Cartoon Character Picker
Who gets the splash page?
Who is on the page?
Tap characters to add or remove their panel (up to 12).
Six decades of Saturday mornings, laid out as a comic page. Choose which cartoon favourites make the cut, press Make the Splash, and a star shouting BOING! and SPLAT! zips across the panels until it stops on one. Everyone else fades to grey while today’s cartoon star takes over the whole page.
- Drawing prompts
- Family game night
- What to watch
Six decades of Saturday mornings, on one page
Cartoon characters are the rare kind of famous that crosses generations without anyone planning it. A grandparent, a parent and a child can each name a favourite and be talking about a different decade entirely. This picker puts them all in the same comic page, sends a sound-effect star zipping across it, and gives one of them the splash.
From shortlist to splash page
Switch characters on or off, or type in one the roster forgot. The panels rearrange to fit however many you keep.
A cartoon sound-effect star zips from panel to panel, losing speed, and each panel it crosses shudders.
Everything else fades out and the chosen panel fills the page, speed lines and all, under a banner naming today’s star.
The roster, by era
Switch off everything outside one row and you get a themed page — which is the fastest way to settle an argument about whether cartoons were better back then.
| Era | Who is on the page | What that era did best |
|---|---|---|
| Golden age | Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Tom and Jerry | Timing. No dialogue needed — the gag is entirely visual |
| 60s–70s TV | Fred Flintstone, Scooby-Doo | The format: same premise, same beats, every single week |
| 80s–90s | Garfield, Bart Simpson, Tommy Pickles, Arnold | Characters with actual attitude, aimed at kids and adults at once |
| Cartoon Network era | Dexter, Johnny Bravo, Powerpuff Girls, Courage | Bold art styles and jokes that trusted children to keep up |
| Modern | SpongeBob, Patrick Star, Bluey | Warmth — the modern hits are kind rather than cynical |
A note on the artwork. Every icon here is an original drawing of an ordinary object from the character's show — a kitchen sponge, a carrot, a spinach can, a mystery van, a doghouse. Nothing depicts or imitates a character design or logo.
When each star first appeared
Land on a character and ask the room to guess the year they debuted — the answers are usually decades out.
- 1929 — Popeye first turned up in a newspaper comic strip, years before his cartoons.
- 1937 — Daffy Duck made his first appearance in Porky’s Duck Hunt.
- 1940 — Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry both debuted in the same year: Bugs in A Wild Hare, the cat and mouse in Puss Gets the Boot.
- 1960 — Fred Flintstone arrived with The Flintstones, an animated sitcom made for prime-time TV.
- 1969 — Scooby-Doo began solving mysteries.
- 1978 — Garfield started life as a newspaper comic strip.
- 1987 — Bart Simpson first appeared in short sketches, two years before The Simpsons got its own series.
- 1990s — Tommy Pickles, Arnold, Dexter, Johnny Bravo, the Powerpuff Girls, Courage and SpongeBob all launched within the same decade.
- 2018 — Bluey, the newest face on the page, first aired in Australia.
Ways people use it
- Drawing challenges. Draw whoever gets the splash page, in your own style.
- Charades and impressions. Act out the character you landed on and let everyone guess.
- What to watch. Land on a character, then go and find their best-loved episode.
- Costume decisions. A fast answer for dress-up day.
- Cross-generation game night. Run it with the whole family and watch who recognises whom.
Why these characters outlive their shows
Almost every character here can be described in one sentence, and that is not an accident. Garfield hates Mondays. Courage is terrified and helps anyway. Daffy desperately wants to be the star. A character that simple can be dropped into any situation and still behave consistently, which is exactly what a show needs when it has to produce hundreds of episodes.
It is also why they travel so well between generations. You do not need to have seen the show to understand the character — one line is enough, and the rest is just watching them be themselves in a new room.
No favourites — not even SpongeBob
Which character wins is settled by a crypto random draw across the panel positions the moment you press Make the Splash, before the star starts moving. The line-up is dealt into new panels each time and the star can travel all the way into any corner, so a character stuck at the edge of the page is exactly as likely as the one in the middle. Tap the shield below the comic page to see the receipt for the draw.
More cartoon and character pickers
After a different flavour? Try these:
- Want the bad guys instead? Run the Cartoon Villain Picker.
- Prefer Disney? Spin the Disney Character Picker.
- Comics instead of cartoons? Roll the Superhero Picker.
- Want more? Browse all random pickers.