Hello everyone my name is Twilight is the BEST and the name is absolutely right!

Now let's talk about something that I have been meaning to talk about for a while.
Why did Gumball Started Out Small?
Out of all cartoon shows showing, Gumball has to be the least talked about of them all. It has a small fanbase, only has a few episode reviews now and then. I've been thinking why this is the case and I came up with a few theories starting with...
1. The Show didn't start off well.
This is a no brainer. If you ask any fan of the show of which season is the least liked, most likely its going to season 1. I'm a big Gumball fan but even I have to admit the first season is painfully average. Now it makes sense, despite Ben and the other staff having experience in animation, this was in fact their very first show which started out as another generic animated family sitcom show with the only unique thing about it is its blending of animations and season 1 was essentially a experiment. I. See what works and what doesn't in order to make the next season better. A example of this is the relationship between the Robinsons and Gumball & Darwin, in the first season you can really tell that they were trying to mimic Spongebob's and Squidward's relationship with one neighbor hating the other while the other just loves them back. Fortunately they learned this wasn't working out so gradually changed this through the seasons to now have Gumball and Darwin be pretty neutral with the Robinsons and acknowledged that the Robinsons hate them. So yeah if someone tried to get into the show with the first season, it will either make or break their experience to get hooked onto the show. A example is that I asked one of the prominent mlp reviewers of what they thought of the show and to my surprise the person out right said they hated it and gave their reasons.

It pissed me off when I have it a chance. Everyone is either stupid, a jerk, or oblivious as the morals get the finger all the time.

The first few episodes.

The first was when the kids were sent alone to a grocery store because the father was a lazy sack of shit. Not to mention a robbery was happening. What an irresponsible father. The second was that the little girl was to be baby sat, and her brother was being an idiot with all the decisions to where I had to step away from the screen every couple of seconds out of utter frustration. Next was that a rented movie had to be returned, and the child refused to confess that he was late in returning it. Then the moral that was shoved down my throat was completely disregarded at the end when the mother decided to not pay a huge fine that was caused by her kid in the first place. Smooth move on that one; giving the moral the birdie just like Super Speedy. The last moment that really pissed me off to where I stopped watching the show was when the kid was at school and met a banana that used his arm to make fart jokes. And from the way he spoke and laughed, he seemed like he was disabled, which felt like the show was jabbing at the handicapped. That was unacceptable if that's what the writer's intention was.

Yes, it's the first season, and I heard endless times that "The show gets better" which is an argument I can't stand to hear because I'm normally patient with other shows. Fuck, I gave The Lion Guard a chance after the abysmal pilot movie, and the show did a better job at what made The Lion King important again.

The final piece to add is that I was shared a scene where that kid stated out loud "Social Justice Warrior". Yeah, that did NOT sit well with me. SJW is a term no child should learn because they're too young and it's a stupid word to begin with.

Yeah, even after looking at another scene of Gumball after a long period and it still boils my blood.

Now while I completely disagree with the person, this does show how much the first season can turn away potential viewers who are curious with the show. That's why whenever I tell people that they should watch it, I advise them to watch one of the later seasons first and then watch the first season.
2. It didn't have star power.
Now we all probably know who the staff are for the show. Ben, Mic, Teresa, ect... Though tell me this.. did you actually know who they were before the show? Yeah for a majority of the staff, they weren't really well known. Ben and Mic only had experience in commercials and a few short films, and the original voice actors weren't well known as well. This is one of the reasons why the show didn't took off. The truth is that if you get fresh new people to work on a new show, their most likely not going to generate enough hype for the new show. On the other hand, when a new show is created with veteran staff, its going to be more hyped. The reason is that the more experience the person is, the better quality they will bring, especially if that person has a fanbase. A prime example is... well Friendship is Magic. Just like Gumball MLP also started out with a pretty average first season, but the difference is that MLP had star power. It had veteran animators/writers Lauren Faust, Meghan McCarthy, Cindy Morrow, Chris Savino, Fullerton, M.A. Larson, and Dave Polsky, and the voice cast as well with the most well known Tara Strong. With those names attached to the series, naturally people who grew up watching the cartoons that these people worked in would be curious enough into watching MLP. So yeah because the Gumball staff were pretty much newbs in the cartoon show business, less people weren't interest.
3. It began to late.
Now you all know about Cartoon Network's Renaissance in 2010 after the dark age of reality tv phase for CN. We gotten new shows like Adventure Time, Regular Show, Sym-Bionic Titan, and Generator Rex. Though you'll probably thinking "what about Gumball" well here's the thing. While all those shows I mentioned were released in 2010, Gumball officially aired in 2011 a year after the Renaissance, and because of that, the shows that aired before Gumball were gathering more attention by the time Gumball released. Add to the fact of my other two reasons, people would rather watch the listed shows rather than an average show.

Well those are my theories on why Gumball didn't start out well. Now next forum I will talk about how the show got momentum and now is one of CN's most popular shows currently airing. Till then, I'm Twilight is the BEST and the name is absolutely right! See ya.

6647487
Yes, all those are good points and I'm not about to disagree with any of them, but I think you're missing how this show's fundamental qualities also affect its reception. I'll get to those right after I make a few quick comments.

1.
First season is absolutely a huge part of it. You could tell people to just start with second season and get to the first whenever they feel like doing so. I sometimes describe it as the pilot season, seems like a useful way of framing it.

2.
This is not a point of disagreement on Gumball, but I'll mention for the record that I personally consider the first two seasons of FiM superior to the rest in terms of writing, and especially character writing. For one, they have the best Twilight.

3.
That's a part of it, and it remained such in the later years. It's not only CN reneissance, it's TV animation in general, and different networks continued to present strong competition throughout the decade.

In addition to all that, I think it's worth keeping in mind just how weird Gumball actually is. There's two main elements to that: humour and the nature of its basic premise.

I don't want to get too deeply into dissecting this show's jokes, but I think most people would agree that they're very hit-or-miss and strongly depend on certain types of personal sense of humour. There's something to be said, I think, about how the show relies on delivery and timing, which is its strong point and it works miracles when the joke is good, but there's only so much timing can salvage when it isn't. Just remember all the anthology episodes which can be described as collections of Youtube poops with an occasional gem in the middle - you can't help but wonder if it was worth it.

The other aspect, I think, is often underappreciated. The basic premise of the show is that it's about a trashy family living in a town of fellow animation rejects. There's a fundamental pretence to this show of being intentionally crappy and getting away with it. Gumball is in some ways a relic of the bygone era of hipster irony. It's much more difficult to be a genuine fan of it when the blue cat can, and occasionally does turn towards the camera and sends a condescending smirk your way for actually liking any of this garbage, lol.

6648250

Just remember all the anthology episodes which can be described as collections of Youtube poops with an occasional gem in the middle - you can't help but wonder if it was worth it.

What do you mean?

6648465
Episodes that are collections of unrelated skits about various random characters and/or objects. They're rarely consistently good.

6648468
In the show or in other shows? I think they are really good in Gumball.

6648671
I don't even recall what other shows do this sort of stuff, tbh. We might disagree on them, but more importantly for this topic, few people in general seem to appreciate them all that much - as far as I can tell, anyway.