Rugrats, Doug, SpongeBob: Nickelodeon Secrets Revealed

If you were watching the first Nicktoons slate during its original run, you might have a few rug rats of your own running around by now.

But there’s also no preferred demographic when it comes to nostalgia for Doug, Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show—which all premiered on Aug. 11, 1991—and kids of every age are welcome to revisit just how envelope-pushing that trio of shows was upon arrival.

At the time, The Simpsons was barely two years old and the landscape was not yet littered with subversive cartoons, so Nickelodeon had a wide-open space to fill with animated programming fit for children but also smart enough for adults.

“Doug, to me, was a show that was so missing for kids. Really, since Charlie Brown,” Nickelodeon Animation School cofounder Vanessa Coffey, who shepherded all three series into existence, told Entertainment Weekly in 2016. “It was speaking directly to them, to their feelings, their fears, their lives.”