Remembering Rugrats

Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing well enough I suppose. Apologies for the lack of content this week, but it's actually been pretty busy. So about a year and a half ago I got three boxes full of VHS tapes from someone I know and one of the tapes was Rugrats: A Rugrats Vacation, which was released by Paramount Home Video in 1997. I decided to pop it into my VCR last night just because I haven't seen Rugrats in about 25 years, give or take a year. The three episodes on the tape, were the direct-to-video episode, "Vacation", "Ice Cream Mountain" from season 2, and "Graham Canyon" from season 1. I'm writing this not to review those three episodes, but to talk about Rugrats in general and my memories of watching the show back in the '90s. So let's get into it.

 Nickelodeon wasn't a thing here in Canada back in the '90s. Many of the shows that were on that network in the U.S. ended up on YTV or Family Channel, depending on the decade, but very few of the popular shows from the '90s actually made it up here for whatever reason. And the majority of the ones that did, often wouldn't air here until either a few years after the show started in the U.S. or wouldn't show up here until the end of the '90s or the very beginning of the 2000s. And oftentimes they didn't even make it through the entire series, as they'd only be on YTV or Family Channel for a year or two and then get pulled never to appear on Canadian Television again. This practice was still in effect by the time The Amanda Show started airing in 1999, with the series not coming to Canada until 2002 when it began airing on Family Channel. Though it had stopped by the time that Zoey 101 and iCarly began in the mid 2000s, with Zoey 101 airing on Family Channel and iCarly airing on YTV. Rugrats is another series that got delayed.

Airing on YTV during the early hours of the block known as The Zone, Rugrats didn't come to Canada until 1994 and aired until 2004 when the series ended. And yet, of all the shows that I watched on YTV, Rugrats is the one that I watched the longest. While I only got to watch it when I was in the hospital or at Nana's and Grandpa's house for the first year and a half to two years of the show's Canadian run, since we didn't have cable from 1993 until 1996, I watched it all the time from 1994 until 2000 or 2001. While I didn't watch the spin-off/sequel, All Growed Up!, my brother and sister did. I think it's because, by the time All Growed Up! started in 2003, I just wasn't watching YTV anymore. I would occasionally tape movies off it, like Sailor Moon R: The Movie - The Promise of the Rose, and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, but by 2003, I was in high school and I had already started to watch YTV less and less by the time Digimon started in 1999, so shows like All Growed Up! didn't interest me anymore.

I also don't actually remember much about Rugrats after Rugrats in Paris: The Movie came out in 2000. I remember Dil being born in The Rugrats Movie and I vaguely remember episodes with Dil in them, but I think I stopped watching the show either just before or just after Rugrats in Paris came out. I'm pretty sure it was before because, by the time 2000 came around, I was already watching shows like Radio Active, Animorphs, Pokemon, and Digimon, all of them on later in the evening, though Digimon was on during the final hour of The Zone.

Watching the three episodes of Rugrats on VHS last night reminded me just how much fun the show is. And what makes it even more entertaining is the cast of adult characters who look after the babies, and Angelica. I mean, don't get me wrong, Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil, and Angelica are hilarious, but their parents, and grandfather, Didi and Stu Pickles, Lou Pickles, Drew and Charlotte Pickles, and Betty and Howard DeVille, are even more hilarious. Which is what I remember from watching the show as a kid. They seem negligent, but the babies never come to any real harm, even when they fall or something falls on their heads, usually dropped on them by Angelica. I remember seeing the show when I was a kid and thinking that I wouldn't get along with someone like Angelica. Nor would I have gotten along with most of the adults on the show either, except maybe Didi. 

I only vaguely remember what the Pickles's (Stu, Didi, and Tommy) house looks like. The episodes I watched last night didn't feature the house at all, except in the classic opening sequence, so I only kind of remember what it looks like. Houses in '90s cartoons always looked really weird, but cool at the same time, and I kinda feel like that started with the house on The Simpsons, which started only less than two years before Rugrats did. Looking at pictures of the house on the Rugrats Wiki though, it does remind me of the Simpsons's house a little bit. Mostly because of the colour of the walls.

When the show first started on YTV in 1994, I think it was still while the Adam West Batman series and Power Rangers were still airing at 5 and 5:30 respectively. Power Rangers was removed from YTV prior to the second season airing in late 1994, but I'm pretty sure Rugrats started just before that. I remember watching both shows on The Zone at the same time, with Rugrats airing at 3:30, before shows like Samurai Pizza Cats came on. If I remember correctly, reruns of Alvin and the Chipmunks were on before Rugrats and then Captain Planet and Samurai Pizza Cats were on after it.

The thing is it's been almost 30 years since Mighty Morphin Power Rangers first started and 29 years since Rugrats started airing here in Canada so my memory of what exactly was airing on YTV at the time that the show started isn't going to be 100% accurate. Especially because there's very little video record of  YTV's schedule from 1994 to 1996, so, aside from a video on YTV's history with the Power Rangers franchise, which shows an early schedule, showing Dennis the Menace (the 1986 animated series) on at 4, Captain Planet and the Planeteers on at 4:30, Batman on at 5, and then Power Rangers on at 5:30, there's no way to tell what was on at 3 or at 3:30. And for all I know, that schedule might've been from early 1994. I'm just going by what I personally remember from that time period.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I'd forgotten how much fun Rugrats is. I'm glad I was able to relive my memories from when I watched it brand new in the mid '90s. But I think that's where I'm going to leave off for today. I wanna do a whole post on YTV's The Zone and talk about the other shows that I watched on there. But for now, I'll be back soon with more blog posts and reviews. So until then have a great evening and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.