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[insects chirping]

♪ Hon De Laud Hup Hive! Up NICK! ♪

♪ Hon De Laud Hup Hive! Up NICK! ♪

♪ Hone De Rikki-Tikki Lo Y Livin' No. 1 Nickelodeon

[Kenan Thompson] Nickelodeon, if you want to know about it.

It's a kid-owned environment.

It didn't feel like the version of what an adult was telling a kid to watch.

It felt like really what kids were into.

It just had a voice that kind of had respect for kids.

[Mitch Kriegman] We were the anti Disney.

We were the anti Saturday morning.

[Anne Kreamer] It was weird and wacky.

What are the things that people I think don't know about Nickelodeon

was how many women there were at the top.

Kids can smell from a thousand miles away when they're being sold a bunch of crap

versus something that is a kind of original production that is targeting them specifically.

From a kid's point of view life can really suck because grownups make the rules.

If it was a tiny bit naughty, kids would really appreciate that

and feel that it was real and it was really for them.

I mean, the stuff we got away with was insane.

The inmates were very much running the asylum back then.

It was way easier to slip stuff in.

[Anne Sweeney] Ren & Stimpy.

The Kenan & Kelshow.

-All That. -[Graham Yost] Hey Dude.

Legends of the Hidden Temple.

You Can't Do That on Television.

[man 1] Rocko's Modern Life.

The Adventures of Pete & Pete.

Salute Your Shorts.

-[Marc Summers] Double Dare. -[Angela Santomero] Doug.

-[Paul Germain] Rugrats. - The Secret World of Alex Mack.

Clarissa Explains It All.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

[Phil Moore] The team of people that worked there at that time were...

the most creative and talented people I've ever met.

So there's all those crazy things that happened that, you know, nobody knows about.

[upbeat music playing]

In the very beginning, there was an experiment in Columbus, Ohio, called QUBE,

and it was interactive TV.

In the very near future,

Warner Cable will be introducing an expanded system of communication in Columbus, Ohio.

It will involve television.

Plus what is now known as cable television, but it will go beyond both.

It starts with this little black box.

The big thing then in Columbus was this whole interactive thing.

They had these buttons at home and you could interact.

And it was television of the future.

And everybody thought, oh, my God, this is, you know, revolutionary.

[man 2] These buttons offer the subscriber the capability

literally to talk back to the television set.

You can press them to give your views on a subject or take part in the game.

You can answer questions asked of you.

Ever feel that nothing exciting happens to you, that life is just passing you by?

Should the possession and use of marijuana be legalized?

Button I would be for yes, button 2 would be no.

Touch now

You could sit at home and press buttons and actually get involved with shows.

We had a show called Talent Search

and it was sort of like today's American Idol.

If some act was on and you didn't like it,

you could press a button at home and see the percentages on the screen

and that act was gone within a minute and a half.

♪ You bet your life That it isn't her ♪

♪ But could she love Could she woo ♪

♪ Coochie coochie, coochie coo ♪

Ooh.

One of the people who was the scientist behind QUBE

was a woman named Dr. Vivian Horner.

It was her pedagogy that went behind that early version of Nickelodeon,

which actually was called Pinwheel.

♪ Pinwheel, pinwheel Spinning around ♪

♪ Look at my Pinwheel And see what I've found ♪

♪ Pinwheel, pinwheel Where have you been? ♪

♪ Hello, how are you And may I come in? ♪

[Burt Dubrow] It was puppets, it was focused, I think, for the first time,

right to a specific audience. To children.

[man 2] Button two in the community column brings you Pinwheel.

This is programming designed especially for the 2 to 5-year-old preschool children.

♪ It's a shower for a flower A bath for a bee ♪

♪ A wash for a squash And a drink for a tree! ♪

[Burt] You know, when you don't have a lot of money to do, you know,

because you're in Columbus, Ohio, you tend to get pretty creative.

It was better in some sense because it was raw

and there wasn't all that great production value.

And... and I think in a sense that was better for kids.

It was more real for a child, I think, watching

than seeing all this great New York or Hollywood production.

It was sort of the beginning of... of... of everything in terms of cable.

So when we wrapped the Columbus versions of Pinwheel,all that crew,

they went to New York and thought,

"Huh, we should not do just one show over and over and over again.

Let's do a network for kids.

And I don't know, why don't we call it Nickelodeon?"

[man 3] Introducing... Nickelodeon.

Children's programming that's fit for children, 14 hours of programming a day,

seven days a week that will make them wonder, laugh, ponder and think.

The story I always understood as the origin story of Nickelodeon

was that the Warner Brothers, they had bought a Nickelodeon machine, a movie machine,

and they were screening movies on their Nickelodeon in their garage.

So when this fabulous company went into business with American Express,

their first channel was called Nickelodeon.

[Scott Webb] So those early days of Nickelodeon had sort of an old school feel to it,

you know, shows that had, you know, some kind of educational value to it.

But there was nothing very distinctive about Nickelodeon in those days.

But we call those days the... the green vegetables days at Nickelodeon

because it was good for you, but it wasn't something really that kids wanted.

We're going great...

There was a lot of shows that were very much about kids

who could play concert piano and kids who were jumping out of airplanes

and, you know, parachuting and just amazing kids who did incredible things.

Those shows made kids feel terrible about themselves

because there's that kid on TV and he's doing something amazing

and I can barely get through third grade.

[Alan Goodman] Nickelodeon had been run by a guy from the toy business Cy Schneider,

who had his opportunity.

And then it was passed onto Gerry Laybourne.

[Anne Sweeney] Geraldine Laybourne is the most progressive thinker

the world of media has ever seen.

The first time I heard Gerry Laybourne talk about Nickelodeon,

it was about her background as a teacher and how kids were always first.

[Scott Webb] Part of what's important to her is that whatever she's working on

is to put it in the form of a cause, a mission.

And I think she wanted to change the world.

[Alan Goodman] So Gerry assembled a core group of her staff.

We all went out to Gerry's house

and we brainstormed, and we pitched ideas.

And then Gerry's son Sam came through the living room at one point

with a very typical 8-year-old's lament.

Gerry watched as he left and she said, "Boy, it's tough to be a kid."

We realized almost every one of us almost instantly,

that there was tremendous value and dignity in letting kids be kids.

[Anne Sweeney] She had the idea to go out and talk to kids.

We actually had an arrangement with the Watchung Elementary School in Montclair, New Jersey.

And in exchange for giving them a television set,

we were allowed to come into the classroom and talk to kids.

And we talked to kids about what was going on in their lives.

We didn't say, "Do you like this television show or that television show?"

We said, "What does it feel like to be a kid?"

[Geraldine Laybourne] Mothers were going to work for the first time, divorce rates were high.

Kids were either coming home alone or into school after school programs.

They needed a place where they could just be kids.

And that became our mantra.

We had had a logo that was a silver ball and multiple colors,

and it was so, so condescending,

you can't believe it is this romp through clichés about kids.

The original theme song had been done by the London Symphony Orchestra.

[theme music playing]

Tough to find kids that would connect into that sound.

So Fred Seibert and Alan and I were trying to figure out

what is going to be something that kids will attach to.

Now, Fred and Alan had been involved in the MTV logo.

They knew that a participatory logo was about as good as it could get.

And we wanted kids to own Nickelodeon.

It was... that was our intention.

[Alan Goodman ] We had a lot of success with the MTV logo that we had developed.

And it was the first logo I knew about that changed.

And our attitude was, television moves.

It should be raucous. It should be noisy.

We thought the same thing when we got to Nickelodeon.

Let's represent this audience,

which is noisy and crazy and fun and irreverent and all of that stuff.

[Anne Sweeney] And I'll never forget the day Fred Seibert stood up in a meeting

and said, "Anne, orange! It's orange!"

And we said, "Why? What? Orange?"

And the one promo that has stuck in my head my whole life has been,

"Orange you glad you got your Nickelodeon?"

♪ Aren't you glad you got Your Nickelodeon? ♪

♪ Aren't you glad You're watching

♪ You're watching You got your Nickelodeon? ♪

♪ You're watching Nick! Aren't you glaaaad ♪

♪ You're watching You're watching You're watching Nick! ♪

[Anne Sweeney] Fred picked orange because it was a happy color.

Kids responded to it.

[Alan] Pantone 021, which is the orange color of Nickelodeon's original logo.

It was the perfect color because it went with nothing.

[Anne Sweeney] You could do anything you wanted with that color and any number of shapes,

but you couldn't change the typeface and you couldn't change the color.

[Alan] It was its own thing that would slap on the screen

the same way that the MTV logo was a spray painted TV

to say this is thematically defacing whatever is behind it.

That was my attitude about the orange logo as well

as that it sort of was there to deface whatever was behind it.

[Anne Sweeney] In the early years, we couldn't get any one really in the United States

to sell programs to us.

And I remember talking to a big syndicator

who had all of the... the big animated series at the time.

And he said to me, and I quote, "Honey, I'll never sell a program to you.

The business is on broadcast and in syndication."

Okay, fine. We'll... we'll go out and find it ourselves.

We would buy series from Japan and have them dubbed.

We would buy French series and have them dubbed.

We would buy shorts.

And it probably wasn't until

we screened You Can't Do That on Television that came from Canada

that we had the moment that crystallized

really where this was going.

[theme music playing]

I think that show informed everything that we did going forward.

[Kenan] You Can't Do That n Television, I think was like,

"Oh, that is Nickelodeon."

Whenever I would think about their shows, like that's Nickelodeon,

because they do that slime thing and those kids are like hanging in those lockers.

-Hey, Adam. -Yes, Mathew.

I had this nightmare. I dreamt that I got slimed, told pathetic jokes.

I was humiliated in front of millions of people.

Yeah, Matthew, that nightmare is still going on. It's called being on this show.

I hope I wake up soon.

[Geraldine] We put a show called You Can't Do That on Television on the air,

which was a comedy skit show.

And really it was a show that understood kids' needs so deeply.

And it really turned a kid's world upside down.

Time for dessert, kids.

Boo! We hate desserts.

-Can't have more Brussels sprouts, and liver? -Yeah.

Normally I'd say no,

-but now we have Liver & Brussel Sprout ice cream. -[both] Yay!

So at the end of the day, a kid would feel better watching You Can't Do That on Television,

because their parents weren't that bad.

Their teachers weren't that bad. Their principal would never put them in a dungeon.

[Drake Bell] it was so cool to be able to watch something that wasn't talking down to you.

You look back, and it's comedy genius, really.

You look at it and you're just like, "Man, they were just so ahead of their time."

But, you know, if your parents saw it, it'd be like,

"Okay, it's a little... it's a little pushing the envelope."

But that's what was cool about it.

See you around.

[Anne Sweeney] I think You Can't Do That on Television

was the most critical piece of programming

that Nickelodeon ever purchased.

And I think one of the geniuses who really informed a lot of what happened at Nickelodeon

was a guy named Roger Price, who is the producer of You Can't Do That on Television.

Roger believed that all kids feel stupid and alone on the inside.

And I think that that was such a... a powerful truth, you know, that he articulated.

All of these crazy guys who went to Cambridge and Oxford

were creating this completely inappropriate television.

And Roger was of that vintage.

He tried to sell the concept of a TV show about kids who could just be who they are.

And these very staid producers said, "You can't do that on television."

He said, "Yes, I can.

And that's what I'm going to call it!"

Kids all over the world said, "I get to be me,

and if I really am lucky, maybe I get to be slimed."

I think it was super clever because, you know, the trigger and I don't even want to say it.

You know what it is.

Like what else could there be in that green stuff?

Well, I don't know. See, that's one thing about...

[Christine McGlade] You get punished for not knowing, right?

So that's... that's the idea there.

You... you are gonna get dumped on if you don't know the answer.

Just a physical incarnation of this thing where, like, kids are just dumped on.

And I think that's how kids feel.

It turned out it's really great to be slimed.

I've been slimed several times.

It's warm. It's wonderful.

And so the kids loved getting slimed and they were paid an extra 50 bucks.

I never got paid for being slimed, but, you know...

I think if I told you what slime was made out of, I'd probably have to kill you.

[Scott] Nickelodeon owes a lot, obviously, to ou Can't Do That on Television,

not just kind of the elements of... of green slime,

you know, that... that became iconic for Nickelodeon.

But I think the whole way of relating to kids in a very honest, authentic, real

and not, you know, fancy or polished or, you know, pretty way.

On your mark. Get set, go.

[announcer 1] These two teams are in the tension

trying to pop water balloons on top of their partner's dunce cap.

Who's ever first...

[Marc Summers] Well, if you ask me, Double Dare put Nickelodeon on the map.

I mean, slime was there and, you know,

I Don't Know and You Can't started to bring eyeballs to the set.

But I think we were the first appointment TV the kids had.

The question was, how do you make a low cost, high volume program

that could really perform well for kids in this times lot that we were looking to win?

[Anne Sweeney] Dee LaDuke, Geoffrey Darby,

and Mike Klinghoffer were in a room talking about shows,

talking about development, talking about games.

And one of them said, "Do you remember when you used to dare someone

to do something when you were a kid?"

And the response from somebody else in the room was, "Well, that was fun.

But it was when you double dared them that it got really interesting."

Thanks, everybody. Welcome to Double Dare.

It's the game that doubles the challenge from your brains right down your feet.

[Marc] They shot a pilot in Geoffrey Darby's basement.

They wanted Geoffrey because Geoffrey was like the king of Nickelodeon

and Gerry Laybourne thought everything he did was magical.

And so, "Well, why don't you do it, Geoffrey?"

Well, if, you know, you see the pilot, you see why Geoffrey should have never done it.

You start this with a tossup round. So hands on the buzzer.

Here's the question for ten dollars and control of the game.

Seventy percent of the Earth's surface is covered by water.

But what is the name of the largest ocean in the Earth?

-[buzzes] -And Mrs. Mr.?

-Atlantic? -Wrong. I'm so sorry.

[Marc] I was 33 years old. I didn't want to do a kid show.

I didn't even know what the hell it was.

I just wanted to get on television on a regular gig.

This physical challenge is going to be very easy.

Amy, why don't you come up over here and Mike right over there?

-Have you ever been to Hawaii? -No.

Never been there. It's a great place. You've never learned to hula though?

[Scott] You know what makes Marc special is that he doesn't talk down to kids.

I mean, that he's just that guy who's like a... a friend.

Having somebody who's personable and likable,

I think made him the right choice for hosting that show.

How about a round of applause for Amy and Mike for doing such a darn good job here for us.

All right. Very nice.

So first day on the set of ouble Dare, we were all excited and nervous

and the bigwigs came down from New York.

And we just wanted to get it right.

Well, keep in mind, it was the first time I'd ever done the obstacle course.

And I had a lot going on in my mind, but it was also everybody else's first time.

So the very first obstacle was called Nightmare.

And there was a pillow filled with feathers

and there was a flag somewhere hidden in that pillow.

Come on, get that flag. You can't... no, you can't help.

Find the... find the flag.

Find the flag. It's in there somewhere.

We thought somebody put the flag in, but they didn't put the flag in.

So for 60 seconds, they're going through the feathers. There's no flag.

Three, two, one...

Sorry, your time is up. We never even got to our first flag.

Gee, I feel bad about that. There is a flag in there somewhere, I promise.

We just, uh, unfortunately don't have time to go in and find it.

But there is a flag in there and, uh, we're only to obstacle number one.

We're cutting. Great. Thank goodness.

It looked scary.

Here was a stiff host wearing penny loafers, trying to control kids.

And we go to an obstacle course that is supposed to run, uh, eight obstacles in 60 seconds.

I think it took us two hours to do a 60-second obstacle course.

We have to shoot four shows a day to make our budget.

And we only get one show shot that day.

And I am beside myself.

After the fact, you know, I went to Gerry and I went, you know, "Are we okay?

What's going on?" "Oh, you were fantastic. Show was fantastic."

Little did I know she had said to Klinghoffer, "What have I got myself into here?

I've sent these boys to go down and play television who have never done it."

So she gets on the train to go back to New York going,

"Okay, I'll probably be fired in a week."

And then it became what it became.

[announcer 2] Every weekday, Nickelodeon gives kids the physical challenges they want

on Double Dare. Flying Zucchini Brothers.

William Tell. Rain on your Parade.

Weatherman, Top Gum. Scrambled Egg. And more.

The Physical Challenge, another reason to watch Double Dare every weekday on Nickelodeon.

Double Dare really went for everything that kids laughed at

that they weren't supposed to laugh at.

Having kids dive in to pools of slime

and come out of it just dripping with goo.

It was epic. It became another cornerstone of Nickelodeon.

[Kenan] I just loved Double Dare because it was, you know, food based

and people swimming around and eating it and competing at the same time

was like the best three things in the world.

I don't know, it was like weird and gross and disgusting and fun.

I just remember, like, you had to reach up into a nose for a flag or something.

Who doesn't want to do that? [laughs]

Our safety record was really good with the exception of one kid.

As he was coming down, he flipped over.

I... I could've sworn he broke his neck. I thought his head snapped.

And you can hear me saying during the entire time, "Are you okay?

You feel all right? You okay?"

And you know, they got to obstacle number six.

And I... and you could see me. I put my arm around the kid.

I said, "Are you doing all right? You doing all right?"

You know, so... so then afterwards we go back in the control room.

We watch it on ska-mo.

This person shouldn't be alive today.

I mean, his head went this way, his neck went this way. It was frightening.

We get done and, uh, his father comes in.

And he goes, "Lucky for you. My kid's all right." Yeah. Thanks.

"You know, the large screen TV was obstacle number seven." Yeah.

"I won't sue you if you give us the large screen TV."

Hey, whatever you want, man. [laughs]

You want that large screen TV? Anything else you want?

You want a piece of the set? What else do you want? What else can we give you?

[Scott] So the success of Double Dare really showed how important

original programming was for Nickelodeon,

not just for ratings,

but for Nickelodeon to have its own identity.

[Marc] Yeah, it became a hit rather quickly.

And then they asked us to start doing personal appearances.

So, Robin and I started to go to malls.

Well, you know, 10,000 people would show up.

And then we realized, "Oh, my God, this is huge.

Why don't we take and start putting it in arenas?"

Then there became a competition for kids because Nickelodeon owned kids,

I think, from that point on they always have.

Then when they made the deal at Universal

and families were forced to bring the kids down to be a part of it,

uh, that's pretty heavy.

When you plan your whole vacation around a cable network, that's nuts.

[man 4] Nickelodeon is the world's leading television network for children.

Two sound stages at the side of live action programming,

while sharing in the excitement of taking part in programming designed just for them.

Children have a close up look at how television is produced.

[Geraldine] At one point in the late '80s,

we were producing seven shows in seven different places.

And I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if we had a studio, a central studio with a lot?"

I knew that we couldn't afford it.

So I tried to think about who needs us,

who would possibly benefit from having Nickelodeon on their lot.

And Universal Studios, Florida was just getting started.

Gerry Laybourne, who was brilliant, went to Universal Studios management, said,

"You know, down here in Florida, you got competitors down the street

and they got something you don't have. They got a mouse.

We can be your mouse."

[Marc] Welcome to the Nick Studios, ladies and gentlemen, we are live!

First time in 11 years, we're doing a live broadcast on Nickelodeon,

and it means we are coming to you from our new home right here in Orlando, Florida.

These are your studios where you can come to watch Nick being made

and you can audition to be on a Nick show.

[Alan] It was a place where shows got produced

because it was supposed to be a real working studio.

So there were two stages.

We were probably two floors high.

And then on the third floor, I think there was a glass walkway

that went between the two studios.

So the tour could look down into either stage from this glass walkway

and see us actually producing shows.

The Orlando Nickelodeon experience was... was wild.

You would see this Nickelodeon tour and you would see these kids looking through a window.

Looking at us like a bunch of, like, talented fish.

[Josh Server] At first you were very aware of it, but after a while you just forgot.

So we would be in the hair and makeup room or in the wardrobe room.

And then all of a sudden you just like turn around and there would just be like a kid

with his face pressed up against the glass, like.

And so it created this like it was like the zoo effect. [laughs]

And so you really felt like you were always on.

[Marc] Okay, folks. Here we are in Production Alley.

If you look up in the monitors, that's what they're doing next door on sound stage 19

where they're recording Family Double Dare.

This is Production Alley some of the behind the scenes rooms.

The first room in the back there, that's the makeup room.

Of course, with those bright lights, every star, every contestant on Nick

needs to wear makeup to look their best.

[Marc] After a while, they wanted every part of our lives exposed.

And I hated that, especially when you're a performer and you need to be in makeup and hair.

And I... I went to management, said,

"I'm begging you to close the curtain while we're getting made up

and get that microphone out of there."

Well, they said they wouldn't do it. Okay, fine.

So I waited one night, until everybody was gone

and I went in and pulled the guts out of all the microphones in there

and it took them a month.

They couldn't figure out why the hell... Everything's plugged in.

Everything's plugged in.

But I ripped all the... the innards out of the microphone

so they couldn't hear what the hell we were saying because I don't wanna be bothered.

Sorry. No pictures. No pictures. I'm sorry.

[Kel Mitchel] That was our backyard.

Like Universal Studios was our backyard.

In between like breaks and stuff like that,

in between sketches we would go hang out on the Back to the Future Ride.

[Kenan] We would like sneak into the park at lunchtime and like go ride like Terminator Two.

That was like the ride at the time.

[Marc] Why kids wanted to be slimed. I don't know.

When we built Universal Studios, we had a whole room

where people would get slimed on a regular basis.

[Alan] it was part of the tour attraction.

They'd go in and they'd play some Nickelodeon games

that were similar to the games that were played on Nickelodeon's game shows.

And one kid would get... would get slimed. And it was a great time.

[Geraldine] Nickelodeon Studios was a big step forward for us

because it said to the world that we were big.

We had a big physical presence.

So when people would come, when advertisers would come down here and see us,

we were no longer a cable television channel.

We were something gigantic for kids.

[Alan] Nickelodeon Studios became the thing that got kids to say to their parents,

"We got to go to Universal Studios, Florida."

And the lines to get into that attraction were enormous.

[Anne Kreamer] That gave us a home base. It was in your face, Disney.

You know, here we are. We've got this other thing going on right now.

And it really created an anchor and attraction thing

that extended further that sense of kids being able to touch and see and participate

in this thing they love, Nickelodeon.

The Nickelodeon team was constantly pushing itself.

We were constantly thinking about what should we be doing next?

You know, how did that work out? And very conscious of not repeating ourselves.

So going into live action with a show like Hey Dude was the next chapter.

[announcer 2] Hey Dude.

♪ It's a little wild And a little strange ♪

♪ When you make your home Out on the range ♪

[Anne Sweeney] Hey Dude was of critical moment for Nickelodeon.

To do a scripted show, to do something that other networks did.

They did scripted television.

So it was critical that this was written for kids.

And, you know, you look back at some of the writers that we had, Lisa Mel a med, Graham Yost,

I mean, these are real writers in Hollywood.

Hey Dude was one of Nickelodeon's first scripted series.

I would say almost the equivalent of Saved by the Bell, but on a dude ranch.

Hey Dude, half hour live action comedy

was about kids working at a dude ranch in Arizona

that has just been purchased by a guy from New York.

So a real city slicker, a real dude.

Mr. Ernst. And he's there with his son, Buddy.

Beautiful. Just beaut.

That's just beautiful, isn't it?

It is hot, but beautiful.

[Graham] And for a season, there was a dog and then that was just too much work.

So, Cassie just kind of disappeared.

Cassie. Cassie. Go get it. Get it.

There were no veterans on the show.

There were no people who had been working in the business for years who could say,

"Oh, don't do that." We were all just figuring it out.

You know, it was an inexpensive cable show for kids, but we never wrote down to it.

[Graham] I always said to people it was a little bit like writers' boot camp in that,

"Okay, let's write the classics.

Have... we've got Brad and Ted, who, you know, girl and boy who really like each other,

but they're always fighting.

Well, let's have them get handcuffed together and lose the key."

That's a classic.

Dave Brisbin, he played Mr. Ernst, the ranch owner.

Let's have him trip and fall into a water trough.

Man, we went into the water trough... whenever in doubt have him...

someone fall in the water trough.

[Christine] We shot Hey Dude in Tucson, Arizona, in the middle of the desert.

It was the Tanque Verde Ranch, which is actually a place that people go for vacations

for a dude ranch experience.

But we had some property off of the ranch itself and they built sets.

It was really interesting. They really developed a real hybrid way of making a TV show.

What they had miscalculated was the heat and the locations

because the sets weren't air conditioned.

And one time we put a thermometer on the hat of the boom man

and it was one hundred and twenty six degrees.

We could fry eggs.

[Graham] Everyone felt they were lucky to be working.

They were having fun, very little attitude or anything.

I think we absolutely bonded more because we were living on location.

I mean, what do you do when you're 17 years old

in the middle of the desert making this show?

But it was the best.

It was super fun and we all had the best time.

[Lisa] Ultimately, at the end of the day, our stories were about

the kids taking care of each other and being generous to each other and being good friends.

And I think if you have the privilege of putting something out there in the world,

that's what it should be.

[Anne Sweeney] I think because we had learned a lot about ourselves

and had been successful with Hey Dude, we felt ready to take on more scripted.

[fanfare]

[Steve] The idea for Salute Your Shorts came about

because I was a counselor at summer camp up in Maine and I met a guy named Tom Hill.

We decided to take our summer camp experience

and put it into a big humor book called Salute Your Shorts.

Nickelodeon had just begun

creating new shows for... for kids and they're looking for things.

And they thought that camp would be a perfect arena for them

because it was kids in a kids' environment and it was kids living by their own rules.

♪ We run, we jump We swim and play ♪

♪ We row and go on trips ♪

♪ But the things that last Forever ♪

♪ Are our dear friendships ♪

♪ Camp An a wanna ♪

♪ We hold you in our hearts ♪

♪ And when we think about you ♪

♪ It makes me wanna fart ♪

[Steve] As we were casting, one of the things we wanted to make sure that we're doing

was to get kids who were natural.

We wanted less acting and we wanted more normal kids.

I remember casting for the pilot when it was me as Budnick

and Michael as Donkey Lips.

I remember feeling like that's... this is going to work.

Meet my best friend in the entire world.

This is Eddie "Donkey Lips" Gelfen.

I can hock a loogie eight feet in the air and catch it with my tongue.

I lived with just my father and we... he was like a single parent family.

We couldn't afford cable at that time in our life.

So I was literally working on the Nickelodeon show

and not being able to watch it at that moment.

[Venus] Being a child actor in Los Angeles

and then also just the kind of upbringing that I had,

I wasn't actually exposed to that much diversity.

So I was the only black kid on this show, you know.

So, "at that time", that was very diverse.

[Steve] We're trying to break the rules.

We were trying to do things that were... that had never been done before.

My goal was to make it look as cinematic, and as large as possible.

And so I pitched the show saying that the camera would be up on the roof,

under the bed, it would be behind the ball.

And we always want to do things differently.

Hey, everybody, it's awful waffle time!

Awful waffle. Awful waffle. Awful waffle.

What's an awful waffle?

[Michael] So one of the questions a lot of people want to know is

what is an awful waffle?

Well, we don't truly know!

The awful waffle, I... I never heard it explained in detail.

It has something to do with like a tennis... some sort of racket and syrup.

And from there, you can use your imagination or ask Steve.

Maybe he'll finally... he'll finally spill the beans.

Do you want to know the secret of the awful waffle?

There's some secrets that cannot be told.

And the secret of the awful waffle is one of them.

Did I ever receive push back from Nickelodeon? Of course.

They were the studio and they were ultimately in charge of... of... of what got on

and what the rules were.

One of the big push backs was an episode where a kid was gonna sneak out of the bunk

and he was going to go down to the lodge and he was going to steal candy.

Note from network, "Children cannot steal candy."

The big problem was obesity.

We're gonna... we're very concerned with obesity and healthy eating.

That's what the network said. So we had to change it.

And instead, the child had to sneak out of his bunk, sneak down to the lodge,

risk being thrown out.

And he had to go and steal an orange.

[Danny] It was like being in camp.

The crew, we had the same sort of group of people, and it was... it was fun.

We had a lot of fun on that show.

[Steve] We were able to tell stories where the kid didn't have to win at the end.

There was disappointment. There were bullies.

Kids at home responded to that.

Those were real world problems that they were facing.

And so now they were able to watch characters on the screen

who reflected their lives at home.

I got to go to work and have pie fights.

I've got to go to work and play dodge ball.

There was no better time in my professional career than making Salute Your Shorts.

[Big Pete] It all started right here on the 50-yard line,

with a sky-high whirling discus throw that killed an innocent squid.

[Danny Tamberelli] Pete & Pete was a very weird show, like it wasn't for everybody.

And because of that, I think what people latched on to was that sort of weirdness.

People used to say it was Twin Peaks meets the Wonder Years.

[Drake] Pete & Pete. Oh, my gosh.

I mean, if you watch that show now, have you watched it recently? It is brilliant.

[Will McRobb] I think the goal of Pete & Pete was to tell a story the way kids tell stories,

where it's just one big stream of consciousness,

a burst of images and half completed thoughts

that underneath it all was a layer of deep nostalgia.

But on top of that, it was sort of filtered through a very fractured mindset

of... of... of the narrator.

I think one of the things that made people realize that Pete & Pete was something different

was in our opening credits.

[theme music playing]

♪ Hey, smilin' strange ♪

♪ You're lookin' happily Deranged ♪

We give a tattoo a credit and we give a plate in Mom's head their own credits.

Petunia was my tattoo.

Nobody knows how I got it,

but every time I shake my... my wrist like this,

I can make her dance, my mom fainted.

So I had to wear long sleeved shirts even in the summer.

I've seen a lot of Petunia tattoos, all pretty unique.

A lot of people are like "Hey, is the tattoo real?"

I was like, "No, it's not, it's not real. I was seven years old."

It was interesting that we could get away with that then.

I mean, you know, she's sort of a partly clad woman.

I mean, it's like a real hardcore tattoo, something an old sailor would have.

Someone did something illegal to a child.

Then we put it on Nickelodeon.

The main difference between Big Pete and Little Pete would have to be that

Little Pete is secure in his childlike imagination and brain.

But Big Pete was always struggling with, "Do I want to stay a kid?

Do I want to grow up?"

He's at the crossroads and I'm not there yet.

And I want him to stay with me. And he wants to stay, too.

But he also has his own friends in high school.

[Michael] Big Pete and Ellen's relationship,

as we're introduced to it in the beginning,

is "you're a girl and you're a friend, but you're not a girlfriend."

Listen, you're a girl and you're a friend, but you're not a girlfriend.

And that's from Pete's point of view.

But we do see their relationship develop over time, both in the "Day of the Dot",

which was early on in our series production,

and the "Valentine's Day Massacre", which was one of our specials.

You can see that, you know, Pete and Ellen also might have feelings for each other.

And that, I think helps kids understand, you know, about growing up.

Maybe your childhood friends turn into something else.

There are a lot of excellent musician cameos that were on Pete & Pete.

[upbeat music playing]

Katherine Dieckmann, who was the director.

She's had directed Shiny Happy People.

She directed Stand.

Because of her contacts, she was able to get Michael Stipe to be on the show.

I think once we got Michael Stipe on the show, we had the cool cred.

So then it was like, "Well, let's see if we can get Iggy Pop."

Iggy Pop's like, "Oh, yeah, I'll do it."

Iggy Pop was so cool.

He just wanted to hang and do more stuff.

So they would just start adding him into scenes

because he wanted to hang out and he wanted to stay.

I'm sorry, Gumdrop.

But I'd have to be an idiot to let you go trick or treating.

[Michael] Artie, the Strongest Man in the World,

was a character that became Little Pete's bodyguard and personal protector.

And he's a guy who wears pajamas and can move houses

and fly, apparently, if he moves fast enough.

[Will] Some people didn't think he existed.

He just lives in the kid's imagination.

Some people thought he was disgusting,

and that tight fitting outfit certainly didn't help the argument.

My mom didn't like that he wore the tights, though.

The first time Toby put on the tights, I don't know if he was wearing the thickest underwear.

And so, you know, my mom was like,

"Who is this guy running around in tights, anatomically outlined?"

[laughs] Like, can you give this guy an extra pair of boxers or undies or something?

Come on. We would, you know, go on all sorts of crazy adventures together.

And then one day, he had to leave me.

You're different Viking, now.

Yes, I have to go.

No!

Yes.

Everything you need to learn is in here.

Out there is some boy who need me.

He's small. He... he's puny... Like you were.

But, Artie, you're my best friend.

I always will be, my little Viking.

For me personally as a kid like that resonated with me

because that was exactly where I was at in that moment.

You know, being like fifth or sixth grade and people starting to not do kid things anymore.

And... and it was a nice way of showing that sort of crossroads to... to other kids,

and I think that those episodes actually, you know,

really resonate with the people that like the show for that reason.

I know that I'm still nostalgic for that time in... in history sometimes

when you were younger and... and didn't know so much stuff,

and ice cream was the most important thing on... on like a hot afternoon in the summer.

Being a show about growing up, and being that people hopefully never stop growing up,

it'll hopefully always be important to them.

Hi, I'm Clarissa. Clarissa Darling.

Clarissa really captured what we called the middle aged kid.

We realized in conversations that we were having with kids

that life got tricky in about sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade.

Some mornings you just don't want to go to school.

[Anne Sweeney] By the time you figured out who you were as a kid,

you were thrown in to this pre-teen space that was uncomfortable.

Clarissa really became representative of that kid.

Clarissa, the only abnormal child of two perfectly normal parents.

[knocking]

Unless, of course, you count him.

She was really relatable.

And it was funny how, you know, she was always making fun of her brother,

and how she just had kind of a quirky parents that kind of let her just be herself.

[Larisa] She was smart and interesting and marched to the beat of her own drummer.

And I just wanted to be her best friend.

Did you not like to break the middle things off pens and use them to clean my toenails?

No.

Clarissa Darling was... she was a lot like me.

She was just a girl who was tough, thick skinned, creative.

She was very stylish, which I was not.

Talk about a wardrobe, huh.

[Melissa] You know, just kind of nonconformist.

Doesn't care what anyone thinks and is going to pave her own way.

All I know is I'd like to change my mind all the time.

[Alan] Clarissa Explains It All changed the world.

She was the first female character

who wasn't sitting by the phone waiting for the boy to call.

Clarissa is a smart, independent, self-assured 14-year-old girl.

Clarissa is a feminist.

[Geraldine] I think girls are fantastic.

I think they're really interesting.

And I think actually, boys like girls, even though they say they don't.

I think they deeply do.

I just think they don't like girly shows because they're produced in a stupid way.

They hit on stereotypes of girls.

[Alan] You know, the... the wise people of show business were always quick to tell you

that girls will watch shows starring boys, but boys will not watch shows starring girls.

[Melissa] And Clarissa kind of debunked that really.

When Clarissa came on, they were just as many boy viewers in the demographic as there were girls.

So it kind of, I think the ratings were better than they expected

because it had a... it had a much wider demographic.

Morn, don't you realize that if I don't watch TV,

I won't be able to keep up with the cultural level of my peers?

[Mitchell] Trying to create Clarissa was just mainly that I was thinking of every cool girl

that I knew and I kind of, you know, amalgamated all those into this girl.

[Melissa] That was a big audition process.

I think it was the third audition, and I was sitting with Mitchell,

it was like an interview process thing.

And he wanted to talk to me, and he said, "Do you like the New Kids on the Block?"

♪ You got the right stuff Baby a'

And I went, "Oh, I hate them" and then I went, "Oh, no, this guy's in Hollywood.

He probably knows them. And I just... and everyone loves them.

And why did I say that?" And he goes, "Well, who do you like?"

And I said, "I like They Might Be Giants."

I Istanbul was Constantinople ♪

I Now it's Istanbul Not Constantinople ♪

And he was like, "Okay." And that stuck with him.

Then They Might Be Giants became a big part of Clarissa,

we had the posters on the wall and I think we mentioned him a few times.

I like Twizzlers, Jawbreakers, and Sugar Bombs.

John, the one without the glasses in They Might Be Giants.

It turns out that he loved those answers

because I wasn't, you know, conforming to what all the little girls loved,

New Kids on the Block, and I couldn't stand them.

[Mitchell] She was, like, flawless in her presentation.

She was utterly charming and relaxed.

But she had none of that fakey kid actor stuff, which I was terrified of.

[Alan] You can't teach it.

You can't pretend it's there when it's not there.

Some people just have it, and she was a star.

Hey, if you're looking for advice, you never have to look far.

[Melissa] My mom wouldn't let them touch my eyebrows.

They weren't allowed to pluck them.

I barely wore lipstick. You know, there was like no eye makeup.

It was just kind of a concealer or a little blush to make me look alive on camera

under the bright, bright lights. And that was it, really.

But I think that's what people related to, like, "Yeah, I know that girl,"

or "I am that girl," you know?

When I went to do a theme song, I just went to the coolest girl that I knew

and the coolest girl I knew was Rachel Sweet.

♪ Listen to me, baby ♪

♪ I won't play the fool ♪

♪ Rather see you dead Little boy ♪

♪ Than be with another girl ♪

And I didn't really give her any direction at all.

That's all Rachel.

♪ Na, na, nanana ♪

♪ Na, na, na, na, na, na ♪

♪ All right, all right ♪

[Geraldine] Our goal with Clarissa was to get Clarissa to be really interesting.

She had a computer, she had a friend, Sam, who climbed in her window.

[Mitchell] The core idea of Sam was that he was a boy who was a friend, but not a boyfriend.

And that was, you know, if you talk about what was sort of unique

and forward looking about it. That was it.

That was the way I see it, love is a roller coaster

You mean, it makes you barf?

No, I mean, once you get to the top, the only thing you can do is come down.

It was great to see her break the fourth wall, you know,

literally talking to the audience and talking to the camera.

Since we're going to be hanging out a lot

and I'm going to explain all the things that go on around here,

I think you should know a few things about me.

There's a lot of speculation about what Clarissa would do as an adult.

There was a book written, Mitchell wrote a book called Things I Can't Explain.

I hold very dear to the things that were dear to her when she was younger

because that's what I wrapped my character around.

So I feel like she would be in New York.

She would be loving New York.

You know, probably dated Sam, didn't end up with him, you know, those high school ones,

they can be a little rocky.

Marrying some kind of creative type or, you know, just living the high life in New York.

We felt that we were a full network for kids and the obvious missing piece was news.

The real idea behind Nick News was to nurture a better group

of political candidates

for the sake of our democracy.

We tried to figure out who in the world tells stories about the news.

And it was Linda Ellerbee.

At Christmas, many people go home for the holidays.

What if you don't have a home to go to?

Many homeless people we see on the streets seem to be alone.

But what you may not have seen

are the thousands of homeless families across the country.

There are kids your age with no home.

[Geraldine] How do you tell stories so kids feel like they're part of the world?

Not frightened by the world? We weren't trying to break stories.

We weren't trying to heighten things.

We were trying to make it understandable.

The HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to retire from the Lakers.

When Magic Johnson was diagnosed HIV positive,

I called David Stern and I said,

"If you ever want this explained to kids, Linda and I are ready to do this."

When Magic Johnson went on television and said he was HIV positive,

he also said he wanted to help kids know more about AIDS and safer sex.

Good.

So when she went on the set with Magic Johnson,

he didn't know anything about what she was going to do.

And the first thing she said was...

How many people sitting here are HIV positive?

And these three little kids raise their hand.

And one of them starts to sob.

And God bless Magic Johnson, he just calms her down.

I want people to know that we're just normal people.

[Magic] Mm-hmm. Oh.

You don't have to cry. You don't have to cry...

[crying]

Because we are normal people. Okay. We are.

You just want to be treated like that, right?

You just want your friends to play with you and call you up

and come by and still have sleepovers and things like that, right?

Yes. And it's okay to cry.

It's okay to cry.

[Geraldine] It was really magical television.

There was a sign on my door from a newspaper clipping.

If it ain't broke, fix it anyway, which is really what you have to do.

You know, we were so successful.

We had 56 percent of all kids' kid TV viewing.

We were... we were growing at 36 percent a year with a 40 percent profit margin.

So we had to continually reinvent.

♪ I'm here with my friends Nickelodeon ♪

♪ The song never ends Nickelodeon! ♪

[Anne Sweeney] We had done a lot of animation in our shorts work,

so we were starting to get comfortable with the kind of animation,

the style of animation, that was reflective of Nickelodeon;

the channel, the environment, the tone, the sense of humor.

And Vanessa Coffey was hired

to really put Nickelodeon into the animation business.

[Jim] Vanessa Coffey is just an amazing person and a great visionary.

The thing that Vanessa did that nobody else would do is she says,

"I want them to be creator driven, original pieces." That's big.

Things that were being on TV was, you know, was the Ninja Turtles, Where's Waldos,

it was things that had books and games and stuff behind it.

[Vanessa] Basically, it was if you had a toy, then you could get a show.

Transformers, GI Joe, My Little Pony, commercials basically for toys.

And after a while, I just didn't want to do that anymore.

So they said, "Why don't you go out and find stuff that you like?"

So in two weeks I came back with ug, Rugrats, and Ren & Stimpy.

It still is amazing to me to think back that those are your first three projects

and they turn into your first three animated hits.

[narrator] You won't find them in Never Never land.

They're not squishy and sweet and they don't make you go goo-galoo.

They're the Nicktoons. Doug, Ren & Stimpy, the Rugrats!

Turn to the Nicktoons every Sunday morning, starting at ten/nine Central on Nick.

[Geraldine] With Rugrats, Arlene Klasky had this idea

because she had small children of, you know, what would it be from their point of view?

And she said, "I want to do a show about babies."

I thought, "What do I do with babies, babies, babies?"

That night I went to sleep thinking about babies.

And I remember when my youngest brother came home from the hospital,

you know, he's like a week old.

So his eyes aren't focusing and he's drooling and he can't lift his head, you know.

And I thought she can't be that stupid.

I bet he's faking me out.

I bet when we leave the room, he gets up and talks.

So I go into the pitch with Vanessa and I said "A bunch of incognizant babies.

But when the adults leave the room, it turns out the babies can talk."

And she looks at me and says, "That's what I want. Go make that."

And that's how Rugrats happened.

[theme music playing]

The designs for Rugrats, when I showed them around was like, "Aargh.

They're kind of ugly." I know.

I love that. I love ugly.

How come everybody draws babies as these beautiful ones?

When they first come out, heads are kind of weird looking, kind of funny looking.

And that's why the Rugrats were drawn like they were.

And that was so real.

[Geraldine] The writing was so clever. The characters were so fresh-looking.

You'd never seen anything on TV like that.

Everybody fell in love with it immediately.

I know, let's play with my new ball!

[gasps]

[Vanessa] Tommy was modeled after Paul Germain's son.

He's the leader and he is fearless.

Who's with me?

Let's go!

[Paul] If my main character is this intrepid leader,

then I thought, my next character had to be this guy who was fearful

and that was Chuckie.

I don't know, Tommy.

I don't think this is such a good idea.

Come on, don't be a baby.

So we had Phil and Lil, who were kind of... we always thought of them as the peanut gallery.

They're just crazy. [laughs]

And then we also thought, "Who do we have as a villain?"

And when I was in fifth grade, I used to get picked on by this girl bully.

And I thought, that's cool... I've never seen a girl bully before.

And what if the key to her is that she's really sweet and cute to the adults

and she's a monster to the other kids?

When we get to the party, daddy, can I play with little Tommy?

Sure, sweetie.

Listen up, dummy.

This may be your birthday, but when the presents are opened,

I get first dibs on the toys.

Gabor Csupo, who... who was one of the other creators of the show, and my boss,

came to me and said, "I've got a great idea for the music for the show.

I want to get this guy Mark Mothersbaugh to do the sound for the show."

And I thought, "Well, that's the guy from Devo, you're not gonna be able to get him."

♪ Crack that whip ♪

♪ Give the past a slip ♪

We did all this research and finally we tracked him down.

And he was really into doing it.

[theme music playing]

There were all these weird instruments that sounded childlike

and creepy and yet cute at the same time,

it was really perfect for what the tone of the show was.

[theme music playing]

[Geraldine] With Doug, Jim Jenkins had been one of the original puppeteers in Pinwheel.

And he went off, worked for Sesame Street on small animated projects

and wrote a book called Doug.

[Jim] I got a phone call.

They're looking for original ideas to make into animation.

So I went over to Nickelodeon with this book proposal, Doug Got a New Pair of Shoes.

He came in with his book, which was like bound together from, you know, FedEx or something.

And I looked at Jim and I looked at his drawing of Doug.

And I talked to Jim and his sweet demeanor

and his vulnerability was all that I needed.

If you know Jim Jenkins, he is the most decent, kind, lovely human being.

And this series was about a wonderfully kind guy.

It just was Jim Jenkins.

Later, she told me that what she had done is run to the person she reports to

and said, "I like this guy. I want to take him to pilot."

That just doesn't happen. That is a... that is a miracle.

And it changed my life.

Doug is about as real as I can think of

depicting the life of an eleven and a half year old kid.

It's animated and it's super exaggerated

with what's the best and the worst that can happen in Doug's imagination.

But to me, it feels very real.

I think a lot of kids aren't the most popular and they're not the big loser.

They're sort of here in the middle.

I think that's the majority of what kids are dealing with,

taking chances, believing in yourself, trusting your friends.

Doug's fortunate to have Skeeter as a best friend

and somebody that's a lot easier, breezier, you know, about life.

Yo, man, let me take care of this.

The new kid wants three moo cows, one no cucs, one no sneakers,

one wet one, four cubers, and four from the vine.

Do you want anything else?

How do you order a salad from the salad bar?

One salad from the salad bar!

And Patti. Oh, my goodness, Patti, who's so understanding and patient with his craziness.

From the moment Doug arrives in Bluffington,

he sees this girl on a bicycle and he's done.

Trying to find the voice of Patti Mayonnaise. I could hear it.

I could hear it my head and I just couldn't find it.

We were casting all over the place

and I was at home in New York City in my apartment getting ready for work.

And the TV is on in the background.

And all of a sudden I hear this voice in a commercial.

It happened to be a mayonnaise commercial.

Today, this fella comes in, says he'll have chicken salad.

Then he won't. Then he will.

I say, "Darling, make up your mind."

Says he's cuttin' down on cholesterol.

I show him Kraft Cholesterol Free.

Welcome back to mayo, I say!

And I'm like, that's the voice.

That... that's it.

That... that... that girl right there. That's her. That's Patti Mayonnaise!

Are you doing anything on Friday night?

No, not yet. I mean.

Well, would you like to go see a movie?

Sure. Who else is going?

Well, nobody yet. I mean, I wasn't planning to ask anybody.

-You weren't? -Did you want to invite someone else?

No. Well, that is... you mean, just me and you?

Well, yeah.

Oh.

I mean, if... if you don't want to. That's okay.

No, I mean, yes. I mean. Well, it sounds great.

Oh, good.

I'll meet you in front of the Uniplex Friday at 7:30.

-Sounds great. See yah! -See yah!

Wow! Just me and Patti.

I'd say the number one question asked of me when we tour or whatever it is,

when is Doug going to kiss Patti?

And we held that Off.

You know, you want to keep that tension.

But also, I like the innocence of where it is.

He dreams about it plenty.

It was, it was simple.

And I think because of that, it was... it was beautiful.

Hello. Hope you like Bluffington.

I. Love. Bluffington.

[Jim] When Doug needed a alter ego superhero,

I'm thinking, what is the most unexpected, unlikely of heroes?

And I thought about a quail.

[narrator] Quail Man fighting a never ending battle for truth,

justice and the way of the way of the quail.

The quail, they sit still hoping you walk by.

That's their power.

Restraint is their big power. I love that.

That... that they would use that instead of big muscles or, you know, flames.

It would just be like being patient.

Doug messed up on a regular basis.

He always had a fork in the road and took the wrong fork and went "Whoa."

And then got on the right track.

That feels a lot like how life really works.

I had set up in a hotel room and I had people coming in to pitch things.

John Kricfalusi came in.

He had four projects that he was pitching.

The only thing that I liked was there was a dog and a cat in his project called Your Gang.

I said, "If you take that dog and cat,

let's pull those out and let's create a show around them."

Because of those characters are incredible.

[theme music playing]

[Vanessa] Things that we did on Ren & Stimpy were scary for Nickelodeon.

It didn't look like anything else.

I guess we just wanted to be kind of sickening as possible.

[gargling]

How are you fellas doing?

Fortunately, I was working for somebody.

Gerry Laybourne. Her theory was that when she hired somebody to do a job, she let us do it.

So I didn't have a lot of people looking over my shoulders.

I don't think anybody looked at our storyboards before we shot.

And it probably shows now that there weren't... there wasn't a lot of oversight

because especially with Ren & Stimpy is there's some pretty wild

and crazy stuff in there.

Animators are very sneaky people.

I didn't even know what a dingleberry was.

[ding]

You can string the dingleberry garland.

Huh?

We had such great talent on that show.

Vicky Jensen, who was doing background painting.

I had her direct as the first show that she's ever directed.

It was about the village that made that show.

I mean, Lynn Nailor, Jim Smith, Vincent Waller, Bob Camp.

Bob Camp, he's amazing.

I mean, he wrote the Logsong.

♪ What rolls down stairs Alone or in pairs ♪

♪ Falls over Your neighbor's dog? ♪

♪ What's great for a snack And fits on your back ♪

♪ It's log, log, log ♪

♪ It's log, log ♪

♪ It's big, it's heavy It's wood ♪

♪ It's log, log ♪

♪ It's better than bad It's good ♪

Ren & Stimpy, because of the... the crossover audience,

MTVthought this should be for us, it's our audience, which it was.

We were drawing their audience to Nickelodeon.

I think that what Ren & Stimpy did for Nickelodeon

was bring in a new... a whole new audience.

♪ Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy ♪

♪ Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy ♪

♪ Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy ♪

♪ Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy ♪

♪ Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy ♪

♪ Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy ♪

♪ Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy ♪

Ren & Stimpy was groundbreaking for Nickelodeon. It's just that simple.

It was groundbreaking.

[Jim] As far as the Nicktoons growing,

definitely you wanted to see what was going to be the... the incoming freshmen.

You know, the new guys.

After the three original series launched

and it was time to start doing other pilots,

Joe Murray came in with his pitch for Rocko.

Heh-heh, good as new.

♪ Rocko's Modern Life ♪

Rocko's Modern Life.

[Vanessa] It was a combination of the sitcom like Rugrats, and Ren & Stimpy,

which is crazy,

and it had a lot of heart like Doug too.

I mean, Heffer and Rocko's relationship was so great.

Rocko, Rocko, Rocko, you no want to be hanging with big fat bovine dork man!

[thud]

That bovine dork is my best friend.

And if he's not good enough for your club, I'm not good enough.

Rocko had a lot of irreverence.

We had set this pace with Ren & Stimpy that you could push the envelope

and, you know, bust it wide open.

Rockois one of the cartoons that made it okay for cartoons to be funny again.

I think then and now as... as new people discover Rocko

and as the kids who grew up on it and go into adulthood,

they're still discovering how subversive it was.

Better split up and look for food.

[munching]

[roars]

[whines]

[Paul] We were like the first original cartoons on cable.

The idea that there would be a network that would show cartoons every day

and then eventually 24 hours a day.

That never happened in history before.

So, it was the beginning of a revolution, but we did know that.

[Angela] That was their vision for what Nicktoons would look like.

And every show that was animated after that really kind of came out of that likeness.

[woman 1] Next Friday catch sneak peek of the next level of game shows Nick Arcade

after the Nick Hit List at seven/six Central only in Nick's ♪-Zone.

I've always liked game shows growing up.

And game shows went away, I think, for a long time.

Marc did such a spectacular job with Double Dare.

I always thought him as the quintessential game show host.

And then you had Nick Arcade, which was sort of a new technology show,

and then you had Phil Moore doing it,

who is also great at what he did with his endless supply of energy.

[cheering]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

All right, thank you and welcome to Nickelodeon Arcade

where your video savvy and your video game skills are put to the ultimate test.

They wanted to have an original element to Nick Arcade aside from the end game.

Basically they book end the show with an original game at the front,

and an original thing at the end.

In the middle, we play what you knew.

We're about to face-off in a game we call Brainstorm.

And in this game, each team has to protect their cerebral neurons

from these incoming nerve impulses.

The face-off games, when we started out, was really just glorified Pong.

It really was. You know, they disguised Pong.

That's what they did.

And I would say from here it's safe to say that yellow team wins.

All right, yellow team!

Right. Here they go.

[Michael Ray] Well, being on Nick Arcade with Danny Cooksey.

It was pretty cool because the guys got to go against the girls.

Could you, like, possibly like do the song for me going Camp An a wanna?

Sure. Yeah.

One, two, three...

♪ Camp An a wanna ♪

♪ We hold you in our hearts ♪

♪ And when we think about you ♪

♪ It makes me wanna fart! ♪

[Phil] Yeah!

[Phil Moore] The video zone, when you went inside that,

that was really just blue screen and anything that you touched had to be physically built.

So when you saw the kids walk upstairs, there was a blue staircase

and everything was designed exactly in the shape that you saw on TV.

In order to see where to move around,

they had television monitors strategically placed all over.

It was thoroughly odd because you're... you're playing these games

and you're staring off on... at these monitors and you can't really see what's going on.

It was a lot of fun. I... I love...

I would have loved to done a lot more of the game shows.

[Kirk] And then, of course, they came up with Legends of the Hidden Temple.

It was like a Raiders of the Lost Ark game show.

[man 5] In Nickelodeon's never ending quest to give you what you want comes...

Legends of the Hidden Temple.

The first game show that lets kids live out legendary adventures.

It's physical.

Metaphysical.

Olmec is the star of the show, he really is.

[Kirk] I mean, he's this big weird rock that sits in the middle of the set

and he basically guides everybody with his stories and his legends

and sets the whole thing up for kids to succeed and try to conquer

and achieve the lesson of the day.

It was just a big giant haunted house, is what it was.

And if you're a kid, you're watching that show, you get the crap scared out of you

because you're trying to make it through something,

and you never know when some freaky dude's going to come out of some room and grab you.

And what a beautiful thing that was.

Now, that was television.

Do, do, do you have it? Do, do, do you have it??

Guts.

[Geraldine] Oh, God. Guts was so fun.

What we tried to do was show kids

we're not doing a cheap little television network for you.

We're making this as interesting and as exciting as we possibly can.

[Mike] Welcome to Guts.

The action sport show that's gonna make you sweat.

Hello, everyone, I'm Mike O'Malley!

Welcome to the Extreme Arena, home of Nickelodeon Guts:

the action sports show where kids live out their greatest sports fantasies.

[Geraldine] It was a much more physical game than we'd had,

and we were always concerned about not having boys win everything.

So it had to have enough stuff in the game that a girl could have a chance of winning.

[Kirk] These game shows were really amazing.

Nickelodeon really tapped into something completely unique

that wasn't like any other network.

-Hey. Nick. -Junior.

Nickelodeon, from the very beginning,

was always conscious of who was in front of the television set at what time of the day.

So the early part of the day was devoted to preschoolers.

That was their time.

And that's really where Nick Jr. came from.

[Eileen] Nick Jr. really filled a void that wasn't there.

They were doing these wonderful new shows for kids

and just blew everything wide open when it came to the preschool set.

We were trying to have a host for the morning

and Scott Webb came in with a thing called Face.

And Face was crazy.

And I had remembered in my studies that you shouldn't do disembodied parts for kids,

that scares them.

So I... I said to Scott,

"I don't know, like, you're not supposed to do disembodied parts.

What do you think?"

He said, "I think this Face takes the whole screen

and they're not going to know it's a disembodied part."

And Face was just a charming, charming host for preschool stuff.

Hi, it's me, Face.

I'm looking for Blue.

She's a puppy and she's blue.

[Angela] Nick Jr. was still looking for its footing in terms of what is it,

what's the mission? What's the goal?

What's the signature show for Nick Jr.?

And so Brown Johnson wanted to create a game show for preschoolers

because Double Dare was so huge.

What would that look like for little ones?

And so she had asked me to sit in meetings where creators would pitch ideas about game shows,

where there'd be like relay races with three-year-olds

or like give a three-year-old a clicker and they would answer questions.

I would just have it all over my face like, this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

Like, this is never gonna work,

so much so that she looked at me and she was like, "Well, what would you do?"

And... and I was like, "All right, let me think about that."

So Blue's Clues was born out of that desire to be a game show for preschoolers

where kids were interacting and playing along the way you would on a game show.

♪ We are looking For Blue's Clues ♪

♪ Wonder where they are ♪

A clue! A clue!

Oh. Oh, did you see a clue? Where?

Where's the clue?

-I can't find the clue. -Right there.

Oh.

[Angela] Because we were inherently fun and active and interactive,

you had to take notice because kids were screaming at the TV.

The interactive aspect was instrumental in educating kids.

Kids could learn shapes and sizes and dances

and all these kinds of things in a little half hour programming.

So it was... it was pretty astounding.

Hi. Come on in.

We're so glad you're here.

[Angela] I'm a huge Fred Rogers fan,

and so what we wanted was a live action person who could talk directly to kids.

We were looking for a Matthew Broderick, Ferris Bueller, camp counselor type of person.

Whereas Steve, when he came in, he was this like skater punk dude, right.

Like, just total dude who thought he was coming in to, like, do voice over role.

And when we told him what it was, he was like, "All right, cool," you know.

We had said, "Can you, for the network,

dress a little bit more conservative, a little bit preppier?"

And he did.

And I think he'll still say he hates those pants

and everything that we made him wear.

But his reaction to the camera, the way that he talked to kids, got kids, we did research,

got kids screaming back to him right away.

♪ You know with me and you And my dog Blue ♪

♪ We can do anything That we want to do ♪

Bye-bye! See you later!

-Bye-bye! -Bye.

Come again. Bye-bye!

♪ That we want to do ♪

♪ We can do anything... ♪

[clock ticking]

You guys watch some TV, okay? We'll be upstairs.

-Don't fight over the remote. -[both] We won't.

-Bye. -Bye. See you.

-Bye. -Bye.

-Bye. -Phew.

[Geraldine] We wanted to do prime time shows for kids,

but it was very hard to beat that economics,

so we decided Saturday night was a very bad night for television.

Let's give it up to kids.

On Saturday nights, there's a group of people who are watching TV.

And they're people who are too young to be on a date and too old to be in bed.

And voila, SNICK.

They called it SNICK, Saturday Night Nick,

where everybody would sit on the big orange couch.

[Anne Sweeney] Oh, Saturday night on Nickelodeon,

SNICK was every kid's dream of what Saturday night should be.

In that two-hour block, SNICK provided a variety of programming for kids.

There's a little bit of everything for everyone.

And I think, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, really, you know,

stuck out in that lineup.

[man 6] Every Saturday night, explore a side of Nickelodeon you never knew existed.

When we ask, "Are you afraid of the dark?"

Nick's new show spin's ghastly tales of ordinary kids.

And they're not so ordinary encounters with the supernatural.

Oh, my gosh. Are You Afraid of the Dark?

That was an awesome show. That show used to scare me.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? was Twilight Zone for kids.

We took very real kids who were going through very real dilemmas,

that all kids could relate to, and then they happened to run the boogeyman.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? was a group of kids who would,

I guess, sneak out of their parents' place

and meet up in the woods and tell ghost stories around a campfire,

which when I explain it like that, it sounds a little creepy.

You know, it revolved around the Midnight Society

who met every week to tell stories

and the primary part of the episode was the story itself.

[Ross] Clowns and ghosts and random things popping out of doors and walls.

I think that was Are You Afraid of the Dark?

[creaking]

[screams]

Are You Afraid of the Dark? was co-created by me and my partner, Ned Kandel,

and the original idea was bedtime stories for lazy parents.

We were going to get some old guy, some old actor who everyone knew,

who was out of work.

And we put him in a big easy chair in front of a roaring fire that's all comfy.

And you have a big book that said "Fairy Tales" on it and he'd read fairy tales.

The problem came in when we tried to decide what kind of stories we were going to tell.

You know, fairy tales? We're going to tell Little Red Riding Hood?

Three Little Pigs? You know, that's boring as what not.

So Ned asked me the question that will live in infamy.

He said, "What kind of stories did you like when you were a kid?"

I said, "I like scary stories."

So suddenly fairy tales became scary tales.

But then having some old guy sitting in a chair reading scary tales to kids was creepy.

So it's like, well, who tells tales, scary tales, where they themselves aren't scary?

Well, it's kids sitting around a campfire.

Okay, so the old guy gets nixed.

So let's have kids sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories.

[snap finger] Bing! They liked that. And that's how it took off.

[theme music playing]

I was always excited to join the cast of Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Because as a member of the Midnight Society,

I got to sit in the storyteller's chair and actually throw the magic dust on the fire

and say, "Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story."

And to this day, people still ask me what was in the magic dust,

what was in the magic dust?

And you will never know! Ever!

The powder was coffee-mate.

It was actually coffee-mate.

It actually was nondairy creamer because that stuff is... is petroleum based

and... and it burns.

There was a pyro effect for the fire to sort of, you know, do that boom thing.

But it actually helped it a little bit, too.

So there the secret is out.

[Jason] D.J. also believed that kids were a lot smarter than you give them credit for

and that they could handle more sophisticated subjects

and that he could also push the horror or the... the scariness of it, you know, further.

[Ross] I think this was the difficulty that D.J. had as well,

trying to convince Nickelodeon to do this show,

was the fact that, yes, you are trying to scare kids.

They said we may get push back. So there was a mandate upfront.

They said try to find literary antecedents to draw your stories from

so that if parents call and start picketing outside the offices, our comeback can be,

"What're you're talking about, this is classic literature."

So for the pilot we did was called the "Tale of the Twisted Claw",

which is the take on the Monkey's Paw.

Tale of the "Midnight Madness". It's the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

We did Jekyll and Hyde.

We did The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Never once did we get push back.

It didn't talk down to kids.

It thought of kids as being more sophisticated and it gave them a more sophisticated product.

I think it's just a testament to what that show brought

and how different it was for its time and how it stuck out and really struck a chord with kids.

[theme music playing]

[Geraldine] Tommy Lynch did Alex Mack.

He had this design as a boy at the center.

I can't remember if it was Herb Scannell or me who said,

"You know, it really should be a girl at the center."

I should just face it. I'm boring.

And it was much more interesting with a girl at the center.

It was a coming of age show about a girl who gets doused with a chemical

that gives her superpowers, not superpowers, special abilities.

Let's call them that.

The morphing did change a bit from the pilot.

In the pilot, my clothes morphed off and I guess I was like behind a box,

like, thank God someone had the right idea to be like, you know, let's not make it like that.

We did not have a ginormous budget for much.

And actually, I think it served us.

I mean, truly, like the stuff with the telekinesis, it was like on fishing wire.

Alex was me.

I mean, it was me and, you know, the parallel is very obvious.

It's like this kind of extraordinary thing happened to me at the age of 12.

And I got on a TV show, not only got on a TV show, but was starring on a TV show.

We were sort of experiencing this at the same time.

Like how things shift and how things don't shift and what's important

and just dealing with being the age that you are

and sort of understanding who you are as a human

and getting to know yourself a little bit better.

[man 7] Fresh off the box. Stop, look and watch.

Ready yet, get set. It's All That!

All That was a sketch comedy for kids.

It was really a new, fresh idea.

Nobody had ever done a kids' sketch comedy show.

If I had to compare it to something, I think it was closest to In Living Color,

with the racially diverse cast and the R&B and hip-hop.

[Alisa] We had guest performances

done by everybody that's very well known now, was on our show.

We started off with amazing people.

Right, like TLC did our theme song.

It was almost like youth is wasted on the young.

You didn't realize that you were in the presence of people that were going to be great.

[Lori] It was wacky and it was messy and it was a little edgy

when you think about what was on Nickelodeon at that point.

Like, you know, a lot of shows didn't have Coolio stopping by.

Being on the set of a kids show, I don't think that was any different than,

you know, performing for anybody else.

I remember Coolio was the first time, like, somebody blew the studio up with, like, weed.

And it was like, "Oh, my God, what is that smell?"

I was very green back then.

You know, they kind of kept him in the back in his room

and we weren't allowed to kind of go there.

So it was like this very, like, invisible curtain that we would always kind of stand at

and like look to see, like, what the music people were doing and stuff.

Of course, I don't remember.

Because it was a green day, obviously.

[Lori] It was cool to have Chris Farley there.

And I was very much of that age where I was watching that cast of Saturday Night Live

and all of the movies that came out of that.

So that was really cool.

He did cooking with Randy and Mandy, and it's such a blessing.

Cooking with Randy.

He's a master chef all the way from Chicago,

please welcome, Chef Farley.

Come on over here!

Well, well, how do you do Randy?

[Kenan] He was a ketchup guy. He loved ketchup.

That was his thing. And I loved chocolate.

And we were battling to see which one was better.

[inaudible]. What is you're doing?

We rehearsed it once and we shot it once. And he was out of there.

He was not playing around, but he was so nice.

He showed me what being like a real pro was all about.

[Kel] With all my characters, I like to add something to it.

And so with Good Burger, I remember how it started was on a sketch called Dream Remote.

My line was, "Here's your pizza." But I did it with the Ed Voice.

And I was like, "Whoa, here's your pizza."

And they were like, yo, this... we love his voice.

And so they took that voice and created a whole world around, like, the Good Burger Guy.

During rehearsals it was cool, but I felt like he needed something else.

And I went into the hair room and I saw the hair, this Milli Vanilli hair,

his "I Want To Be Down" Brandy wig.

And I put that on and it just took off, man.

It just... it was just so hilarious to me, man.

It... it was just great. Ed was born.

You know what I mean? [laugh]

Just don't think about tinkling. Don't think about tinkling. Okay.

Hello! I'm Connie Muldoon!

Okay, what do you want, Connie?

Well, I have a medium Good Soda here, which is plenty for me to drink.

But we Muldoons like to drink out of large cups.

May I have a larger cup?

-Yeah. Okay. Okay. Here you go. -Thank you!

-|'ll transfer it now! -Okay.

Wait, you don't have to do that right here.

[Lori] Doing A II That was like a great training ground.

It was my first job in show business and television.

[Kel] You got these kids from all different cities,

you know, Chicago, Atlanta, New York.

It gave a lot of hope to a lot of kids coming from different walks of life saying like,

"Well, I can do this, too."

Any little child could go, "I look like him or her."

And I think that's important.

It was just like full of good time energy. We were all young.

We're all out of town, basically, because nobody was from Orlando.

So it was like being on, like, paid vacation, doing something awesome to get paid.

You know what I mean? It was... it was the best ever.

And plus, we thought we were cool.

[Kel] When they approached Kenan and I to do our own show, man, that was... that was awesome.

They saw us a lot, you know, behind the scenes and having fun.

[Kenan] We were hanging out like 24/7.

So, you know, around all of that, I think they were like,

let's see, like, you know, they can do a show and, like,

make something else out of this whole thing, like, make a little spin off.

And, yeah, it worked.

[theme music playing]

Aw, here it goes!

♪ Everybody out there Go run and tell ♪

♪ Your homeboys and home girls It's time for Kenan and Kel ♪

[Coolio] The Kenan & Keltheme song would probably become

one of the most important things I did in my career

because it introduces me to a whole new audience

and a new legion of fans year after year after year.

[Kel] Kel Campbell, kind of messed up a lot of stuff at times, you know what I mean?

[Kenan] You need one dude to be zany and need one dude... one dude to be grounded,

but have zany ideas at the same time.

And that's what makes them friends.

Because every time I would try to, like, condemn him for doing something stupid,

I would have what I think is a brilliant idea, that turns out to be just as stupid.

You know what I mean? So that's what I think made that bond work.

-This is a nice sweater! -Thanks.

My grandma knitted it for me before she passed away.

Oh, that is so nice.

[stammers] I mean, not that your grand mama passed away,

but I... I'm saying that she knitted it before... It's a very nice sweater.

Thanks.

I only wear it on special occasions.

Did you wear it at your grand mama's funeral?

Kel.

[Kenan] I don't know, he just made me laugh so much.

He's so freaking funny.

And I would try to do, you know, reciprocate and try to, like,

bring up funny things or whatever. But that dude is he's a beast.

Who loves orange soda? Kel loves orange soda.

Is it true? Is it true?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, it's true.

I do, I do, I do, I do.

Shooting that was just a great experience.

We were friends. You know what I mean?

So it was cool to be on our own show, doing what we do all the time anyway.

[Geraldine] We were no longer a cable television channel.

We were something gigantic for kids.

Gerry Laybourne had a point of view on Nickelodeon that drove all of us.

We could fail and do a crummy show, but we couldn't not take a risk.

The energy was such that we thought we were going to change the world,

like there was no question that we were doing amazing, great work.

It was like driving to an extremely professional million dollar playground.

Everybody's imagination, everybody's mind, was just

if it worked and it had fun and it made you laugh.

It didn't matter if it looked normal.

It didn't matter if it felt right.

Nickelodeon was a... a relationship between us and kids, and kids and us.

And our mission statement was to connect with kids

and connect kids with each other through entertainment.

That's only one manifestation of Nickelodeon.

[man 8] Picture this, Nickelodeon takes over your school and puts you in charge!

[Larisa] It was like,Nick Takes Over Your School, Kids' Choice Awards, and The Big Help,

they were all just like big reunions for us.

Who sent in the postcard?

[man 9] The postcard! Send it in and you have the power

to win Nick Takes Over Your School.

[Danny] Nick Takes Over Your School was exactly that.

They would come in and they would just like take over everything.

Put green and orange stuff everywhere.

[Kenan] But I remember I only did it once and I had a stomach virus

and I spent the entire time in the bathroom.

And that was my only trip to Naples, Florida.

I... I took over their entire plumbing system.

It was... it was kind of messed up.

[Mitchell] Let's talk about merchandise.

Nickelodeon at the time had not really gotten to that yet,

and they hadn't gotten to it for a lot of decent reasons.

First of all, Gerry had some really super honorable principles

about not exploiting kids.

Suddenly, she was creating original series.

So I think it was hard to get your head around making toys from that initially.

Like, obviously, she got there.

We got offered a cereal, a Double Dare cereal that opened on two ends

and you poured it on this thing and turned it upside down.

And they offered us a million dollars. And Gerry turned it down.

She said, "We're not doing it, okay?"

They get bombarded with that enough.

Nickelodeon was classy enough, to this day, and they do not sponsor that stuff

because they could take in a bazillion dollars, but have chosen not to do it.

[Anne Sweeney] Anne Kreamer, I remember coming in to do Nickelodeon magazine

and then the whole development of the merchandizing and licensing.

Suddenly there was a physical manifestation of Nickelodeon

and that's what Anne and David did, which was to get it out there.

[Anne Kreamer] I believe we got into all the different products that we got into

because we wanted to touch kids in their lives where they could be,

we wanted to be able to have a magazine that could stick in their back pocket

and have in their backpack and take with them wherever they went.

We wanted them to be able to have toys that they can play with, that were unusual.

I'm not sure if you can see it on camera,

but Gak is basically a fluorescent amorphous blob of goo.

For my money, nothing sums up that Nickelodeon spirit than this wonderful blob of mess.

What is Gak?

Gak is great stuff.

Oozy.-

Ugh.

[laugh]

[David] Gak really became kind of a cultural phenomenon.

Nickelodeon partnered with Mattel.

And back then, Mattel had the best chem lab in the business.

And they essentially said, "Okay, Mattel, we're your partner.

Show us all the ideas that the other guys rejected."

The Mattel people came to Nickelodeon and said,

"Well, we've got this recipe for this funny blob of goo and we don't know what to do with it."

And when Nickelodeon saw that, they said... [snap finger] that's for us.

[Anne Kreamer] With the Gak packaging that we made,

we forced Mattel to spend a lot more money than they wanted to just on the packaging,

because we designed it in a splat and then we made the lid

so that when you put your Gak back into the container, it would fart.

[farting sound]

We created Gak, we created Floam.

We created something called the Zog Logs, which I adored, but kind of sucked.

♪ Grab Zog Logs little one ♪

♪ They'll stick together Just like they ought to ♪

Zog Logs

Videocassettes seems so old school now,

but videocassettes always came out of their sleeves

and then you'd have just these piles of things all over the floor

and who knew what video was what.

So I made our videos orange.

Everything had a kind of logic to it that was about highlighting

and sort of promoting the brand but at the same time over sewing our kids.

And I think that for a long time, Nickelodeon kept the same path.

You know, they came up with great stuff with Sponge Bob.

♪ Who lives in a pineapple Under the sea? ♪

♪ Sponge Bob Square Pants ♪

[Alan] The biggest change at Nickelodeon came when Sponge Bob Square Pants

and Dora the Explorer started to deliver a lot of money in licensing.

Once a corporation starts to taste that kind of success,

it's very difficult for the people at that corporation

to remember that that was not originally the goal.

But you look at Nickelodeon today and they're doing really well.

Dora the Explorer grossed a billion dollars. Okay?

We never grossed a billion dollars.

I think things changed for Nickelodeon when you weren't the underdog anymore

and you weren't growing and wanting really hard.

We really wanted to be seen in the same light as a Disney, as a PBS

and really have these amazing shows on the air that you could feel really proud of.

I think all of a sudden, when you're at the top, what do you do?

[Scott] You want to embrace growth and change.

And I think any business like Nickelodeon has to grow and change.

I felt no sadness when Nick Studios closed down because it served a real purpose.

It put us on the map with advertisers.

It gave us a great facility to operate in.

But it wasn't the easiest thing.

[Anne Sweeney] Kids would get down there thinking,

"I'm actually going to be able to crawl inside of Nickelodeon."

And, you know, over the years, a lot of things were figured out.

We couldn't produce every show down there.

[Kenan] When I got word that it closed, it was like, yeah, a piece of your childhood,

like, closing up and it was sad.

It was like its own little own kind of little world, you know?

Listen closely, Harvey is gonna tell you everything...

[Marc] Not many people know this, but I quit Nickelodeon.

I was going out on those tours on a... on a regular basis.

And one day my son said to me when he was 10, 11 years old,

"How come every weekend you're with everybody else's kids

but you're not with us?"

And I flew to New York the next Monday and... and quit.

You know, for me, I had had a great run 16 years at Nickelodeon,

and we got to do so much.

But I could sort of see that you have to scale and you have to be a big business.

And that wasn't really what I was interested in.

And I was interested in making new stuff.

And I wanted to take a risk on myself.

[Scott] Gerry Laybourne leaving Nickelodeon was a shock,

not just because she was leaving something

that she had birthed and created,

but that she was going to Disney. [laughs]

That's what kind of like blew our minds.

[Angela] We all cried like that's how... even Herb Scannell,

who was about to be president of the company, was in tears.

We just really believed in what she was doing

and wanted to continue to work under that kind of vision.

[Geraldine] We had a bigger mission.

We had an audience we cared about.

We had an audience that we wanted to make a difference for.

And I didn't really realize how special that was until I left.

[Anne Sweeney] If you missed the Orange Years, you missed the laboratory,

you missed the building of the lab and the experiments that went on.

And also an understanding of kids that was unique.

[D.J.] We were given the golden ticket.

We were given the orange ticket.

Here's your orange ticket.

And that orange ticket says, "You got a good idea, my friend. Go with it."

And there were so many great shows that came out of it.

You take raw talent with raw producers and real kids and you get great TV.

And that's what Double Dare and all those other shows on Nickelodeon

during the '80s and '90s were delivering.

People come up to me and literally say verbatim, they say,

"You made my childhood," which is like an amazing thing.

I get, "Hey, you look familiar. Did we go to high school together?

Were you on a... Wait a minute, were you on a show?

What show were you on?

Were you... was it Are You Afraid...you're on Are You Afraid of the Dark?"

The fact that it resonates so much with people and people still want to talk about it,

it's awesome.

I'm thrilled to be a part

of the era of Nickelodeon television that I was.

I got a lot of love, and I think that our show gave people a lot of love, too.

It was a great part of my life and it gave me a career.

So if you think I'm sick of hearing, "We grew up watching you."

What a great feeling. Who... who gets that?

[Jim] Through that chaos, something very original happened.

And I'm just... I feel really fortunate to be a part of it.

[Danny] You know, I never did get slimed.

And that could have been, you know, take your pick of... of which shows to get slimed on.

[Vanessa] We really wanted to make a place for kids to actually have a good time,

but learn about themselves at the same time.

[Geraldine] We were a progressive broad-minded network

that cherished everybody, regardless of race, ethnicity.

We tried to broaden people's minds about the arts with opera and doo-wop and jazz.

We tried to open eyes to new kinds of creative ways of visualizing things,

to playing with our audience to come up with new things.

The legacy is you.

The legacy is every kid who watched us.

♪ Yeah, I miss you ♪

♪ When you're away ♪

♪ And I don't want to go ♪

♪ But I doubt you will stay ♪

I'm Al, also known as TheSolePurpose.

I'm pretty much known as the biggest Nickelodeon collector

out there on the social media platform.

My Nickelodeon collection started back maybe over 12 years ago, give or take.

I love every item from the cheapest to the most expensive.

I cherish every one of them.

When I first started collecting Nickelodeon merchandise,

I thought that I was probably the only one collecting

and I thought maybe that this is something I shouldn't share.

And then as I got more into it,

I started realizing that there was a lot more people into this.

Let's face it, the pinnacle of athletic achievement

for basically our whole generation was a piece of the Aggro Crag.

Now, I'm not that athletic.

I never went to Orlando, so I never actually got a chance to win one.

But I do have eBay, so I eventually did find one after 13 years of searching.

So thanks, Mike, and thanks Nickelodeon for having the best show ever.

So for my 31st birthday, Emily threw me a Nickelodeon party.

All of our friends got on board.

I had costumes and themed food, slime filled cupcakes.

I bought five hundred to a thousand ball pit balls, a giant swimming pool.

I knew I was gonna do a Double Dare course.

The grand prize winners won the... the Aggro Crag.

Second place won a big Stick Stickly that I made.

And then we just basically said, "Hey, who wants to get slimed?"

[man 10] So this is the Mondo Gallery.

We do limited edition screen, printed posters,

and, you know, we do soundtracks and collectibles.

We wanted to celebrate Nicktoons and Nickelodeon and that culture and that era

of just amazing programming.

We have people come out and have a good time

and just kind of relive their past and experience childhood again.

It was fun to kind of relive the nostalgia

and get to have a picture with the giant nose

and try and dig your hands up inside of it.

It helps us to connect with that inner child.

And it brings us back to a time when life was just a little bit more fun.

It was funny and it was gross and it was stupid and it was stuff you wanted to watch.

It was great. And it's still funny.

It gave me like a different perspective to every other channel.

It reflected things that normal, typical kids went through, no matter where they came from.

We paid attention to the one thing that paid attention to us.