It’s been 25 years since Cartoon Network first hit the airwaves. What started off as a channel dedicated to airing reruns of classic animation empires, like Hannah Barbera and Looney Tunes, the channel evolved into something more important. To kids born in the 90s’, Cartoon Network was a place for unique innovation, actual cartoons with real plots, funny jokes and characters with heart. The Powerpuff Girls, Courage The Cowardly Dog and Ed, Edd and Eddy were all amazing in their own right and even hold up today.
I’m a 25-year-old millennial that grew up glued to my television screen. My mom realized at a young age that parenting was harder than gossiping, so she let the cable box raise me instead. From the moment I’d wake up to the moment I crawled into my Pokémon bed sheets, I had that television on. Saturday mornings were for WB Kids and I never missed an episode of Hey Arnold!, but Cartoon Network was always my favorite. When my family took day trips to NYC, I thought Elvis impersonators were just copying Johnny Bravo. When we went to the pound to adopt our first dog, I nearly cried when my mother said we couldn’t name it Courage. These characters, ranging from the ordinary to the mythical, were constants in the ever-changing life that was prepubescent adolescent.
My favorite part of Cartoon Network weren’t even the shows, but the bumps in between commercials. Started in the late ‘90s, Groovies were two-minute-and-under music videos based on Cartoon Network properties. They ranged from the minimal, like sticking Coolio in front of a green screen, to the grandiose, where newspapers and paper cutouts show a surreal landscape where Atom Ant saved the world from nuclear armageddon . Groovies had no schedule – if you wanted to see “Gorilla 4 Sale,” you had to wait all day just for the chance to scratch that listening itch.
“Go Monkey Go” was my favorite Groovies song, a catchy tune about the Powerpuff Girl’s sinister simian. To the generation before mine, DEVO was a gimmicky electro band that wore orange ziggurats and cracked whips, but “only ‘90s kids will remember” Cartoon Network blasting “go Mojo jojo” until it became the theme song for our dreams.
Now that we’re in the age of the internet and every child is spoiled with instant gratification, all of the Cartoon Network Groovies classics can now be watched online. Since I tend to view my childhood through rose-tinted glasses, I decided to sit down and rewatch every single song, short and clip I could find. Some stuff held up, while others I couldn’t believe actually existed. "Signal In The Sky” and “The Incredible Shrinking Day” still make me tap my feet, while anything with Dexter’s Laboratory is better off forgotten.
For some odd reason, Dexter’s Lab was paired alongside hip-hop. Will.i.am, Prince Paul and even Coolio spit bars about Dexter’s secret formulas and Dee Dee. They are so ‘90s, it hurts, full to the brim with gentle rapping and overproduced beats. Cartoon Network wanted to push its most popular property alongside what a few fat cat CEOs thought would be “cool with the kids.” Even They Might Be Giants, who wrote amazing songs for Nickelodeon’s Kablam! , were relegated to generic anime spoofs that seemed outdated in 1998.
Even though Cartoon Network has replaced its thought-provoking programming for Teen Titans GO! clones, I’ll always have fond memories of the content that made them an animation staple for over two decades.. Especially the massive Sugar Ray hit “When It’s Over” combined with George Of The Jungle and The Jetsons.
