Whoopass Stew! was Craig McCracken’s student film that preceded The Powerpuff Girls.
McCracken created Whoopass Stew! while he was a student at the California Institute of the Arts. The short featured an early form of the superpowered girls and established the basic idea of childlike characters fighting monsters with exaggerated cartoon abilities.
The project was later adapted for television through Cartoon Network’s What a Cartoon! initiative. The characters and concept were refined, and the title was changed before the property became The Powerpuff Girls. This development explains why early production history sometimes uses a different name for the franchise.
Whoopass Stew! is not the title of a regular episode of the finished series. It refers to the earlier student-film concept that helped McCracken demonstrate the visual style and comic premise that eventually became a major Cartoon Network property.