A fabulous original production cel of Ren Höek from The Ren & Stimpy Show, presented in a vertical format that immediately sets it apart from the standard horizontal compositions most collectors encounter.

John Kricfalusi's creation hit Nickelodeon on 11 August 1991 and proceeded to rewire an entire generation's sense of what a cartoon could be. The show was anarchic, grotesque, tender, and genuinely deranged in equal measure, and Ren was the engine of most of its chaos: the barely contained chihuahua whose moods could swing from sullen gloom to frothing mania within a single scene. This cel catches him in full domestic crisis mode, raiding the fridge with the kind of unhinged desperation that Spümcø's animators rendered with such gleeful, rubbery commitment. A bleary-eyed Ren is depicted here clutching his salad buddy in front of the open fridge. The vertical framing is unusual for a television production cel and gives the composition an almost poster-like presence, the refrigerator towering above the scene while Ren occupies the lower foreground in glorious, crumpled disarray.

The cel is presented against a studio-printed lithographic background, 12-field, bottom peg holes present, and the condition throughout is excellent. The Nickelodeon Studio Art Programme seal is affixed, confirming this as a piece issued through the official studio programme during the original production run.

For a generation that grew up with this show, the nostalgia is not nostalgic in the soft, distant sense. It is immediate. Ren and Stimpy never really left those who loved it, and original Spümcø-era material carries exactly the charge you would expect from a programme that felt, at the time, like it had been made specifically to surprise you.