The Ren & Stimpy thread - Separate from the John K. pedo thread

The original Ren & Stimpy was great. The adult spinoff ... less so, IMO.

I agree with some people and say that the show will remain a product of its time: the landscape for children's animation has changed over the last 10 - 20 years.


The 'Don't Whiz On The Electric Fence!' segment still remains my favorite.

 
The clip doesn't have it, but at the very end of the song when they're throwing their hats in the air there's a fucking intestine shooting out poop.

That's like something you'd see out of a fucked up Adult Swim show, not a Nickelodeon kids show.
I noticed that only in recent years and impressed they got away with it when they did!
 
The original Ren & Stimpy was great. The adult spinoff ... less so, IMO.

I agree with some people and say that the show will remain a product of its time: the landscape for children's animation has changed over the last 10 - 20 years.


The 'Don't Whiz On The Electric Fence!' segment still remains my favorite.


Not only a product aimed at children that's so obviously subversive it doesn't even try to hide it like other shows. But a product that was an absolute monster hit at it's time. The proof is in the merchandise. There were t-shirts, books, comics, toys, dolls, and video games on every platform excluding the Atari Jaguar.
 
When I was a kid I had no clue what Ren and Stimpy were supposed to be.

I only guessed that the smaller white one was Stimpy based on his appearance.
 
I blame this show for my macabre sense of humor.

I know children who were scared to death of the show, while I sat their laughing my ass off. And the darker and more psychotic it got, the funnier it was to me.

I think the appeal was that it was just amazing a children's show got away with all of this. Even today, I'm still amazed that Nick allowed them to do half the stuff they did.

My favorite episodes:

1) Stimpy's Fan Club = Ren's total break down is one of the funniest goddamn things I have ever seen in a cartoon. His Macbeth like soliloquy while Stimpy is asleep is the stuff of legend and probably the show at its most hilariously dark. Also...the ending is actually kind of sweet.

2) Space Madness = First episode I saw, and the moment where Ren completely lost it still sticks out to me (that's going to be a common theme in my favorite episodes)]

3) Sven Hoek = Ren has to deal with two blithering idiots instead of one, and his enraged monologue at the end is, once again, the stuff I lived for in this show. Also "Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence!"

4) In the Army = Once again, Ren gets tortured and loses his damn mind, and its hilarious. Also, the Drill Sgt. character is a hoot.

5) Stimpy's Invention = The mark of just how insane this show was. They made Stimpy...fucking Stimpy, probably the biggest dumbass lumox in the history of animation a mad scientist with a laboratory. Ren gets fitted with the "Happy Helmet' so he'll always be happy, and watching Ren struggle to resist the helmet and ultimately succeed is probably Ren's greatest victory in the whole show.
 
I blame this show for my macabre sense of humor.

I know children who were scared to death of the show, while I sat their laughing my ass off. And the darker and more psychotic it got, the funnier it was to me.

I think the appeal was that it was just amazing a children's show got away with all of this. Even today, I'm still amazed that Nick allowed them to do half the stuff they did.
I was already a teen when the show started, so I came into it already having been a child in the 80's watching the most mundane of cartoons and saw what an awakening the program was. I wasn't quite in the same boat as you but was older enough to see what they were going for, and nailed it perfectly.

My favorite episodes:

1) Stimpy's Fan Club = Ren's total break down is one of the funniest goddamn things I have ever seen in a cartoon. His Macbeth like soliloquy while Stimpy is asleep is the stuff of legend and probably the show at its most hilariously dark. Also...the ending is actually kind of sweet.

2) Space Madness = First episode I saw, and the moment where Ren completely lost it still sticks out to me (that's going to be a common theme in my favorite episodes)]

3) Sven Hoek = Ren has to deal with two blithering idiots instead of one, and his enraged monologue at the end is, once again, the stuff I lived for in this show. Also "Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence!"

4) In the Army = Once again, Ren gets tortured and loses his damn mind, and its hilarious. Also, the Drill Sgt. character is a hoot.

5) Stimpy's Invention = The mark of just how insane this show was. They made Stimpy...fucking Stimpy, probably the biggest dumbass lumox in the history of animation a mad scientist with a laboratory. Ren gets fitted with the "Happy Helmet' so he'll always be happy, and watching Ren struggle to resist the helmet and ultimately succeed is probably Ren's greatest victory in the whole show.
This episodes are high on my list as well, even though they reran those first two seasons over and over a lot during the mess Nick had with kicking John out, those were still great episodes to see again and again.
 
I blame this show for my macabre sense of humor.

I know children who were scared to death of the show, while I sat their laughing my ass off. And the darker and more psychotic it got, the funnier it was to me.

I think the appeal was that it was just amazing a children's show got away with all of this. Even today, I'm still amazed that Nick allowed them to do half the stuff they did.

My favorite episodes:

1) Stimpy's Fan Club = Ren's total break down is one of the funniest goddamn things I have ever seen in a cartoon. His Macbeth like soliloquy while Stimpy is asleep is the stuff of legend and probably the show at its most hilariously dark. Also...the ending is actually kind of sweet.

2) Space Madness = First episode I saw, and the moment where Ren completely lost it still sticks out to me (that's going to be a common theme in my favorite episodes)]

3) Sven Hoek = Ren has to deal with two blithering idiots instead of one, and his enraged monologue at the end is, once again, the stuff I lived for in this show. Also "Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence!"

4) In the Army = Once again, Ren gets tortured and loses his damn mind, and its hilarious. Also, the Drill Sgt. character is a hoot.

5) Stimpy's Invention = The mark of just how insane this show was. They made Stimpy...fucking Stimpy, probably the biggest dumbass lumox in the history of animation a mad scientist with a laboratory. Ren gets fitted with the "Happy Helmet' so he'll always be happy, and watching Ren struggle to resist the helmet and ultimately succeed is probably Ren's greatest victory in the whole show.

Same boat here. I grew up as a huge fan of horror films and the show greatly contributed to my fucked up humor and probably my view of the world as well. Which is maybe sad to some but better to be informed by Ren & Stimpy rather than Care Bears or some other bullshit.
 
I blame this show for my macabre sense of humor.

I know children who were scared to death of the show, while I sat their laughing my ass off. And the darker and more psychotic it got, the funnier it was to me.

I think the appeal was that it was just amazing a children's show got away with all of this. Even today, I'm still amazed that Nick allowed them to do half the stuff they did.
Ren and Stimpy aired before I was born. Growing up, I was watching Billy and Mandy, which was a bizarrely inappropriate show in its own right. Hell I almost consider Billy and Mandy to be on the same level of fucked-upedness as Ren and Stimpy. I think it was because of Billy and Mandy that R&S appealed to me as a teenager, and the only reason I think R&S is more disturbing is because it isn't outwardly a horror-themed show. Billy and Mandy starts with a creepy theme song and the Grim Reaper laughing maniacally, so you have an idea what you're getting in to. Ren and Stimpy meanwhile appears innocent enough, with a mildly catchy and upbeat intro and the animation isn't as dark and macabre as Billy and Mandy at first glance. R&S does a good job disarming you and then sucker-punches the viewer with its outrageous content, and that's why I think it's a lot more shocking than the shows that came after it.
 
I used to watch this show when I was really little, but it's been years since I've seen it. I think, in some vague way, I realized even then how fucked up the whole thing was. I loved it. There was this one episode I remember where Ren tore Stimpy's skin clean off, leaving him a pile of bones and still-beating organs. I wasn't allowed to watch it anymore after that one...
 
Maybe I missed it but did nobody post space madness? Where is my fucking ice cream bar.



 
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There were t-shirts, books, comics, toys, dolls, and video games on every platform excluding the Atari Jaguar.

Hahah, well even as a young teenager I knew that the Jaguar would be a total failure when I sampled some games at the store, and I guess the Ren & Stimpy people did too. No one wanted to return to those stupid plastic inserts to play games. That was very IntelliVision.

Same boat here. I grew up as a huge fan of horror films and the show greatly contributed to my fucked up humor and probably my view of the world as well. Which is maybe sad to some but better to be informed by Ren & Stimpy rather than Care Bears or some other bullshit.
Ren & Stimpy and PeeWee's Playhouse were my favorite shows growing up, so when the Adult Party Cartoon came out I thought it would be even funnier but it was a disaster. John K. only seems to do well when he's heavily wrangled by the studio.
 
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I blame this show for my macabre sense of humor.

I know children who were scared to death of the show, while I sat their laughing my ass off. And the darker and more psychotic it got, the funnier it was to me.

I think the appeal was that it was just amazing a children's show got away with all of this. Even today, I'm still amazed that Nick allowed them to do half the stuff they did.

My favorite episodes:

1) Stimpy's Fan Club = Ren's total break down is one of the funniest goddamn things I have ever seen in a cartoon. His Macbeth like soliloquy while Stimpy is asleep is the stuff of legend and probably the show at its most hilariously dark. Also...the ending is actually kind of sweet.

2) Space Madness = First episode I saw, and the moment where Ren completely lost it still sticks out to me (that's going to be a common theme in my favorite episodes)]

3) Sven Hoek = Ren has to deal with two blithering idiots instead of one, and his enraged monologue at the end is, once again, the stuff I lived for in this show. Also "Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence!"

4) In the Army = Once again, Ren gets tortured and loses his damn mind, and its hilarious. Also, the Drill Sgt. character is a hoot.

5) Stimpy's Invention = The mark of just how insane this show was. They made Stimpy...fucking Stimpy, probably the biggest dumbass lumox in the history of animation a mad scientist with a laboratory. Ren gets fitted with the "Happy Helmet' so he'll always be happy, and watching Ren struggle to resist the helmet and ultimately succeed is probably Ren's greatest victory in the whole show.

These episodes were good not because they focused on grossness, but because they focused on the relationship dynamics between Ren and Stimpy and on dark, absurdist humor. R&S also had a manic physicality to its animation. Not just in exaggeration of the movement, but its focus on anatomy as well. I'm impressed at how realistic Ren's breathing is whenever he's screaming or losing his shit. Bear in mind, up till now, cartoons aimed at children were pretty basic -Most 80's cartoons were either Hanna Barbara franchises or thinly disguised toy commericals, with pretty stiff, low-budget animation. R&S was a throwback to the earlier days of cartoons, homaging Bob Clampett Looney Tunes with a generous helping of mid-century UPA studio aesthetic. It reminded me of the better Mr. Magoo cartoon shorts and countless 50's TV advertisements.


Where the cartoon fell apart, was when it decided that the grossness was the defining factor of the show, not the witty, dark satire or deranged animation. Grossness is like pure wasabi - you only need a little bit to spice things up. Too much and it becomes unpalatable. I know there are folks who disagree, and I realize the grossness of the show is just the type of thing that appeals to its target audience, boys on the cusp of puberty, But if you cram too much into a show, it becomes a niche work with a smaller fanbase and it loses a little of its timelessness.
 
The best thing about the videogame was that you could actually beat it unlike most of the other kid cartoon games they put out there

The 90's was great time for kid's programming. You had stuff ranging from cartoons filled with shit that would cause countless outrage articles and soccer mom rioting if it aired nowadays (your R&S, Rocko and Animaniacs) to children-oriented game shows (Guts, Wild and Crazy Kids, Legends of the Hidden Temple, that one fucking bizarre arcade one) to stuff like Are You Afraid of the Dark (which was far spookier as a child than it had any right to be) and it was all bookended by the beginning of Courage.
 
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I liked R&S as a kid but at times the show genuinely disturbed me, like when Powdered Toast man flies so fast he actually burns up people riding on his back or Ren's many freakouts, I could tell even as a kid that there was genuine insanity behind the show and sure enough I turned out to be right.

But when it was good it was really good, although ironically enough one of my favorite episodes as a kid was the Travelogue one, which was Games era.

That Sega Genesis game was also dope as fuck, boy did I love the hell out of that game.

By the way, does anyone know how frequently Nick would air reruns of R&S in the 90s and when exactly they stopped? Because from my memory it was actually somewhat of a rare treat to actually watch R&S, I easily watched Rocko, Rugrats and Doug ten times as much as I ever did watch R&S.

The best thing about the videogame was that you could actually beat it unlike most of the other kid cartoon games they put out there

The 90's was great time for kid's programming. You had stuff ranging from cartoons filled with shit that would cause countless outrage articles and soccer mom rioting if it aired nowadays (your R&S, Rocko and Animaniacs) to children-oriented game shows (Guts, Wild and Crazy Kids, Legends of the Hidden Temple, that one fucking bizarre arcade one) to stuff like Are You Afraid of the Dark (which was far spookier as a child than it had any right to be) and it was all bookended by the beginning of Courage.

The 90s was the best time for kid's TV and the 80s was the best time for kids or at least family friendly movies, as a 90s kid it was the best of both worlds because I got to watch what was on TV, while also having the best of the 80s movies, like Goonies, easily available on video or on TV.
 
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