Phineas and Ferb are making a mischievous return, targeting multiple generations of fans

It’s summer again. A decade may have passed in real time since stepbrothers Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher had their last summertime adventure on TV, but it’s just one unremarkable school year later for the characters in the beloved animated TV series Phineas and Ferb. The longest-running show in Disney Channel history, Phineas and Ferb aired from February 2008 to June 2015, winning five Emmys and becoming the most successful animated series for kids (ages 6 to 11) and tweens (ages 9 to 14) in Disney Television Animation history. It became the No. 1 animated TV series among tweens in 2009, supplanting Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants. Tina Fey, Ben Stiller, Seth MacFarlane, and Chaka Khan guest-starred, among many others, attracting a wide audience—roughly 25% of whom were older than 18. A live show featuring costumed actors doing musical numbers toured North America from 2011 to 2013. Then, after a seven-year run of 126 two-part episodes, co-creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh ended the show. They were exhausted. But viewers were not—Phineas and Ferb has since racked up more than 13 billion viewing hours across linear and streaming platforms. It remains Disney’s top-ranked title among boys 6 to 11, and has achieved cult status among many of its original fans. Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, creators and executive producers of Disney’s Phineas and Ferb [Photo: Disney/Michael Kirchoff] During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Povenmire got on TikTok “because I was bored,” he says. “Almost immediately I got millions and millions of followers.” (He has 6.8 million today.) “I realized that all the twentysomethings who grew up with the show had all moved to TikTok.” Posts in which he’d evoke the voice of Phineas and Ferb archvillain Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz would get millions of views overnight. [Image: Disney] In January 2023, Disney announced it was bringing the show back. Forty new episodes are set to run, starting with two episodes on Thursday, June 5, at 8 p.m. ET and PT on Disney Channel and Disney XD. (The first episode will be available that same day on Disney Channel YouTube). The first 10 episodes of the season will then premiere the next day on Disney+ and also be available to stream on Disney Channel On Demand. The action picks up the summer after the show’s original run, with the kids a year older but not visibly changed—except for an extra orange stripe on Phineas’s trademark T-shirt. (You can see the new trailer here.) [Image: Disney] “If you were bingeing the whole series and got to the end of the fourth season and went right into the fifth season, it shouldn’t feel like a different show,” says Povenmire, who returns to the helm with longtime collaborator Marsh (they also voice the characters of Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Major Monogram, respectively). Most of the original voice cast is also returning, and the new series will have the same format: two stories contained in a 30-minute time slot. But since the show’s original run, the world has changed, the way audiences consume media has evolved, and the Disney universe has expanded. So with the reboot of Phineas and Ferb, Disney is using every trick in its marketing playbook, hoping to optimize new platform synergies and maximize engagement with fans well beyond the typical Disney Channel demographic of 6- to 14-year-olds. “With Phineas and Ferb, we have a rare opportunity to tap into both nostalgia and discovery,” says Shannon Ryan, president of marketing at Disney Entertainment Television. “Many original fans are now young adults or parents, and our campaign is designed to celebrate that cross-generational appeal.” [Image: Disney] “Hey, Ferb! I know what we’re going to do today!” Phineas and Ferb is known for its rapid-fire puns, visual gags, and zany pop-culture references, all of which came easily to creators Povenmire and Marsh, veterans of The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Family Guy. The show’s plot is essentially always the same: Phineas and Ferb dream up an over-the-top, large-scale invention—an other-dimensionator, a giant robot shark, a tower to the moon, an animal translator, a time machine, a backyard beach with an ocean—and get their pals to help them build it. Their teenage sister, Candace, tries to “bust” them. Meanwhile, the boys’ pet platypus, Perry, in his alter ego as super-spy Agent P., battles the gleefully evil supervillain Dr. Doofenshmirtz and his latest “-inator” device (De-Love-Inator, Hot-Dog-Vendor-Revenge-Inator, Double-Negative-Inator, to name a few). Almost always, the story ends with the evidence of the boys’ invention being wiped away, leaving Candace fuming. “Early on, we decided to make the show a nicer show,” Povenmire says. “We decided to get rid of a lot of the attitudinal humor that is the easiest to write and say, ‘Let’s see if we can make a good, edgy show without making the characters into jerks and idiots.’ And I think that’s what y

Apr 3, 2025 - 14:46

Phineas and Ferb are making a mischievous return, targeting multiple generations of fans

It’s summer again.

A decade may have passed in real time since stepbrothers Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher had their last summertime adventure on TV, but it’s just one unremarkable school year later for the characters in the beloved animated TV series Phineas and Ferb.

The longest-running show in Disney Channel history, Phineas and Ferb aired from February 2008 to June 2015, winning five Emmys and becoming the most successful animated series for kids (ages 6 to 11) and tweens (ages 9 to 14) in Disney Television Animation history. It became the No. 1 animated TV series among tweens in 2009, supplanting Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants. Tina Fey, Ben Stiller, Seth MacFarlane, and Chaka Khan guest-starred, among many others, attracting a wide audience—roughly 25% of whom were older than 18. A live show featuring costumed actors doing musical numbers toured North America from 2011 to 2013.

Then, after a seven-year run of 126 two-part episodes, co-creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh ended the show. They were exhausted. But viewers were not—Phineas and Ferb has since racked up more than 13 billion viewing hours across linear and streaming platforms. It remains Disney’s top-ranked title among boys 6 to 11, and has achieved cult status among many of its original fans.

**Dan Povenmire** and **Jeff “Swampy” Marsh**, creators and executive producers of Disney’s *Phineas and Ferb* [Photo: Disney/Michael Kirchoff]

During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Povenmire got on TikTok “because I was bored,” he says. “Almost immediately I got millions and millions of followers.” (He has 6.8 million today.) “I realized that all the twentysomethings who grew up with the show had all moved to TikTok.” Posts in which he’d evoke the voice of Phineas and Ferb archvillain Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz would get millions of views overnight.

In January 2023, Disney announced it was bringing the show back. Forty new episodes are set to run, starting with two episodes on Thursday, June 5, at 8 p.m. ET and PT on Disney Channel and Disney XD. (The first episode will be available that same day on Disney Channel YouTube). The first 10 episodes of the season will then premiere the next day on Disney+ and also be available to stream on Disney Channel On Demand.

The action picks up the summer after the show’s original run, with the kids a year older but not visibly changed—except for an extra orange stripe on Phineas’s trademark T-shirt. (You can see the new trailer here.)

“If you were bingeing the whole series and got to the end of the fourth season and went right into the fifth season, it shouldn’t feel like a different show,” says Povenmire, who returns to the helm with longtime collaborator Marsh (they also voice the characters of Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Major Monogram, respectively). Most of the original voice cast is also returning, and the new series will have the same format: two stories contained in a 30-minute time slot.

But since the show’s original run, the world has changed, the way audiences consume media has evolved, and the Disney universe has expanded. So with the reboot of Phineas and Ferb, Disney is using every trick in its marketing playbook, hoping to optimize new platform synergies and maximize engagement with fans well beyond the typical Disney Channel demographic of 6- to 14-year-olds.

“With Phineas and Ferb, we have a rare opportunity to tap into both nostalgia and discovery,” says Shannon Ryan, president of marketing at Disney Entertainment Television. “Many original fans are now young adults or parents, and our campaign is designed to celebrate that cross-generational appeal.”

“Hey, Ferb! I know what we’re going to do today!”

Phineas and Ferb is known for its rapid-fire puns, visual gags, and zany pop-culture references, all of which came easily to creators Povenmire and Marsh, veterans of The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Family Guy. The show’s plot is essentially always the same: Phineas and Ferb dream up an over-the-top, large-scale invention—an other-dimensionator, a giant robot shark, a tower to the moon, an animal translator, a time machine, a backyard beach with an ocean—and get their pals to help them build it. Their teenage sister, Candace, tries to “bust” them.

Meanwhile, the boys’ pet platypus, Perry, in his alter ego as super-spy Agent P., battles the gleefully evil supervillain Dr. Doofenshmirtz and his latest “-inator” device (De-Love-Inator, Hot-Dog-Vendor-Revenge-Inator, Double-Negative-Inator, to name a few). Almost always, the story ends with the evidence of the boys’ invention being wiped away, leaving Candace fuming.

“Early on, we decided to make the show a nicer show,” Povenmire says. “We decided to get rid of a lot of the attitudinal humor that is the easiest to write and say, ‘Let’s see if we can make a good, edgy show without making the characters into jerks and idiots.’ And I think that’s what you get—a show that’s wholesome but not cringey.”

Integral to the show’s appeal are its catchy songs, written by Povenmire, Marsh, and collaborator Martin Olson. Every episode of Phineas and Ferb features at least one musical number, and these songs have continued to inspire viral content on TikTok and Instagram many years later.

“I’d see Jason Derulo [dancing to] ‘Platypus Controlling Me,’” Povennmire says, “Lizzo doing ‘Squirrels in my Pants’ in front of a sold-out crowd at a concert, Jimmy Fallon and Reese Witherspoon doing ‘Squirrels’ on TV. It was really bizarre, but it gave us this feeling like there’s still a very rabid fan base out there.”

It’s an unusually broad one. The first generation of Phineas and Ferb fans are college age. Their parents, who were often won over as well, are now (gulp) in their fifties. And an entire new generation of youngsters has discovered the show through streaming on Disney+.

Each of these audiences has different viewing habits—and presents unique marketing challenges—and Disney has made a calculated plan to appeal to them all.

“Seize the day!”

Even during the show’s original run, “it was clear that fan appetite extended beyond traditional TV,” Ryan says. “That’s why we launched early original short-form series like Take Two With Phineas and Ferb and Doof’s Daily Dirt to keep the world alive between seasons.”

This summer, Disney will debut two new original shorts, Cartoonified With Phineas and Ferb, a Take Two update featuring interviews with real-life celebrities drawn in the style of the series, and Agent P, Under C, featuring Perry as Agent P. battling rivals from A.N.A.T.H.E.M.A. (the Alliance of Nefarious Animals That Has an Exceptionally Memorable Acronym). The shorts will play on Disney Channel, Disney+, and Disney YouTube channels.

The new episodes themselves will initially run at 8 p.m. ET and PT on Disney Channel—a prime family viewing hour. They will then stream on Disney+ the next day, with more episodes released over subsequent weeks. The linear and streaming platforms “don’t seem to be cannibalizing each other,” says Ayo Davis, president of Disney Branded TV. “Kids are title loyal, platform agnostic, and they watch anything, any and everywhere.”

Meanwhile, thanks to Disney+’s extended constellation of properties including Marvel and Star Wars, there are new brand synergies to capitalize on. There were a couple of crossover episodes in the original run of the series, including “Mission Marvel” and “Star Wars.” This time around, Marvel will publish new comics featuring Phineas and Ferb and other show characters reimagined as superheroes.

New show-related merch will include the first Phineas and Ferb FunkoPop! collectible figures and, on May 9, an album from Disney Music Group called Lofi: Phineas and Ferb, featuring chilled-out renditions of 10 songs from the original series.

The “summer celebratory takeover,” in Disney’s marketing speak, will also include trailer placement with in-theater screenings of the Warner Bros. Minecraft movie; promotion at this year’s Vans Warped Tour music festival; branded ice-cream trucks at beaches; and a sponsorship at the San Diego Zoo, home to the only two platypuses in the U.S.

Near the start of the new series pilot, Phineas, Ferb, and their gang frantically throw out dozens of ideas for their next invention. Rather than deciding on one, they build them all. Disney seems to be doing much the same thing. “Our campaign is about more than launching a new season of a hit show,” Ryan says. “It’s about making Phineas and Ferb the must-experience event of the summer.” It’s going to be hard to miss.