Oh Yeah! Cartoons (found Nickelodeon series)

Oh Yeah! Cartoons
A tribute to Rob Renzetti's pilots courtesy of akron-squirrel.

Oh Yeah! Cartoons is an American animation showcase that appeared on the Nickelodeon cable channel. Oh Yeah! was an animation project guided by Fred Seibert, former Creative Director of MTV Networks and President of Hanna-Barbera. Produced by Frederator Studios, it ran as part of Nickelodeon's Nicktoons lineup, and in its second season, was hosted by Kenan Thompson of All That and Kenan & Kel fame; Then later by Josh Server, also from All That, for its third season. Bill Burnett composed the show's theme music. Oh Yeah! Cartoons was distributed by Nelvana outside of the United States.

In terms of sheer volume, Oh Yeah! Cartoons remains TV's biggest animation development program ever. Giving several dozen filmmakers the opportunity to create nearly 100 seven-minute cartoons, the series eventually yielded three dedicated half-hour spin-offs and two co-series made by Billionfold Inc.:

• The Fairly OddParents
• ChalkZone
• My Life as a Teenage Robot
• Alex Adventure

Nickelodeon's Oh Yeah! half-hour featured in its first season, a total of 39 brand new seven-minute cartoons in 13 episodes, surpassing the number of new cartoons and characters on any other single network. In its full run, Oh Yeah! Cartoons featured and produced over 99 cartoons and 54 characters.

Many of the animated shorts were created by cartoonists who later became more prominent, including Bob Boyle, Thomas R. Fitzgerald, Bill Burnett, Jaime Diaz, Greg Emison, John Eng, John Fountain, Antoine Guilbaud, Butch Hartman, Larry Huber, Steve Marmel, Zac Moncrief, Ken Kessel, Alex Kirwan, Seth MacFarlane, Carlos Ramos, Rob Renzetti, C. Miles Thompson, Byron Vaughns, Pat Ventura, Vincent Waller, and David Wasson. Many of the animators featured on Oh Yeah! Cartoons had worked on the What A Cartoon! Show produced by Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network two years earlier. The show was also created by Fred Seibert while he was president of Hanna-Barbera and had the same concept as Oh Yeah! Cartoons. When Seibert left Hanna-Barbera in 1997 and founded Frederator Studios, many of the animators that had worked on What A Cartoon! migrated with him to produce shorts for Oh Yeah! Cartoons.

Now, after that little introduction, let's talk about what separates "What A Cartoon!" and "Oh Yeah! Cartoons" in terms of availability. Even though only specific WAC shorts were released on VHS tapes back in the 90's, and these shorts have not been seen on television since limited airings on Boomerang in 2007, every WAC short can be watched on various online sites (partially due to these limited Boomerang airings, and the fact that several people recorded episodes off of their TV and were generous enough to put them up on YouTube). However, there are some original forms of very few WAC shorts that are missing, which are detailed on the Lost Media Wikia page linked right here: The What a Cartoon! Show (Missing 1995-1997 broadcasts)

Oh Yeah! Cartoons clearly has several shorts that are completely missing on the Internet, save for some noninformative postcards on the shorts. This series mainly aired all of its episodes after "The What A Cartoon! Show" ended, and this series also last aired on public television in 2007. These shorts should be just as easy to find, right? Wrong! For some strange reason, very few people seem to have recorded this series, despite it airing for several years in reruns (Or these people do not want to upload their recorded episodes onto online video sites). It is extremely rare to see an Oh Yeah! short with a Nickelodeon or Nicktoons watermark in the corner of the short online.

However, unlike WAC, Nickelodeon and Frederator did not halt OYC distribution when it was taken off of the air in 2007. Because Nickelodeon still owns the rights to everything broadcast in the show, unlike Kablam, Nickelodeon has uploaded a wide collection of OYC episodes, including the very rare in-between segments with Kenan Thompson and Josh Server, onto sites where users must pay for the episodes such as Amazon and ITunes. This collection has helped the online community find most of the OYC shorts. Most of the OYC shorts that have a presence online have been recorded from this collection of episodes that do not have any watermarks on them.

Frederator also has not forgotten about OYC, as they used to release specific shorts of OYC submitted to them by the short creators onto their old Channel Frederator videos. Specific Channel Frederator episodes have been archived and can be watched for free on Veoh.

HOWEVER, the two situations above only include MOST of the OYC shorts, not ALL of them. The shorts that were not released on pay-to-watch sites/Channel Frederator are impossible to find online. The only way to find the "missing shorts" as listed below would be if someone recorded the shorts off of their TV when OYC was still airing on Nickelodeon and Nicktoons and was nice enough to share these recorded, lost shorts with the online community. But, as said earlier, it seems that few people recorded OYC off of their TV sets. This presents a problem that these "missing shorts" may be harder to come by than we would think.

The list below also includes "found shorts that cannot be viewed for free". This means that it would be nice if someone were to buy some OYC episodes off of Amazon, ITunes, etc. and upload the shorts included in this list onto a free online video site.

Found Shorts That Cannot Be Viewed For Free

*Youngstar 3

*Microcops

*Earth To Obie

*Jelly's Day: Uncle Betty Comes To Visit

*Herb

*Tales from the Goose Lady: Goldie Locks

Missing Shorts

• The Semprini Triplets
• Tales From The Goose Lady: The Fisherman, The Fisherman's Wife, And The Fish

UPDATE 2/12/16- It turns out that after the creator of this article bought some shorts off of Amazon, "Apex Cartoon Props & Novelties" turned out to be a found short that cannot be viewed for free! The short was misnamed as "Kitty The Hapless Cat", another OYC short that can be watched for free on YouTube.

UPDATE 2/19/16- Three previously lost shorts can now be watched for free on YouTube thanks to the YouTube user "Nicktoons Network" for uploading them! These shorts are "Fat Head", "Hubbykins Vs. Sweetiepie", and "That's My Pop".

UPDATE 2/20/16- These past two days have helped this article make great progress! The YouTube user "Nicktoons Network" has also uploaded "Little Pigs 3" and "Skippy Spankerton".

UPDATE 2/28/16- It turns out that after doing some research, there is yet ANOTHER lost OYC short! It is called "The Fisherman, The Fisherman's Wife, And The Fish". It sporadically aired in Season 3 along with "The Really Bad Day" and "Baxter And Bananas". The credits for this short can even be seen on the copy of "Baxter And Bananas" that has been uploaded to YouTube. Storyboards and character models were added onto an old Channel Frederator blog by Fred Seibert, but nothing else related to this short has surfaced online.

UPDATE 11/23/16- "Jelly's Day", "Teddy and Art: 25 Cent Trouble", "Hobart: The Weedkeeper", "Protecto 5000", and "Peter Patrick, Private Investigator" will be airing on The Splat! The former two will be airing on Saturday, December 3, 2016, and the latter three will be airing on Sunday, December 4, 2016!

UPDATE 12/4/16- Thanks to the YouTube user "LoganHolmes007 Productions", the entire first episode can now be watched for free!

UPDATE 12/5/16- Thanks to the YouTube user "LoganHolmes007 Productions", the entire second episode can now be watched for free!

UPDATE 12/6/16- Thanks to the YouTube user "LoganHolmes007 Productions", the entire third episode can now be watched for free!

UPDATE 12/18/16- Thanks to the YouTube user "LoganHolmes007 Productions", the enitre fourth episode can now be watched for free!