Hey Arnold!

Hey Arnold!
Genre Dramedy
Slice of life
Created by Craig Bartlett
Developed by Craig Bartlett
Joe Ansolabehere
Steve Viksten
Creative director(s) Tuck Tucker
Voices of Toran Caudell (seasons 1–2)
Phillip Van Dyke (seasons 2–3)
Spencer Klein (seasons 4–5)
Alex D. Linz (season 5)
Jamil W. Smith
Francesca Marie Smith
Composer(s) Jim Lang
Country of origin United States
No. of seasons 5
No. of episodes 100 (187 segments) (list of episodes)
Production
Running time 22 minutes
Production company(s) Anivision (pilot only)
Snee-Oosh, Inc.
Nickelodeon Animation Studios (as part of Games Animation, pilot episode and season 1)
Broadcast
Original channel Nickelodeon
Original run October 7, 1996 – June 8, 2004
External links
Website

Hey Arnold is an American animated television series created by Craig Bartlett for Nickelodeon. The show centers on a fourth grader named Arnold, who lives with his grandparents in a boarding house. Episodes center on his experiences navigating big city life while dealing with the problems he and his friends encounter.

Bartlett's idea for the show is based on a minor character named Arnold whom he created while working on Pee-wee's Playhouse. The executives enjoyed the character, and Bartlett completed the cast by drawing inspiration from people he grew up with in Portland, Oregon. He created the pilot episode in his living room in 1994, and official production began in 1995. The animators worked to transform Arnold from clay animation to cel animation, leading to the series' premiere on October 7, 1996. The show finished production in 2001 and ended on June 8, 2004.

Hey Arnold! received generally positive reviews, with many critics praising its character development and serious themes. Over the course of its eight-year run, the series aired 100 episodes. A feature film based on the series, Hey Arnold!: The Movie, was released in 2002 to generally negative reviews. All five seasons have been released on DVD, and reruns currently air on the TeenNick block The '90s Are All That.

Premise

Characters

Hey Arnold! stars nine-year-old Arnold (voiced by Toran Caudell; Phillip Van Dyke; Spencer Klein; Alex D. Linz) and his neighborhood friends: Gerald (Jamil Walker Smith), a street-smart character who generally serves as the leader of the group, and Helga (Francesca Smith), a girl who bullies Arnold in order to cover up her profound crush on him. Bartlett drew inspiration from people he grew up with when creating the characters for the show.[1]

Arnold lives with his eccentric but loving grandparents, Phil (Dan Castellaneta) and Gertrude (Tress MacNeille), proprietors of the Sunset Arms boarding house, in the fictional city of Hillwood. In each episode, he often helps a schoolmate or boarding home tenant solve a personal problem, or encounters a predicament of his own. Many episodes involve urban legends usually told by Gerald, such as superheroes or headless horsemen.

Other characters include students and faculty at P.S. 118, and citizens of Hillwood. Certain episodes focus on the lives of supporting characters, such as the tenants of the boarding house that Arnold's grandparents own.

Setting

Hey Arnold! takes place in the fictional American city of Hillwood, Washington. Bartlett described the city as "an amalgam of large northern cities I have loved, including Seattle (my hometown), Portland (where I went to art school) and Brooklyn (the bridge, the brownstones, the subway)."[2] Bartlett, having grown up in Seattle, based many of the show's events on his own experience growing up in the city. Evan Levine of the Houston Chronicle commented on the series' " backdrop of dark streets, nighttime adventures and run-down buildings, all seen from a child's point of view."[3]

Production

Animator Craig Bartlett graduated from Anacortes High School and obtained a degree in communications from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.[4] During high school and college, he studied painting and sculpture at the Museum Art School in Portland, and his first job after college was at Will Vinton Productions, a claymation house.[4] Originally, Bartlett intended to become a painter "in the 19th-century sense", but he became interested in animation during a trip to Italy.[1]

In 1987, while working on Pee-wee's Playhouse, he created claymation cutaways about a character named Penny and her friend Arnold. Six years later, Bartlett was teamed up with five writers from Rugrats to develop animation projects for Nickelodeon.[4] These meetings were generally difficult and the writers became frustrated; Bartlett recalled: "Our ideas were OK, but such a large and motley group couldn't get far at pitch meetings. Network execs got migraines just counting us coming in the door."[4] As a last resort, Bartlett played the "Penny" tapes, intending to highlight the Penny character. However, the executives were more impressed by Arnold, despite him being a minor character.[4]

After the meeting, the group began developing Arnold, creating his personality and evolving him from claymation to cel animation. Bartlett stated: "We did a lot of talking about who Arnold is. We came up with a reluctant hero who keeps finding himself responsible for solving something, making the right choices, doing the right thing."[4] After creating ideas for Arnold, Bartlett began work on the supporting characters, drawing influence from his childhood: "A lot of the characters are an amalgam of people I knew when I was a kid. The girls in Hey Arnold! are girls that either liked or didn't like me when I was in school."[1]

In 1994, Bartlett created the first episode of Hey Arnold! in his living room, and showed it to producers at Nickelodeon. A year later, the network decided to begin work on the series.[1] The character was previously featured in a trilogy of clay animation shorts from 1988 to 1991: Arnold Escapes from Church (1988),[5] The Arnold Waltz (1990),[6][7] and Arnold Rides a Chair (1991), the latter having been aired as a filler short on Sesame Street in 1991; as well as an eight-minute short, titled Arnold (1996), shown in theaters before Nickelodeon's first feature-length film, Harriet the Spy.[4]

Apart from the animation style, Nick's Arnold wears a sweater, with his plaid shirt untucked (resembling a kilt). Only Arnold's cap remains unchanged from his original clay-animation wardrobe. Arnold comic strips also appeared in Simpsons Illustrated magazine, as Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, is Craig Bartlett's brother-in-law.

Production of Hey Arnold! wrapped in May 2001.[8] A dispute over a second planned Hey Arnold! movie, The Jungle Movie, then resulted in Bartlett leaving Nickelodeon. The last season's episodes were stretched out by a period of four years. The series aired its final episode, unannounced, on June 8, 2004, as did fellow Nicktoons Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys.

The show aired in reruns on "Nick on CBS" from September 14, 2002 to September 17, 2005. In 2011, the Canadian Nickelodeon channel began airing episodes of Hey Arnold!. In September 2011, TeenNick brought Hey Arnold! reruns to "The 90's Are All That" programming block.

Episodes

Season Episodes Originally aired
First aired Last aired
Pilot March 1, 1994
1 20 October 7, 1996 February 14, 1997
2 19 September 21, 1997 January 18, 1998
3 20 August 31, 1998 March 8, 1999
4 17 March 10, 1999 December 11, 1999
5 24 March 4, 2000 June 8, 2004

Merchandise

VHS

Books

Film

In this 2002 feature film, Arnold, Helga and Gerald set out on a quest to save their old neighborhood from a greedy developer who plans on converting it into a huge shopping mall. This film was directed by Tuck Tucker, and featured guest voice talents of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Sorvino, and Christopher Lloyd.

In 1998, Nickelodeon gave Craig Bartlett the chance to develop a feature adaptation of the series.[9] As work on the fifth season was completing, Bartlett and company engaged in the production of Arnold Saves the Neighborhood, which would eventually become Hey Arnold!: The Movie.[9] The Neighborhood project was considered for television and home video,[10][9] but executives at Paramount Pictures decided to release it theatrically after successful test screenings.[10] According to animation historian Jerry Beck (in his Animated Movie Guide), the decision was buoyed by the financial success of the first two Rugrats movies, The Rugrats Movie and Rugrats in Paris: The Movie.[9]

DVD and digital releases

Nickelodeon released all five seasons on DVD in Region 1 via Amazon.com through its CreateSpace Manufacture-on-demand program in 2008/2009. Season 1 was released on August 21, 2008, Season 2 on August 29, 2008, Season 3 on December 8, 2009,[11] Season 4 on November 27, 2009 and Season 5 on December 4, 2009.[12] All of these releases are now discontinued.[13]

On May 9, 2011, it was announced that Shout! Factory had acquired the rights to the series.[14] They subsequently released Season 1 in a 4 disc set on August 9, 2011.[15] Season 2, Part 1 was released on March 20, 2012,[16] followed by Season 2, Part 2 on July 24, 2012.[17] Season 3 was released on January 29, 2013, as a Shout Select title.[18] On May 14, 2013 season 4 was released as a shout exclusive followed by season 5 released on October 15, 2013 also as a shout exclusive[19] making the entire series available on DVD. On August 19, 2014 the complete series was released through Shout! Factory as a Walmart exclusive.

DVD Name Episodes # of Discs Release Date
Season 1 20 4 August 9, 2011
Season 2, Part 1
Season 2, Part 2 		204 March 20, 2012
July 24, 2012
Season 3♦ 19 3 January 29, 2013
Season 4♦ 17 2 May 14, 2013[20]
Season 5♦ 24 3 October 15, 2013[21]
Complete series 100 16 August 19, 2014[22]

♦ – Shout! Factory select title, sold exclusively through Shout's online store.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Unmacht, Eric (November 9, 1999). "Here's How They Make a Cartoon". The Christian Science Monitor. Christian Science Publishing Society. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  2. ↑ Burk, Kim (November 4, 1998). "Interview with Craig". HeyArnold.Madpage.com. Archived from the original on January 21, 2009. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  3. ↑ Levine, Evan (April 27, 1997). "'Arnold' deals with life in the big city". Houston Chronicle. Hearst Corporation.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Levesque, John (October 7, 1996). "'Hey, Arnold!' Toons in to Nick's Family Hour Seattle Native's Animated 9-Year-Old Debuts Tonight on Nickelodeon". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  5. ↑ James, Caryn (October 14, 1988). "Review/Film; Animated Works From All Over". NYTimes.com. The New York Times. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  6. ↑ Hicks, Chris (May 8, 1990). "Film review: XXII International Tournee of Animation, The". deseretnews.com. Deseret News. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  7. ↑ Bevilacqua, Joe K. (December 1998). "Craig Bartlett's Charmed Past Life". www.awn.com. Animation World Magazine. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  8. ↑ Tladi, Tumelo (January 3, 2011). "Nickelodeon's Five Best Animated Shows". DStv. MultiChoice. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Beck, Jerry (2005). "Hey Arnold! The Movie". The Animated Movie Guide. Chicago Reader Press. p. 111. ISBN 1-55652-591-5.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Horn, John (July 9, 2003). "Nickelodeon flops on big screen". Chicago Tribune. Los Angeles Times. p. 3 (Tempo). Retrieved October 6, 2011.
  11. ↑ "Hey Arnold! DVD news: Now Available: Hey Arnold! – Season 3: Volume 1 and Volume 2". TVShowsOnDVD.com. May 25, 2007. Retrieved June 16, 2013.
  12. ↑ "Hey Arnold! DVD news: Now Available: Hey Arnold! – Season 4". TVShowsOnDVD.com. Retrieved June 16, 2013.
  13. ↑ "Nickelodeon Brings Some of Its Most Popular Series to DVD for First Time, Exclusively on Amazon.com". WebWire. August 25, 2008. Retrieved July 30, 2009.
  14. ↑ "Hey Arnold! DVD news: General Retail Release for Hey Arnold! – Season 1". TVShowsOnDVD.com. Retrieved June 16, 2013.
  15. ↑ "Hey Arnold!: Season One". Amazon.com. ASIN B004ZKKL32.
  16. ↑ Lambert, David (December 8, 2011). "Hey Arnold! – 'Season 2, Part 1' Retail Release Announced by Shout! Factory". TVShowsOnDVD.com. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  17. ↑ Lambert, David (April 6, 2012). "Hey Arnold! – Nickelodeon/Shout! to Release 'Season 2, Part 2' in Stores this Summer **UPDATE: Box Art**". TVShowsOnDVD.com. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  18. ↑ Lambert, David (December 20, 2012). "Hey Arnold! – The 3rd Season of the Nickelodeon Show is Scheduled for a Shout! DVD". TVShowsOnDVD.com. Retrieved December 20, 2012.
  19. ↑ https://www.shoutfactory.com/node/217616&utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ig_heyarnoldfinal
  20. ↑ "Hey Arnold!: Season 4". Shout!Factory. Retrieved June 16, 2013.
  21. ↑ "Shout! Factory". shoutfactory.com. Retrieved March 14, 2015.
  22. ↑ "Hey Arnold!: The Complete Series (Full Frame)". Walmart.com. Retrieved March 14, 2015.

External links

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