Ice Age

Blue Sky Studios built a durable animated franchise on a simple comic engine: a mismatched herd of a grumpy mammoth, a dim sloth, and a wary saber-tooth, trudging across a prehistoric world that keeps trying to kill them. The films found their warmth in that bickering family dynamic, even as the plots grew sillier with each thaw.

The real mascot, though, is Scrat, the acorn-obsessed squirrel whose silent slapstick shorts run parallel to the main story and often outshine it. That split personality, sentimental herd comedy versus pure cartoon physics, defines the whole property.

It spans feature films, Oscar-nominated theatrical shorts, holiday specials, a streaming series, and tie-in games, which keeps Scrat and the herd visible long after the box-office heyday cooled.

The Ice Age franchise spans 1 series, 2 games, 12 films in the CrossBinge catalog.