I wonder what everyone’s first reaction to SpongeBob back when it first premiered in 1999?

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Nobody had faith in this show about a talking sea sponge, let alone knew it would be such a cultural phenomenon, when Stephen Hillenburg first pitched it. The executives dismissed it as too weird and gave it no budget and only 6 episodes initially, Stephen Hillenburg was very uncertain it would go anywhere, and Bill Fagerbakke, Patrick's voice actor, even referred to it as "inane pulp for preschoolers" when he was first hired.

have any screenshots of people actually liking it at the time?

I remember not liking it and thinking "why was this more hyped up than Catdog?"

>Zoomers on Twitter are now lumping seasons 4-5 of Spongebob with the "Classic era", apparently blissfully unaware that seasons 4-5 were widely considered big shits by fans when they first aired

What happened?

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So according to your logic, if the characters were toddlers then the show is for animals???

I was 8. Found it okay, the Tiny Tim song got the biggest laugh from me.

I think the bubble stand episode was when I realized this show was going to be special.

Did Nick spam the show much back then?

>bob
>an animal
is the soap an animal too then?

>Do ya smell it?

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It's odd to think that Spongebob and Family Guy both came out in 1999 and Family Guy wasn't as popular back then and was cancelled for years, while Spongebob has been going on since its inception and has tons of video games, toys and products compared to Family Guy.

Despite this, Family Guy still gets higher ratings than Spongebob, and Seth MacFarlane is a millionare big shot in Hollywood while Stephen Hillenburg is niche compared to Seth despite his cartoon being more well-known and beloved.

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No, it infamously had a once a week morning slot at the time. I remember the ad for its premiere getting spammed alot, but that was part of the hype for the kids choice awards.

I hated the fact that it was on Nickelodeon because I hated everything else on Nickelodeon and this was just a trap to get your idle TV on some god-awful shit. But it was good. For a brief period of time.

Being 13 at the time, I didn't need decent cartoons to watch so that fact that there was one was a nice bonus. I remember parents of young children making a far bigger deal out of it than any kids I knew.

I remember my older sister and I mocking the advertisements and refusing to watch it because of Spongebob's goofy design. Eventually we gave an episode a go to poke fun at it, and ended up in tears of laughter during that scene where Patrick kept upping the bet with Neptune and getting burnt to ash every other sentence.

I think neither of us wanted to admit that we liked it until a marathon aired and we both agreed to tape it.

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I really enjoyed it, I loved animals and you didn't see sea creatures spotlighted very often. If I remember it came out around the same time as Rocket Power which was sort of ok, but it made Spongebob stand out more.

>shit talks classic spongebob
>quotes and references ren and stimpy and simpsons butt booger jokes
why am I not surprised?

Butch Hartman was offered by Hillenburg and Drymon to work on SpongeBob as a writer/storyboard artist, but he declined as he was busy working on the Fairly Oddparents pilot.

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Hillenburg was pretty smart making lesser-known sea creatures the main characters. That experience in marine biology certainly came in handy for him

I remember thinking it was really funny. I was probably in third grade at the time. Rugrats was still the big name up until about 2002, but I do recall SpongeBob being an instant hit.

They're blinded by how unironically great of a song "Gary Come Home" is to see how shit everything around it is.

The irony of referencing both those things is that John K didn't like the Simpsons, and they retaliated against his dislike by making fun of Ren and Stimpy's production troubles.

Soul

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Soulless. They made Mrs. Puff, Pearl and Karen part of the main cast purely to appeal to females and SJWs when they were barely in the show during the earlier seasons. Pearl wasn't even in a single season 5 episode.

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I remember when it was new I wrote it off as another shallow attempt to recapture the Ren & Stimpy lightning, because "Spongebob Squarepants" had a sort of humor to it that sounded like a Ren & Stimpy character and I saw the part of the intro where Spongebob plays his nose like a flute.

Post some

Season 4 has some good episodes that fit in pretty well with the original seasons but it's also obvious the show was already losing steam

Sea sponges are animals.

Wasn't it because they have such a limited cast they need more characters to have some new stories, and to minimize recycling the same stuff; and they don't want to add new characters, like FOP did?

AU where Seth didn't miss his flight on 9/11 and Stephen is alive and healthy?

>Alternate Timeline where ChalkZone is the Nicktoon that Viacom milks the shit out of

Nick delayed it for 2 years for unknown reasons.

Well I love ocean life so I instantly loved it as a kid, eventually my whole family started to watch with me.
It was the first show we all watched together.

It premiered when I wasn't even 10 yrs old yet but I remember liking it almost immediately.

God,I hope this is bait

I remember this particular commercial coming on, every day, before it aired.

youtube.com/watch?v=FRHu6zIyp9k

Then, I remembered them spamming the sneak peek, which was the clip from "Tea at the Treedome" where Spongebob tries to save Sandy from the giant clam. I remember enjoying it, but then again, I was only 5 years old. I actually missed the premier, so the first episode I saw was "Bubble Stand".

ikr. Life isn't fair. With all the respect to Mcfarlane but he's a disaster as a director/producer. He should stick with voice acting only,ONLY

Season 4 was always better than the ones that came after it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone like anything from season 5 besides handsome Squidward.

>The broken english
This just irks me up a bit with their shitty type, it’s like I’m reading shit from mentally retarded manchild

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FG was barely popular since the quality feel flat, the same said for Spongebob without a regard. That only became nick’s source of income,

>The best place to turn for new toons.

Oh how I missed the variety Nick had during the time. Went to shit in 2007.

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It was super popular at first, it took a few years
I loved it from the moment i watched it

*it wasnt super popular at first

I remember the adds, there were so many

Season 5 had some good stuff
>Friend or Foe
>Spy Buddies
>Krabs a la Mode
>Money Talks
>Slimy Dancing
>Sing a Song of Patrick
>The Two Faces of Squidward
>Battle of Bikini Bottom
>The Original Fry Cook
>Roller Cowards
>Goo Goo Gas
>The Krusty Sponge, a satire of how Nick is milking the franchise and puts Spongebobs face everywhere to sell
>Spongebob vs the Patty Gadget
>BlackJack
>Blackened Sponge
>Mermaid Man vs Spongebob
>The Inmates of Summer

I thought it was an alright show I enjoyed before season 2.

The problem here is in assuming that the loudmouths complaining about Nickelodeon programming online in 1999 were somehow a majority. It's the same thing with twitter trends; it's SUCH a small subset of the population getting amplified to ridiculous degrees.

That said, I recall Spongebob getting a lukewarm reception. My best friend and I LOVED it to death; but we were serious social outcasts. We were also graduating middle school the year it premiered, so I doubt we were the target audience, but it barely registered with any of my younger friends/cousins at the time, either. I don't quite recall when the popularity seemed to take off, but my friend and I were already kind of over it long before the movie happened.

None of that is broken english. The punctuation/formatting sucks, but they're all complete, legible sentences. Retard.

You could say it jumped the shark at its peak.

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>The second season's premier was honestly a way bigger even than the first's.
I remember this. I was super shocked that the show even got a second season because nobody I knew was talking at all about the first, but I guess the ratings proved otherwise because as soon as they had promos for season 2, they started making a BIG deal about it. The first episode had that Ween song in it, made it feel really major because Nicktoons rarely had major musical performances attached to them before that.

Heck, the thing that won me over so hard about the first episode was the Tiny Tim song.

Was not even a year old when it premiered, but I remember loving it for as long as I can remember.

Teenagers called it gay and for kids

Rocket power and chalk zone

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I was about 3 when I premiered so I don't remember it myself, but my parents loved it. They'd watch it on their own sometimes because they got such a kick out of it