CARTOON NETWORK Class of 2000
BUBBLES
Coloring Society
"Look, I gave the sun a smiley face!"
BLOSSOM
Goody Two-Shoes Club
"Cheaters never prosper."
BUTTERCUP
Golden Gloves: Kindergarten Division
"I'm a bad mamma-jamma!"
JOHNNY BRAVO
French Club, Weiqht Lifting
"I thought French Club meant
something else."
u
SPACE GHOST
JV Badminton
"I'm allowed to go off campus
for lunch.”
DEXTER
Science Club, Math Club, Chess Club,
Debate Team, National Honor Society
"Accent? I have no accent."
an irony-laced superheroine comedy in
which he’d had enormous confidence.
“[The kids] said, ‘They look weird. We
don’t like the way they look. We think
this is stupid, but not the good stupid.’ ”
At this point, a less courageous
development team might have ordered
McCracken, 29, to make his characters
less stylized (the kindergartners don’t
even have hands, for cryin’ out loud),
in a crazed search for the elusive “good
stupid.” Instead, they went back to
the storyboard, not the drawing board.
The test audiences “pointed out it was
working on one level, which was irony,”
says Lazzo. “But it wasn’t working
on the level that all entertainment
should work on: characterization.”
So McCracken differentiated his
generic kick-ass lasses into three dis
tinct do-gooders: draconian Buttercup,
practical Blossom, and deceptively
sweet Bubbles. Add a toned-down title
(changing Wkoopass to Powerpuff
was McCracken’s one concession to
corporate conservatism), a retro-rave
soundtrack, some wink-wink gags
(were those condoms the girls slipped
into the pocket of creator/father fig
ure Professor Utonium before send
ing him out on a date?), and a dash of
Chemical X, and you’ve got one of Car
toon Network’s highest-rated shows.