Hey Arnold! was the crown jewel of Nickelodeon's 1990's cable TV cartoon dominance. Much of this has to do with the fact that since the end of the show's run in 2004, Nickelodeon made a decisive shift in their programming in favor of low quality live-action garbage such as iCarly, although I understand this new range of shows is not intended to appeal to young men in their 20's such as myself. The Nicktoons giants of the past (Doug, Rugrats, Rocco's Modern Life) are all great examples of Nickelodeon's knack for the cartoon format, but no show from the channel ever reached the heights of Hey Arnold! in terms of animation, voice-over, storyline, humor and sheer volume of interesting characters. In fact, I would bet that most guys around my age not only wanted to watch Arnold every week, but wanted to be Arnold. He made city life seem like the most exciting thing on earth—kicking it with all different kinds of people appeared fascinating rather than frightening. So, I begged my mom for a remote control fold out couch to no avail. Hey Arnold!'s characters were so well-developed, in fact, that each time they were thrown into an unfamiliar scenario, it was completely fucking captivating and riveting to watch as a kid. Of course, since this is a cartoon we're talking about, these situations lead to a ton of bizarre behavior and even stranger wardrobes. Naturally, these moments of style were never the focus—they added humor and freshness to a show whose strong, self-aware writing always lead. With that said, because we are Four Pins, we're gonna run through these fashion moments anyway because they're all so dope.
Image via Complex Original
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