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The Ripping Friends was an American/Canadian animated television series, created by John Kricfalusi. The show premiered September 8, 2001 on Fox, but was cancelled in September 2002. Cartoon Network later picked up the show to air on their Adult Swim sister station. The series occasionally airs in Canada on Teletoon. The series also aired briefly in the UK on the CNX channel.

Kricfalusi and his long-time partner Smith created the Ripping Friends before they created the similar superhero Powdered Toast Man for The Ren and Stimpy Show. After Nickelodeon fired Kricfalusi from The Ren and Stimpy Show in September 1992, he had plans to make a feature film starring the world’s "manliest men." The feature film plan was scrapped, but the characters were used in The Ripping Friends. Also, as early as a 1987 story session for the Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Kricfalusi had proposed using a wad of gum as a character, an idea which was employed to create the first villain for the new series, the Indigestible Wad.

The Canadian Studios hired to do the layouts used the same poses over and over again, and made the artwork look less like the usual Spümcø style. The Canadian studios hands were tied as there were no style or design agenda. Artists were expected to recreate the atmosphere of an antiquated 1940's production process, while still trying to maintain a schedule. Hastily written scripts and storyboards were provided, further demonstrating the unpreparedness of the production. This generated much criticism, most notably from John Kricfalusi himself. The Ripping Friends lasted for thirteen episodes.

The show centred on a group of four superhuman brothers who attempt to fight crime from their base, RIPCOT (the Really Impressive Prototype City Of (Next) Tuesday): Crag, Rip, Slab, and Chunk, Crag being the leader. Friends of the four include Jimmy The Idiot Boy, a mentally-challenged drooling child, and their foster mother He-Mom (the name speaks for itself). The villains range from the Indigestible Wad (a wad of gum who sucks moisture out of people), to Flathead (an invertebrate in search of a spine), to their own underpants.

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