Mrs. Wakeman could turn Jenny into a highly evolved AI, giving My Life as a Teenage Robot a cyberpunk edge. Courtesy of Nickelodeon.

Look, we all loved Ghost in the Shell, didn’t we? Perhaps Jenny begins to question her existence as a Global Robotic Response Unit and has to defy not only her “mother” but a government (or governments) attempting to procure her for their own purposes. Mrs. Wakeman could find an equally eccentric genius for a husband who can help take Jen’s cybernetics and adventures to the next level. Perhaps XJ9 tires of life on a chaotic Earth and departs to find her destiny among the stars after one of her encounters with aliens on Earth. Rob Renzetti can send Jen’s pals Brad and Tuck off to college after a couple of seasons, juice up the scripts for adult viewers, and develop the series into My Life as a Freebooting Galactic Cyberbabe.

OK, Cartoon Network, your turn. Remember Mission Impossible? I refer to the terrific series from the ‘60s, not that crap on cruise control that Hollywood so predictably mangled. Well, Cartoon Network has the next Impossible Missions Force in the making, and they’re the kids next door. Since December 6, 2002, these five multicultural mini-operatives have been waging war on adult rules and regulations as Codename: Kids Next Door. The mysterious Numbahs 1-5 under the command of Nigel Uno (Numbah One, of course) include a female tactician, and a hand-to-hand combat expert, a superbrain and a techie genius. Utilizing their exclusive “2 x 4 technology” (weapons cleverly crafted from junk and common household objects) and an impregnable hamster-powered treehouse, these kids are truly R.A.D (Radical Adult Disrupters).

Unfortunately, time marches on and so do hormones and growth spurts. The young revolutionaries begin to M.A.T.U.R.E (Make Adult Transitions Under Realistic Expectations), graduate college and take jobs. Some of them marry, but that doesn’t mean that the fun is over. Nigel and crew have been watched for many years by a clandestine international security force that does behind-the-scenes work in the world’s hotspots. Realizing the potential of a group of operatives that have been honing their subversive skills since grade school, the organization contacts the former KND members and proposes a reunion.

At first it doesn’t go well; some of the young men and women have misgivings or want to leave the past behind. Their first mission is a disaster even though they are armed with high-tech weapons. A senior Chinese diplomat is killed. Vowing to make things right, the young operatives disdain their new equipment and institute their old M.O. Teamwork and makeshift technology save the day and an underground nuclear material exchange is thwarted. Nigel, Hoagie, Kuki, Wallabee and Abby decide that even though the world is run by adults, they are part of that world and have the savvy and responsibility to keep it in one piece. Your assignment, Nigel, if you choose to accept it…

In a spin-off, the KND team could reunite to save the world as adults. Courtesy of Cartoon Network.

This series would most likely need the most radical revision in artistic style of the three, but hey, those guys at Curious Pictures are pros, just like the crew at Toon Disney and Frederator. As long as they’ve got pencils, they can draw anything. What the three series would need are long enough runs and tight continuity (at least better than that typically found in comic books). It took Rugrats more than a decade to even attempt moving the kids into middle school, but when they did the audience was very aware of the extensive backstory. Then, of course, the writing would have to reflect emotional, social and psychosexual changes in the characters. One way this could be done is by moving writers off the show every two years and leaving them in successive creative control while an entire new team comes in with a fresh take on the characters and cast as progressively older versions of the originals. Or the same team could stay intact for a considerable length of time, following a prewritten “bible” that ages the characters.

Either way this might be an idea worth playing with, and there is at least a partial precedent. Our future crop of adult cartoons might evolve from the toons that kids are watching today.

Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.