Animaniacs coming to The Hub makes Christmas a little brighter

With Gravity Falls, Legend of Korra, Young Justice and Green Lantern: the Animated Series all on hiatus during the fall and winter (luckily all coming back in early to mid 2013), I’ve been jonsing for more cartoons on my TV. Luckily, The Hub is giving kids of the ’90s some much needed nostalgia this Christmas season — they’ve picked up Animaniacs for syndication starting on Christmas Eve. Not a bad Christmas present!

I guess it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that the show has been picked up by The Hub — other Kids WB shows like Batman: The  Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series have been shown in syndication on the Hub, and Wakko’s Wish (the Animaniacs straight-to-video movie that was essentially the finale of the show) has been a part of the network’s Family Movies segment recently. Considering the Hub has had success with these other shows, it makes sense that they’d bring in arguably Kids WB’s most successful and beloved show.

Animaniacs helped shape my sense of humor more than almost any other show growing up. As a thematic descendant of Looney Toons and Merry Melodies, the show had tons of slapstick, puns galore, pop culture references and just enough adult humor that somehow always went over our heads. And with the insanely talented likes of Rob Paulson, Tress MacNeille, Jess Harnell, Maurice LaMarche, Frank Welker among others, the timing is just perfect. It also featured a plethora of original songs, including Broadway star Bernadette Peter’s work as Rita the cat and Paulson’s legendary Countries of the World song … which he’s been known to still sing by heart during conventions. It does my heart good to know that a new generation will be able to watch the show on TV again.

Of course, this makes me wonder what other cartoons from my childhood could show up on The Hub. My first guess is Pinky and the Brain, since it was a direct spinoff of Animaniacs, or maybe Tiny Toons as its predecessor, but I would love for the network to pick up Kids WB dark horse Freakazoid to give it more exposure to a generation that might not know about it. It would be fantastic to see the show Histeria! come back to television and while I have no doubt it aged poorly, a small part of me would want to see Road Rovers again.

A regular schedule for Animaniacs hasn’t been released, but The Hub will introduce the show with a four hour marathon on Christmas Eve starting at 4 PM EST and an airing of Wakko’s Wish at 8 pm EST.