The newest cartoon, posted on April 1, replaced the original intro video on the site — and more importantly, seems as if it's closing the book on the Homestar Runner series and characters. It delves into the site's history, playing long-forgotten features for laughs, sending a love-note to the fans of the wildly-popular Strong Bad E-Mails and closing with interplay between the site's two iconic characters.
The last screen, a call-back to the series's love of obsolete tech (have I mentioned that the site is entirely in Flash, a platform that's dying off faster than '80s pro wrestlers?) features download links for Windows 98 desktop themes and the ever-present end-screen Easter Eggs.
Really, looking back on the site is like looking into a vault of my adolescence. The site, starring the roticistic hero Homestar Runner and luchador mask-wearing Strong Bad, grew out of a children's book parody and maintained childlike whimsy throughout its ten-year run on the Internet. Looking back, HomestarRunner.com is more groundbreaking than one might have imagined while watching a bunch of weird cartoon characters make fun of each other.
As HomestarRunner.com featured more and more characters and worlds in which various characters lived, it became something of a channel with multiple series; it made watching videos in a browser seem more desirable than downloading files to watch in Quicktime; it made the idea of creating and selling one's brand on the Internet (complete with t-shirts, videos, plushies and stickers) seem somehow viable; and it popularized kid-friendly entertainment that was still fun for adults. It's obvious that the site's creators, brothers Matt and Mike Chapman, have taken that lesson with them to their other projects (including a reported development deal with Disney, mentioned in the L.A. Times)
If this is the end of Homestar Runner, it's a fitting one...though I wish they'd at least taken the time to explain what the hell "melon-ade" was before they signed off.