Obscurity, much?/Animation

Animation, being a popular medium, has a lot of popular series. Many of these are not among them.

The rules for this subpage:

* Just because it isn't available for streaming (or was pulled from streaming) doesn't automatically make it obscure. There needs to be evidence that there wasn't much of an audience during its initial release to qualify for this trope.
* With the exception of legacy examples (documented before January 1st, 2023), only ended/cancelled shows should be documented.
* Animated movies should only be documented once their initial theatrical run ends, or 1 month after their streaming release for streaming-exclusive movies, whichever comes first. This is because movies that have at least made their budgets back probably have a big cult following.

The following networks/examples have their own page:

* Cartoon Network
* Corus
	+ Teletoon
* Anime
	+ TV Tokyo
	+ Pokémon
	+ Akira Toriyama
	+ Weekly Shonen Jump
	+ Toei Animation
	+ Sanrio
		- Jewelpet
* Disney (including Fox animation)
* ViacomCBS (including Nickelodeon, MTV, and Comedy Central animation)
* NBCUniversal (including NBC and DreamWorks animation)
* The Internet (including internet animation)

## Honorable mentions

The following works have not been ended (or in the case of films, stopped playing in theaters) yet, but Tropes Fanon feel they might have an example on this page (depending on certain circumstances) once the series end/get cancelled:

* *Adventure Time*: Specifically the *Fionna and Cake* sub-series. *Adventure Time* itself had a spectacular run at 10 seasons (even if the creator had to quickly wrap up the storyline), and the IP itself was popular (and made a lot of money for Cartoon Network). Ultimately, the series got disqualified from this trope as many *Adventure Time* fans seem to be watching the new series as far as Tropes Fanon could tell.
* *Elemental*: Despite having one of the worst opening weekends in Pixar's history, the film ultimately grossed over twice its budget back by the time it ended its theatrical run, disqualifying it from this trope.
* *The Ghost and Molly McGee*: The first season's highest-rated episode on Disney Channel? The Christmas episode at 370,000 viewers. The second season is currently being aired, and this is before you take into account the fact most kids' shows that get more than a season nowadays are more popular via streaming than on cable. Thus, Tropes Fanon would likely wait until the second season ends before deciding whether it really belongs on this list (or more specifically, Disney's own page).
* *Kiff*: A second season is coming, and to call it obscure before said second season even premieres defeats the purpose of the criteria listed above, so Tropes Fanon will wait until the show ends before checking to see if it qualifies.

## Other examples

* Ketchup: Cats Who Cook. In America. Long story short, North America only ever received a VHS release for the show. DVDs are just as rare, if any.
	+ On top of that, it didn't even get its own Wikipedia page until 2012, and even then, it's rarely updated (case in point: there were no updates for the article at all in 2018).
* Speaking of Australian cartoons, Pixel Pinkie is this in America, despite The Mysterious Mr. Enter reviewing an episode.
* The Get-Along Gang. Its pilot aired on Nick and the series proper aired on CBS, but the series faded into obscurity after CBS cancelled it.
* Shirt Tales. It hasn't been seen since its last Boomerang airing in 2012.
* Simsalagrimm is a cartoon that uses an animation style similar to The Raccoons. Unfortunately, it's all but obscure now.
* Speaking of The Raccoons, it's also obscure, both in the United States and its native Canada. Teletoon Retro reran it because, and *only* because, Teletoon reran it in its early years.
* Sonic Underground prior to This TV rerunning it, believe it or not. Because of this, many people born after mid-1999 didn't even know Sonic had *siblings* until they watched their local This TV affiliate on Sunday mornings between 2010 and 2011. It has since reappeared on Disney XD as well.
* The Madeline special Madeline in Tahiti can range from completely obscure to completely forgotten. Hence why everyone thinks *My Fair Madeline* is the last animated project for the franchise.
* The first season of Johnny Test is semi-obscure, and those who know about it (usually) find the first season slightly better than the rest of the show, which is hated by most of the US.
	+ In fact, until 2013, the entire first season save the episode "Johnny's House of Horrors" was completely obscure in Canada.
* Spaced Out, Creepschool, and Dude, That's My Ghost!. The similarities? They were all co-produced by Alphanim or its successors (and all three have English dubs), and none of them have aired in the United States as of yet.
* Any Christian children's series produced after the 1980s that isn't named VeggieTales is prone to be this. The only exception to this is the remake of Superbook.
	+ The Mysterious Mr. Enter has, however, reviewed a failed pilot for a planned Christian children's series called Dorbeez (yes, there was a pilot literally called that).
* Fleabag Monkeyface, and any gross-out show from the United Kingdom, for that matter, is prone to this.
* Angelo Rules has an in-universe example. Sherwood once says a word that started out as obscure, but became a fad after Tracy put it up online. And then Angelo sells the rights to the saying to a Japanese soda company, making it obscure (in what the cartoon portrays America) once again.
	+ Another example is the page image on the main page, where being famous apparently gets one videogames before they're even out. Even if they're obscure prior to release. (That said, this wouldn't really be an example (even in-universe) if the episode came out and/or was documented today, considering the new rules for the trope as of January 2023. This only remains an in-universe example of the trope due to the Grandfather Clause.)
	+ The show itself is semi-obscure at best.
* At the time J.G. Quintel's Close Enough was greenlit, a lot more people knew J.G. Quintel solely because he worked on Regular Show. This was averted by the time HBO Max released the series (and especially once it was cancelled and pulled due to the Warner Bros.-Discovery merger).
* Scooby-Doo *rarely* has this trope occur to one of their shows, but the biggest example was probably Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!. Not helping was that Kids' WB was in their CW years, the end of the block was speculated for two years afterward, and the series was cancelled upon the transition to TheCW4Kids- and as such, it never aired reruns on Cartoon Network or Boomerang (at least on cable, Boomerang has the show on its subscription service as of 2019).
* Block 13, outside the Arab World, is semi-obscure at best; however, the people outside the Arab World that did find out about it immediately dismissed it as a South Park rip-off. So now instead of being completely obscure, Block 13 is now infamous outside the Arab World for ripping off one of Comedy Central's longest-running television series.
* Every *My Little Pony* installment other than *My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic*, likely because what little of the franchise's popularity at that point was waning before *Friendship is Magic* was made and sent the franchise into skyrocketing popularity, mainly due to bronies only caring about it for *Friendship is Magic* and related merchandise, and little else. *Friendship is Magic* then ended up making the fourth generation of the ponies the longest-running of them.
	+ That said, not even *Friendship is Magic* was safe from this outside of North America. It took until 2011 for *My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic* to debut on German airwaves, due to the obscure-outside-Europe *Filly Funtasia* toyline. Until the *Filly* license was yanked from Germany, next to no one was willing to license *FiM* for the German market due to how often girls' toys fail outside their home countries. This was also true for *Filly*, which wasn't first manufactured in Germany (*Filly* was invented in Denmark).
		- Thanks to the bronies, though, the fourth generation of *My Little Pony* currently averts this in Germany (and anywhere else where there's a significant brony fandom).
* This could've happened to *Sinbad Jr. and his Magic Belt* had Trans-Artist Productions not been replaced by Hanna-Barbera as the animation studio for it during the pre-production phases.
* Compared to its sequel *Wakfu*, *Dofus*, while not completely obscure, has some shades of this outside of its native France.