Spongebob was created by Stephen Hillenburg in 1984. He got the idea for Spongebob when teaching and studying marine biology at the Orange County Marine Institute. But, then he started drawing and got into animation. He studied animation for a while then came up with the brilliant idea for Spongebob. When the show was first being created Stephen Hillenburg had Spongebob wearing a red hat and a slightly different outfit and name “Spongeboy”, but that name was already taken in another show, so he chose Spongebob. And, besides Sponebob is waaaaayyy cooler than Spongeboy. The pilot episode of Spongebob was first aired on May 1, 1999, it was “Help Wanted”/”Reef Blower”/”Tea at the Treedome.”. The series premiere was on July 17, 1999. The official first episode was ”Bubblestand”/”Ripped Pants.” (Each episode contains multiple episodes because they are short.) At first, the shows ratings suffered and it was not too popular, all though those some of those first episodes are the greatest episodes of all time (in my opinion, and also in the opinion of many others.) In 2000, Spongebob aired on television in the United Kingdom. After the huge increase in popularity in the beginning of the second season, a huge merchandising campaign was created that is still around today. The Spongebob Squarepants movie was released in 2004 and was intended to be the series finale. There were multiple geust stars in the movie including Scarlett Johansson and David Hasselhoff. But, it was decided Spongebob would be continued with a fourth season. The fourth season went well and Nickelodeon approved a fifth season. In the fifth season there was a special TV movie called “Atlantis Squarepantis.”
The show is now it is seventh season and recently had its ten year anniversary on July 14, 2009. There was a bi
g TV event called “The Ultimate Spongebob Sponge Bash” on Nickelodeon. It was 50 1/2 hours long and featured 11 new episodes. Soon after, a second TV movie was released called “Truth or Square”, featuring many guest stars like Will Ferrel and P!nk.
Time magazine named Spongebob Squarepants one of the greatest television shows of all time, I must agree. At the kids awards Spongebob won the Blimp Award for Favorite Cartoon in the years 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009. Out of the many Golden Reel Awards Spongebo won was in 2008 it aslo won the Golden Reel award for best sound editing. Spongebob also won the TCA award for Outstanding Achievement in Children’s Programming. Spongebob was also nominated for dozens of other awards.
Speaking of the history of Spongebob, in a few episodes Spongebob has traveled to different times. In one episode Sponegebob traveled to prehistoric times and discovered fire and fought over the flame in a hilarious ordeal with Patrick and Squidward. In another episode Spongebob traveled to Medival times and dueled a knight. And Spongebob even traveled to the future and saw the future Krusty Krab which was much shinier. But besides those episodes, Spongebob is mostly in present day.
In most episodes, there is usually a problem that is resolved in the end. Though sometimes it is not. But, there is usually a moral to the story and sometimes the viewers learn a lesson, not that they need to, because it is such an awesome show. Spongebob will go far.
