SpongeBoy, also spelled Sponge Boy in some drawings, was an early proto-type version of SpongeBob. The reason the name was changed to SpongeBob is because the developers had found out there was already a cleaning product named SpongeBoy. The image shown to the right had been drawn by the series creator Stephen Hillenburg.
Although he was already a cleaning company mascot, there have been pictures of SpongeBoy from 1989 and 1994 with a Nickelodeon stamp, possibly meaning Stephen Hillenburg may have tried to start the show as early as 1994.
