MTV's breakthrough hit of the 1990s, Beavis and Butthead, grew out of a series of animated shorts. Each half-hour episode chronicled the title characters' hormone-driven adventures while offering their commentary on popular music videos. Beavis and Butthead were almost universally-recognized pop icons by the time their run on MTV ended in 1997. They helped to usher in a new genre of irreverent television comedy and symbolized for many critics the decay of the American mind in the days of Generation X.

Those viewing "Frog Baseball," Beavis and Butthead's premiere installment on MTV's animation showcase Liquid TV, might have judged the cartoon—in which the duo does indeed play our national pastime with a frog as the ball—nothing more than a demented teenage doodle. But creator Mike Judge's simplistically-rendered protagonists struck some chord with MTV's young audience, and more episodes were featured. Beavis and Butthead's...