Histeria! is an American animated series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Warner Bros. Television Animation. Unlike other animated series produced by Warner Bros. in the 1990s, the series was an explicitly educational program created to meet FCC requirements for educational/informational content for children. Histeria! aired on Kids' WB from September 14, 1998, to March 31, 2000, and continued to air reruns until August 30, 2001. The show was presented as a Saturday Night Live-style sketch comedy, with its cast often filling the roles of historical figures. It was to be WB's most ambitious project since Animaniacs. Like the aforementioned series, 65 episodes were originally going to be made, but due to being $10 million over budget, only 52 episodes were completed before production of the series was canceled in March 2000. Due to the high production costs, footage from previous episodes was often re-used and re-timed to match newly recorded audio, as well as several non-educational segments being used as filler. More recently, the show was aired on In2TV, first from March to July 2006, and then it returned in October of that year. In January 2009, all of the episodes were taken off the site. MeTV Toons included the program as part of its educational/informational slate when it launched on June 25, 2024.
Summary Like other animated series produced at the time by Warner Bros. Animation, Histeria! derived most of humor from its slapstick comedy and satire, with the distinction of combining historical figures and events. Episodes would commonly feature a large cast of children and typecast adults in comedic skits and song parodies, e.g., the cause of the American Civil War sung to the tune of the theme song from The Brady Bunch.
Characters
The hosts Father Time (Frank Welker) is the main "host" of the show, allowing the cast to "travel" through time. He is dark-skinned, has a long beard and is shown to get quite irritated by the Kid Chorus when they fail to get their facts right. This tends to irritate Loud Kiddington who often screams "SHEESH, WHAT A GROUCH!" after he is out of sight. Big Fat Baby (Luke Ruegger) is the egg-shaped sidekick to Father Time, frequently accompanying him as he introduces the sketches. He is known for the foul odor he carries, caused by his constant defecation in his diaper, which is constantly stated to have been unchanged since ancient times. Big Fat Baby is also accident prone, often falling down steps or off of high places. There seems to be multiple Big Fat Babies, including some female versions with a single strand of hair and bow. Miss Information (Laraine Newman) is an aptly named ditzy tour guide who leads a group of tourists through various moments in history, as if the world is her own personal museum. As her name suggests, she is constantly getting her facts wrong and sometimes coming up with some demented logic to justify her statement (for example, she believes the Washington Monument is not named after George Washington because it is not called the George Monument). The World's Oldest Woman (Tress MacNeille) is a very old woman who claims to remember when air was invented. She also claims to have dated every historical male in history. She seems to have a particular romantic interest in Bill Straitman. She is known to romantically hound every male host of an episode as well.
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