Soaking Up Raves

Swimming against the tide of reality mania and hyper-ironic comedies, a naive, sweet-natured cartoon invertebrate named SpongeBob SquarePants has been creating a small sea-change in TV.

”He’s hyperactive and eager to please, and he tries really hard to keep on those rose-colored glasses,” says Tom Kenny, who supplies the carbonated voice for the porous protagonist, who says stuff like ”Oh, barnacles!” when flustered. ”It’s nice to have a character like that in the age of wisecracking, cynical characters.”

Since its debut on Nickelodeon in July 1999, SpongeBob has swollen into the network’s No. 2 kids’ program, cheerfully breathing down the necks of those back-sassing Rugrats — and expanding from Saturday mornings to prime time (Monday-Thursday at 8 p.m.). And its demo has broadened way beyond the Garanimals set: Of the 2.2 million viewers tuning in each episode, roughly 39 percent are 18- to- 34-year-olds. ”Everything we do is for kids first,” says Cyma Zarghami, exec VP at Nick. ”The results we got were unexpected on the adult side. [It’s] icing on the cake.”

SpongeBob’s creative team attributes the show’s broad appeal to its hip earnestness. ”It’s cute without being cloying in a crappy Care Bears way,” says Kenny. Adds creator Stephen Hillenburg, 39, ”We wanted a certain amount of absurdity and surreal whimsy.”

No problem there. Let’s see, we’ve got a buck-toothed sponge bunking in a multilevel pineapple who’s happy as a clam about his fry-cook job at Krusty Krab. His best friend is a dim-witted starfish; his idol, a bitter, clarinet-playing octopus named Squidward. ”The humor is character-based, like The Honeymooners,” says Kenny, who also does voice work for that other cross-gen phenom, The Powerpuff Girls. ”And I’m so aware of the pretentiousness of talking about a cartoon as if it’s Macbeth.”

Okay, so it ain’t Shakespeare, but Hillenburg does count Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin among his classic influences. ”Stuff that’s still funny,” he says. It was after a stint as creative director on Nick’s defunct ‘toon Rocko’s Modern Life that Hillenburg decided to plumb the depths of his first career: teaching kids about tide pools in Dana Point, Calif. ”It dawned on me that there are all these weird little animals I’ve never seen animated.”

For the pitch meeting of what was then called Spongeboy, Hillenburg lugged in an aquarium. ”I guess he thought the network wasn’t smart enough to understand it was set underwater,” laughs Kevin Kay, senior VP of production. Kay, who’d been oversaturated with Rugrats rip-offs, saw something novel in the show’s tone. ”People will tell you comedy is about pain, but this is the opposite,” he says. ”There’s no pain here — that’s the charm. It celebrates its own silliness.”

And that’s given Nick’s marketers something to celebrate. Not only does the spineless thesp have his own ”Got Milk?” ad and a deal with Burger King, there are plush SpongeBob dolls, key chains, T-shirts (half of those sold are in adult sizes), and a Game Boy Color game. And how’s this for a potent retail alliance: In August, Target will unveil its own line of clothes, bedding, and other goodies. ”Kids like it, college students like it, adults find it funny. It appeals to both genders,” explains the chain’s Sally Mueller, a senior marketing manager. ”Rarely does a licensing opportunity have that appeal. This looked like the next thing.” Jim Silver, publisher of the industry bible The Licensing Book, agrees: SpongeBob has legs. ”This is just the beginning…it’s going to be tremendous,” he says.