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Welcome to the Internet's largest memorial to the late great Kids WB (1995-2008).

Kids WB is the only children's programming block to actually outlast the network it was aired on, and its initial six-cartoon lineup was, in my opinion, the greatest Saturday Morning lineup in television history. If you're into Kids WB, read on to relive the first moments, or click up above to watch over 100 promo spots. And if you had anything else planned for the next few hours, kiss it all goodbye.

I had no Internet in 1995 and so the first announcement I ever heard regarding Kids WB was this 60-second promo that aired throughout the summer. I give them a D- for effort as far as concealing the "mystery" of the shadowed characters.

Even if they hadn't used the Animaniacs theme as the background music, Portland's WB 32 spoiled it anyway. This started appearing in August and it undeniably contained new Animaniacs footage, which for a season-starved megafan was quite the sight. In addition, they also ran the entire "Brainstem" song from Pinky and the Brain one month early, and Brain said something different at the end: "Now....let's get this show on the road. YES!"

To show off its debut season, The WB created one of those prime-time Saturday Morning preview shows that used to be all the rage. Not many people know this special exists, because WB affiliates were not obligated to show it. They had the option of broadcasting it, but the WB didn't cover Friday nights yet, and they could only send them the tape and suggest they do something with it. My affiliate aired the special, but on Saturday morning itself, immediately AFTER the cartoons had shown!

This is all there is. I got annoyed with it two minutes in and quit recording. I might have had it all if the incentive to catch real previews was there, but the only new portions of this now were of WB "stars" obnoxiously mugging for the camera. This was the most annoying part of the block's first two seasons, and once you start watching the bumpers you'll agree with me. In the beginning The WB and Kids WB were often synergized to force kids into watching the whole network. The cross-pollination between the WB's terrible prime-time lineup and their superior cartoons was taken to such an extreme that I saw twice as much of Tia and Tamera as I did of Pinky and the Brain.


"Stick around for more Kids WB! It's a stick of gum, get it?"
There's only so much Harland Williams I can take before I explode.

Finally, on September 9, the fated day arrived....at six in the morning, so I had to set the VCR. I taped almost the entire first day of Kids WB (the tape cuts off after Freakazoid ends), and I saved the tape for just such an occasion as this. Wanna re-watch with me?

The first new episode of Animaniacs Kids WB showed was the third produced--episode 72, the one where they met Sherlock Holmes, Walter Wolf faked his death to get revenge on Slappy, and TWO verbal shots at Disney's "Bonkers" were taken. But the highlight of the ep was the phony "Previously, on Animaniacs" re-cap at the front. They did this bit well, and before Family Guy or anyone else thought of it.

Meanwhile, we were being pitched all sorts of products.

DIZZY GRIZZLIES: How are these new Teddy Grahams better than the originals? For one thing, their backsides are covered in fudge and sprinkles, so they're even worse for your health. Another thing that makes them better is that they are not only grizzlies, the fiercest of wild bears, but grizzlies into extreme sports. And to cap it all off, they're perpetually nauseated and look like they could barf at any time! That Nabisco Thing had his finger on the pulse of preteen America.

BAYWATCH BARBIE: For the time period, it not only made sense but was inevitable. Barbie runs in slow-motion on the beach, her wet plastic skin glistening with sunlight, sporting the skimpiest "Baywatch"-logo-branded pink swimsuit Mattel would allow. She finds a dolphin in some kind of trouble and gives it CPR. The dolphin makes a full recovery and leaps over her Free Willy style, guided by a little girl's hand. "And now they're together, best friends foreverrrrr!" sings the Barbie songstress who never came on camera to be identified.

FLOWER MAGIC MARY: Flower Magic Mary appeared on every show. Her magical powers were limited to making cloth flowers appear whenever you pushed her watering can on something. Mary was powerless without the can; some magician she was. Locally, there were a lot of ads for tractors, and I don't know how many tractor-buyers were watchers of Freakzoid, nor how many would decide they couldn't live without Flower Magic Mary.

There was also this.

After Animaniacs came the first episode of Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries. This show stayed on the longest out of the initial lineup, yet I've never heard anybody say "I really miss that Sylvester and Tweety show." Every attempt to bring back the reruns on cable has been met with apathetic ratings, and even when it was in production and kept getting renewed it was just kind of "there." This first season is different from all that came after--there's one story per episode, not two, and there's an attempt to make the mysteries more than half-baked. Eventually the formula became "they go somewhere, a crime is committed, Sylvester chases Tweety for the next ten minutes, then they stumble on the solution, next cartoon."

That said, I feel oddly compelled to buy the upcoming DVD sets.

The best part of Sylvester and Tweety was the cameos from obscure Looney Tunes characters--just about everyone got a turn. Rocky and Mugsy from "The Unmentionables" appear in episode 1, "The Cat Who Knew Too Much." Cool Cat, the most obscure Looney Tune ever, eventually appeared in every episode.

Sylvester and Tweety went all over the globe on this show. Their first stop was New Orleans. Yes, Granny walks in with beads and says "You wouldn't believe what I had to do to get these."

Here's something a lot of people never noticed: Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries had a joke credit. In an idea ripped from Animaniacs' Kathryn Page, S&T staff member Paul Trandahl was listed as something different every time. In the first episode he's credited as "Colonel Rimfire." They hadn't started putting Cool Cat in every episode, but Colonel Rimfire was the name of the guy who hunted him.

After S & T came another brand-new Animaniacs episode, and boy was it delicious. It began with a pitch-perfect Power Rangers parody ("Here, have a fat-free yogurt") and continued into a Slappy Squirrel cartoon directed by none other than Baynartz/Charlton Woodchuck. I must have watched it again about fifty times.

As if life wasn't good enough this morning, Pinky and The Brain were about to get an entire series to themselves. I initially assumed this was going to be like The Plucky Duck Show and would consist of one episode followed by recycled Pinky and The Brain footage from Animaniacs. But thankfully, this wasn't Fox and I would eventually see a full 65-episode series (though in the first season we did get enough recycled material to make one wonder if Al Gore was doing the episode editing).

The first episode, "Das Mouse," involved the titular mice hijacking the submarine that captured footage of the sunken Titanic in 1986 and using it to return there. Then they raised the Titanic with balloons and crashed it next to Acme Labs. This was so they could....um, get the ingredients for a hypnotic pancake batter. And Jim Belushi was involved somewhere. A second new P&B aired that night in prime time and involved Brain committing insurance fraud. It made a little more sense.

Years later, Kids WB recut footage from "Das Mouse" for an ad shortly after Titanic came out where Pinky sang a soundalike ripoff of "My Heart Will Go On." Too bad I couldn't give you a video of that one.

Next came Freakazoid. The first time he'd ever been seen anywhere. Very little had been revealed beyond one teaser ad that showed a geeky teenager turning into a large blue man in red tights. But finally, here he was, WBA's next baby....and I remember having a definite "WTH" reaction to this whole episode.

"Steff, you fibbed to Dex about washing your hair. If this were an afterschool special OOO you'd pay a BITTERSWEET PRICE for your little deceit! Like GETTING BIG OILY ZITS or EATING OFF THE SAME PLATE AS DAVID LEE ROTH!! OOOOOH! IT'S THE PLAAATE! AND--AND OOOOOH! HE'S BEEN ON IT! DON'T YOU SEE? DON'T YOU GET IT?? OOOOOO! OOOOOO!!!"

After he came back from commercial, he drew a face on his hand and made it "kiss" the face on the other hand and the kissing went on for about three minutes until it ended in his hands getting married, then having hot hand honeymoon sex under fireworks. He was definitely freaky. I wasn't sure what to think.

Eventually I came around; I thought Freak's third episode involving multiple alien sightings in Washington was total genius. I became a total Freakaphile, which in 1995 was a lonely position (without the Internet, anyway). I couldn't convince anyone else in my class to turn the show on. Later Freakazoid ran on Cartoon Network, everyone saw it, and then everyone became a fan--but it was too late. It was in cold reruns.

No Earthworm Jim screens? I already told you the tape quit at the end of Freakazoid. In fact, I didn't see the first EWJ episode until December. "It's based on a video game and it's not from Warner Bros. so it probably won't be as good," I thought to myself. I was very wrong. This show was hilarious and could stand with Animaniacs and Freakazoid easily--but despite that, it wasn't treated as well. Most of Jim's Season 2 episodes were only shown once in America--it never reached cable.

The first EWJ episode tread familiar ground to anyone who knew the plot of the game--Psy-Crow kidnapped Princess What's-Her-Name (with much difficulty) and Jim had to save her. The difference was, this time he did it with a giant robot mech. Meanwhile, Evil the Cat meets the sweetest little child in the world and decides "He MUST be destroyed." The scene where the mech chases after Jim was used in the credits of every episode afterward.

So why do I consider this lineup the greatest Saturday Morning in kids' TV history? Because thirteen years later, all these shows still hold up. In every season there's usually at least one terrible show you wouldn't touch with a 39 1/2 foot pole. Other cartoons seem good under the naive minds of children, but turn rotten to them once they grow up (and God help me, that Hi-C can DOES look like a nice paperweight). This is the rare exception. All these shows are just as funny and entertaining today as they were before. The lighting in a bottle that was Infant Kids WB may never be seen again.

NEXT: THE FINAL WEEK OF KIDS WB!