"Oh, my God, they killed Kenny!" Anyone unfamiliar with this line by now has never heard of the outrageous, scandalously scatological animated television series South Park. Created by "twenty-somethings" Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the show has only been on the air on Comedy Central since 1997, but it has already made a big splash, becoming the highest rated show in the cable television network's history. South Park, with its crude animation and even cruder humor, is an unlikely success story, but its doe-eyed, foul-mouthed stars Kyle, Stan, Cartman, and Kenny have already found their way onto all kinds of merchandising and dozen of Internet fan Web sites.

Many South Park fans are familiar with the story of how the smash hit started off as a short animated video "greeting card" entitled The Spirit of Christmas that was commissioned by an executive at the Fox network. The video then...