Sponge Bob Turns Ten, Worth $8 Billion Dollars

via HuffPost
Television’s favorite animated sponge is now 10 years old, and Nickelodeon celebrates this weekend with a blowout bash. Eleven new episodes and countdowns of fan favorites will air. A documentary on the series debuts Tuesday on sister station VH1.

“SpongeBob SquarePants” has been TV’s most popular animated show for children aged 2 to 11 for seven years now, and a not-so-secret factor to its appeal is that many parents _ and even people without kids _ love it, too. It’s a cash cow that has generated $8 billion in merchandising revenue for Nickelodeon.

he show is seen in 25 different languages and counts two world leaders, President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who say they watch with their children.

Hillenburg is an artist and also a scientist who taught, and the inspiration for many of his show’s characters came from a comic he wrote, “The Intertidal Zone,” designed to teach his students at the Ocean Institute about tidal pool characters.

FULL STORY HERE

~ by streetknowledge on July 15, 2009.