Café Con Leche

Recess exists because two writers lost a fight over how mean Angelica Pickles should be. Paul Germain co-created Rugrats. His son inspired Tommy. Angelica came from a real bully in his childhood, and he wanted to write her that way. His team started penning darker episodes exploring why a three-year-old torments the babies. Co-creator Arlene Klasky hated it. She thought Angelica was too cruel and the storylines too mature. Critics praised those exact episodes. The rift over one cartoon character split the creative team behind the biggest kids' show on TV. So Germain walked. He took Joe Ansolabehere, story editor of the first 65 Rugrats episodes, straight to Disney. Their new show kept the same core trick, kids running a hidden society adults never see, and aged it up to fourth grade. Germain named the school after Third Street, the real elementary school his own kids attended. The playground ran like a prison yard out of The Great Escape, complete with a king and a warden. It premiered on ABC 29 years ago this week and became the network's biggest Saturday morning hit of the late 90s. The 2001 movie pulled $44.5M. Two of the defining cartoons of the 90s, and the wall between them is an argument about a cartoon toddler.