General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Shut Up! Cartoons

Shut Up! Cartoons was a YouTube animation channel created by the Smosh duo Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox together with Barry Blumberg, featuring a rotating lineup of original animated series. It was funded as part of YouTube's $100 million original channel initiative, launched on April 30, 2012, and ceased operations on June 23, 2017 with the series finale of Smosh Babies.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Creators	Smosh co-founders Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla with Barry Blumberg, then president of Smosh and EVP of Alloy Digital³
Funding	Part of YouTube's $100 million original channel initiative¹
Run	April 30, 2012 (first video: Do's and Don'ts) to June 23, 2017 (final video: Smosh Babies series finale)²
Output	485 videos; 18 short-form web series totaling 180 episodes planned for the first year²^•⁴
Audience	Just over two million subscribers over its lifetime, one of the least-subscribed Smosh channels³
Signature series	Oishi High School Battle, Pubertina, Krogzilla, Smosh Babies, Do's and Don'ts⁵

Creation and launch

The channel was created by Smosh co-founders Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla with Barry Blumberg, who was then president of Smosh and executive vice president of Alloy Digital, the media company that owned Smosh. Blumberg had previously led Disney Television Animation from 1994 to 2006, and he described the project as a combination of "great" animation with greater creative freedom and a niche of humor that was prevalent in the online space.³ Alloy Digital had acquired Smosh in 2011, and Blumberg had joined after seeing Smosh's clips on YouTube.⁶^•⁷

Smosh announced the channel on April 13, 2012, saying it would launch on April 30 as part of YouTube's original channel offering. At the time Smosh was the third-most subscribed channel on YouTube, and the animation channel's launch group of creators and producers was set to deliver 18 short-form web series comprising 180 episodes in the first year.⁴ The channel was one of three animation channels funded by YouTube in that initiative, alongside Fred Seibert's Cartoon Hangover and a Mondo Media channel.⁸

The launch went well by YouTube standards. Shut Up! Cartoons was the top subscriber gainer on the platform when it launched, and by early 2013 it had more than 600,000 subscribers and over 61 million views.⁶^•⁹ A 2012 profile described it as "a monster hit from the start."⁹

Format and series

The channel ran weekly shows on a fixed rotation: each series received 10 episodes, one per week, and after the 10 weeks new shows replaced the old ones, with a show for every weekday of the week.⁵ Series included Do's and Don'ts, Nature Break, Planets, SnowJacked, Politicats, Sub:3, Pubertina, Weasle Town, With Zombies, Really Freaking Embarrassing, Krogzilla, Samurai! Daycare, and Icons of Teens.⁵ Later additions included An Okay Place to Eat, a series about a nostalgia-themed diner staffed by washed-up childhood mascots, which debuted on December 21, 2015.¹⁰

Oishi High School Battle. The channel's eighth series followed Oishi Kawaii, a teenage girl and demon hunter from outer space who enrolls at an Earth high school to exterminate demons trying to consume the planet. The first episode was uploaded on July 13, 2012, and the tenth and final episode on September 14, 2012, followed by a three-part Oishi Origins starting September 28, 2012.¹¹ The series mixed animation with live-action footage and was later described as one of the more popular series to come out of the channel; a 2015 press release called it "the award-winning anime and live action Oishi High School Battle."¹²

Pubertina. Created by Emily Brundige, the series grew out of her 2011 CalArts student film, a short musical about a girl going through puberty, which a Shut Up! Cartoons producer saw at the school's Experimental Animation Showcase and developed into a series. Its first episode earned 2,068,116 views, and the channel ranked first in subscriber gains during the character's first week while holding a top-15 slot for weekly views; at that point the channel was nearing 650,000 subscribers with more than 60 million total views.¹³

Smosh Babies. The series followed digital stars Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox as rambunctious toddlers, and it carried the channel to the end: its series finale on June 23, 2017 was the channel's final video.¹²^•¹

Recognition and distribution

In September 2015, the streaming service Viewster announced a partnership with DEFY Media, Alloy's successor after its 2013 merger with Break Media, to bring shows from Smosh Games, The Escapist, and Shut Up! Cartoons, including Smosh Babies and Oishi High School Battle, to its branded channels; the release put the channel at over 1.8 million subscribers.¹²

Shutdown

The channel ceased operations on June 23, 2017, nine days after Anthony Padilla's departure from Smosh, with the Smosh Babies finale as its last upload. Over its five-year run it accumulated 485 videos and just over two million subscribers, which made it one of the least-subscribed Smosh channels.³ A retrospective look at the venture described its trajectory this way: it launched under the leadership of a former Disney Television Animation staffer with eighteen short series lined up, and for roughly two years it served as the nearest equivalent YouTube had to a Saturday morning cartoon lineup, until the initiative's funding was exhausted and viewership failed to reach a television-sized audience.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Comedy, drama, and general-genre web series › Premiered 1999 to 2016

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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