Like Dexter’s Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls, Mina and the Count started out as a student film. And like the others, it became a What A Cartoon short at Hanna-Barbera Studios. Unlike Dexter and Powerpuff, its pilot did not lead to a series on Cartoon Network.

There was a point where it was pitched as a middle cartoon for Dexter. Didn’t happen. After that, there was interest from ABC for their Saturday morning lineup of cartoons. Then Disney bought ABC and Doug ate Mina’s lunch.

The rollercoaster ride of great hopes and even greater heartbreak continued at Nickelodeon. Fred Seibert, who was president of Hanna-Barbera when I arrived, moved to Nick, and took me and Mina with him. He wanted to make Mina and the Count into a full-blown series and gave me six more shorts, created under the Oh Yeah! Cartoons banner, to convince Nickelodeon. They were so unconvinced that they canceled the last short.

The execs at Nick had always been a little squeamish about a little girl and a vampire hanging out together. Although the relationship was completely innocent, it still gave them the heebee jeebees. My emotional roller coaster ride ended with a crash. Mina and the Count would not become a series.

I assumed that Fred was going to give the sixth unfilled slot to one of the other artists making shorts for Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Instead, he asked me to come up with another idea. I pitched him three, one of which was about an angsty teenage girl who had an emotionless robot for a boyfriend. In her head, their relationship was very tempestuous. In reality, the robot felt nothing for her, or for anything else. Fred gently suggested that, considering how Nick felt about Mina, another story about a girl who had an unusual relationship with a non-human lifeform was probably a bad idea. I had to admit he was right. But something about the teenage girl and robot combination stuck in my head.

A few days later, on my way to the grocery store, the solution suddenly struck me – make the angsty teenage girl and the robot one character. The entire storyline of the Teenage Robot pilot came to me right then and there. I pulled over and wrote it all down on the back of my grocery list.

I had tried for so long to make Mina and the Count into a series. But it was my failure to do so that brought My Life as a Teenage Robot to life. 

A hearty welcome to all my new subscribers and congrats to Jameelah Shahin, who has won the Mina animation cel. Now I just have to wade in to the files and find the one she wants!