Nickelodeon held a panel today during New York Comic Con, mostly about their upcoming Legends of the Hidden Temple movie — but they answered a few other questions. Michael Sammaciccia, the movie’s executive producer, told the audience Rugrats was being considered for a comeback.
And he hinted it’s not alone. “What’s happening with [Legends of the Hidden Temple] is that it’s allowing Nickelodeon to look at the rich library they have, and not just Rugrats,” Sammaciccia said. “All of them are being considered.”
I think my reaction represents that of most people who were there in the late 90’s: we have enough Rugrats as it is to last us a lifetime. The world can certainly use more than 52 of Rocko’s adventures, but there are over 130 episodes of Rugrats in existence and that’s if you don’t count the “All Grown Up” spinoff. The show was strong, inspired and fresh in August of 1991, but as time went on and it passed the 65 episode limit, the episodes produced in the latter half of the decade soon lost track of what made the series work. Rugrats died not of cancellation, but of overexposure.
But we’re talking about the network that owns a Money Bin full of Spongebob episodes at this point, and can’t ever bring themselves to cancel Fairly Oddparents. It doesn’t matter if you want or need more Rugrats, too much is NEVER enough.
To be fair, a Rugrats revival might work if it was kept to a minimum, like the TV movies that Arnold and Rocko are getting…and it kept the wit of the earlier episodes intact. Series creators Paul Germain, Arlene Klasky, and Gabor Csupo would be needed for that — but they can’t seem to agree on how they’d approach it.
