Since the 1980s, there have been many television shows that have featured famous and well-known cartoon characters (Scooby-Doo, Bugs Bunny, etc.) appearing as children. This trend, often referred to as "Babyficationated" shows or "babyfication," was kicked off by Jim Henson's Muppet Babies, which was based on a sequence in the (live-action) film The Muppets Take Manhattan.
A common trait of many of these spinoffs is their habit of breaking whatever semblance of continuity (however minimal or nonexistent it may be) the previous versions of the characters established; for example, the original Flintstones series stated that Fred and Barney first met Wilma and Betty as adults while working at a resort, an assertion backed up by several later episodes/spinoffs (as well as the second live-action Flintstones movie, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas). However, The Flintstone Kids shows them all as having known each other as ten-year-olds. Another issue not addressed by the animators is the fact that Bedrock, as portrayed in The Flintstone Kids, has a very strong African-American presence, even though Bedrock on the regular grown-up Flintstones series was almost exclusively Caucasian. Exactly what happened to the Bedrock minorities in the years leading up to the Flintstone's adulthood has never been addressed.
Here are a list of some other shows that feature younger versions of cartoon characters:
- Gadget Boy & Heather (DiC Entertainment, 1995): featuring Inspector Gadget as a young bionic boy.
- There was significant character replacements in this series. The most ones are:
- Gadget's later niece, Penny, was replaced with his Nanny/partner, Heather.
- The dog Brain was replaced with a shape-shifting robot dog called "G-9."
- Finally, the original series' villain Dr. Claw was replaced with Spydra, a pink Spider-Man-esque foe.