25 years of a Sea Sponge's Antics

I realized that after I did my ED, EDD N EDDY post, I should do some post about the largest cash cow Nickelodeon as had since 1999.

I give you: SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS

Premiering on May 1 1999, this would turn out to be Nickelodeon's longest Lasting Nicktoon ever.

It was created by the late Stephen Hillenberg.

Back in the Mid-90s, shortly after completing Rocko's Modern Life, Hillenberg decided to create a cartoon inspired by his fascination with Marine Biology.

The show was inspired by Hillenberg's early comic book

THE INTERTIDAL ZONE.

The character of THE INTERTIDAL ZONE, BOB THE SPONGE, would serve as an early prototype for the SpongeBob Character at large.

After the end of ROCKO's MODERN LIFE, Hillenberg was then asked by his then Co-worker Martin Olson to create a cartoon based on INTERTIDAL ZONE.

And to this end, he created an amalgamation of his INTERTIDAL ZONE concept and create what's referred to as SPONGEBOB.

Of course, the earliest Concept was called SPONGEBOY AHOY.

However, after the storyboards were made, Hillenberg was told he could not use the SPONGEBOY name because it was already trademarked.

Now previously, it was thought that the Trademark was from a Mop Company 

But it was eventually corrected where it was discovered that the Spongeboy Mop Company doesn't even exist.

Instead, it was a company that made pencils.

So his name had to be change but Hillenberg wanted to make sure that his character still be referred to as SPONGE since he didn't want people thinking his character was a walking piece of Swiss Cheese.

And thus SpongeBob was born as a name. And SquarePants was also born too because Hillenberg wanted SpongeBob to have a family name.

Help Wanted, the very first episode of SpongeBob, was created in 1997 but didn't air on Nickelodeon until 1999.

Probably because it wasn't long enough to justify a pilot so two more episodes were created to fill it's premiere timeslot.

The show would air for........ 25 more years and counting but whenever people, especially those from around my birth date who grew up on SpongeBob, look back on the show, they think more of it's first 3 seasons, plus the 2004 movie.

Probably because those had Hillenberg's heavy involvement, and those early episodes are also the most memetic.... probably due to where the majority of SpongeBob related memes come from.

Which I wish I could show but then I'd have to go through the catacombs of Google, Facebook, Reddit, X(Formerly known as Twitter), etc. just to download all the meme templates out there which I don't want to dedicate the time for at this moment due to work. 

Maybe in the future, when I compile all my photos, I'll update this post periodically.

Despite Nickelodeon treating the show like it's Cash Cow, people have moved on to other shows.

AVATAR Fandom anybody?

And for this, I'll leave this retrospective for now.

I'll periodically update it when the time permits.