I've been rewatching this show and it's great. Very varied,amazing storyboards, unique settings, good chemistry between characters,etc. I really can't point out any flaws in it and it still holds up. Rugrats is not on the level of this show. How did clasky csupo go out of business? They had a dynasty with rugrats,this,as told by ginger,duckman,and wild thornberrys. All of the shows drew a lot of popularity so what happened?
shareIf you're still around and want to know the answer, it's complicated. Why did Klasky/Csupo crash and burn? There's a lot to it, but mostly they tried to simultaneously remain a small studio and be as big as they could possibly be. It meant Arlene and Gabor tried to keep their hands in everything that happened creatively...even as they became busy with other stuff.
Duckman and Ginger both had very strong creative forces behind them...that steered the things aesthetically. Thornberrys too. While the characters on that one were designed for a primetime show for Fox (that wasn't picked up) the theme and tone were defined by the writers who developed it. Eventually, however, all those shows were pulled back into the control of the management team...and while they had built and excellent studio, they weren't as well suited to write/create/develop the shows as the writers and artists who conceived of the ideas initially...so the studio floundered.
Also, they'd signed an exclusive deal with Viacom to produce content for their channels (specifically Nick) and that meant that while Gabor Csupo conceived of increasingly adult ideas the studio had limited the number of places they were allowed to take them. Each individual you talk to from that era will blame someone else. But in the end, I think the studio was limited by their desire to maintain a "house style" and aesthetic.
The era for that stuff just passed...and then we moved into a Flash-animated, heavily graphic style. Look at the rise of Butch Hartman (Fairly Odd Parents, Danny Phantom) and you'll see that there's really no place for the kind of cinematic, script-heavy stuff like you saw on Duckman, or Monsters or the kind of strange humanity that made Rugrats so popular.
Better than the 1998-and-beyond Rugrats, but every show there ever was is better than those.
Better than the Paul Germain era ones, hell no. Those were genius. This was merely OK.