Why The Nickelodeon Version Of Doug Was So Much Better Than The Disney Version
Anonymous ID:QN1LR/k/ No.2707338 View ViewReport Quoted By:
Everybody knows Nick's Doug versus Disney's Doug is no contest (Nick's was WAY better), but maybe you can't articulate precisely why the Nickelodeon version of Doug was better than the Disney version. Well, there are in fact a lot of reasons, and most of them are due to behind-the-scenes issues that you probably haven't heard about.
But first, let's reminisce about Doug. It was a popular cartoon in the '90s, created by Jim Jinkins, about an average kid going through average trials and tribulations. He had an active imagination and a great taste in music, and for all those reasons, Doug was immensely relatable. The show ran on Nickelodeon from 1991-1994 but was acquired by Disney, where it ran for another few years – from '96-'99. And it was with the Disney acquisition that it went downhill in a hurry.
This list explains the many on-screen and behind-the-scenes changes that made Disney's version of Doug so much worse than Nickelodeon's.
>Disney Changed The Theme Song
The Nickelodeon Doug had a jaunty little number for the intro of the show (doo, do-do, do-do-do, doo, do-do, do-doo!), and Disney did away with it. Disney's version was a whistled tune that tried to keep the spirit of the original's but fell short. It maintained some elements, like a background electric guitar for points of emphasis, but also added some things to try to make it its own.
While that's totally reasonable, there was a section of the Disney version that inexplicably had a Scottish lilt, and it was just weird.
>Disney's Version Lost Sight Of How Integral Music Was To The Show
The Beets – an obvious homage to the Beatles – was Doug's favorite band. The thing about the Beets, though, was that they legitimately had some good songs! "Killer Tofu" and "I Need More Allowance" were absolute jams. And, for whatever reason, they were just 86ed. It was part of a larger degradation of music in the new version as a whole.
>Continued:
