentum. All these wonderful aspects that built the Nickelodeon empire and, in the turn of the millenium, everything started to fall apart. So, when and why did their brand stop being relevant???

Nickelodeon may have embraced aspects of hip-hop and that era's visual tastes in order to make their brand resonate with the audiences, but they were making the 90s more memorable on their own by innovating, creating unique shows and showcasing artists with new ideas. While none of that was flawless, it was still an iconic era full of creativity and innovation that embodied Walt Disney and the Golden Age animators and artists' spirits. But the biggest and worst problem is that Nickelodeon had imprisoned themselves in the comfort zone with no way out, with the formats that made them money in the past and the only changes they made were moving away from pioneering the family entertainment industry to their status quo. Nickelodeon Animation has since had moderate to reasonable to little to even NO success. Their biggest fall from grace had its roots in 1996 when Nickelodeon noticed that there was demand for more family-friendly programming. Shows like Friends were so popular that they were the target of pop-culture referencing in children's shows, yet that show kinda alienated families who didn't want to watch that overrated bullshit with their kids. So, Nickelodeon didn't hesitate and began providing programming that would be more ideal to this demographic. This is when the more corporate version of Nickelodeon was established. They saw success but it also started to fuck up shows that were very different. The direction was starting to shift. According to Hey Arnold! creator Craig Bartlett, "they got bigger and more corporate than when they were young. While Herb was running things, it just grew more and more corporate, and less like you have a personal touch. It was probably just inevitable that it was the way it was going to be. It wasn't Herb's fault. Herb's Nickelodeon was still a great place to be, but each year it got bigger and more out of control." This was the trend on the horizon.

Both SpongeBob and Rugrats became Nickelodeon's biggest cash cow franchises, with their theatrical movies being commercial blockbusters. Such success have led Nickelodeon to extend their runs longer than they really needed and thus their quality dwindled. Both shows have been the tip of the spear for the network for their respective decades. What really happened to the variety? Why Nickelodeon has since placed all of their tips on the SpongeBob-Rugrats combo? To Rugrats' credit, it had friendly competition. Now all I see is nothing but both SpongeBob and The Loud House, their newest cash cow. Sure, they had Avatar: The Last Airbender. That show was mature, fun and unlocked many possibilities. Unfortunately, this resulted into an abysmal live-action theatrical abomination and a sequel called The Legend of Korra that barely made across the finish line. While the actual show is good, Nickelodeon failed to milk it properly. The final season didn't even air on the network itself, but on their streaming services. Why couldn't they have done both? It's almost like they have forgotten to produce and market a show outside the likes of SpongeBob. Meanwhile, shows like Harvey Beaks, despite being a critical darling, were cancelled for not being Nickelodeon's cash cows. To add salt to their injury, they had the opportunity to house Adventure Time, one of the cartoon masterpieces of this decade, but they had since become so corporate that they turned it down not just once, but twice, allegedly in favor of Fanboy and Chum-Chum. This has led Cartoon Network to immediately take it under their wing and make their own SpongeBob out of it, resulting not just on the Cartoon Network Renaissance, but on the current overall television animation renaissance. If this wasn't enough, Nickelodeon also rejected Phineas and Ferb which is also a masterpiece that could easily fit their network's formula but it was instead warmly welcomed into the happiest place on Earth that is Disney.

As I said, Nickelodeon has gone so corporate that they've been over-reliant on past formulas for success, mainly if not just sitcoms which are genreally pretty formulaic and repetitive, but on Nickelodeon's case they're just trying to copy-and-paste the formulas of Dan Schneider and Disney Channel. Stuff like All That! and its successors reflect what many of us think back to when someone mentions the 90s or the overall good days of the network because at that time it was new and the kid stars were able to have fun on the set to resonate with the younger demographic. However, Nickelodeon's current sitcoms feel uninspired, tiresome and when the kid audiences grow up these shows will never hold up unlike when that demographic were just kids. But the worst problem that Nickelodeon is facing and still won't solve is the building of their line-up and the way that's reflected by the brand. Nothing on that channel stands out in a way that can realistically compete with other platforms. While The Loud House still has its heart and charm, it can't top the likes of Steven Universe and Star vs. The Forces of Evil and plenty other modern hit cartoons, which it's actually alright because you don't have to try trumping over the competition to be a good show, so there wouldn't be a cartoon cannibalization. The real issue is Nickelodeon's lack of saving grace in this modern western animation era and landscape and this is the red signal that Nickelodeon is now nothing more than a third-and-last-rate. Alongside the modern programming, it looks like they're also trying to cash on nostalgia for their good old days with endless revivals of Hey Arnold!, Rugrats, Invader Zim and Rocko's Modern Life. Their plan B just seems to be cashing on nostalgia since their animation department is in incredible danger, but the problem with this is that the original Nickelodeon brand can't simply be brought back the way it used to be because the world has changed too dramatically and just because 90s in nostalgia were hip and cool for so long and might still be hanging on, Nickelodeon's charm has always been the fact that it felt like a channel for kids and when the only bits and pieces of a unique brand that it has left are appealing to the childhoods of people in their 20s and 30s that's not going to end the same. The brand that made all those shows successful was a product of its time. In the 90s, it was to find an era. Today, it's nothing but nostalgia. So, what does the Nickelodeon brand currently has to offer that isn't nostalgia? If you take a look at their current brand, it seems like a bunch of adults got together and said:

Person 1: "This is what kids like these days: smartphones and random nonsense."
Person 2: "But, wasn't the original Nickelodeon brand about just random nonsense?"

It may have seemed like this and I don't wanna put any of this on a pedestal, yet there was at least some degree of familiarity to it. They would choose an idea and stick to it and every single idea would be different. It would be something specific but it would change itsetlf apart from itself. While it would be strange, they wouldn't sacrifice structure because without that pilar weirdness just blends into itself just like Nickelodeon's current presentation which does nothing to set itself apart from other networks aesthetically, especially since Cartoon Network has also been doing the random humor bologna for years to a point of just being dishonest with their corporate pandering to kids. Regardless, to CN's credit and defense, their brand is somehow more a love letter to their classic age than Nickelodeon. Also, who said to these brands that the so-called random humor humbug is still cool? Sure, that trend died with MySpace, so now if you do this, you're no better than Oscar, the dashing hero from the DreamWorks film Shark Tale.

Sincerely, I'm kinda heartbroken at the fact that Nickelodeon has since gone in all ways possible from Garfield and Snoopy to Charlie Brown and Jon Arbuckle and to creeps, televangelists, telemarketers and evil businessmen who's cancelling all your favorite shows and building SpongeBob theme parks. It's not Nickelodeon's animation deparment that's failing miserably. On the contrary, it's still standing strong. It's just being overlooked by the network that may no longer be the home of the Nicktoons. Looks like Nickelodeon has simply fled from the epic war for the television animation market and dominance in general media. Whatta bunch of wimpy and sissy cowards. While Cartoon Network is no longer perfect anymore, they still have a line-up of revolutionary shows that people absolutely have hoots for and their brand is still a huge western animation powerhouse. Disney's on the same ship than Cartoon Network, churning out shows that are worth of their brand even if their treatment of cartoons is sort of debatable occasionally and they're still not as popular as Cartoon Network in the modern animation reality, but they don't have to be popular to be good. Even companies like DreamWorks and other streaming-affiliated animation powerhouses are churning out game changer after game changer while Nickelodeon seems to have SpongeBob, The Loud House and its 90s material as its life support. If they really want to reclaim its long-lost glory taken away by the competition by force, please stop being too comfortable on formulaic success and don't be afraid to take risks anymore.

Looks like Nickelodeon has gone to the point where they're toxically dependant on old formulas to survive because it's not overall bad business. No wonder since it was born Nickelodeon has gradually gone more and more corporate. If I was on a creative studio where the business people have all the invicible power, so naturally they're going to care more about the business' financial well-being than their products' actual quality. So why taking risks of letting creative talents innovate and dictate their own visions when not innovating and playing safe is your shelter from poverty? Just... bite me. Sure, Nickelodeon has recently gone under management shift, Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie is a masterpiece, I can't wait for the Rocko's Modern Life and Invader Zim comeback specials and the Nickelodeon animation department still amazes me. So who knows what kind of future might hold for the network? Yet, if they don't make any effort to present themselves in new ways and recoup their long lost creative spirit, I'm afraid that the network will remain mediocre as the competition single-handedly crushes them mercilessly.

Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie - After 11 years, one of Nickelodeon's worst mistakes has been fixed

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Hey Arnold!, Nickelodeon's animated series starring a 9-year-old football-head boy with a tiny cap, the most creative bedroom for a 90s cartoon character, a big shirt which is mistaken for a kilt and an idealism with attitude.



Hey Arnold! is the sixth Nicktoon and one of Nickelodeon's most significant cartoons of all time. The show mixed adult humor with complex and relatable characters. It blended realistic storylines in an urban setting with surreal fairy tales starring urban legends. It blended a kid-friendly point of view with adult characters dealing with adult issues (alcoholism, gambling and stuff that could only be seen in live-action dramas). As a result, it was the most ecclectic Nicktoon. In addition, the ending theme song was pure jazz and the show is what made kids interested in jazz.

A kids' cartoon that has Arnold's grandpa confronting Adolf Hitler is a perfect example of combining humor with adult innuendos.

But the show's core theme was the idealism-vs-cynicism debate. We have our title protagonist called Arnold Shortman (this last name wasn't revealed until the show ended), a boy who believed that as long as everyone worked together the world could be a better place to live, and that was always ready to do his part in helping whoever has a problem. He's always giving advice to people and helping his friends to solve everyday's problems, both his classmates and his adult friends.

"Arnold, saving the neighborhood isn't a game. It's real life. And in real life, you can't always win. I mean, I can win Runaway Bus every time I play it but that's because it's a game."

But the scene-stealer is Helga G. Pataki. She's Arnold's opposite. Helga is an abusive school bully who's always beating and cursing at the living snout out of everyone to get whatever she wants. She's bossy and sassy and has a grimdark vision of life and, due to Arnold always claiming that anything goes with everyone's efforts, wouldn't hesitate on knocking poor football-head back to his senses that real world is nothing but hell.

"This is the real fucking life!"

Helga's actions are consequences of her miserable family life at home, thanks to her abusive dad, her drunken mom and her older sister whose success detracts Helga from achieving any expectation from her parents as they base it on their favorite firstborn. She has no room at home and built her own outside, using brutal violence and tyrant cruelty, as she didn't learn other ways of respect.

Helga had to go to school on her own too early due to her parents' negligence.

At school, she took it on the other children.

On the other hand, Arnold lives in an unusual home where he was raised by his grandparents who own the boarding house where Arnold interacts with several houseboarders who helped raise him, without knowing his biological parents who disappeared mysteriously. This is where Arnold gets love and respect from the adults who listen to whatever he says and let Arnold help them in their predicaments, building up the idea of Arnold helping anyone as long as he does the least.

While not blood-related, they're still a happy and perfect family as they all live together in the same house. For example, Mr. Hyunh raises Arnold as if he is an uncle while his daughter Mai does the same as if she is a distant cousin. They spend holidays and birthdays together and, whenever every single one of them has a predicament, they help. They may not seem a traditional family, but they're still a family.

What makes the opposites, which are Helga and Arnold, attract is that Helga lusts over Arnold ever since preschool days because Arnold is the first person to show her any single kind of compassion (for example, noticing that she was wet, offering his umbrella and praising her attire). And Helga always torments and abuses Arnold to conceal her true feelings for her (as she is unable to deal with them), though she secretly supports and roots for him and hopes that the world is not as cruel as far to crush the poor boy's pure heart. Ironically, Arnold is oblivious to this and can't remember the day he loaned his umbrella to Helga. He's unhappy with Helga's abusive behavior and this is how things are like this in the world.

Helga's love for Arnold reaches to not-so-healthy levels, such as stalking and shrines to lick the boots out of his image. However, she's a talented poet for her age.

This is Hey Arnold!. The story of one of Nickelodeon's most complex cartoon characters (alongside Zuko) and her cynical feelings, her endless suffering and lust for acceptance, and of the boy she loves.

This also about all these other characters which, while lacking Helga's development and Arnold's collaboration, are all interesting characters. After all, Craig Bartlett was heavily influenced by the works of Charles M. Schulz to create the then-next Nicktoon.

A great cartoon. Timeless, magnificent, groundbreaking and... unfairly canceled by Nickelodeon. One of the most heartbreaking cases of Nickelodeon sabotaging their own animated offering (it wasn't certainly the only case, as The Ren & Stimpy Show got ruined by Nickelodeon amid irreconciliable creative differences which caused the departure of John Kricfalusi and his animation company Spümco, Invader Zim had his planned finale unfinished, not to mention Nickelodeon's abusive cruelty towards The Legend of Korra)

The tearjerking consequence of Nickelodeon's mishandling of their Nicktoons

"How could you (Nickelodeon) say those horrible things to MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE???????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Hey Arnold! officialy has 100 episodes (split into 120 segments) and a feautre-length film. A made-for-TV feature film released theatrically as Hey Arnold! The Movie and 100 episodes split into 5 seasons. However, as the show's renewal for a fourth season was in planning stages, it was actually renewed for fourth season episodes and two movies, one of which would conclude the series. So, the number was supposed to be four seasons and two movies (because Craig Bartlett feared Nickelodeon would do the same thing to his creation than they were doing to Rugrats and other Klasky-Csupo Nicktoons at that time and they would do to Spongebob Squarepants and The Fairly Oddparents as we know it: seasonal rot), instead of five seasons and one movie. So, what in the blazes happened?

The original movie Hey Arnold! The Movie went south in box office. Actually, it was successful on test release, but became a critical and commercial tragedy as Nickelodeon decided to give it a theatrical release instead of keeping it made-for-TV and direct-to-video. The results: the movie was blasted by critics and audiences, prevented Nickelodeon from releasing future Nicktoon films theatrically for a while and, not only that, put plans for a sequel in jeopardy.

Yes, the fourth season finale was to be a 2-part ratings trap that would lead to the second movie that was supposed to be the series finale. So, by cancelling the movie, they cancelled the entire series finale. I think it was too unparalleled believe that a little movie with no pretensions intended for TV could be paralleled to a rushed movie to be the series finale, the definite ending of the series that, as long as the writers are good (those from Hey Arnold! were the best), is the best point of the series.

Concept art from the new movie's unfinished version by Roger Luan

No-no-no! 2001 has come, but Nickelodeon, wanting to turn Hey Arnold! into their next Spongebob/Rugrats, divided the already in-production episodes into two more seasons and spaced their releases, but the show could have continued until 2004 with new episodes, with or without Craig Bartlett. This is how Nickelodeon stripped the show from his finale.

Yes, the potential sixth season which could give the series at least a more coherent ending and not end in a great cliffhanger was out of question.

In the ending of the 2-part episode The Journal, Arnold finds a map that would indicate where would his parents supposedly be.

Everything happened in 2001. So, in 2004, Craig Bartlett was already busy in another cartoon as production of Hey Arnold! wrapped in 2001, but Nickelodeon found out that he was working for Cartoon Network and it was John Kricfalusi and his Ren & Stimpy all over again because Bartlett had signed an exclusivity clause with Nickelodeon, which didn't help as he wouldn't even give the series a closure. But this officially soured the relationship between Nickelodeon and Craig Bartlett, not unlike what happened in the Ren & Stimpy days.

So many petitions for production of the film have been made, despite all of this.

The 2-part episode that would lead to the movie aired before the last episode and Nickelodeon selected a typical episode to be the last, just to hype up for a movie. On June 8th 2004, Nickelodeon aired the episode "Phoebe's Little Problem" (what a series finale). This was the end of Hey Arnold!.

The last episode of the series.

If you think all of this is over, you're foolishly mistaken! There's the reason Craig Bartlett wanted the second movie - which, in now full production, is called The Jungle Movie - to be the series finale. He didn't want to cancel the show out of nowhere. He had future plans for Hey Arnold!. He wanted to create a spin-off starring Helga called The Patakis, which was planned for Nick at Nite - Nickelodeon's primetime block originally targeted for adults and teenagers. The Patakis was to focus on Helga, now 15-year-old, in a point where she and Arnold were finally open to each other only for him to leave the city soon. She would cope with her teen issues, her mom's alcoholism would be further explored, so would her dad's abusive cruelty (he would be based on Tony Soprano in the spin-off). Nickelodeon rejected this series as it was considered too dark for the network's standards.

They feared it would meet the same fate that plagued the spin-offs of their 1991 cartoons All Grown Up! and Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon. The first one, from Rugrats, wasn't as well received by fans as the original for being an unnecessary rehash of As Told by Ginger - also created by Klasky-Csupo - with the Rugrats texture and killed the Rugrats franchise, while the latter, from The Ren & Stimpy Show, was an adults-only cartoon for Spike TV - Nickelodeon's sister network - that was short-lived with horrible results.

Good ideas for spin-offs from 1991 Nicktoons that were horribly misused, which led to the deaths of the Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy franchises.

Craig Bartlett also tried to launch The Patakis on MTV - Nickelodeon's other sister network - , but the network rejected it as they viewed it as too similar to Daria, one of their own cartoons MTV was producing at the time.

Now that I talked about how The Jungle Movie, The Patakis and any possibility of a closure for the characters of Hey Arnold! went into development hell, I'll talk about Nickelodeon. It's time for animation history:

Nickelodeon is a channel created amid the Animation Renaissance of the 1990s when studios like Disney, Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera came to end the cheap, lazy and overcommercial way of producing cartoons from the 1980s, and produce better produced and more creator-driven cartoons that anyone could enjoy. This is the decade which cartoons like Sonic the Hedgehog: The Series, Darkwing Duck, TaleSpin, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron, Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain and the DC Animated Timmverse came from. Cartoon Network is another channel that was born in the same decade and both CN and Nick became the parents of modern creator-driven animation.

The gems of Nickelodeon's animation crown

It's during the Animation Renaissance that Nickelodeon created many original cartoons called Nicktoons which became critical and commercial hits: Doug, Rugrats, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Rocko's Modern Life, Aaahh!! Real Monsters, KaBlam!, Hey Arnold!, The Angry Beavers, CatDog, The Wild Thornberrys, SpongeBob Squarepants, Rocket Power, As Told by Ginger, Chalkzone, The Fairly Oddparents, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Invader Zim and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

From this list, Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, The Wild Thornberrys, Rocket Power and As Told by Ginger ended their original runs in 2004. Rugrats was continued by a spin-off starring the grown-up title characters called All Grown Up! which was commissioned by Nickelodeon and overlapped with another spin-off planed by Nickelodeon starring Angelica and Susie in preschool. Those spin-offs weren't as succesful as the original source material and killed the Rugrats brand. Let's see the others from this list.

The Ren & Stimpy Show ended its production run in 1996 and got an adults-only spin-off Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon which was commissioned by Spike TV. That one crashed and burned even worse and killed the Ren & Stimpy franchise. Doug and Aaahh!! Real Monsters had their feature films cancelled by Nickelodeon, killing those franchises. Doug was sold to Disney who produced a Doug movie of its own. Other shows ended their runs and the last one to be cancelled was CatDog in 2005.

Two of Nickelodeon's most successful animated series that remain are SpongeBob Squarepants and The Fairly Oddparents. Nickelodeon currently has five cartoons, three of which have considerable success. Both those aforementioned shows, the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, Harvey Beaks and The Loud House.

Nickelodeon's post-Renaissance cartoons were successful, but they weren't as successful as Avatar: The Last Airbender. Thanks to Nickelodeon not renewing the Avatar creators' contract, this is not what Nickelodeon would invest into.

While Danny Phantom and My Life as a Teenage Robot weren't very next to the 90s Nicktoons, they reasonated well with critics and audiences with their own merits and are still loved today.

Resuming: the good days of Nickelodeon were the entire 1990s. Despite still making good cartoons from that point, they felt threatened by the rise of Cartoon Network. And from the cartoons that made up the good days of Nickelodeon, the channel became content with running the best part of the bunch into the ground, including Avatar: The Last Airbender. Meanwhile, the channel spends much of its life in the current animation field with both 90s shows renewed to this day, both already in the same decay that affected The Simpsons and Family Guy.

Say what you will about Poof, Sparky and Chloe, but this picture is the rock bottom of The Fairly Oddparents losing his shock factor.

Nickelodeon is an endangered species that got on the verge of extinction when the Animation Renaissance ended.

In this game, Nick at Nite became the home of reruns of Nickelodeon's Renaissance cartoons instead of that originally intended programming for grown-ups, as those cartoons became the network's heart and soul.

Nick at Nite's logo changes are based on how the block's original concept was getting lost before becoming nothing but marathons of reruns of Nickelodeon's programming from the good old days.

Since the beginning of the current age of animation, there were attempts of turning DreamWorks Animation's most successful movies into TV series: The Penguins of Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and Monsters vs. Aliens, all of which were discontinued experiences. The only critical and commercial darling is Dragons which moved from Cartoon Network to Netflix.

Desperate to bank on the popularity of Cartoon Network and Disney Channel/XD's cartoons such as Steven Universe and Gravity Falls, Nickelodeon announced last year that they would produce new seasons for their 90s library. With this announcement, the first show to be revived was nothing more than Hey Arnold!. After Nickelodeon and Craig Bartlett made amends, it was announced that, 11 years after the final episode of Hey Arnold! was aired and 14 years after it was cancelled, Nickelodeon would finally produce The Jungle Movie.

Everything goes back to the movie that almost never was.

And every single Hey Arnold! fan was finally able to give up the petition stites.

This means that, if The Jungle Movie reasonates well with critics, fans and viewers, Hey Arnold! will be brought back to production, whether it's a good idea or not, as the movie was meant to conclude the entire Hey Arnold! franchise. Whatever be a brand new season or The Patakis, there's still so much mystery in the announcement, but what's so important is that it will be back.

What does it mean? Certainly, Nickelodeon desperately wants to be relevant again and wants to know how to turn the tables. Since the beginning of the this decade, Cartoon Network has been enjoying a new age with Adventure Time (whose actual series was rejected by Nickelodeon), Steven Universe, Regular Show, Over the Garden Wall, We Bare Bears, etc. Now they decided to embrace pure notsalgia and jump the reboot bandwagon with everything they got.

Considering that Nickelodeon mooned at and gave a middle finger to The Patakis, I think that, even if they had produced Adventure Time, they wouldn't give a shit to anything that made the series so great.

Unless it's done right, this is the recipe for disaster. As much as I love Hey Arnold!, it's a desperate idea that could be executed in the very worst way possible. It was a 1990s show and I'm sure it will rely on more than nostalgia to be relevant today, with Craig Bartlett and the original creative team on board with a little help of some new blood to put effort into and passionate about it. Mr. Bartlett, you're all set for a successful revival movie. You've got a good combination of old veterans and newcomers, you've got a dedicated and talented staff and, above of all, you've got pure imagination and expertise to inject into it. Best of luck, and I hope Rocko's Modern Life, KaBlam!, Danny Phantom, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Invader Zim, Codename: Kids Next Door, Samurai Jack, Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi, Sym-Bionic Titan, Megas XLR, SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron, Animaniacs, Kim Possible, Gravity Falls, etc. get the same kind of treatment.

Translated from dentrodachamine.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/hey-arnold-the-jungle-movie-depois-de-11-anos-um-erro-grande-erro-foi-desfeito/