An animated series featuring a collection of short subjects. These mostly come in two flavors: compilation works that repackage older material, usually theatrical animation or individual segments of a company's older Two Shorts series, and Variety Show-style works comprised of newer material made specifically for the show or acquired for it, and often presented in a Three Shorts format.
Programs in the latter format may also serve as a showcase for numerous pilot episodes, skipping focus testing to gain direct audience reaction on whether or not they should become standalone series. More standard shows without that goal may also vary the relative lengths of the shorts under their umbrella, and it's not uncommon to see either style of series have episodes be themed around a certain subject.
See also: Anthology Film, Animation Tropes.
Examples:
Classic Compilations:
- Tom and Jerry
- Casper the Friendly Ghost
- Most of the early Cartoon Network line-up, prior to developing original content, presented much of its programming in this manner. These included shows themed around certain directors (The Bob Clampett Show,
- The Tex Avery Show, and The Chuck Jones Show) and more general collections like Toon Heads.
- Popeye. In previous decades, anthologies of Popeye cartoons would have unique live-action hosts with different gimmicks.
- From 1983 to 1997, the Disney Channel had a few shows in this format for showcasing its theatrical shorts from the 1920s to the '50s, such as Donald Duck Presents.
- After the channel was split into three separate blocks in 1997, Disney created an early morning cartoon anthology series called The Ink and Paint Club
that focused on a different subject matter each episode. It was discontinued in 2002, after Disney decided to stop airing their "classic" programming on the network.
- After the channel was split into three separate blocks in 1997, Disney created an early morning cartoon anthology series called The Ink and Paint Club
- Rolfs Cartoon Time
- Stay Tooned
- Woody Woodpecker Show
- The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show
- The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show
- The Mouse Factory: A 1970s syndicated series where classic Disney cartoons were shown, with each show hosted by a different guest star and costumed versions of Disney characters.
- The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends: A British animated series from the early 90's which usually has two stories combined into one episode based on the stories by Beatrix Potter.
- Totally Tooned In
Variety Show Style:
- Tiny Toon Adventures
- Animaniacs
- When production began on the Spin-Off Pinky and the Brain, production was already under way on segments for Animaniacs starring the two lab mice. Those were collected as anthology episodes, along with a few classic segments from previous seasons of Animaniacs. Most of the show proper followed a full-length half-hour format.
- Garfield and Friends
- The Busy World of Richard Scarry - The show was known for having two episodes taking place in Busytown sandwiching an episode that takes place in a certain part of the world.
- Freakazoid! - Did about half its episodes in AA form, and the rest as full-length episodes.
- Histeria! - Sketches revolved around the historical lesson du jour.
- PBS Kids Bookworm Bunch, a programming block featuring a number of Nelvana-produced series (all based on kids' books as the name suggests), including the 2003 adaptation of The Berenstain Bears, Corduroy, Elliot Moose, George Shrinks, Marvin the Tap-Dancing Horse, Seven Little Monsters, and Timothy Goes to School
- Infinity Train - Seasonal anthology with recurring setting.
- House of Mouse does this with a Framing Device.
- Mickey Mouse Works, which preceded it, was a straight-up anthology.
- Disney previously did Raw Toonage, with the series Marsupilami, Bonkers and Totally Tasteless Videos (the last one, completely random shorts) and a wraparound (which starred guests such as Ludwig Von Drake and Sebastian).
- Liquid Television
- Cartoon Sushi
- What A Cartoon! Show, with all of the shorts serving as pilot episodes for potential Cartoon Network standalone series. It and it's successor series, The Cartoon Cartoon Show, birthed eleven different shows: Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, The Powerpuff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Family Guy (which came on FOX instead, but had its origins in the Larry & Steve short), Mike, Lu & Og, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?, Codename: Kids Next Door, and Megas XLR.
- A cancelled successor series called Cartoonstitute never made it to air, but had its shorts uploaded online later on. Of the cartoons that were completed, Regular Show and Uncle Grandpa were greenlit into standalone series, with the latter initially coming out as the Spin-Off Secret Mountain Fort Awesome.
- Oh Yeah! Cartoons for Nickelodeon was also a breeding ground for new series, with The Fairly OddParents, ChalkZone, and My Life as a Teenage Robot eventually being greenlit out of the anthology program. The former two, alongside Mina and The Count, served as recurring sketches on the program as well.
- Nickelodeon later did Random! Cartoons, which gave us Fanboy and Chum Chum, Adventure Time (which would become a Cartoon Network series), and Bravest Warriors (which became a Cartoon Hangover web series instead).
- The Nickelodeon Animated Shorts Program was a 2012-2015 project created as the successor to the above two projects, inviting domestic and international animators to pitch pilots that Nickelodeon uploaded online. Three Nicktoons, Breadwinners, The Loud House, and It's Pony, came out from these shorts, while a fourth short called Monster Pack was picked up by Nelvana as Ollie's Pack.
- The Nicktoons Film Festival of 2004-2009 was an annual televised project initially produced by Frederator Studios that broadcasted animated shorts from all over the world. Several of the shorts shown were originally from YTV's Funpak anthology series.
- Shorty McShorts' Shorts was a short-lived Disney Channel attempt, which aired individual animated shorts in-between the network's other programming rather than together in a packaged format. Nothing came out of it except SheZow, which would be greenlit by The Hub years later.
- KaBlam!, better known for its spin-off Action League NOW!, was an anthology show of animated shows. It had four-to-five recurring sketches each week.
- Grim & Evil
- Shorties Watchin Shorties
- Cartoon Monsoon
- Takashi Yanase Fairy Tale, A 2008 OVA series by "The Answer Studio" which showed animated adaptations to some of Takashi Yanase's picture books (such as Shippo no uta ,Tenshi no guratan, 'Ritoruboo, and Kabako).
- TripTank
- The Comic Strip, a daily 1987 series featuring four different "series": "Mini Monsters," "Karate Kat," "Street Frogs" and "Tiger Sharks," each on a rotating business. Two were shown per day.
- The Wacky World of Tex Avery
- My Little Pony 'n Friends aired in this format. First was My Little Pony, and then one of three other shows. My Little Pony was the only segment to get aired every week. The other properties, Glo Friends, Moondreamers, and The Potato Head Kids (yes, really), alternated each week.
- Maxie's World, a 1989 series that also featured episodes from Beverly Hills Teens and the animated Punky Brewster.
- Saturday Supercade
- Super Sunday was a 1985 anthology that was best known for introducing the series Jem.
- Love, Death & Robots
- The Boys: Diabolical
- Several Hanna-Barbera shows were anthologies, starting with The Huckleberry Hound Show. Others included The New Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Series (Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har, Touchè Turtle, and Wally Gator), Magilla Gorilla, Peter Potamus, The Cattanooga Cats, CB Bears, Space Stars, The Kwicky Koala Show and 1985's The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera (which ran as three separate half-hour shows but were all under the same umbrella title).
- The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show.
- The Mr. Men Show
- Anime example: Mankatsu, an hour-long series comprised of several segments, all based on the various works of Monkey Punch.
- Curbside - An unsuccessful pilot revolving around shorts starring Terrytoons characters, the framing device consisting of a talk show hosted by Heckle and Jeckle.
- Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids.
- Sunday Pants
- Funpak, a 2004 series from Nelvana that aired on YTV, was composed of several different animated miniseries, such as The 9th Life of Sherman Phelps and Rotting Hills. One of these series, Sidekick, eventually became its own show in 2010.
- Freaky Stories featured various urban legends and spooky stories told through a framing device, and each of the 4 stories featured in a given episode made use of different animation styles, musical scores, and narrators.
- Jellystone!: Not in a literal sense of it being a showcase of different shorts in one half hour like Animaniacs or Looney Tunes Cartoons but rather each episode would focus on a different set of characters with their own different settings and scenarios including but not limited to:
- Yogi, Boo-Boo and Cindy working at Jellystone Hospital.
- Top Cat and his crew scamming the clueless denizens of Jellystone.
- Doggie Daddy and his helicopter parenting tactics with Augie Doggie.
- Jabberjaw and Loopy De Loop working at Magilla Gorilla's bowtie boutique, with Jabber working hard to get a promotion.
- Augie Doggie, Yakky Doodle and Shag Rugg hanging out and going on wacky adventures.
- Mayor Huckleberry Hound trying to engage the town in an event that would always end in disaster.
- The Animatrix
- What If...? (2021)
- Star Wars: Visions
