ruderemoval copyI keep telling the Gen Xers to watch out: Hollywood is only a few years off from taking aim at my childhood, and thus really making the last generation feel old. As your G.I. Joe‘s and Transformers get to their fifth, sixth, seventh films… That’s when the big budget Power Rangers reboots will start hitting and Hollywood’s great Eye Of Sauron –the glowing orange retina that searches the land for exploitable IPs– will have moved on to the mid-to-late 90s. Once they start greenlighting shows based on cartoons you’ve never heard of… then you’ll feel it.

In any event, for the Millenials in the house most will agree that Dexter’s Lab was a bread-and-butter cartoon. Everyone watched and loved Dexter, even if it was few kid’s absolute favorite. The show, about a grade school mad scientist and his annoying sister, was a remarkable mix of dry wit, slapstick, and absurdist humor, and was the work of Genndy Tartakovsky, who went on to do impressive work with Samurai Jack and Clone Wars.

One episode of the show, titled “Dexter’s Rude Removal,” was a fairly straightforward episode with a slight twist: two rude clones of Dexter and Deedee created by the former’s latest device actually swear profusely throughout the episode. Each swear word was bleeped, but it was still an edgy choice to have a character clearly telling another to go fuck himself, censored or not. Standard and practices at Cartoon Network pulled the plug, but not before the show was completed and packaged for air. Thus the episode has sat on the shelf totally finished since 1998.

The episode was relegated to rumor until the show’s creator broke it out at some animation festivals and the president of Hanna-Barbera mentioned it in interviews over the years. More recently Adult Swim tweeted about possibly uploading the show and, after many thousands of encouraging responses, they have now done so.

If the half-a-million views accrued in just the one day are any indication, it was a good call.

Behold!

via Bleeding Cool