Ren and Stimpy - just the facts

Ren & Stimpy - just the facts

The Ren & Stimpy Show was an American animated television series created by Canadian animator John Kricfalusi. The series follows the adventures of the eponymous characters: Ren Höek, a neurotic "asthma-hound" chihuahua, & Stimpson J. Cat (a.k.a. Stimpy) — a simpleminded cat. They wander around in nonsensical adventures in a style reminiscent of the Golden Age of American animation. Kricfalusi created the characters around 1979, while working on low-budget TV cartoons. The two characters were originally conceived as unrelated doodles until Kricfalusi's co-worker, Joel Fajnor, advised Kricfalusi to pair them together.

Though a series from the children's cable network Nickelodeon, The Ren & Stimpy Show had a reputation for subversive gross-out humor, often involving nasal mucus & flatulence. While primarily controversial for grotesque imagery & violence, the series also lampooned aspects of western culture, such as materialism & superstition. In 1992 John Kricfalusi, the show's creator (and voice of Ren), was fired from the show by Nickelodeon, with production being moved from his Spümcø studios to Games Animation, where it stayed until its cancellation in 1996. It can currently be seen on Nickelodeon spinoff channel Nicktoons Network & was featured as part of Nick Rewind broadcasts in 2006.

The main characters are Ren Höek & Stimpson J. Cat.

Ren Höek is a scrawny "Asthma-Hound" chihuahua. He's vain, spiteful, conniving& abusive with a short temper. When irritated, he calls Stimpy an "eeediot" & slaps him across the face. The character's name was inspired by the real name of Kricfalusi's building manager. Kricfalusi originally voiced him, using a voice mixing Peter Lorre & Kirk Douglas. When he was fired from the show, Billy West, already the voice of Stimpy, took over the role using a combination of Burl Ives, Kirk Douglas, & a slight "south of the border accent" for the rest of the Nickelodeon run. Kricfalusi returned to the voice, however, for the Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" on Spike TV.

Stimpson J."Stimpy" Cat, Cornish RexStimpson J."Stimpy" Cat is a fat, tailless, red & white cat with a blue nose, purple eyelids, & flat feet . He is often blissfully naive , & tends to prove Ren right when he calls him an idiot , though he has shown the occasional flash of intelligence & cunning. Despite the constant abuse from Ren, he is deeply devoted to him. He does most of the work around the house, & has a deep emotional attachment to his kitty litter box, his "first material possession". Stimpy was voiced by Billy West from the start. He based the voice on an "amped-up" Larry Fine.

The show features a host of supporting characters, both recurring & single episode appearances, although Ren & Stimpy are the only characters to appear in every episode. Some of the supporting characters factor directly into the storyline (such as George Liquor) while others only make brief cameos. Other characters, such as Mr. Horse, are exclusively cameo-based, appearing in many episodes in bits that have little bearing on the plot.

History

Spümcø 1991-1992
In 1989, Kricfalusi pitched, & eventually sold, The Ren & Stimpy Show to Nickelodeon. Kricfalusi's own animation house, Spümcø, finished the pilot in October 1990 & the first episode of the show proper aired on August 11, 1991, premiering alongside Doug & Rugrats. Spümcø continued to produced the show for the next two years, though not without running into problems with Nickelodeon standards & practices. Over the years a number of episodes were censored, & in 1993 Kricfalusi was fired from the show. Without Kricfalusi production was moved from Spümcø to Games Animation. The main sticking points for the Nickelodeon executives seemed to be the level of violence in the show, & Kricfalusi points specifically to the episode Man's Best Friend, which features Ren beating the character George Liquor with an Oar for his firing. That episode, in fact, was banned from airing on Nickelodeon, & didn't air on American television until Adult Party Cartoon began in 2003.

Games Animation 1993-1996
Bob Camp wrote & directed the episodes for Games Animation when they took over the show. Since Kricfalusi was also the voice of Ren, West took over the role.

Under Camp's direction, Ren & Stimpy's relationship took on a homosexual subtext. The show was ultimately canceled in 1996, ending its Nickelodeon run with a Christmas episode ("A Scooter for Yaksmas"), with nine episodes never airing on the network.

Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon
In 2003, Kricfalusi relaunched the series as Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon. The new version was aired during a late night programming block on Spike TV & rated TV-MA. The series, as the title implied, explored more adult themes, including a more explicit homosexual relationship between the main characters & an episode filled with female nudity.

The show began with the "banned" Nickelodeon episode "Man's Best Friend" before debuting new episodes. Kricfalusi only got the network three of the ordered nine episodes on time. After three episodes, the entire animation block was removed from Spike TV's programming schedule.

Music of Ren & Stimpy
The Ren & Stimpy Show & Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon featured a wide variety of music, ranging from folk to pop to jazz. The opening & closing themes were performed by a group of Spumco employees under the name "Die Screamin' Lederhosen". "Ren & Stimpy" have also released three albums; Crock O' Christmas, You Eediot!, & Radio Daze.

In addition to music written specifically for the show, a number of episodes utilized existing songs by composers such as jazz musician Raymond Scott. Claude Debussy, Tchaikovsky, & a host of "production music", which fans later compiled into an album.

List of episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show

Home releases

VHS
Throughout the 1990s, Sony Wonder distributed various collections of The Ren & Stimpy Show on VHS video tape in the United States & Canada. Unconfirmable rumors state that some of the tapes were censored Nickelodeon versions, while others were uncut Spümcø versions. All videos are now out of print.

Eventually, the rights for Nickelodeon's programming on home video were transferred from Sony to Paramount Home Video. Paramount only released one video of The Ren & Stimpy Show; "Have Yourself a Stinky Little Christmas" was actually a re-release of one of Sony's videos that had been released several years earlier. Like all of the other Paramount cassettes of Nickelodeon shows, they were recorded in the EP/SLP format. Tapes released by Sony were recorded in SP format.

Several tapes, mainly containing episodes produced by Games Animation, were released in the United Kingdom in the PAL format — which is not playable on conventional US VCRs. Bill Wray painted the covers for the UK-only cassettes, each of which was rated PG by the British Board of Film Classification. The earlier, Spümcø-based tapes typically received U (all ages) ratings under that system.

LaserDisc
The Ren & Stimpy Show was also released on LaserDisc in the USA by Sony Wonder. There was only one release, "Ren & Stimpy: The Essential Collection", featuring the same program content -- in higher quality -- as the Ren & Stimpy Classics & Classics II VHS tapes. The double-sided disc is recorded in CLV mode, & has digital sound.

DVD
Several episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show were released by Time–Life as a "best of" set in September 2003. This set is now out of print.

On October 12, 2004, Paramount Home Video released the first two complete seasons in a three disc box set. Although the cover art & press materials claimed the episodes were "uncut", they were in fact censored. One of the episodes from the second season, "Svën Höek", did have footage reinserted from a master tape, but with an editing machine time code left on the screen. The scene was later restored.

A set for Seasons Three & a Half-ish, containing all of season three & the first half of season four (up to "It's A Dog's Life/Egg Yolkeo") followed on June 28, 2005 , with Season five & some more of four, completing the Nickelodeon series, on July 20 .

On July 17, 2006, a two-disc set dubbed "The Lost Episodes" was released. The Lost Episodes set featured both the aired & unaired episodes from Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon, as well as clips from unfinished cartoons.

UMD
On September 25, 2005, a compilation entitled The Ren & Stimpy Show: Volume 1 was released in the U.S. on UMD, the proprietary media for the Sony PlayStation Portable.

Controversies
As the show grew in popularity, parenting groups complained that Stimpy was subject to repeated violence from Ren. The show often contained scenes where Ren would break down into fits of psychosis & gleefully plotted to kill Stimpy, Example, in Stimpy's Fan Club, Ren plots & attempts to try & break Stimpy's neck. Other sources for complaint were the scatological humor, language used, & the show's use of sexual innuendo. The show also featured several characters smoking.

UK DVD censoring
In October 2006, Paramount UK released the first two seasons of The Ren & Stimpy Show on DVD. The distributors heavily edited some episodes; most notably the episode "Out West" has the entire song "The Lord Loves a Hangin'" removed & cuts directly to the end of the episode after Ren & Stimpy steal Mr. Horse. In addition, all commentaries & the "banned" episode "Man's Best Friend" are completely absent, even though they are mentioned as present on the DVD packaging.

Australian DVD censoring
The episode "Man's Best Friend" was cut from the Australian DVD, & all mentions of it were removed from the packaging.

Ren & Stimpy in other media

Video games
Ren & Stimpy-themed games have been produced for Sega Genesis, one for Game Gear & Sega Master System, four for SNES, one for NES, two for Game Boy & one for the PC, PlayStation & Game Boy Advance. Most of the games were produced by THQ.

Ren & Stimpy Show: Buckaroo$ released on the NES - 1992
Ren & Stimpy Show: Veediots! released on the Super NES - 1993
Ren & Stimpy Show: Fire Dogs released on the Super NES - 1994
Ren & Stimpy Show: Time Warp released on the Super NES - 1994
Ren & Stimpy Show: Buckaroo$ released on the Super NES - 1995
Ren & Stimpy: Space Cadets released on Game Boy - 1992
Ren & Stimpy Show: Veediots! released on Game Boy - 1993
Ren & Stimpy Show: Stimpy's Invention released on Sega Genesis - 1993
Ren & Stimpy: Quest for the Shaven Yak on Sega Game Gear & Sega Master System
Nicktoons Racing on PC, Sony PlayStation & Game Boy Advance
Additionally, Ren & Stimpy were included in several Nickelodeon-themed activity & crafts software for computers.

Comic books
Marvel Comics optioned the rights to produce comic books based on Nickelodeon properties in 1992. Their initial plan was to have an anthology comic featuring several Nicktoons properties, but Ren & Stimpy proved to be so popular the comic was instead dedicated entirely to them. Marvel produced 44 issues of the ongoing series, along with several specials. Most of these were written by comic scribe Dan Slott. One Ren & Stimpy special #3, Masters of Time & Space, was set up as a 'choose your own adventure' & with a time travel plot, took Slott six months to plot out in his spare time. It was designed so that it was possible to choose a path that would eventually be 20 pages longer than the comic itself.

Airing history
Canada
Muchmusic (1991-1993)
Teletoon
USA
Nickelodeon (1991-1998, 2000-2001, 2006)
MTV (1995-1998)
VH1 (2001-2002)
Nicktoons Network (2001-2003, 2005-Present)
Spike TV (2003-2005)
TV Land (2005)
MTV2 (2006)
UK
BBC2 (1994-1997)
Nickelodeon (Jan 1994-2006)
Ren & Stimpy aired in summer of 2006 as part of the Hall Of Fame block; they aired Sammy & Me & The Last Temptation of Ren.
Nicktoons (2004-2007)
MTV UK (2002)
MTV2 UK (2002)
Argentina
Telekids (1994)
Magic Kids (1995-1998)
Nickelodeon (1996-1997)
MTV Latin America (1999-2002)
Locomotion (2000-2002)
Brazil
Multishow (1994-1996)
Nickelodeon (1996-2002)
Locomotion (2002-2005)
Romania
Prima TV (1999-2000)
Serbia
B92
Australia
Ren & Stimpy currently airs on Nickelodeon Australia in the early hours of the morning (formerly every Sunday night for three hours)
Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon airs occasionally on The Comedy Channel & Nine Network.
New Zealand
C4 (2007)