Wit & Attitude Quote by Craig McCracken

McCracken’s little timeline is casual on the surface, but it’s a quiet flex about how animation actually gets made: not by lightning-bolt “genius,” but by momentum, proximity, and a string of chances you’re ready to seize. He names 2 Stupid Dogs, Dexter’s Laboratory, and The Powerpuff Girls like stepping-stones, the kind that look obvious only after the fact. The throwaway line - “a lot of little things in between” - is doing the real work. It’s an artist smuggling process into a sound bite.

The intent feels corrective. Fans love to mythologize hits as singular breakthroughs; creators know careers are braided from pilots, shorts, late nights, notes from executives, friendships, rivalries, and small assignments that teach you how to ship. By elevating “the main ones,” McCracken acknowledges the public-facing milestones while insisting the invisible labor matters too. That’s not self-effacement; it’s a map of how creative ecosystems function.

The context is late-90s/early-2000s Cartoon Network, when the channel’s identity was being built by creator-driven shows that looked weird, fast, and personal. McCracken’s list reads like a mini-history of that era’s feedback loop: experiments become series, series become a house style, and the house style becomes a generation’s sense of humor. The subtext: Powerpuff wasn’t a fluke. It was the next logical mutation in a culture that rewarded distinctive voices - as long as they could keep delivering.