Who'd have thought a bunch of kids in diapers could whip those Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers?

Rugrats, a wry and funny look at contemporary life from a toddler's perspective, is now the number one show on YTV, Canada's most watched specialty cable service and a family staple in 6.8 million homes across the country.

``When we took Power Rangers off we put Rugrats in its place and the audience went up by 25 per cent,'' says YTV publicist Liz Armstrong. ``It's the success story of YTV's year.''

The two-time Emmy Award-winning series delivers laughs for both youngsters and parents in following the adventures of one-year-old Tommy Pickles, intrepid baby explorer of the cartoon world.

Along the way, Tommy is joined by his buddy Chuckie; the twins from next door, Phil and Lil; his spoiled cousin, Angelica, and his pooch, Spike. There are a host of colorful adult characters, usually well-meaning but always clueless to the adventures that exist between our knees and the floor.

``The inspiration was our children,'' says co-creator Arlene Klasky, on the phone from Los Angeles. ``I had been staying home for about 15 months with my second child and it was very humorous to me what motivated babies, as opposed to what motivated an adult.''

``Arlene had this idea about the baby's point of view in Yuppie families,'' adds husband Gabor Csupo, the other half of Klasky Csupo, Inc.

Born in 1952 in Budapest, Csupo learned the craft of animation at Hungary's famed Pannonia studio. He fled the country in 1975, on a perilous walk through a darkened railway tunnel to Austria and freedom. After animating stints in Sweden and Germany, he met Klasky, a graphic designer, and the couple relocated to California. They formed Klasky Csupo, Inc. in late 1981 in the spare room and dining room of their apartment.

Klasky and Csupo got their first big break when James Brooks awarded them the job of animating The Simpsons for The Tracey Ullman Show in 1988. After developing Rugrats for Nickelodeon in 1991 they went on to produce an animated prime time television series based on Everett Peck's underground comic book Duckman. Csupo has also created the original characters for Aaahhh! Real Monsters, a new cartoon series not yet airing in Alberta.

``I think it's a very exciting time right now for children's programming,'' Klasky says.

``Rugrats was written on two levels so that it was expressly written for children but also with adults in mind. What it's done is we've found that adults will come to animation.''

``We've learned that kids have a lot more sophistication than most adults would credit them with,'' says Csupo.

In its second week on YTV Rugrats took the coveted No. 1 position with kids two to 11 away from the soon-to-be-yanked Power Rangers. In its third week, it rated No. 1 with both kids and teens. As proof of its popularity, the half-hour show, packaged in two 15-minute episodes, often turns up three times a day on the YTV schedule.

The story lines are cleverly comic explorations of everyday experience. Sort of Jerry Seinfield writ small, very small. In one episode Tommy spends a day in a highly regimented day care and stages the toddler equivalent of a jail break. In another, he shows his mettle in a playground showdown, a la High Noon, with the Junkfood Kid.

In other episodes Angelica decides to sue her parents for divorce after they insist she eat some broccoli, and Chuckie adopts a pet, Melville the bug, and has a difficult time accepting it when the bug dies.