Blockworld

Blockworld is an American animated television series, created by Geo Gratterson. The show is about the many adventures of Ed, a dark green building block and his red Lego-lookalike Bill. The show is produced by ToonHub Productions and Universal Animation. It premiered on April 4, 1998 during ToonHub’s Saturday morning children’s programming block, Toons in the Morn’ with the first two episodes, “John’s Vacay”, “Spring Shambles”, and “Party Strife”. The show initially used ink and paint for its first 3 seasons, but the show started using Flash animation in Season 4, but switched to digital ink and paint in season 5 due to complaints about the animation looking cheap.

The series is currently running for 24 seasons and 682 episodes, and 2 movies (A third in production). It was reported to supposedly end after the movie, but an 11th season was confirmed a day after the movie’s premiere (April 4th, 2008).

= Premise = The adventures of Ed, Bill, Brane (A teal block who is very smart), John (A dark blue block who is taller than Ed’s friend group), and Meestah Literal (A stickman who makes any metaphor he hears literal).

= Characters = ·        Tom Kenny as Ed, a silly and fun-loving dark green building block with glasses who is friends with Bill.

·        Rob Paulsen as Bill, Ed’s best friend who is slightly stupider than him, but smarter than Meestah Literal.

·        Billy West as John, Ed’s big brother who is meaner than him, but still likes him.

·        Jill Talley as Ell, Ed’s distaff counterpart, also his crush.

·        Parrish Todd as Jill, Bill’s distaff counterpart, also his crush.

·        Kath Soucie as Jane, John’s distaff counterpart, also his girlfriend.

·        Gregg Berger as Meestah Literal, a VERY annoying man who’s humor relies on metaphors.

= Episodes = Main article: Blockworld episodes.

= Development = Humble Beginnings

In 1975, then-8 year old Geo Gratterson came up with the characters of Ed, Bill, and John, and created comics with them, however, as he got older, he abandoned the idea, it wasn’t until 1995 that the idea came back to him, and on December 1995, production on an animation short began.

Enter ToonHub

In September 1996, the short had wrapped production, Gratterson had pitched the short to ToonHub and they immediately liked it, on November 1996, a show based on the short was greenlit for a 30-episode season that was set to premiere on September 13th, 1997.

On April 3rd, 1997, the short was shown in theaters along with The Dog and Squirrel Movie with an updated opening and some jokes being edited. On April 13th, however, the show was delayed to April 4th, 1998, due to Square Guy, another show with a square as the main character, coming out on the same day, at the time when half the season was completed.

On April 4th 1998, the show finally premiered on ToonHub to positive reception, On April 11th, a week later, the show was greenlit for a season 2.