Remember when things were so much simpler?
You get up late Saturday, pour your favorite bowl of cereal and sit on the floor watching your favorite cartoons all morning and into afternoon. Which got us thinking: What did we watch way back when?
Flashing back to our childhoods and away from PA sportsbooks for the moment, PennStakes.com looked into Pennsylvania residents’ favorite childhood cartoons. Using Google Trends to compare the search terms for each cartoon between Feb. 27-March 5, 2024, we uncovered the top 10 for the state. Here is what we watched:
| Rank | Show | Search Interest Score |
| 1 | Sponge Bob SquarePants | 43 |
| 2 | Avatar: The Last Airbender | 36 |
| 3 | South Park | 20 |
| 4 | Scooby-Doo | 13 |
| 5 | Adventure Time | 11 |
| T-6 | Rugrats | 8 |
| T-6 | The Powderpuff Girls | 8 |
| 8 | X-Men | 6 |
| 9 | Hey Arnold! | 5 |
| 10 | The Fairly Oddparents | 4 |
Since 1999, children across the Keystone State have answered this one question daily: “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” with an emphatic “SpongeBob SquarePants!” In fact, the cartoon tops our list with a search interest score of 43.
Avatar: The Last Airbender debuted in 2005 and lasted only three seasons but was so popular it is second on our list with a score of 36.
In 1997, an animated sitcom with four boys as the main characters was probably the most-watched by adults as South Park hit the airwaves on Comedy Central. The show is still thriving and is No. 3 on our list with a score of 20.
A cartoon more to this writer’s liking, Scooby-Doo, debuted in 1969 and is still going strong at No. 4 with a score of 13.
Rounding out the top five is Adventure Time (score of 11), which had a run from 2010-18 and could be seen on The Cartoon Network. The series follows the adventures of a boy named Finn and his best friend and adoptive brother, Jake - a dog with the power to change size and shape whenever he wanted to in whatever situation warranted.
The rest? 6-Rugrats (8), 7-The Powerpuff Girls (8), 8-X-Men (6), 9-Hey Arnold! (5) and 10-The Fairly OddParents (4).
Back to our regularly scheduled routine of monitoring online PA casinos and sports
Author
Lou Monaco had been East Coast Scene columnist for Gaming Today in Las Vegas since June 2019, covering the East Coast sportsbook scene with emphasis on NJ and PA. He also currently is a part-time writer for the high school sports department for NJ Advanced Media (NJ.com) in Iselin, NJ. Lou has over 30 years sports experience with previous stints at ESPN SportsTicker, Daily Racing Form and Oddschecker.
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