Nickelodeon Renews 'SpongeBob SquarePants'

Question: who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Answer: for at least one more year, 'SpongeBob Squarepants.'

Yes, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the beloved kids show has been renewed for an eighth season, with a full slate of 26 episodes ordered by parent network Nickelodeon. 'SpongeBob,' which first debuted back in 1999, celebrated its tenth anniversary on Nov. 6 with the special 'Truth or Square,' which drew an impressive 7.7 million viewers.Question: who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Answer: for at least one more year, 'SpongeBob Squarepants.'

Yes, according to the Hollywood Reporter, the beloved kids show has been renewed for an eighth season, with a full slate of 26 episodes ordered by parent network Nickelodeon. 'SpongeBob,' which first debuted back in 1999, celebrated its tenth anniversary on Nov. 6 with the special 'Truth or Square,' which drew an impressive 7.7 million viewers.

Those figures, along with ongoing merchandising and DVD sales on the back end, were more than enough reason for Nickelodeon to re-up the animated series about an anthropomorphic sponge who lives under the ocean and interacts with a similarly unlikely group of sea friends. And Nickelodeon's animation czar, Brown Johnson, couldn't be prouder.

"After a decade on our air," Johnson stated, "'SpongeBob' has emerged as one of the most beloved and popular characters in television history." Not bad for a series that was originally conceived by creator and executive producer Stephen Hillenberg way back in 1984 and that took fifteen long years to reach the small screen.

And don't expect the show to end any time soon. Hillenberg attempted to close out the series back in 2004 with the feature film 'The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,' but public demand along with pressure from the network compelled him to continue. Now, with this latest order bringing the total run up to an impressive 178 episodes, it seems inevitable that the series will last at least long enough to get to its milestone 200th installment.

So he may be absorbent, yellow and porous, but above all, Mr. SquarePants best embodies another classic sponge attribute: resiliency.