Long-Runner Tech Marches On: The strip began with Darryl talking on a payphone. Now, the kids can cause all sorts of trouble when their parents leave their smartphones lying around. Lampshaded in a strip that depicts Zoe's baby photos being lovingly placed into albums, Hammie's baby photos being stored in boxes, and Wren's baby photos being taken on a smartphone to be printed out someday.
Surprisingly Lenient Censor: One early gag involved Wanda squirting breast milk into Darryl's coffee from off-panel ("Bulls-eye!"). Jerry sketched out the strip as a joke on Rick, who got even by actually drawing and finishing it. They then decided to submit it as a joke on their editor, thinking that she'd laugh and ask them for a replacement — only to have it printed, as their regular editor was out that week. Predictably, it's one of the more popular strips.
Executive Meddling: It's been said it was a struggle to even keep the name Baby Blues. Either way, the end result was a show that bore more resemblance to The Simpsons after its glory days (or an early Family Guy) than the actual comic strip it was based on. While the creators liked some of it, they felt it wasn't in the true spirit of the comic strip and could have done better.
Exiled from Continuity: Warner Bros.' ownership of the show's new characters and subsequent refusal to license them to King Features is the reason they never appeared in the original strip.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: The animated series may never be released on DVD for two reasons: 1) It's not beloved enough for fans to demand a DVD release, and 2) The theme song is a real song ("It's All Been Done" by the Barenaked Ladies), which means it'll be edited to avoid paying licensing fees (like what happened with Married... with Children when they replaced Frank Sinatra's "Love and Marriage" with an upbeat, instrumental clone of that song on the Sony DVD version of the shownote the complete series released by Mill Creek Entertainment and the complete series shown on Hulu has the original song).
The show was cancelled with five episodes left unaired (similar to The Oblongs and Mission Hill). They would eventually air two years later on Adult Swim.
More severely, a second season exists, but has never been (and is unlikely to be) released in any form.
What Could Have Been: A second season was planned, but never made it to air. It's not known how far into production they were before being scrapped.
In May 2020, it was revealed by the comic strip's co-creator that the second season got rather far along, with all episodes being produced and fully animated. Apparently, all that had to be done were minor edits such as replacing temp music cues and sound effects, but it's thought these episodes will never see the light of day.[1]
A random incidental character in a comic strip bears a resemblance to Carl Bitterman.
