Despite featuring a talented cast and crew, Fanboy & Chum Chum might be one of Nickelodeon’s worst ever shows. Fanboy & Chum Chum centers around the title characters, who are two young comic book fans that dress up as superheroes and have surreal adventures. Nickelodeon passed on Adventure Time in favor of giving a greenlight to Fanboy & Chum Chum, which debuted on the network in 2009 and ran for two seasons.
Nickelodeon has a rich history of great children’s cartoons, including Rugrats, Danny Phantom, and Ren And Stimpy, to name just a few. Everyone has at least one favorite Nickelodeon show they watched regularly as kids. That’s not to say every program they produce is a creative smash hit, as any parent who suffered through Lucas Cruikshank’s Fred: The Show or Mr. Meaty will know only too well.
Fanboy & Chum Chum is something of a special case, however. While the series was hyped as the next big cartoon before it premiered, things didn’t quite work out that way. The show sits at an abysmal 3.2 on the IMBd, with even the highest-rated episode “Fangboy/Monster In The Mist” only ranking at 5.1. While Fanboy & Chum Chum definitely has a fanbase – especially among those who watched it as children – it has a regular spot on any list of Nickelodeon’s worst shows.
Part of the reason Fanboy & Chum Chum is so poorly regarded is that many viewers find the title characters unbelievably grating. They’re a pair of screeching irritants who aren’t particularly fun to spend time with. Fanboy & Chum Chum’s overreliance on toilet humor and poop gags quickly falls flat too, and the show’s opening tune is famously obnoxious too. Even the visual look of the series is unappealing, with fugly character designs and a garish color palette.
Where shows like The Fairly OddParents or SpongeBob SquarePants had zany humor and crazy setpieces, they still remembered to make the main characters likable or relatable. The mistake Fanboy & Chum Chum made is relying almost entirely on the wacky antics of the central duo, but episodes quickly dissolve into unfunny slogs with little in the way of a compelling story to hold them up. Of course, an argument could be made the show is aimed at younger kids, but so were a lot of other classic Nickelodeon shows that didn’t just resort to toilet humor for cheap gags. In hindsight, Nickelodeon probably wish they’d taken a chance on Adventure Time after all.