Chowder's creator Carl (C.H.) Greenblatt, who worked previously on SpongeBob and Billy and Mandy, believes his show falls midway between the former's sweet silliness and the latter's dark, sarcastic tone.

Greenblatt isn't the only one who sees parallels between the two characters. Cartoon Network already had the show in production when Hill joined the channel from Nickelodeon. "When I came here and saw the show, I was, wow, this has the makings of a potential hit. Talk about SpongeBob kind of excitement, that's the effect it had on me. I felt the show had a lot of breakout characters and a unique voice the way SpongeBob does. I made comparisons I'm still holding onto. Chowder has that childlike exuberance, he's like a bull in a china shop. He wants to do good but he's probably going to wreck the place. It creates awesome tension and you tune in for that reason -- what kind of disaster is he going to create this time?"

Hill is also impressed with the impact Mung's hard-luck assistant, the rock monster Shnitzel (whose entire vocabulary consists of repetitions of 'radda-radda'), seems to be having. "It's cool to have a show with breakout characters. You know you have a really good show when kids are quoting catchphrases; 'radda-radda' is becoming social currency on the playground. Shnitzel is really resonating with kids and we're planning a lot of breakout stories for him in the near future."

Needless to say, Hill is pleased with Chowder's impact on Cartoon Network's schedule to date ("wherever we place it, it lifts up its daypart by a few percentage points") and plans to use its leverage to launch other shows. In the meantime, however, "we have a huge thing planned for him in July: the Raddapendence Day Chowder Raddathon."

Joe Strike is a regular contributor to AWN. His animation articles also appear in the NY Daily News and the New York Press.