The Most Popular Cartoon Of All Time Dominates Netflix Top 10
For almost 30 years, one cartoon has dominated pop culture in a way few properties could ever hope for, and no, it’s not The Simpsons. Spongebob Squarepants debuted in 1999, and as we get closer to the 30-year anniversary, the optimistic sponge that lives in a pineapple under the sea is showing no signs of slowing down. As evidence, The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water has spent over a week in the Netflix top 10, and not the Kid’s list either, it’s up there with The Watchers and Horizon: An American Saga on the overall top 10.
A Movie That Defies Explanation
The continued success of Spongebob Squarepants may be a surprise, but kids raised on the adventures of the crew from Bikini Bottom are now old enough to have their own kids, who they in turn are introducing to the groundbreaking series. And yes, as someone raised on Doug, Ren and Stimpy, and Rugrats, that was a painful sentence to type. Even those who weren’t raised on the series have been exposed to it, like The Simpsons. It’s become a central part of modern internet culture, and it seems there’s a Spongebob meme for every occasion.
Most of the popular memes come from the show’s early seasons, while The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water was released in 2015 and sends Spongebob and friends on a journey through time, space, and the strangest of all locations, dry land, to recover the Krabby Patty recipe and save Bikini Bottom. It’s delightfully strange, features an unhinged performance from Antonio Banderas as the pirate Burger Beard, and any attempt to summarize parts like “Bikini Bottom turns into Mad Max” and “Sandy tries to sacrifice Spongebob to appease the Sandwich Gods” makes you sound insane, which is why it was a return to peak Spongebob Squarepants.
Paramount’s Most Successful Franchise
Any long-running series will have its ups and downs, but just as The Simpsons Movie helped distract fans from the lackluster seasons that surrounded it, The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water did the same. The difference is that Spongebob Squarepants kept churning out movies, with more coming in the next few years, while The Simpsons may finally, mercifully, be coming to an end.
An argument can be made that Spongebob Squarepants has become too much of a kid’s show in the last, say, decade and has lost the satirical edge it had before the unfortunate passing of creator Stephen Hillenburg, but what can’t be denied is that it’s Paramount’s most successful franchise.
Star Trek fans know very well that it’s one of the greatest franchises of all time, but it’s always struggled to be profitable, so it does make sense that the merchandising machine that is Spongebob Squarepants is one of the most valuable franchises in the world. The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water made over $325 million in theaters, and at a budget of only $72 million, was more profitable than Star Trek: Beyond, further cementing its status as the crown jewel of Paramount’s media empire. It’s easy to overlook today, but there’s no denying that the strange cartoon that turned a plankton into a recurring villain (sort of) is one of the world’s most popular shows.
Though The Simpsons has it beat in longevity as the longest-running animated series, Spongebob Squarepants has more spin-offs, more movies, more merchandise, more theme park rides, more video games, and more memes. There are two generations now that can recognize Handsome Squidward but may not know who Hank Scorpio is or why “Boo-urns” is one of the greatest punchlines in comedy history. Golden Age Simpsons can’t be touched, but that ended before Spongebob aired its first episode.
The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is the best of the show’s feature films to date, though it was followed by Sponge on the Run, and in December of this year, a fourth film, The Search for Squarepants, will be in theaters. 13 seasons of Spongebob Squarepants are available to stream on Paramount+, while The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is also on Netflix.
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