MY CHILDHOOD, WHY IS THERE NO LOVE FOR YOU
I forgot how amazingly strange Rugrats was. It was, in retrospect, probably up there with many anime! I mean, okay, it's a show about babies, but it's a show about babies who believe/think very strange things and whose families are also very strange. The first episode is, for example, supposedly about Tommy's birthday, but that's really the B-plot. The main character instead are interested in eating dog food so that they'll turn into dogs so that they can sleep in the flowers. I-i just. W-what. What. WHAT. Meanwhile there is a toy flying saucer that ACTUALLY FLIES that Tommy's dad invented, and a puppet show of fail.
And that's just the first episode. Look at the summary of the 1999 episode "Chuckie's New Shirt":
"While the Rugrats play ball, Chuckie rips his trademark shirt with the planet on it. Chazz gets him another one. But when he finds out that that's not the same shirt as he always had, he becomes a different person named "Ralph". Meanwhile, Chazz enters a cooking contest with one of Minka's recipes. Grand Prize: a year's supply of air fresheners. "
You see that? YOU SEE THAT!? It's like a crackfic that became canon! Which pretty much describes Rugrats as a whole: a series of crackfics piled into a single TV show. Also it is one of the few children's shows where the adults are not just flat charactures of what children hate about adults or what children wish adults were like but rather their own intersting personalities, but I didn't know where to put that comment, so, um. Yea.
Plus the MOVIES. OKay, so they introduced new characters who were really very unessesary and may have led to Rugrats jumping the shark. And also Bruce Willis voicing spike hurts my soul. But! There are few other movies where you will see toddlers piloting a giant mecha through Paris. That's right: Toddlers piloting giant mecha through Paris.
Some, but sadly not many, of the episodes are here. TL;DR:This series is amazingly strange and desperately needs a fandom.