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Where did the idea for Rugrats come from, originally?
Okay, the original idea came from me. I was sitting home, taking care of my fifteen-month-old second child, and I knew we were going to pitch to Nickelodeon the next day. Paul Germain called me up, and told me we were pitching--I knew we were pitching, actually. Maybe I called him. One of us called the other, and I said, "I've got an idea," it was just jotted down on a scrap of paper, I just wrote down, 'One-year-old point of view,' 'If babies could talk, what would they say,' 'What motivates babies,' 'First-time yuppie parents...' And that was basically it. We had a few other things to pitch, and Paul and Gabor were pitching, and Paul pitched everything. And I guess Vanessa Coffey, who was in charge of development, she wasn't going for anything, so I guess we just sort of pulled that out of a hat as a last-ditch effort, and she went for it! She loved it. And we literally had no drawings, nothing on it, it was really just on a scrap of paper. Then we developed it. Gabor, myself and Paul developed the show originally, together. We developed more characters to go around there. The original character I based on my son.
-interview with Arlene Klasky the producer of rugrats.
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