27 years ago today, Cartoon Network‘s best superhero show made its original premiere, and things have never been the same for cartoons sense. The early days of Cartoon Network are some of the strongest as when the channel started to seek out creating original programming (and not just licensing shows from Hanna-Barbera), it launched a whole new era of creators who are still working on notable projects today. Through efforts like the What a Cartoon! show and more, fans got to see experimental pilots that had the chance to become full series from that point on. And one immediately stood out from the others.
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The Powerpuff Girls originally came to life as a short within the What a Cartoon! program, and then made its full series debut 27 years ago today on November 18, 1998 with Cartoon Network. The animated series debuted a new trio of superheroes unlike anything fans might have seen before. It was a trio of young girls who not only were happy to live their lives as children, but also happy to whoop any kind of foe who came their way to a bloody and brutalized pulp. It’s that juxtaposition that really launched a whole new era of heroes on screen.
The Powerpuff Girls Changed Cartoon Network
The Powerpuff Girls was one of the first original animated series efforts to ever be produced with Cartoon Network Studios, and ran for six seasons with the network and multiple eras of its production. The series introduced fans to Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup, three young heroes who were created by Professor Utonium as part of an experiment to “create the perfect little girl.” But when Utonium accidentally added the mysterious Chemical X to the concoction, the girls were created with super powers like flight, super speed, super strength, heat vision and more.
The Powerpuff Girls was something so dramatically different than anything fans had seen before. It reached across demographic lines as while many girls loved the show, it was the same for boys (though at that age many of them hid the fact that they were watching a “girl’s show”). Each episode saw the girls take on foes and monster much bigger, and much more threatening than the last. But the important thing was that they never backed down from a fight. Importantly, however, the show never lost sight of the fact that they were children.
The girls themselves were often seen attending preschool (it’s also where many of the episodes got their stories from), but all the while needed to be on call for when the Mayor needed their help. Though many of them faced these foes with ease, some of their biggest challenges came from everyday problems that kids could face. Issues with self-confidence, money, the patriarchy, their place as heroes in town and more would all come up, and the girls would knock it all down by working through it all together.
How the Powerpuff Girls Changed Cartoons
The Powerpuff Girls not only struck out a whole new path for Cartoon Network as it opened its demographic, but it changed cartoons forever. Shows used to be made with the idea of being for boys or for girls, but that’s not really the case anymore thanks to this show. The Powerpuff Girls broke the door down and proved that you can make a show appealing to everyone without compromising your creative vision. It was still a very weird show with each episode, but had a very wide appeal nonetheless.
It’s why you can have shows these days that are just made to appeal to children of all kinds of ages and genders. There is no longer a strong divide between demographics, and thanks to streaming platforms and the way media habits have changed, all of these different cartoons are available to a much bigger audience than they ever had been before. It’s a show that punched through these boundaries, and it helped to unite action with these kinds of children’s programs. It’s much like how anime has been successful in Japan for doing the same.
Animation has a lot of trouble stateside because many times it’s still viewed as something just for kids. But The Powerpuff Girls had so much appeal across the board that it’s no mystery why it’s stuck around nearly 30 years after its debut. A new reboot in the works from the original creator, a failed live-action show that failed to take off, a failed animated reboot that didn’t catch fire and more are just some of the ways it’s stayed in the spotlight. All because fans loved watching these young superheroes taking on the world one day, and one adventure at a time.
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