Does anyone else see a sort of bleak and cynical trend in some early Nicktoons

Alduin

Ren and Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, Invader Zim...hell, even some early Spongebob episodes were like that.

Hexartes

Because it's kind of a weirdly childlike view of the world?

Not *puerile*, mind you, but those shows engage cynicism in a way that is relatable to children.

There's nothing weathered and world-weary about Invader Zim's offbeat, constantly disgusting, chaotic world. It's reflective of someone overwhelmed by those things because they all feel new. That's why it resonates with kids.

Alduin

That's true. IZ was just over-the-top and chaotic in a way that the others I mentioned weren't. I was thinking more along the lines of Rocko's Modern Life, where an omnipresent corporation controls almost every aspect of the characters' lives. 

Sredni Vashtar

That period in Nickelodeon's programming history was interesting for a couple of reasons. You could see them moving away from their family game show and rerun roots and branching out into cartoons where, for a certain window of time, the animators and writers were given a startling amount of creative control. And while Rocko is certainly a curious outlier, most of these seem to be part of that child's-view ethos: The world is big and scary and weird, and being able to see that expressed in entertainment at a young age is empowering, and their chief animation producer, for all her faults, recognised this very well.

Anonus

I revisited Rocko a few years ago and wondered how the hell it ended up on a children's network

Anonus

Also I wouldn't call IZ "early" - anything after SpongeBob isn't "early" to me