Before a dozen movies over the course of 20 years, millions of Americans (kids, mostly) saw Professor Xavier's uncanny crew of superpowered mutants for the first time on Fox's Saturday morning staple X-Men: The Animated Series. Based on the Marvel comics that date back to the '60s, but using original stories, the action-packed cartoon focused on a select handful of the franchise's vast character base — Cyclops, Rogue, Storm, The Beast, Gambit, Jubilee, Jean Grey, Magneto and his bad mutants, and, of course Wolverine. Unlike most other kid-oriented cartoons of the '90s, X-Men was mostly serialized, with viewers required to turn in each week to see how multi-part storylines played out.
X-Men debuted in Fox primetime in 1992 before moving to its weekend morning time slot, which it held until 1997. That's actually a bit longer than the network or producers had initially envisioned. It was supposed to run 65 episodes (a standard production run for an animated show in the '90s), but Fox ultimately wanted a total of 76. However, in its fifth and final season, the production environment changed. "Some of the quality controls were lifted," creator and showrunner Eric Lewald told The Hollywood Reporter. "The budgets went down. They were cranked down." When the 76 episodes were finished, so was X-Men. "When it was done, it was like, 'well, contract fulfilled. We did it," producer Will Meuginot said.
