The Powerpuff Girls is Craig McCracken’s animated superhero series for Cartoon Network, which ran from November 18, 1998 to March 25, 2005, and it is one of the shows that defined the network’s early identity. Three kindergarten-aged girls with superpowers, Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup, live with their creator, the scientist Professor Utonium, in the city of Townsville, and they are called on by the town’s childlike mayor to fight whatever is attacking it that week.
Trailer, via HBO Max Family.
The Girls
Cathy Cavadini voices Blossom, the leader. Tara Strong voices Bubbles, the sweet one. E. G. Daily voices Buttercup, the fighter. The three are drawn as circles with enormous eyes, and the design, which looks like a child’s drawing and moves like a martial arts film, is the show’s first joke and its most durable. Tom Kane voices the Professor and Him, and Tom Kenny voices the Mayor and the Narrator, whose sign-offs became a catchphrase.
The Villains
Roger L. Jackson’s Mojo Jojo is the great creation, a monkey supervillain whose elaborate, redundant, self-repeating speeches are the show’s best writing. Jim Cummings’s Fuzzy Lumpkins, Jennifer Hale’s Princess Morbucks and Sedusa, Jeff Bennett’s Gangreen Gang and Chuck McCann’s Amoeba Boys round out a rogues’ gallery that the show treats with the same affection it gives its heroes. Him, a lisping, red-clawed devil, is the strangest villain in children’s animation and one of the best.
The Tone
McCracken’s series was a parody of superhero conventions and a sincere superhero show at the same time, and it managed both by moving fast. Episodes are short, fights are frequent, and the jokes are pitched at kids and at the adults in the room without condescending to either. The show’s feminism, three small girls saving a city run by useless men, was matter-of-fact and, at the time, unusual.
Where It Falls Short
The formula is rigid. A monster or a villain, a fight, the day is saved. The show’s best episodes break the formula, and there are not enough of them across six seasons. The later seasons lean harder on the villains’ gimmicks and softer on the girls’ personalities. And the design, so striking in 1998, was imitated until it stopped looking like anything.
The Verdict
The Powerpuff Girls is a smart, fast, funny cartoon with a great cast of villains and a formula it rarely escaped. It was better than it needed to be, and not quite as good as its reputation. Both are fair.
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