Top 25 Primetime Animated Series of All Time

15. Spongebob Squarepants
SpongeBob SquarePants, created by animator and marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg, first aired on the kid's network Nickelodeon in May 1999. The show's popularity grew exponentially with each new episode and before long the titular yellow sponge had secured his place as a pop culture icon. Unless you've been living under the sea for the past 7 years, you'll know that the SpongeBob lives in a pineapple under the sea with his pet snail Gary. His best friend Patrick, a simple-minded starfish, lives next door. Like The Flintstones and The Jetsons before it, SpongeBob SquarePants often makes comic use of puns relating things in the show's undersea setting to their "real life" counterpart -- SpongeBob's conch-shaped "shell phone," for example. The show's broad appeal is likely a result of the childlike simplicity of the main characters combined with sophisticated, surreal humor and copious references that only older viewers will understand. SpongeBob fever culminated in November 2004 with a big-screen spin-off that featured a memorable cameo by David Hasselhoff. -BL

14. King of the Hill
Created by Mike Judge of Beavis and Butt-Head fame, King of the Hill is the second-longest continuously running animated comedy series on television, behind The Simpsons. The FOX Network show, which returns for its 11th season in January 2007, follows blue collar propane salesman Hank Hill, his wife Peggy, their husky son Bobby, and Peggy's niece Luanne. Also regularly featured to much comic effect are Hank's beer-drinking buddies, Boomhauer, Dale and Bill. Funnier than just about anything Jeff Foxworthy and his Blue Collar buddies could come up with, King of the Hill is true king of redneck comedy. -BL

13. Space Ghost: Coast to Coast
Space Ghost is often referred to as the father of Adult Swim, and one of Cartoon Networks best shows of all time. Using old footage from Hannah Barbera cartoons, the creators of the show were able to take an old cheesy cartoon and make it a random talk show, where the celebrity guest is always a step behind. In 1994 when the show was created, it was simple to look at it as a totally irreverent and frankly bad interview talk show - but the joke thankfully caught on (as did the celebrities), and Space Ghost was able to flourish for a decade on Cartoon Network. For those of you who have not seen the show, to get an idea of the awkward nature of the program, imagine a celebrity sitting in a dark room answering random questions to nobody - and then having the show's editors chop up that footage so that the answers the celebrity gave are either out of order, or taken so out of context that it can fit the silly nature of Space Ghost and his belligerent crew. -DI

12. The Maxx
This impressive and memorable 13-episode animated series aired in 1995 during MTV's Oddities block. The complex series, closely adapted from the comic book series of the same name, followed a masked creature that called himself The Maxx and traveled between the real world and a fantasy world called The Outback. While unreleased on DVD, the series' dark subject matter (The Maxx is linked to Julie, a woman who was beaten and raped, then pursued by serial killer and rapist Mr. Gone) and unique visuals make the series stand out in the minds of the animation fans who were lucky enough to catch the series. -BZ

11. Samurai Jack
Created by Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls), Samurai Jack is a samurai epic that just happens to be a cartoon. Much like the Star Wars: Clone Wars series that Tartakovsky helped create, many Samurai Jack episodes have little or no dialogue, relying instead on action and strong visuals to tell the stories. Entertaining for adults, yet not too violent for kids (most of Samurai Jack's enemy combatants are robots that bleed oil, not blood), Samurai Jack's unique combination of cinematic and comic book styles appeals to all ages. -BZ