The comic book featured a sponge named Bob that was the first incarnation of the spongiform sprite. Hillenburg, a marine biologist by training, created Intertidal Zone, a comic book for his employer, the Ocean Institute. SpongeBob’s rise to animation’s pantheon, not to mention his longevity, made his creator Stephen Hillenburg very wealthy and practically a household name, thanks to SpongeBob merchandise bearing his signature. If the formula-a goofy naïf and his eccentric fellow-travelers-sounded standard, its execution was anything but: The character’s indomitable optimism and childlike joy set him apart from characters whose appeal is predicated on an aspirational attitude of cool. When the first SpongeBob SquarePants episode (“Help Wanted”) aired on May 1, 1999, it did so with little fanfare. It’s SpongeBob’s ocean we just swim in it.
Tom Heintjes gathered insights and reminiscences from some of the people behind SpongeBob SquarePants to illuminate the making of a cultural phenomenon.
More than a decade has passed since Stephen Hillenburg’s porous protagonist established Bikini Bottom as a must-see outpost of popular culture.
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