Web Premiere Toons were interactive cartoons created by Cartoon Network and viewable online at cartoonnetwork.com. These cartoons were interactive, meaning they were controlled by the user. Web Premiere Toons were created in 1999 and "Pink Donkey and the Fly" was the first to premiere.
Initially, World Premiere Toons consisted of only original shorts. However, they soon expanded to include interactive movies and shorts that featured classic cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny and Fred Flintstone as well as Cartoon Cartoon characters like Dexter and the Powerpuff Girls. Dubbed "cartoons you can click on" by the network, development was produced in-house and later outsourced to companies such as Funny Garbage.[1]
History and development
Cartoon Network launched its website in the summer of 1998. To boost new original content on its website, Sam Register announced that it would conduct talent searches at colleges to use Web Premiere Toons as a testing ground for new characters and art styles. The team would also monitor immediate reactions to the cartoons hosted on the website, which Register called "Nielsen on steroids".[2] The first such cartoon, Pink Donkey and the Fly by Gary Panter, was slated for a December 1998 release. For this end, Cartoon Network appointed Funny Garbage to produce cartoons for the platform. Register described the project as "sort of a love story", which also included easter eggs. A team of twelve people were working for the project, which cost less than the $250,000 average to produce a television episode. Characters in the shorts moved like cel animations of the past, which were used to maintain consistency with Hanna-Barbera's cartoons.[3] The service began in February 1999 with Pink Donkey and B. Happy, both shows received new episodes weekly;[4] by April 1999, Cartoon Network planned to make five more shows by 2000.[5]
In August, new titles were released: Germtown, a look at the life of germs, Saturday Night Fred, featuring characters from The Flintstones and The Marshmallow Money Show.[6] In October, Cartoon Network announced a reboot of Hanna-Barbera property The Banana Splits for the project in 2000, as well as the increase in the number of shorts from six to 24. Saturday Night Fred had also gained an adult following.[1] The new Banana Splits series would combine live-action shots of the characters, becoming animated versions. An interactive Atom Ant cartoon was on the works for 2000.[7]
In August 2000, Wildbrain announced that it would make two 15-minute cartoons for the service, without releasing further details.[8] The next month saw WPT inking a deal with Spazzco to provide three shorts, Time E-Lapse, Journey to the Center of My Dog's Head (featuring Wendell and Wuggums) and The Bickelshnotz County Flying Club.[9] In 2001, 40 new shorts were introduced, which focused more on classic characters, six of them were directed by John Kricfalusi.[10] A music video for Sugar Ray's When It's Over was released on the website on June 4, 2001, becoming the first music video from an existing band to be released there.[11]
Production halted in 2002. Some of the shorts available on the site moved to a dedicated Web Shows section on the revamped Cartoon Network website that year.[12]
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