The 1990s. A simpler time. Or was it? While hailed by misty-eyed millennials as The Golden Age of Cartoons, it seems that there’s some debate as to what the greatest 90’s cartoons actually were. Stalwarts like Red and Stimpy? Undergdogs like Ed, Ed n’ Eddy? Or maybe it was some barely-remembered oddity that haunted late night cable channels? The competition was cutthroat, but the results are in! Come now, children, gather around the CRTV with your favorite breakfast cereal and tune into the greatest 90’s cartoons of all time – which was really just a ten year period.
Hey Arnold!
Hey Arnold! was high drama for kids. Taking place in a dreamlike city that feels like a cross between New York and Seattle, the action follows a football headed middle schooler and his attempts to make sense of the world. If you were a kid in the 90’s you’ll remember the high points: the amazing treehouses, the ghost trains, the schoolyard bully battles, the game-winning baseball plays. Rewatching the series as an adult, a different side of the narrative is exposed. Helga Pataki’s quietly tortured relationship with her parents, boarding house tenant Mr. Hyunh’s harrowing experiences of the Vietnam War, Stinky’s plight of living in poverty. Like the best children’s media, Hey Arnold! is an unflinching portrait of real world, adult drama – presented in a way that a child may not fully understand, but can feel nonetheless.
Batman: The Animated Series
Arguably the greatest adaptation of Caped Crusader comics ever made, Batman: The Animated Series is cartoon royalty. The landmark series served as the definitive interpretations of many of Gotham’s most infamous figures. Who could rival Mark Hamil’s madcap genius as The Joker? Who could forget the heartbreaking story of Mr. Freeze, a one-time comic relief B-lister given a tragic villain makeover? And of course, who could forget Kevin Conroy’s legendary portrayal of Batman himself? Regal. Grave. Suave as hell. There’s never been a better voice actor for the role, and there never will be. Troubled, thrilling, and darkly funny Batman: The Animated Series is a kids’ cartoon that any adult can unironically enjoy.
Cowboy Bebop
The anime that served as the medium’s liaison for the 90’s masses, Cowboy Bebop was Toonami‘s crown jewel. The quintessential definition of “cool,” this is a saxophone-soundtracked Neo-noir about bounty hunters in space. In a Wild West of a Solar System, Spike and Jet are two mercenary partners who once found themselves on opposite sides of the law. Now only loyal to the dollar, the pair travel the lawless stars in order to hunt down misfits who aren’t all that different from them. It’s a dog eat dog universe, a place where the future is ever uncertain and the past can never truly be outrun. While the subliminal story of Bebop is beautiful in its own right, it takes a backseat to the mood of the series. Style is piloting this spaceship, and Substance is just along for the ride.
SpongeBob Squarepants
The ultimate children’s sitcom, SpongeBob Squarepants brought vaudeville level humor to grade school minds. While the show’s current seasons are now a sad parody of the series’ former glory, seasons one through three will forever go down in cartoon history – there are still memes being made of frames animated decades ago. The humor of SpongeBob is quietly brilliant, the always-ready protagonist and his best friend who is so dimwitted that he literally lives under a rock do the stupidest things in the most creative ways possible. They stage Oscar winning dramas in cardboard boxes, they accidentally make Renaissance art, and who could forget the time they spiced up their vocabulary with a “sentence enhancer” they found graffitied onto a dumpster? This is the only children’s show that has ever gotten away with saying “f*ck” in multiple lines of (censored) dialogue, and the only one that ever will.
South Park
While SpongeBob censored its potty-mouthed antics, South Park made a brand out of screaming them loud and proud. The ever-relevant story of four foul-mouthed middle schoolers who never grow up, South Park is an animated iconoclast railing at the idiocy of modern life. The series takes a shot at everything, there is no subject too taboo to for its crosshairs. While I can’t even repeat some of the plot lines to a respectable reader such as yourself, trust me when I say that South Park‘s satire is merciless and full bore. The series has since aged with its audience, cleverly lampooning American mediocrity just as it did decades ago, and with the way the series (and America) is going, will continue to do in decades to come.
X-Men: The Animated Series
The other greatest superhero animated series besides Batman, X-Men: The Animated Series is arguably the definitive interpretation of a group of heroes who are (again, arguably) the most interesting collection of super-humans in the genre. Ever underrated and always socially relevant, The X Men have a bit of something for everyone. Rather than being hailed as the heroes that they are, Dr. Xavier and his wards are marginalized and outcasted by a society that hates and fears them – a society that they work tirelessly to protect and appease. A metaphorical representation of the LGBTQ+ community, The X Men are quintessentially queer: misunderstood, impeccably dressed, hot af. The animated series itself is a mature exploration of the barriers to queer acceptance, tackling everything from organized religion to AIDS hysteria – featuring epic action as a cherry on top.
Rugrats
Before Avatar: The Last Airbender claimed the title for Nickelodeon’s magnum opus, Rugrats was a longtime contender. With the infectious rallying cry of “a baby’s gotta do what a baby’s gotta do,” Rugrats took toddlers on more adventures than most adults have in their whole lives. The best episodes by far take place in the babies’ imagination, where their misunderstandings of the adult world wrap manifest as hard boiled noir mysteries about missing candy and day care prison escapes. It’s a masterclass in creativity, so full of childlike whimsy that you can’t help but wonder if there were toddlers in the writing room. And who forget the trendsetting pop banger that was Cynthia’s workout song? I’ve still got “Cynthia, she’s a really cool dancer” running through my head decades later.
Daria
Originally a side character in Beavis and Butt-Head, the deadpan teen Daria was allowed to shine in her own self-titled animated series. It’s a rare example of a spin-off that’s actually better than the series that spawned it, where the crude t-shirt-on-head antics of Beavis and Butt-Head were left behind in favor of a series that was sardonic, mature and refreshingly feminist. The blueprint for the un-phased and unimpressed teen, Daria attempts to navigate the everyday absurdities faced by girls growing up in an age that was often hostile to women. It’s love letter to the teenagers that didn’t want to fit in with the popular kids, that wore combat boots no matter the temperature outside, and who acknowledged the backwards-but-accepted norms of the modern era with bombastic side eye.
Gargoyles
The ultimate underrated 90’s gem, Gargoyles felt like the lovechild of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Batman: The Animated Series. A modern dark fantasy about monstrous outcasts on the side of good, Gargoyles featured a complex cast of demonic beings attempting to do right in a world that does them wrong. Compared to other children’s cartoons at the time, the plot was surprisingly mature – a dark episodic drama in an age of reset-button smashing kids’ sit-coms. It was strange, almost hallucinatory – a show that you wouldn’t believe was ever actually on air were there not proof of its existence on the internet. Sombre, sophisticated, Shakespearean even, Gargoyles is the stuff of 90’s legend. In hindsight, I’m not sure if it was even a kids’ show at all.
Æon Flux
A Western Ghost In The Shell, Æon Flux was a surreal late night Neo-noir set in Monica and Bregna – two city states locked in a constant battle for supremacy. Navigating the architecture of this German Expressionist dystopia is Æon Flux herself, a secret agent from Monica dressed with impeccable dominatrix flair. Flux’s work/life boundaries are complicated to say the least – she sabotages the efforts of Bregna but is also the on-again/off-again lover of the city’s technocratic dictator Trevor Goodchild. In a world of mutants, clones and robots, Æon Flux fights battle of ideologies. It’s Monica’s anarchy vs. Bregna’s totalitarianism – and neither side seems any closer to winning. Lucky for Æon, that means she’ll always have a job. The sad part is, it’s the job keeping Æon away from her happiness. In this world, personal relationships prove to be just as irreconcilable as diplomatic ones. Trevor rules his city with an iron fist, but just can’t pin Æon down. Æon pines for a quiet life free from the stresses of her career, but she just can’t seem to leave the action behind, no matter how hard she tries. A tough life, but maybe that’s the price of cartoon greatness?
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