5 2000s Cartoons That Somehow Fell Through the Streaming Cracks, From As Told by Ginger to Squirrel Boy
From As Told by Ginger to Squirrel Boy, these 2000s cartoons still stick with 90s kids but remain frustratingly hard to stream.
Streaming was supposed to make childhood favorites easier to revisit, not harder to track down. But a surprising group of 2000s cartoons still sits in limbo, remembered vividly by 90s kids and missing from the places you would expect to find them.
1. As Told by Ginger
If any show on this list feels ready for a big nostalgia comeback, it is As Told by Ginger. The Nickelodeon series premiered in 2000 and immediately separated itself from a lot of kids animation by treating growing up as an actual ongoing story. Ginger and her friends did not stay frozen in one neat cartoon phase. The series followed them through adolescence, from middle school into high school, and let them change along the way.
That approach made it stand out beside other NickToons, where characters often stayed the same age for the entire run, whether that meant the babies on Rugrats or the kids on Hey Arnold!. As Told by Ginger also drifted back into conversation because a modern revival was discussed for years before being shelved. That only makes its current streaming difficulty feel more glaring. A show remembered for being unusually honest about growing up is also one of the tougher early 2000s favorites to simply put on and rewatch.
2. Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
This one has always felt like it should be easier to find. Buzz Lightyear of Star Command aired from October 2000 through January 2001, which gave it one of the shortest runs among Disney animated series, yet it still produced 62 episodes. Its pitch was instantly understandable: build a full space adventure around Buzz Lightyear, with Emperor Zurg as the major threat, and effectively create the TV show Andy would have loved inside the Toy Story world.
Part of the appeal was how directly it leaned into sci-fi action. It played like a kid-friendly space saga, and its 2D animation style made it look different from the Pixar version of the character audiences knew from the movies. Rumors have pointed to disagreements between Pixar and Walt Disney Television Animation over both the direction of Buzz and that hand-drawn visual approach. Whether that explains the absence or not, the result is the same. The series is not on Disney+, and the easiest piece to locate is still Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins on DVD, which is hardly the same as having the full show available.
3. The Legend of Tarzan
Considering how much of Disney's animation library has made the jump to Disney+, The Legend of Tarzan stands out by not being there. The series expanded on the 1999 film Tarzan and picked up after the movie's ending, with Tarzan taking on his role as leader of the gorillas while Jane and her father adjusted to life in the jungle.
A lot of Disney animated hits were continued through straight-to-video sequels, but this show got much more room to explore its world. It ran for 39 episodes from 2001 through 2003, turning that continuation into a full series instead of a single follow-up movie. It also earned a stronger reception than some viewers might remember, even landing Emmy nominations. The catch is availability. Complicated rights agreements have kept it off Disney+, and it never received a physical media release. The closest substitute is Tarzan & Jane, a feature assembled from a few episodes and currently on Disney+, but that only gives a partial glimpse of a much larger series.
4. The Mummy
The Mummy was not just a movie hit at the turn of the century. After the franchise's 1999 revival took off, it also became an animated series in 2001. Loosely based on the films and set in 1938, the show followed the O'Connell family as they traveled the world with High Priest Imhotep in pursuit. It had another notable connection to the movies too, since Stephen Sommers, the director behind the Brendan Fraser led films, created the series.
The animated version shifted a lot of attention to Alex, the son of Rick and Evie, which gave younger viewers a natural way into the story. With Alex at the center, the adventures played from the perspective of someone less seasoned than his parents. The series lasted two seasons and 28 episodes before it was canceled. Home video offered only limited help. The Mummy: Quest of the Lost Scrolls stitched together the first and last two episodes of season one into a longer story, and a DVD release arrived later, but without those releases there is no real way to watch the show now.
5. Squirrel Boy
For sheer disappearance, Squirrel Boy may be the most baffling case of the bunch. The Cartoon Network series ran only from 2006 through 2007, but it had a memorable enough setup: an anthropomorphic squirrel teaming with his best friend Andy Johnson, usually because another wild get-rich attempt had spiraled into trouble. That dynamic gave the show a reliable odd-couple engine, with Squirrel Boy charging into chaos and Andy serving as the calmer counterweight.
It also had a strong voice cast, including Pamela Adlon, Kurtwood Smith and Richard Steven Horvitz, and it came from Duckman creator Everett Peck. Yet unlike other hard-to-find cartoons that at least survive through scattered DVDs or one-off digital listings, Squirrel Boy has almost nothing to fall back on. It was never made available beyond its original run. It is not on a streaming service, it never got a DVD release, and it was never officially put online to stream. In an era when even obscure shows usually leave some trail behind, this one is striking because it is barely accessible in any format at all.
