Happy Birthday to Ed, Edd n Eddy!

Looking back on my childhood, there were two channels that I watched more than anything else: Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. Despite its importance to me, I didn’t find Cartoon Network until the latter half of my childhood, but I got hooked right away. There were so many amazing shows on back then: the original Powerpuff Girls, Codename: Kids Next Door, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, to name a few. There was one cartoon that I loved more than all of them combined, though… Ed Edd n Eddy

God, I loved this show!! As one YouTuber who’s name I cannot remember put it, this show captures the fun of summertime and spending your childhood getting into trouble with your friends with slapstick overtones.

Ed, Edd n Eddy revolves a trio of boys known as the Eds, three best friends who spend their days coming up with ways to become popular with the neighborhood while tricking them out of their money. They then wish to use said money to buy the BIGGEST JAWBREAKERS I HAVE EVER SEEN. Look at them!

Ed Edd n Eddy are the Three Stooges

Unfortunately, the universe hates the Eds, as most of the kids do, and their plans almost always backfire on them. That YouTuber I mentioned also compared the Eds to The Three Stooges, Moe, Larry, and Curly, and I have to agree.

Ed

There’s Ed, the big yellow one with a uni-brow and no chin. Ed is the heart and soul of the three, as well as their muscle. He is crazy strong, even for a cartoon character, able to effortlessly pick up trees and even houses. Fortunately, he is a gentle giant who only ever wants to protects his best friends. His past-times are watching sci-fi monster movies, eating Chunky Puffs cereal, gravy, and pudding skin, and gushing over chickens.

Ed is also a gigantic idiot and the source of much of the show’s humor. He is almost always spouting non sequitur or thinking of some crazy thing. He’s basically living in his own world.

Ed was my spirit animal as a kid. I just loved him, and everything he did made my sides burst with laughter. At one point, I even started imitating his mannerisms. Big mistake, because that led my parents to ban me from watching the show so that I wouldn’t act up. True story. It’s one of two cartoons that I was ever banned from watching for a time (the other was Spongebob). That just made me love it more, though, and now I watch it whenever I want.

Edd, AKA Double Dee

Next, we have Edd, or Double Dee, as everyone calls him. He’s the genius of the group. A super-genius, actually, who can create complex inventions out of common household materials. He’s usually stuck with creating the machines for the scams.

Double Dee serves as the voice of reason amongst his friends, and often ends up getting exasperated at their antics and how they lead to their plans failures.

He’s not without his own faults, though. Double Dee has a compulsive need to clean and organize anything he sees as dirty or unsanitary and will freak out when he can’t. To this day, we do not know what is underneath that hat of his, but whatever it is, it cannot be pretty to look at.

Eddy

Last, we have Eddy, the self-proclaimed leader of the group. Eddy is, above all, greedy, self-centered, immature, and a loud-mouth. He’s the one who usually comes up with the scams that drive the plot of each episode, only to have them blow up in his face and leave him back where he started.

Despite being the least likable of the Eds, though, much of what we see of Eddy is a facade. In the series finale movie, it’s revealed that most of his negative traits stem from a misguided attempt to emulate his popular older brother. Coupled with the fact that said older brother turns out to be a bully who physically abuses Eddy, it’s easy to understand his behavior. All he really wants is to have friends.

It’s been ten years now since the show came to an end, and with it, an era of shows on Cartoon Network. It was the last of the 90s cartoons to leave the channel, and after that, I almost stopped watching it. But you know how that song and dance goes if you read my stuff on Adventure Time and Regular Show. Still, I loved this show as a kid, and I still consider it one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I’m also happy that it has remained part of pop culture in the form of things like memes and gifs. So on that note, happy birthday, Ed, Edd n Eddy!

Click here to see my other animation stuff.