Happy 10th Anniversary, Powerpuff Girls!

You read that correctly - the Powerpuff Girls have been around for ten years. Longer, if you count their original shorts on What A Cartoon! back in '97.
I have never felt so old in my life.



And it's still going strong! You still see them on TV, and you can still get knockoff belts with their melon-shaped heads as the buckles. One of the little girls I teach English to has a PPG watch, and last week we momentarily bonded over one of the few things that surpasses the language gap - whether you prefer Blossom, Bubbles, or Buttercup (Though as I understand it, Italian speakers know them as Lolly, Dolly, and Molly, le Superchicche).

But what little girl doesn't recognize this?



I still remember the newspaper articles, back when the show was red-hot, about how parents were concerned with the blatant violence on the show. I remember how they talked about it representing "girl power," and the encroaching influence of anime on America's Saturday mornings. They thought PPG got its weirdness from Japanese influences.
They might have been right, but they didn't know that eventually Japan would take it to a whooooole new level.
They didn't know about Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z.



Look at what you've done, Craig McCracken. You started this. You can never escape it.

But the PPG got a special tenth anniversary DVD set, and watching some of the old episodes made me remember that the show was genuinely good. It was funny. It was sweet. It was kickass.
But ten years old. Damn. A lot of things turn ten this year: Spongebob and Futurama, amongst them, but there's something special about the show that's now older than the protagonists the show is about.

Okay, take it easy. Enjoy some Apples in Stereo.



Or will you fly away before we count to one?