Nickelodeon left quite the impression on many children growing up, particularly during the golden era of the 90's and early 2000s. There was simply nothing like sitting down to a Saturday evening block of SNICK with a bowl of popcorn, or rushing to the TV set to catch the latest adventure of Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender. In the days before mobile phones and mainstream internet, when kids were too young to drive, Nickelodeon was their entertainment.

Though, as time went on, and other avenues of entertainment came to the forefront, Nick seemed to endure a sort of fall from grace, not just in ratings but in overall quality. Networks like the Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, and Comedy Central rose to prominence with interesting content of their own. Kids that grew up on Nicktoons, SNICK, and Double Dare, moved on to the likes of Adult Swim, South Park, and Saturday Night Live.

These days, Nickelodeon has been attempting to co-opt YouTube shorts by broadcasting some of their shows on their network, like Breadwinners and Fred: The Show. They've also tried to recapture an older crowd that grew up on the channel decades ago through nostalgia, replaying 90's programming in an attempt to rise to their former gl꧒ory. What we're left with is a channel that seemsꩲ to be mostly regarded for shows at least 10-15 years old, while much of the more modern content has proven forgettable.

This isn't to say there still isn't some quality programming in recent history. Yet now, with the revolving door of programs coming and going throughout the lengthy timeline of Nick, it's difficult to separate the gems from the duds. We will do exactly that in this piece; we'll take a trip down memory lane and reexamine some of the hits of both the recent and distant past. We'll also analyze some of t♛he stinkers that we'd rather forget - not just from the modern era, but even past shows that might not have been as great as we remember in hindsight.

30 💃 Lame: Rabbids Invasion

It's a head-scratcher why somebody thought it would be a good idea to pluck these annoying and pointless video game characters and turn them into annoying and pointless cartoon characters. Perhaps these loud and zany Rabbids, whose origins can traced back to Ubisoft's Rayman, fit into the immatꦏure nature of Nic🦄k's brand of kid shows.

This Rabbid invasion should have been confined to the video game world...

The plot basically hinges on simplistic, juvenile shenanigans such as wielding chicken butts as egg-shooting wea𝐆pons and running around trying to catch a fly. This is a classic case of all style and no substance.

29 Great: GUTS ♏

Think Gladiators or Olympics for children, and you've got GUTS; a sort of extreme sports spectacle that ran during much of thꩵe 90's, and had kids everywhere wanting to win that sleek neon green trophy at the end.

Do you have it? GUTS!

The show consisted of an array of competitive events t𝕴hat ranged basketball and soccer to boating and swimming. This would all be leading up to a treacherous scramble to the peak of the show's star attraction,ꦺ the Aggro Crag. This intimidating structure was a multicolored, artificially crafted "mountain" wrought with obstacles and steam. Quite extreme indeed!

28 🐈Lame: Mr. Meaty

One has to ask when looking at this odd band of Muppets gone wrong, what exactly is the target audience? This animated puppet show, Mr. Meaty, features mostly immature humor that tries to ride the line between tame, kid-friendly jokes, along with some off-color and gross-out themes. Throughout the show, two fast-food employees spend most ofꦐ their time engaging in pointless banter while getting into various monkeyshines at the restaurant. While the visual style is somewhat unique for Nick, the puppets come across as cheap and, frankly, a bit creepy.

27 Great: Are You Afraid🅘 𝐆Of The Dark?

You might describe this deliciously cheesy kids horror show as a toned-down Tales From the Crypt with some Goosebumps themes, and a tinge of Twilight Zone surrealism. It featured an entirely new and independent story each episode. You never knew what was coming when joining our fireside crew dubbed the "Midnight Society", who🐟 kick off their chilling tales by tossing some dust onto a campfire.

I ain't afraid of no dark!

Stories range from a dress possessed by a ghostly Aunt, to a cursed ca♓mera, to a creepy looking human manifestation of a computer virus that terrorizes our prota🔴gonist. While it's a bit silly looking back, this show truly unnerved many of us as kids and invoked the imagination.

26 Lame: Fan🌊 Boy And Chum Chum

Back in 2007, the network heads at Nickelodeon apparently had a choice to secure the rights to either Adventure Time, or... Fan Boy And Chum Chum. The Nick executives decided to opt for this CG dud, and Cartoon Network scooped up Adventure Time, which turn🍎ed out to be a major hit, and a charmingly creative a꧋nimated show.

Can't win em all, right?

This show banks on the idea that louder, crazier, and more obnoxious somehow makes for more enduring television. Now, hit shows can contain these qualities - just look at Ren & Stimpy. But that show also had substance, likable characters, and some clever humor, none of which are fe♔atured in this show starring tꦡhese two annoying googly-eyed "heroes."

25 Great: Kablam! 🐽♐

This show often gets lost in the shuffle amongst a lineup of solid Nicktoons of the mid to late 90's, but looking back, Kablam! really was entertaining, and perhaps a bit ahead of its time. It contains hints of the bite-sized, obscure programming you might find on adult swim, but with humor that's a biℱt "safer".

The varying styles of animation, from hand-drawn, to stop-motion and claymation, was impressive.

The neat thing about the show is that it was really a block of several colorful and distinct animated shorts crammed into a half hour block. These included the Robot Chicken-esque Action League Now, which was significant enough to branch off into its own series, and the goofy Prometheus And Bob, starring an alien and a s🍌ilent, incompetent caveman.

24 🧸 Lame: Breadwinners

Dancing behinds are funny, right? This is what the creators of the insane cartoon known as Breadwinners would have you believe anyway.

Apparently, even the 🅺creator, who began this series on Youtube, thought he was being punked when the network💯 offered him a deal on this cartoon.

The show stars two ambiguous looking "ducks," SwaySway and Buhdeuce, who, as you might have guessed, spend a good chunk of time getting down. The show seems to desperately seek the attention of high-energy kids, running with the idea that more over-the-top animation equals funny. Spongebob this is not.

23 ﷽ Great: Rocko's Modern Life

When people think crude and cleverly zany Nick animation of the 90's, they usually settle on the breakout hit Ren and Stimpy, but people often forget about this wacky cartoon, Rocko's Modern Life. This situational comedy demonstrated that any day could be a dangerous one...

Rocko's Modern Life is sort of Ren & Stimpy lite in terms of its themes and graphic nature.

To give an example of how crazy this animation was - in a good way - one episode contains a plot involving Rocko's timid friend Filburt dressing up as the Tooth Fairy and extracting one of the Aussie wallaby's teeth, which comes to life, gr𒈔ows to gigantic proportions, and terrorizes an onlooking stadium.

22 Lame: Nick Studio 10 ♌

There's a reason this programming block of sketch "comedy" only lasted 4 months on the air; it was juvenile, pointless, and just plain unfunny. In a haphazard attempt to revive Nick's live programming, a group of teens were featured at a poorly thrown-together studio set and hosted programs like SpongeBob.

The most memorable aspect of this show is that it simply hosted others more funny and endearing than its own material. Its skits included the cast drinking randomly thrown together smoothie ingredients and a musཧic video in which they sang about flatulence in a jar.

21 ܫ Great: Nick Arcade

Thankfully, the awesomeness of this retro classic can still be seen on NickSplat's streaming channel, but back in the ♛early 90s, we had to get up in the wee hours of the morning to watch this retro game-based ga🎉meshow.

It was one of the few things worth getting up early for, besides perhaps McDonald's breakfast.

Nick Arcade featured contestants competing head to head in old arcade games from the NES and Genesis era, along with answering video game trivia. The best of the best, however, was at the end, where the winner advanced to the "Video Zone". The♔ contestant would be displayed on a sort of virtual reality version of a game, dodge ob🌱stacles, and earn points.