Dexter's Laboratory
American comedy science fiction animated television series

Dexter's Laboratory is an American animated science fiction television series created by Genndy Tartakovsky for Cartoon Network. The series follows Dexter, an enthusiastic boy-genius with a science laboratory in his bedroom, which he keeps secret from his unsuspecting parents. Dexter is at constant odds with his older and more extraverted sister Dee Dee, who regularly accesses the laboratory and inadvertently foils his experiments. Prominently featured in the first and second seasons are other segments focusing on superhero-based characters Monkey, Dexter's pet lab-monkey with a superhero alter ego, and the Justice Friends, a trio of superheroes who share an apartment.
Tartakovsky pitched the series to Fred Seibert's animated shorts showcase What a Cartoon! at Hanna-Barbera, basing it on student films he produced at the California Institute of the Arts. Four pilots aired on Cartoon Network and TNT from 1995 to 1996. The first pilot "Changes" became the former network's highest-rated What a Cartoon! short, and viewer approval ratings led to a half-hour series, becoming the first original series under the Cartoon Cartoons moniker. Two seasons aired from April 27, 1996, to June 15, 1998, totaling 52 episodes.
“Dexter's Laboratory” enters the record as american comedy science fiction animated television series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dexter's, Laboratory and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q904733. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995, 1996 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dexter's Laboratory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.