Op-Ed: RIP Youtube Cartoons

There was a time when cartoons and animation on Youtube were SCREACHING hot. Youtube exclusive networks like Mondo Media, Shut Up Cartoons, Cartoon Hangover, Machinima, and a whole bunch more were here and giving us some really great stuff. There was a time when Mondo Media were picking up pilots like crazy, and we were getting steady diets of Happy Tree Friends, Dick Figures, and more. Shit, Mondo even released games and movies inspired by their franchises! Today? Mondo occasionally posts up pilots, and we reported on a bunch of projects being halted post the absence of Aaron Simpson whom went off to work for Disney. Other than that, they split costs with Canadian production companies to produce shorts that air in Canada and that’s why we have Night Sweats. That show’s American counterpart, Like, Share, Die, isn’t being ordered for new episodes anytime soon.

How about Shut Up Cartoons? There was a time when the Smosh-produced channel had schedules FILLED with new content. Do’s and Don’ts, Weasel Town, Snowjacked, even if we were to admit that Shut Up Cartoons still produce quality cartoons, the channel is NOWHERE NEAR as prolific as it was in say 2012 or 2013 when the network was streaming shit like nuts.

Cartoon Hangover? Sounds like that network did a year in the slammer! Bravest Warriors, Bee and Puppycat, the list goes on and on, PREMIUM content that was excellent to watch. As of 2015? Nothing…Supposedly they were working on a series with Sony called Go! Cartoons that was supposed to debut last year, but got pushed until this year, but who knows what the hell is going on over there.

Machinima’s licensed content sounds incredible. New programming inspired by the Justice League and Transformers are promising, but overall the network’s original content has died off, and even the general machinima vertical has been relegated to your occasional GTA V bit, but nothing that I would classify as a series, certainly whence compared to the days when Machinima Realms, Happy Hour, and Machinima proper all had its own original programming at one point or another.

The channels that did it right, are still around. Cyanide & Happiness is probably the biggest cartoon franchise on Youtube, but even those producers have original content elsewhere with Vessel getting earlier runs of Cyanide & Happiness shorts and Seeso getting the show’s long form spin-off. But what Rob, Dave, and Kris did very well was DIVERSIFY their portfolio. Obviously, the long-standing comics are still huge, the Seeso deal, the Anonymous Content deal which I’m sure means more merchandising, Vessel, and THEN Youtube. It all becomes a part of a huge web empire that these guys built, and built they have. How many of those aforementioned dying Youtube channels did any sort of Comic Con tours or panels? The guys that make Cyanide & Happiness by far usually keep the busiest tour schedule and travel all over the planet to promote their franchise and it works in spades.

Other than that, Youtube animation, at best, is a repository. A place to send content that was at one time brand-new so as to save money on self-hosted servers and instead put it on Google’s limitless supply of video storage. Make no mistake, the bubble has burst on Youtube animation…fortunately, you can still go on over and view the bodies.