 While working on 2 Stupid Dogs in 1993, McCracken's Whoopass Girls short was picked up for a series by Cartoon Network. However, the name Whoopass had to be dropped for the channel to include it as part of its new What a Cartoon! animated shorts showcase mostly because the name Whoopass sounded inappropriate because it was pronounced whoop ass. The Whoopass Girls then became The Powerpuff Girls, and the "can of whoop ass" was renamed "Chemical X". McCracken's new short, entitled "The Powerpuff Girls in: Meat Fuzzy Lumpkins", aired as part the network's World Premiere Toon-In on February 20, 1995. The short was not as popular as Dexter's Laboratory, a project McCracken and former classmate Genndy Tartakovsky (who also directed many episodes of Powerpuff Girls) worked on together; being the most popular of the shorts, Dexter's Laboratory was the first to be greenlit by the network. Cartoon Network executive Mike Lazzo allowed McCracken to produce a new Powerpuff Girls short titled "Crime 101", which aired on What a Cartoon! in early 1996. Announcer Ernie Anderson, the narrator of the pilot episodes, died of cancer in 1997, and he was replaced by Tom Kenny for the remainder of the series.
