ARTS: If you're a kid, you can immerse yourself in the cartoon fantasy worlds of Klasky-Csupo. You can eat Rugrats breakfast cereal, head to school on a Rocket Power skateboard, come home and watch As Told By Ginger on TV, read a Wild Thornberrys book, brush your teeth with a Rugrats toothbrush and go to sleep on Rocket Power pillows. Not since Disney has an animation house held its youthful audience in such thrall.
Klasky-Csupo has been around for more than 20 years, but it's not yet a household name. Maybe that's because few know how to pronounce the name (it's class-key chew-po). Still, the privately owned company is a mini media empire, which includes two record labels, a book publisher, three commercial-art divisions, an online store of licensed character merchandise and, of course, the animation artists behind the Rugrats and Wild Thornberrys TV series and feature films, including the just released Wild Thornberrys Movie.
Klasky-Csupo also has a distinctive style, instantly recognisable by kids, that's far from the smooth, flowing, cuddly Disney style. The cartoons' verbal humour tends to be hip and arcane, full of references that may sail over the heads of children but keep their parents interested. The kids in Klasky-Csupo cartoons tend to be drawn with grapefruit heads, freckles, frizzy hair, bug eyes and wide mouths. It's an offbeat, shorthand visual style that company co-founder Arlene Klasky has described as east European. Which makes sense, as that's where co-founder Gabor Csupo hails from.
Born in Budapest, he got his start working at Hungary's Pannonia animation studio. In 1975, while on a tourist visa visit to Yugoslavia, he and several artist friends escaped to Austria by walking through a 2.5-mile train tunnel beneath the Alps. After six months in a German refugee camp, Csupo made it to Sweden, where he worked on the country's first feature-length cartoon.
Three years later, he met Klasky, a graphic designer visiting Stockholm. They fell in love, and he followed her back to Los Angeles. In 1981, the now-married couple founded Klasky-Csupo in a spare room in their apartment. They found work immediately, but their first big break came in 1987, when they were asked to animate some characters for segments of The Tracey Ullman Show. This was the origin of The Simpsons, whose first three series Klasky-Csupo animated.
The success of The Simpsons led to a meeting with executives at Nickelodeon, the kid-oriented cable channel. Klasky, Csupo and co-producer Paul Germain pitched an idea inspired by their own toddlers: what if infants could talk to each other? The result was Rugrats, which has been on the air since 1991 and became a worldwide hit.
Other Nickelodeon series followed, some also inspired by Klasky and Csupo's children. They included Rocket Power, about kids who enjoy surfing and skateboarding, As Told By Ginger, about an adolescent trying to navigate the treacherous terrain of the high-school social pecking order, and the upcoming All Growed Up, a Rugrats sequel imagining the toddlers as prepubescent "tweenagers".
Klasky-Csupo began to challenge Disney in 1998 with the release of The Rugrats Movie. It topped $100 million, or more than €90 million, in US cinemas, the first non-Disney animation to do so. A 2000 sequel, Rugrats in Paris, was nearly as successful, grossing $76 million, or €70 million.
Launched in 1998, The Wild Thornberrys is about a family of naturalists led by debonair British-born documentary filmmaker Nigel Thornberry (voiced by Tim Curry). The central character is 12-year-old Eliza, a bespectacled girl who can talk to animals.
The Wild Thornberrys Movie aimed for the sweep of a Disney animated feature such as The Lion King or Tarzan on a budget - it cost a reported $25 million (€23 million) to produce, compared with a reported $80 million (€74 million) for The Lion King and $130 million (€120 million) for Tarzan. Released in the US in December, it stands a good chance of joining Disney's Lilo & Stitch as a nominee today for the animation Oscar and its featured song, Paul Simon's Father and Daughter, may well take the slot usually occupied by a Disney cartoon for best original song.
Not everything by Klasky-Csupo has turned to gold, however. Attempts to create adult material have met with mixed results. An animated detective spoof called Duckman, starring Seinfeld's Jason Alexander, never grew beyond cult status. Stressed Eric, which had a brief life on the BBC, flopped in the US.
Most worrisome, The Wild Thornberrys Movie has earned just $37 million in the US since its release in December - less than its costs. There's no sign that Klasky-Csupo's setbacks have blunted its ambitions, however. The company has gone from fewer than 100 employees in 1994 to about 500 today. And this summer brings what could be Klasky-Csupo's ultimate franchise movie: The Rugrats Meet the Wild Thornberrys.
Gary Susman
- The Wild Thornberrys Movie is on release
