What-A-Cartoon!, also known as World Premiere Toons or WAC for short, was the mid-1990s animation showcase that appeared on the Cartoon Network. It served as the launching point for several original cartoons including Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, The Powerpuff Girls, and Courage the Cowardly Dog. The Big Cartoon Database cites WAC! as a "venture combining classic 1940s production methods with the originality, enthusiasm and comedy of the 1990s."
WAC was an animation project conceived and produced by Fred Seibert, the original creative director of MTV and Nickelodeon who served as the president of Hanna-Barbera Productions prior to founding Frederator Studios. Its mission was to return creative power to animators and artists, by going back-to-the-future and recreating the atmospheres that spawned the great cartoon characters of the mid-20th century. Each of 48 short cartoons mirrored the structure of a theatrical cartoon, with each film being based on an original storyboard drawn and written by its artist/creator. In 1997, Seibert successfully morphed his unit into the the Oh Yeah! Cartoons project at Nickelodeon.
The first World Premiere Toon to premiere was Dexter's Laboratory, which made its world premiere on February 20, 1995. The series of cartoons made a simulcast airing on Cartoon Network, TBS, and TNT.
Cartoon Network's What-A-Cartoon!, which was assembled into a half-hour series, The What-A-Cartoon! Show (later renamed to The Cartoon Cartoon Show), featured and produced over 45 brand-new seven-minute cartoons, as well as 38 new characters.
There was also a large number of animated shorts created by several cartoonists such as: Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Laboratory (4 cartoon shorts)), David Feiss (No Smoking, which introduced the siblings Cow and Chicken), Van Partible (Johnny Bravo (2 cartoon shorts)), Craig McCracken (Meat Fuzzy Lumpkins, which introduced The PowerPuff Girls, and Crime 101), Butch Hartman (who did a number of one-shot shorts, including Pfish and Chip and Gramps), Seth MacFarlane (Larry and Steve, which were prototypes of Peter Griffin and Brian of Family Guy), John R. Dilworth (whose Oscar-nominated Chicken From Outer Space introduced Courage the Cowardly Dog), and countless others. Also included were works from veterans like William Hanna (Wind-Up Wolf and Hard Luck Duck), Joseph Barbera (shorts featuring The Flintstones' Dino), and Ralph Bakshi (Malcolm and Melvin).
The What-A-Cartoon! experiment introduced many of today's top animation talent and was repeated several times. A similar program was introduced on Nickelodeon, named Oh Yeah! Cartoons.
Videos and DVDs
- The Cartoon Cartoon Show: Complete Series (coming soon)
