Rickey the Wicked

Rickey the Wicked is an American animated television series created by Brad Bird and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. The series chronicles the adventures of a teenage witch named Rickey and his friends in the fictional village of Darkville as they go against evil while Rickey himself becomes a master sorcerer witch.

The series was originally envisioned by Bird in the late 1980s initially created to be a Disney series. However, after meeting Jean MacCurdy, he later considered on making the show for Warner Bros. and being aired on Fox. The show first premiered on Fox on February 8, 1992 and finished its run on May 15, 1998, with a total of eight seasons and 144 episodes. Rickey the Wicked was praised by critics and received high ratings during its original run, becoming popular among both younger and older audiences. It has since became the flagship show for Warner Bros. Animation and even was the inspiration of various other shows like Disney's Demons.

A revival was announced in 2020 and is scheduled to be released on HBO MAX in 2024 as well as simulcasting on Cartoon Network.

Premise
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The Diablos
Rickey Diablo (Rickey the Wicked) (voiced by Candi Milo) - Rickey is a 16 year old teenager who is a witch but disguises himself as a human to fit into the regular Human population of Darkville after moving their with his family from Adelaide for survival reasons. He is a slender teenager with a slightly brown tone when in his witch form but a caucasian teenager with blonde as a human.

Wade Diablo (voiced by Charlie Adler) - Wade is the 45 year old witch who is the father of Rickey.

Grandma Diablo (voiced by June Foray) - The 70 year old grandma witch to Rickey. She is a former master sorcerer of the universe while also having a few tricks up her sleeve.

Production
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Syndication
The series has been syndicated to local broadcast stations in nearly all markets throughout the United States since September 1997. It started to air on Cartoon Network from 1997 as well as on Toonami briefly throughout the 90's and early 2000's.

It also aired on The CW through it's Vortexx block albeit heavy editing to retain a TV-Y7-FV rating and included taking out some dialogue as well as removing blood and even various scenes to appeal to it's morning audience.

Critical response
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Awards and nominations
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Fandom
The series has continued to become Warner Bros.'s most popular animated series and tied with SpongeBob Squarepants to be one of the most popular cartoons of all time while being often defined as "Warner Bros.'s flagship series" outstripping various other series by them such as Randy Rabbit and Animaniacs.

By the time the third season of the series came out, measures were made strongly to make sure various videogames won't be stolen as well as piracy of the new episodes. Rickey the Wicked is considered one of the few four-quadrant, multi-generation spanning franchises that exist today, despite Bird's original marketing of the books to tweens and teens.

Many fan fiction and fan art works about Rickey have been made. Jennifer Conn used Beck Diablo's teaching methods as examples of what to avoid and what to emulate in clinical teaching, and Joyce Fields wrote that the series illustrate four of the five main topics in a typical first-year sociology class: "sociological concepts including culture, society, and socialisation; stratification and social inequality; social institutions; and social theory".

Fan conventions have been another way that the fandom has congregated. Various conventions such as Diablocemeber (which is held annually every December) are made where fans flock to them. They have featured prominent members of the fandom such as Ricardo Hernandez, owner of Oglath.net (Phoenix Rising, 2007); Melissa Anelli, current webmaster of The Leaky Witch (Phoenix Rising, 2007; Witchycon, 2009/2011/2012); Sue Upton, former Senior Editor of the Leaky Witch (Prophecy, 2007); Heidi Tandy, founder of Fiction Alley (Prophecy, 2007), Paul and Rickey Dollaz of the witch rap group Harry and the Potters (along with several other more well-known Witch Rock bands such as The Remus Lupins, The Parselmouths, Ministry of Magic, and The Whomping Willows), (Prophecy, 2007; Leakycon, 2009/2011/2012), Andrew Slack, founder of The Rickey Diablo Alliance, and StarKid, the cast of the fan made musicals "A Very Diablo Musical", "A Very Diablo Sequel", and "A Very Diablo Senior Year".

Still, the conventions try to attract the fandom with other fun-filled Duablo-centric activities, often more interactive, such as witch chess, water Quidditch, a showing of the series, or local cultural immersions. Live podcasts are often recorded during these events, and live Witcxh Rock shows have become a fairly large part of recent conventions. Members of the Rickey the Wicked cast have been brought in for the conferences; actors such as Jim Cummings (Cerberus) and Ashley Johnson (Wendy Diablo), along with several others, have appeared to give live Q&A sessions and keynote presentations about the series.

In addition to fandom-specific programming, LeakyCon 2011 and 2012 have hosted LitDays (as well as incorporating the many fandoms Rickey the Wicked fans have branched into since the ending of the series). LitDays are full of programming with authors, agents, and editors. A few key examples are John Green, author of the award-winning young adult novels The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska; Scott Westerfeld, author of the Uglies series and Leviathan; and David Levithan, author of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist and The Lover's Dictionary.

These conventions are now incorporating the recently opened theme park The Wizarding World of Harry Potter[79] into their itinerary, built inside Universal's Island of Adventure in Orlando, Florida. At the Harry Potter fan conventions Infinitus 2010,[80] LeakyCon 2011,[81][82] and Ascendio 2012,[83] special events were held at the theme park dedicated to the series. These are after-hours events for convention attendees who purchased tickets to experience and explore the park by themselves. The event included talks given by creators of the park, free food and butterbeer, and live wizard rock shows inside the park.

Cultural impact and legacy
Rickey the Wicked was listed as the 28th best animated show in IGN's "Top 100 Animated Series", and was also listed as the 10th greatest animated show in Wizard magazine's "Top 100 Greatest Animated shows" list.

Rickey the Wicked’s popularity is reflected through a variety of data through online interactions which show the popularity of the media. In 2001, it was reported that the official website of Rickey the Wicked recorded 5.9 million hits per day and included 700,000+ registered fans. The term "Rickey the Wicked" ranked 3rd in 1999 and 1st in 2000 by Lycos' web search engine. For 2001, "Rickey Diablo" was the most popular search on Lycos and "Rickey the Wicked" was fifth on Yahoo!, and "Teirka" was the third most popular search term in 2002.

In 2005, media historian Hal Erickson wrote that "Rickey the Wicked may be the closest thing on American television to an animated kids soap opera — though this particular genre is an old and usually geared towards older audiences." Hal Erickson also called Rickey "a series that all and everyone can watch no matter what age group".

In 2016, Ford Motor Company released two commercials featuring characters from the series, the first advertising the Ford Fusion and the second for the Ford Focus.

Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City
Main article: Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City

In 2002, a feature film, titled Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City was released with the movie featuring Rickey and his friends on a quest to find his real, biological mother and stop his dad from taking over the world. The film was produced by Silver Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures in association with Warner Bros. Animation. It ended up being a box office success grossing $243.2 million against it's $60 million budget.

Rickey the Wicked 2
In 2019, it was announced by Warner Bros. that along with the revival being released in 2024, a sequel to Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City would be released in 2023, with both using stylized CGI rather than the traditional animation used in the original film.

Print
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Toys and video games
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Home media
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