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Flashback: Happy 30th Birthday to ‘What a Cartoon!’

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This article was written for the
May-June ’25 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 350).

 

The man behind Cartoon Network’s influential animation incubator looks back at the creation of the anthology series in 1995.

Thirty years ago, What A Cartoon! was my attempt to rekindle the magic of the cartoons I loved as a kid, by giving animated filmmakers the creative reins and trusting their instincts. Against the odds, it sparked a wave of originality that launched careers and helped define a new era in TV animation. For those of us who were there, it was a wild ride; for younger creators, I hope this story reminds you what’s possible when artists lead. I tried to make it a celebration of the spirit that still drives great cartoons today.

As a kid, cartoons energized me before I even knew what that inspiration would mean to my life.

Bugs Bunny, Huckleberry Hound and The Flintstones were my favorites. Later, rock ’n’ roll took over and changed where I was going (I was a science and math kid), but I never imagined it would be cartoons that ultimately dominated. And now it’s been 30 years since I had the chance to help midwife What a Cartoon! and the creations that would galvanize a generation.

After leaving MTV — where I was the original creative director and a co-founder — my partner, Alan Goodman, and I started the world’s first media-branding agency. In 1984, Nickelodeon became our first network client, and we took the channel from worst to first in the ratings in just six months. One tactic was commissioning dozens of wildly inventive network identifications from small indie animation studios. Somehow, that led Nick to ask me how to make its first original cartoons.

From IDs to Toons

We’d only produced 10-second IDs, and all I really knew about cartoons was what I loved as a kid. Providentially, I’d just read Leonard Maltin and Jerry Beck’s Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons.

“Do what they did when cartoons were great,” I told the Nickelodeon team. “Make shorts, one at a time. If they’re good, make more.” Whew! Pulled that one out of my butt.

But the programmers thought I meant, “Make pilots.”

The truth is that I hate pilots. They exist for executives to pull apart and revise endlessly. I wanted shorts, not pilots, put on the air exactly as the creator intended, with no notes or changes. Nick made pilots anyway. It got Rugrats, Doug and Ren & Stimpy — huge successes. What did I know? I was still annoyed.

Eventually, Alan and I closed our company. In 1992, Ted Turner and Scott Sassa hired me to run Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, soon to be the backbone of the new Cartoon Network.

Hanna-Barbera’s last big hit had been The Smurfs a decade earlier. I knew nothing about making cartoons (or, for that matter, any TV shows), but I still had the shorts idea.

Ted didn’t like it. More for business reasons than creative ones — a story for another day —  but I was told to just make some series. I did, and they bombed. With our budget shot, I went back to the well.

“With $10 million, I can find new talent to create dozens of new characters.” The plan: 48 shorts.

“You just failed twice. Why should we let you try again?”

“If we do something 48 times, don’t you think we’ll get it right at least once?”

Besides, cable operators were looking for original programming and loved media buzz. With shorts, Cartoon Network could promote “new shows” weekly for at least two years. And, not for nothing, great shorts had fueled the cartoon industry for a century; we’d be the first in decades to do them commercially.

Ted, always the entrepreneurial risk-taker, went for it, and What a Cartoon! was born.

 

Fred Seibert

‘I spent two years talking to anyone in the animation industry who would listen. Mainly, the artists who got into the business to make cartoons, not animated sitcoms or half-hour toy commercials, but amazing cartoons like the ones that made them fall in love with the medium.’

 

 

The production team centered on my first animation mentor, Buzz Potamkin, and the young-at-heart veteran producer Larry Huber. My management partner, Jed Simmons, figured out how to pry the money out of our parent company. (Plus, anyone else at H&B who didn’t think I was crazy.)

I spent two years talking to anyone in the animation industry who would listen. Mainly, the artists who got into the business to make cartoons, not animated sitcoms or half-hour toy commercials, but amazing cartoons like the ones that made them fall in love with the medium.

From Of Mice and Magic, and from listening to Joe and Bill talk about their creations, I realized that the most unique voices in animation came from the artists themselves. That may sound obvious, but the conventional wisdom I’ve been hearing for 30 years is, “Artists can’t write.” My comeback: “Most writers can’t write either. They can only type.”

I made it my mission to find artists who could “write.” The rest of the industry wasn’t interested in them, which gave Hanna-Barbera a totally open field.

I wanted What a Cartoon! to be as “golden age” as possible. We wanted new voices from around the world to speak to new generations of fans. And “golden age” meant storyboard pitches only — no scripts. You can imagine that didn’t go over too well in some circles.

We put out press releases and waited. Oh boy! Massive mailbags of storyboards poured in. Our estimate: over 5,000 submissions during the three years of production.

The presentation room was packed. I was the least-experienced person there, so I made sure the pitchers — some new, some veteran artists —  had an educated audience: H&B production staff, Cartoon Network folks like programmer Mike Lazzo and then-President Betty Cohen — probably about 20 people per session.

Buzz and Larry brought in legends like Ralph Bakshi and Bruno Bozzetto (yes, they had to pitch too!), which got What a Cartoon! some attention. And many young folks already working on our shows lined up to take part in what I hoped would be a new golden era.

We cast the net wide. The goal: introduce Cartoon Network viewers to original cartoons that reflected the contemporary world, not just reheated versions of the past. The classic stuff would be everywhere soon, thanks to channel expansion. Why try to imitate it?

The Search for Original Voices 

What we needed were original voices and fresh perspectives; they’d create the cartoons the audience had been waiting for.

It was thrilling to hear the pitches. Some were good, some not, and some were great. I could tell by the looks on everyone’s faces: We were living through something special.

Shorts hadn’t been mainstream since the ’60s. The response made it clear: The time had come again.

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera each made shorts for the program. So did veterans like Jerry Eisenberg, Don Jurwich and Robert Alvarez. (You can find a full list on Wikipedia.) But the younger generation brought the most energy — and the biggest success stories.

Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter’s Laboratory) and Craig McCracken (The Powerpuff Girls) came from our 2 Stupid Dogs production. Van Partible (Johnny Bravo) had just graduated college. David Feiss (Cow & Chicken) had been storyboarding on Super Secret Secret Squirrel. John Dilworth (Courage the Cowardly Dog) was a wild card from the New York indie scene.

And the influence didn’t stop there. Creators like Butch Hartman (The Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom), Rob Renzetti (My Life as a Teenage Robot) and Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) also got their springboard with What a Cartoon! 

Looking back on the 48 shorts we produced, every creator brought passion and purpose. You could feel how motivated they were to make their mark in an industry that had overlooked many of them for so long.

And somehow, we cracked the door open, just like I’d hoped. A new golden age was here!


 

Fred Seibert is an animation producer and media entrepreneur, known for founding Frederator, co-founding MTV and producing hit shows such as Adventure Time, Castlevania and The Fairly OddParents. He’s an Emmy winner and the first Tumblr investor. Fred entered the Animation Magazine Hall of Fame in 2017 and the Emmy Gold Circle in 2023.

 

 

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