Hey Arnold!

Animator Craig Bartlett graduated from Anacortes High School and obtained a degree in communications from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.[10] During high school and college, he studied painting and sculpture at the Museum Art School in Portland, and his first job after college was at Will Vinton Productions, a claymation studio.[10] Originally, Bartlett intended to become a painter "in the 19th-century sense", but he became interested in animation during a trip to Italy.[6]

In 1987, while working on Pee-wee's Playhouse, he created claymation cutaways about a character named Penny and her friend Arnold, and made three "Arnold" shorts: Arnold Escapes from Church (1988), The Arnold Waltz (1990) and Arnold Rides His Chair (1991) which years later, were given the nickname "Clay Arnold ". Six years later, Bartlett teamed up with five writers from Rugrats to develop animation projects for Nickelodeon.[10] These meetings were generally difficult and the writers became frustrated; Bartlett recalled: "Our ideas were OK, but such a large and motley group couldn't get far at pitch meetings. Network execs got migraines just counting us coming in the door."[10] As a last resort, Bartlett played the "Penny" tapes, intending to highlight the Penny character. However, the executives were more impressed by Arnold, despite him being a minor character.[10]

After the meeting, the group began developing Arnold, creating his personality and evolving him from claymation to cel animation. Bartlett stated: "We did a lot of talking about who Arnold is. We came up with a reluctant hero who keeps finding himself responsible for solving something, making the right choices, doing the right thing."[10] After creating ideas for Arnold, Bartlett began work on the supporting characters, drawing influence from his childhood: "A lot of the characters are an amalgam of people I knew when I was a kid. The girls in Hey Arnold! are girls that either liked or didn't like me when I was in school."[6]

In 1994, Bartlett created the pilot episode of Hey Arnold! in his living room, and showed it to producers at Nickelodeon. A year later, the network decided to begin work on the series.[6] As mentioned earlier, the character was previously featured in a trilogy of clay animation shorts from 1988 to 1991: Arnold Escapes from Church (1988),[11] The Arnold Waltz (1990),[12][13] and Arnold Rides a Chair (1991), the latter having been aired as a filler short on Sesame Street in 1991. The 10-minute pilot episode, titled Arnold, was shown in theaters in 1996 before Nickelodeon's first feature-length film, its adaptation of Harriet the Spy.[10]

Apart from the animation style, Nick's Arnold wears a sweater, with his plaid shirt untucked (resembling a kilt). Only Arnold's cap remains unchanged from his original clay-animation wardrobe. Arnold comic strips also appeared in Simpsons Illustrated magazine, by Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, who is also Craig Bartlett's brother-in-law.

Hey Arnold! was Nickelodeon's first animated series to feature kids voiced by actual children instead of adults. As a result of this, many of the boy characters, including Arnold himself, were recast at least once throughout the show's run, due to the child actors reaching puberty. One notable exception to this was Jamil Walker Smith, the voice of Gerald. After Smith's voice changed, auditions for a new actor were held, but the crew felt none of them were suited replacements. As a result, Smith was kept on as the voice of Gerald, whose voice subsequently changed in-universe with the episode Gerald's Tonsils. This would last until The Jungle Movie, which featured Benjamin Flores Jr. as the voice of Gerald instead.

Production of Hey Arnold! wrapped on December 7, 2001.[14] A dispute over a second planned Hey Arnold! movie, The Jungle Movie, then resulted in Bartlett leaving Nickelodeon. The last season's episodes were released over four years, beginning in 2000. The series aired its final episode, unannounced, on June 8, 2004.[15]

Nickelodeon released all five seasons on DVD in Region 1 via Amazon.com through its CreateSpace Manufacture-on-demand program in 2008 and 2009. Season 1 was released on August 21, 2008, Season 2 on August 29, 2008, Season 3 on December 8, 2009,[17] Season 4 on November 27, 2009, and Season 5 on December 4, 2009.[18]

On May 9, 2011, it was announced that Shout! Factory had acquired the rights to the series.[19] They subsequently released Season 1 in a 4-disc set on August 9, 2011.[20] Season 2, Part 1 was released in a 2-disc set on March 20, 2012,[21] followed by Season 2, Part 2 in a 2-disc set on July 24, 2012.[22] Season 3 was released in a 3-disc set on January 29, 2013, as a "Shout Select" title.[23] On May 14, 2013, Season 4 was released in a 2-disc set as a Shout exclusive followed by Season 5 released in a 3-disc set on October 15, 2013, also as a Shout exclusive[24] making the entire series available on DVD. On August 19, 2014, the complete series was released in a 16-disc set through Shout! Factory as a Walmart exclusive. On November 20, 2018, Paramount Home Entertainment released Hey Arnold!: The Ultimate Collection DVD containing all of the previously released episodes and movies now packaged into one set.[25]

In Australia, all five seasons have been released by Beyond Home Entertainment under license from Nickelodeon. A 16-disc collector's edition was released on September 1, 2016, containing all five seasons.

♦ – Shout! Factory select title sold exclusively through Shout's online store.

Before the premiere of The Jungle Movie, Nickelodeon stated that if the ratings of the movie would succeed they would consider rebooting the series. Unfortunately, even though the ratings were a success with older audiences, it ended up missing the mark with the young kids demographic so the idea of bringing back the show on Nickelodeon was scrapped. However, in August 2018, musical composer for the show Jim Lang revealed in a Tunes/Toons podcast that while Nick will not produce the show at the studio due to how poor ratings were with The Jungle Movie, he had this to say: "Netflix, Amazon, Apple were all people that they were going to go out to with the idea of trying to make a season six of Hey Arnold!. We haven't heard anything yet but we've got our fingers crossed."[39] In October 2019, Craig Bartlett revealed in an interview with The Arun Mehta Show that Hey Arnold! could come back as a series if the Rugrats reboot is successful.[40]

Hey Arnold! The Music, Volume 1. was released on July 3, 2020. The soundtrack included 45 minutes of previously unreleased music that had been remastered from the original audio files by Emmy Award-winning sound engineer Dave Marino in conjunction with show composer Jim Lang. As well as, new original exclusive artwork done by Bartlett. Released in vinyl format complete with A-side and B-side. The release marked the first ever release.[41]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Hey Arnold!

• Official website on Nick
• Hey Arnold! at IMDb
• Hey Arnold! at TV.com
• Hey Arnold! at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• Hey Arnold! at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on February 5, 2016.