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When The Powerpuff Girls jumped from college project to pop-culture hit, the most shocked spectator might have been the show's creator, writer and animator Craig McCracken.
"I was surprised," he told Wired.com. "My instincts thought it would be too bizarre for mainstream success."
McCracken built the series around his student film The Whoopass Girls, with an eye toward crafting a humor-laced superhero story inspired by Adam West's campy '60s TV show, Batman.
"Watching [Batman] as a kid, the show was deadly serious with big heroes and real villains," McCracken said. "But my parents laughed. We shot for the same in Powerpuff, but we never let the humor overwhelm the superhero adventure story."
The Powerpuff Girls revolves around Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup, three well-behaved school kids who gain superpowers in a serendipitous lab accident. Balancing homework with battling supervillains, the girls serve up cute smiles and skull-crunching punches in every episode.
Now, the entire animated series is available in one DVD package, The Powerpuff Girls: The Complete Series -- 10th Anniversary Collection. Released last month, the comprehensive set -- which includes a documentary and every TV episode, but not the 2002 Powerpuff Girls movie -- gave McCracken the opportunity to look back on the phenomenon.
"The core concept of the girls and the villains and how the show functioned stayed the same as my original college project," said McCracken, who originally pitched the adventures of his animated heroines for '90s animation showcase What a Cartoon Show. The Cartoon Network picked up the series in 1997.
"Cartoon Network puts faith in their creators," McCracken said. "There's never a lot of interference."
As the Emmy-winning show progressed, its wide-eyed characters evolved organically.
"We were working to make a show we’d like and what we wanted to see," McCracken said. "It was guys who liked cartoons getting a chance to make a show they wanted to watch."
With McCracken and his crew working mainly to please their own sensibilities, the runaway success of Powerpuff Girls shocked everyone involved.
"It was a pleasant surprise to see people get this," he said.
Images courtesy Cartoon Network
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