CartoonNetwork.com was the official website for Cartoon Network. It was originally first founded in 1995 as Cartoon Network Online, which was an America Online-exclusive website, before it merged with GhostPlanet.com in 1998. It mostly featured playable games, until it was rebranded.

The new CartoonNetwork.com was similar to the former, but with a style similar to Dimensional. It was mostly promoted for watching episodes on the site, and included apps you could download on the app store.

On August 8, 2024, the website was shut down and now redirects to the HBO Max page.

History

Early years (1996-2000)

On January 9, 1996 Cartoon Network registered CartoonNetwork.com as its official website, although it would not be officially launched until 2 years later.^[1] Sam Register served as the website's vice president and creative director, while Rob Scorcher served as executive vice president and head of Cartoon Network Online.^[2][3] In 1999 the website revealed "Web Premiere Toons", which were short cartoons made only for CartoonNetwork.com.^[4] In Late 1999 the website debuted it's Toonami section.

2000s (2000-2010)

In early 2000, CartoonNetwork.com Debuted its Boomerang section.^[5] In May 2000 Character Websites were created. These websites showed interactable screens, games, videos, and other things.^[6] In October 2000, the website began to showcase these websites more as well as create a game called Cartoon Orbit, an online gaming network characterized by digital trading cards called "cToons". In August 2002, The website was updated to show more variety.^[7] On July 27, 2004, the website under went a branding to have CN City as a background.^[8] In early August (Or late July), the website updated to remove the CN City theme and advertise Toonami Jetstream.^[9] This ended in September the same year. In February 2009, the website underwent a rebrand showing the Noods characters.^[10] In October, the website retired the characters and got the last rebrand for the decade.^[11]

2010s and beyond (2010-2024)

On April 26th, 2011, the website was revamped again. The home page now showed animated banners promoting new games and new episodes of shows. The shows section returned to the site. A Coming Soon section was also added. This revamp was more positively received by users.

On August 20th, 2014, the website was revamped once again. The site was given a style similar to the CHECK it 3.0 era. This was another controversial revamp as the site was more difficult to navigate and all of the mini-sites, the Fan Talk and Coming Soon sections were removed. Games no longer immediately displayed the badges that could be earned from them, so the only way to know if a game had badges or not was to click on the game. Around the time of this revamp, Cartoon Network began to promote their apps, riddling the site with ads for their mobile games and other apps. Production on new games for the site slowed down in the wake of Cartoon Network taking greater interest in the mobile market.

The site received its final revamp on April 1st, 2018. The style was changed to resemble the Dimensional era. The site removed all of the older shows and their associated games, videos and badges.

Features

Home Page

The home page of www.cartoonnetwork.com. In most iterations of the site, it displayed new shows, games, the day's schedule and links to clips and mini-sites of blocks like Toonami and Miguzi.

Mini-sites

On the top-centre of the site was an interactable bar containing links to several mini-sites for various Cartoon Network shows. Clicking on the one of the icons displaying a character from a show would take you to their respective show's mini-site. It contained information on the show, character bios, games, clips, an episode guide, airdates, creator bios and other miscellaneous features. Some mini-sites were removed from the bar to make room for new shows, but could still be accessed from the Shows section.

In the 2009 revamp, mini-sites were revamped with less features and were all given the same format, though mini-sites for shows added after the revamp such as Adventure Time and Sym-Bionic Titan had the same higher quality of the mini-sites prior to the revamp.

In the 2011 revamp, all mini-sites were revamped again. They all used the same format with no deviations.

Games

CartoonNetwork.com hosted many games for visitors to play. Most of them required the Shockwave and Flash players to run. Games could be accessed from the games section or if users were looking for a game themed after a specific show, they could be accessed through their respective mini-site. The games were categorized by show and genre. The different genres included action, adventure, arcade, puzzle, sports, racing and gizmos. The section always had the newly-released games shown at the top and had a section for the most played/popular games. There were also links to the Powerplay Games service when it was available.

Sometime in 2008, the games section was revamped. It had an easier-to-use UI, showed popular games, high scores and the most played game on the site. All games were compiled by show at the bottom, allowing for easy access to them.

In 2010, the website began releasing 3D games developed with the Unity engine. These Unity games were released with increased frequency over time.

On August 25th, 2010, badges were introduced. Several older games had badges added to them and most new games were released with badges to earn.

Shows

A section that showed every show that ever aired on Cartoon Network. You could read summaries of the various shows. Some shows also had character bios.

TV Schedule

A section that showed the Cartoon Network schedule for the day and the next six days.

Shop

An online shop that sold merchandise of various CN shows. Some of the items sold there were DVDs, action figures, clothing and video games. An account was required to purchase items.

Cartoon Orbit

Cartoon Orbit was an online game where players could collect trading cards, battle each other in gToons, visit different worlds and customize their own cZone. The game was regularly updated until 2006. It later closed down on October 16th of the same year.

Powerplay Games

A paid service launched in 2002. Users would be able to play exclusive games for $19.95. The games tended to be longer and have more features than the other games on the website. The games had a thirty-use free trial. The service struggled for popularity. It initially launched with Dexter's Labyrinth, Fast and Flurrious and To the Ed-streme!, games that were previously free on the website. They were given extra content to justify the price. The prices of the games were reduced in $9.95 in 2006, but the reduction failed to bring in many new customers. Later that year, the service stopped adding new games. On February 8th, 2008, the service was shut down.

Ringtones

A section where ringtones were available for purchase. Users could have the theme songs of their favourite shows as ringtones for their mobile phones. This section was removed with the site's 2009 revamp. Ringtones would return to the site with the 2011 revamp, now being purchasable from their respective show's mini-site.

Profiles

Starting from October 12th, 2009, users could create their own profiles. They could customize their profile pic with images of characters from shows and Check It icons. Badges earned from games are displayed on profiles.

Fan Talk

After creating a profile, users could interact with each other on the CN forums. The forums had sections for different shows, certain games and the different series of Ben 10. Each show/game had their own pre-made topics created by the administrators. eg. What is your favourite Ben 10 alien? Administrators would moderate the forums and ban anyone for swearing to keep the forums kid-friendly. Moderation became increasingly lax throughout 2013-2014.

Coming Soon

A section located at the bottom of the home page. This section showed information about upcoming shows or upcoming episodes of currently-airing shows. They would often display plot details, character designs and storyboards.

International Sites

A section with links to Cartoon Network's international sites. These sites had their own exclusive features and games. The most popular of which was the Latin American version of the site, which was actively promoted from 2007-2009.

Trivia

• Though the Noods era debuted in 2008, The revamp didn't happen until 2009.
• The profile pictures contain blank Noods in them, even after the era.

References