01) Hamtaro

HamtaroGroup

Nah, I’m screw’n with ya!

In all seriousness though, Hamtaro does have a great deal of significance to the history of Toonami. Toonami being forced to air Hamtaro was a text-book example of Cartoon Network not understanding Toonami as a block or a brand. As time went on, Cartoon Network would regularly squander Toonami’s potential with shows ill-suited to be airing next to high octane action adventure series.

Their desire to focus the block more toward children would lead to the removal of several fantastic series and eventually seclude Toonami to Saturday nights. While CN initially touted Saturday night Toonami as a block older children and teenagers, they slowly but surely phased out all the daring shows except Naruto because it was seemingly untouchable until Toonami went off the air. There’s no reason to begrudge a cute show like Hamtaro for existing but it had no business airing on Toonami and was most significant of many inexcusably bad decisions from the Cartoon Network programming department.