They’re best friends whose wacky, violent escapades comprise The Ren & Stimpy Show, which debuted on Nickelodeon on August 11, 1991, alongside Rugrats and Doug in a cataclysmic 90-minute block that ushered in the Nicktoons era and changed North American animation as we know it. It’s the History Eraser Button, you fool!” What we got here is a shrieking, abusive Chihuahua named Ren Höek berating a doofy Manx cat named Stimpson J. Throughout the week, we’ll be publishing essays, features, and interviews to get at the heart of what made Nick so dang fun-and now so nostalgic. To mark the anniversary, The Ringer is looking back at Nick’s best-ever characters and the legacy of the network as a whole. Introduced on August 11, 1991, under the brand of “Nicktoons,” Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show would quickly become hits and change the course of animation, television, and popular culture at large. Thirty years ago this week, a rising but not-yet-ubiquitous kids network by the name of Nickelodeon launched its first original animated series.

Ren and stimpy pencil animation