No one’s getting any tattoos or rocking hairdos of these shows, I can tell ya that.

The Simpsons is officially celebrating 30 years as an active franchise since it debuted as a shorts series on the Tracey Ullman Show and continues to be an animated mainstay despite changes in the television landscape and other broadcast networks like UPN (remember them?), ABC, NBC, and CBS attempting to both blatantly rip-off and offer usually lame alternatives in an attempt to try and sway viewers from The Simpsons. We even had some decent attempts, but most, if not all, sucked the big one and seldom lasted longer than a season. Let’s check ’em out and see how many of them YOU remember.

Today we have Animals, but there was a time when producers Nat Mauldin, Steven Bochco, and Michael Wagner came up with a similar concept all about the rats, mice, and roaches that lived in the White House. The series was really one of the final broadcast prime-time attempts from Hanna-Barbera Productions, the same studio that gave us The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and other legendary franchises that pretty much defined the vertical. Unfortunately, Capitol Critters was anything but legendary, and ABC’s attempt at toppling The Simpsons didn’t last longer than a few episodes. Fun fact: the distributor of the series? The Simpsons’ own 20th Century FOX.

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