September 15, 2001 – January 26, 2002
The Ripping Friends: The World's Most Manly Men! (also known as The Ripping Friends) is an animated television series created by John Kricfalusi, creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show on Nickelodeon. The series aired for one season on Fox Kids, premiering on September 22, 2001 and ending on January 26, 2002. The show was subsequently picked up for syndication by Adult Swim, where it reran from 2002 to 2004. The show occasionally airs in Canada on Teletoon. The show also aired briefly in the United Kingdom on the CNX channel and on ABC in Australia.
Summary
The show focused on a group of four ultra-masculine, massively muscular superhuman brothers who attempt to fight crime from their base, RIPCOT (the Really Impressive Prototype City Of (Next) Tuesday): Crag, Rip, Slab, and Chunk Nuggett, Crag being the leader. Friends of the four include Jimmy the Idiot Boy, a mentally challenged drooling child, and their foster mother He-Mom. The villains range from the Indigestible Wad (a wad of gum who sucks moisture out of people), to the evil Euroslavian dictator Citracett, to Flathead (an invertebrate in search of a spine), to their own underpants.
Each episode was usually tagged with a short episode which Kricfalusi says was composed of "left overs". These segments were called "Rip Along with the Ripping Friends" and usually portrayed the Ripping Friends solving the problems of fans. These included: addressing the fact that hot dogs come in packs of 12 and the buns in packs of 8; "ripping" the man who creates insane video game controllers and the man who writes the instructions for them; and finding out why toys no longer come in cereal boxes, among others. In each segment viewers (referred to as "kids") are asked to "rip along" with the action by ripping pieces of paper up in front of the television when coaxed to.