text: Unhappy with his position on The Critic, Tartakovsky accepted Huber's proposal, and the resulting project, "Changes", was produced as part of Cartoon Network's animation showcase series, World Premiere Toons, debuting on February 26, 1995. Viewers worldwide voted through phone lines, websites, focus groups, and consumer promotions for their favorite short cartoons; Dexter's Laboratory was the first of 16 to earn that vote of approval. Mike Lazzo, then-head of programming for Cartoon Network, said in 1996 that it was his favorite of the 48 shorts that had been produced by that point, commenting that he and colleagues "loved the humor in the brother-versus-sister relationship".
  Even after "Changes" premiered, Tartakovsky had no expectations that it would lead to an entire series. In 2018, he noted that his generation was the first in which people could become showrunners at a young age, saying, "Everybody before us were in their forties, at least, and so [our generation's experience] was a very different way to do something where we had no clue what we were doing and we were just trying to make each other laugh." When Dexter's Laboratory received a series greenlight, Tartakovsky became, at age twenty-seven, one of the youngest animation directors of that era. Speaking with the Los Angeles Times in 2002, Tartakovsky remarked about the network, "With Cartoon Network, they were looking for more undiscovered talent, people that may have had a hard time getting in.[...]It became a great opportunity to do something. And as I got into it, I realized that they were also offering the creative freedom. They were letting the creators make the shows."