Episode 37: Santa, Baby! and The Comic Strip

M hm, weird, weird. Welcome to Ranking on Bass, an off fan joke that became a long running podcast. I'm your host. Mike White joining me is a dancing frog, mister Christashue. On this episode of Ranking on Bass, the most important question and asked will be answered.

Who can do better? Who can God damn it, you fucked it up? Who can do hip hop better than a frog can? Straight frogs? That's yes, very important distinction.

Also with us as a man who brought Christmas spirit to the hood, mister Richard had him. He's a regular white savior. Hey, I'm Santa Baby, not Santa Baby. I'm Santa Baby, Ma Baby. Yes, the pause is important.

I thought you're wondering how I got here. Let me tell you. It's Heptune Street Baby. Oh she didn't quite you know the Yeah, I see what you're doing, but she didn't quite do it. No, right, right, you've heard of She's like, look at the street.

It looks great now. It didn't always look this way. Yeah, now, I'll tell you all back in time, and I'm the magical Partridge from the song. Right. She says that she straight up goes remember that song that you've heard they're talking about me mm hmm, which I don't even think they ever break out the song.

She just throws stuff out and I was just like, Oh, I bet you five golden rings is going to be the last thing she says, Oh my god. But instead she can summon milkers, throw throw milk in Gregory Heinz's face. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about ranking and best. We are coming to the end of the ranking on Bass podcast. There's a couple more episodes ago, but we are scraaping spin in the bottom of the barrel.

We are talking about Santa Baby from two thousand and one, as well as the comic strip. No, not the one with Aid Edmondson and Rick Mail and those guys. We're talking about the comic strip which aired nineteen eighty seven to nineteen eighty eight, and my gosh, I'm surprised they lasted that long. That was an animated anthology of four different cartoons, and we'll talk about it. Probably we'll talk about the commercials I played during those cartoons even more knowing us.

But yeah, let's get into it. Let's talk about some Santa Baby but otherwise known as this is what happens when we just go ape shit with talking animals. Holy cow, Yeah, don't you just don't you just hate all the things we've been doing for the longest time, over and over again. We're gonna do it ten times more than we've ever done it before. Oh, there's a lot of stuff going on in this episode.

Wow, this is how you know your project is animated. They're talking animals and magic. So we've got melody. Songbird is the mistress of ceremonies for this telling us the story. She is the partridge from the Partridge in the Pear Tree, and she's telling this story about how Noel, a songwriter voiced by Gregory Hines, is having trouble writing a big Christmas hit.

I think is what he's looking for, a hit song. He just wants a hit song. Yeah, but I guess you know, if you're you're really smart, you're gonna get that hit Christmas song because they're gonna trap that sucker ound every single year. I'm already being subjected to Mariah Carey. Come on, it's October, folks, right, yes, I mean everybody knows that any songwriter worth their salt is trying to cement themselves in the annals of history by writing a Christmas song, because that's effectively what Rankin and bast did, isn't it.

And that's the weirdly meta thing about this. It's like, it's a movie about a guy who can't write a song that anybody cares about at Christmas time, and I'll tack on the word anymore in reference for Rankin and Bass. Actually, my favorite thing about this is speaking of the idea of this entire character's motivation is to write a Christmas song. Melody songbird goes, I will grant you one wish, daughter of the guy trying to figure out the song, I want my dad to come up with a Christmas song. Well, fuck you, I can't do that.

That's literally the response when she goes, you can have any wish that you want except for that one. Well. It is weird because she he says it'll take too long, and then once and then and then the girl says, well please, and she's like, well okay, and then negotiation skills, yeah, right, and then she sort of embarks on what really is sort of a lengthy plan it because apparently it can't just be okay, I'm going to implant the song in his head's you know, because it's a Christmas story, it's got to be about personal transformation because of the inherent miracle of the season, and as it touches individual people, they become transformed. So she needs him to essentially stop thinking about himself.

And it takes a minute because it sort of looks like like we're not really clear on what his problem is at the beginning, other than he's in a bad mood and he really wants to write this song, and so in that way, he is very self centered, and he sort of is kind of clashing with his wife, clashing with his daughter. And then we learn throughout the episode at a certain point, oh, all these things he's being told to do or forced to do is to get him to stop thinking about himself and start thinking about others. He doesn't start out as Ebenezer screwed. So yeah, he doesn't get visited by three ghosts. It gets visited by a talking bird and a talking cat, though I don't think he can hear the cat talking.

Yeah, and nobody can see the magic of the bird unless she wants you to. It's a modern it's a much more modern story of Christmas angst which is typically around the Christmas season, we do get very wrapped up in Oh my god, Okay, we're we've got to buy presents, We've got our relatives are flying in, or we've got to get on an airplane. There's like a lot of stuff going on that makes you tense and puts you in a bad mood. Maybe work. Maybe you do have to work late into the season or over Christmas, and that puts people in a bad mood and which is again very modern sort of oh that's why Christmas is not good this year.

But there always does come that moment if you're really trying, where you do finally go okay, you know what, I gotta forget all that, Just be in the moment, Just be with your family, Just enjoy yourself, just enjoy the season, find a little grace. That's kind of what this one's about. I think it falls into that category. Well, it definitely feels like something written in the early two thousands for children. As a child who would have been eleven years old when this came out, it feels very much written for the audience.

What's crazy is Suzanne Collins is one of the two names on this aka Susan Collins, who Susanne Collins, who wrote the fucking Hunger Games books. Right, she went from Melody Songbird to Mockingjay. Yeah, what's crazy because again, like I've read the first Hunger Games book. It's fine. I like it.

It's fine, right, Like I mean, it's more approachable ya fiction than some of it's more adult than it is young adult. I'm surprised by how lackluster this is given her again her writing abilities as an author, because it is just it kind of just feels. I don't think the word pandury is the right word, but it doesn't do anything to set itself apart from like anything else that was around at the time, or even the best of Rank and stuff. Other than it having a somewhat updated animation style. It's kind of a weird mix of the two.

The characters are very different, more contemporary, you know, choices are being made, but then the environment looks shockingly poor like it used to in the you know, seventies and eighties animations that they were doing on Ranks that we've again talked about before as not being the best examples of the things that they were doing. I would really ask a question at the beginning of this, which is why isn't this just AnimagiC? Like you know, like, well, okay, So in the book that has got to be it might cost too much, it might have taken too long. In the book they tell the story about how the genesis of the project was, we were going to go to Coca Cola and we're gonna say, Coca Cola, this is going to be your Christmas special next year, and they and they pitched it and and I guess, uh, Arthur Rankin, you know, was like, okay, but the only way we're going to do this is if there we'll fly to Atlanta.

We'll go to and I've been there, by the way, I've been to the World of Coke in Atlanta. It's a big I mean, it's really it's kind of fun. You go, it's like a coke museum and then at the end you get to drink all the coke you want and go through the coke gift shop and you didn't realize you needed, you know, uh, Coca Cola pajamas, but man, when you're there, you feel like you do. Anyway, they wanted to go to this office, and Arthur was like, we'll go We'll go to Atlanta. We'll go meet with you.

We'll pitch, but we need an answer in the room. This can't you guys take six months because we got to get to work right away. If you want this, we got to get on it. So we go, we pitch, you tell us in the room, yeah or nay. They went, they pitched, They got a ya.

So they set to work at you know, breakneck speed. I think one of the things that distinguishes it. Obviously, and the Rank and Bass specials have been slowly flowing their way toward this, but it's a predominantly African American cast and voice cast. You have Gregory Hines, Patti LaBelle, Vanessa Williams, and earth A Kit and they're great. They're really great.

You know. That's what I would say. That's kind of what makes this whatever amount of fun we have watching it, it's because of them. Yeah. The when I was watching it with my wife, she goes, wow, this is really different.

I was like, Yeah, it's almost like rankin and Bass is making up for the fact that it's been shockingly white this whole time. It's a white Christmas for a decade. Yeah, and you know, again, we wouldn't commented all other than the fact that you know, there were episodes of Ranking and Bass stuff where they were verging on and were essentially racist or at these playing interracial stereotypes. And some of this does too. I mean, you know it's set on Heptune Street and it's like this, you know, it's like, what does this do?

The right thing? The animated special, Like, I just it's it's weird because again, everything else Ranking in Bass has done has been so sanitized. And again you use the term whitewashed. I wouldn't say that far, but again it's very undiverse in terms of and you know, Santa Claus is black in this special, like, which is a thing I've actually not seen in most things, if anything, frankly, and I was like, wow, okay, that's a that's a really important choice to make, and I think it's one that does work here. It's just I wish this wasn't two thousand and one.

Well it was, let me two thousand and ten for the Twitter verse to go crazy, Oh right, black Santa in two thousand and one being being diverse and being you know, sort of conscious of diversity. What that meant was white guys bringing people of color into their cast, but it was predominantly still white guys and a small smattering of white women writing and producing and directing the material. If this was Redone today, it wouldn't be Suzanne Collins. It would be it would be there would be an African American director, writer, they you know, I mean it would be. It would be if that's what was going to be represented on the screen, then it would be people bringing that representation.

Who who are in that? You know, who are of that? Who are of the race that is being represented? In other words, okay, it would not be a ranking in Bass's idea of what black people are going to do in you know, part of New York City. Yeah it you know, two white folks writing a African American led Christmas special.

The optics of that are a little strange. There's there's yes, But I guarantee you at the time, right, no, you were. You were so forward thinking and it's fine, and they were for every time agreed that was the best you had. And Gregory Hines and all of them came in and went, well, at least they're doing something right well. And that's the thing that I always try to reinforce is the idea of like where we are now is such a far step from that, and it has to be viewed within the context of how it happened, not necessarily why.

We can't control the why, but this is how it happened, this is the way it was, and it's thankfully moved far. I mean far is going to be defined by whoever the fuck is saying it, but we're farther down the road than we were, and it's always measured in inches, not in miles. The thing that's kind of unfortunate about this entire special is it doesn't real if it has African American characters. I again, three of us are white, so we're not able to define it any more than they are. But I don't think it really speaks to the African American experience the characters to be right, And that's just kind of like, again, doesn't feel good, doesn't feel bad.

It just is what it is. But we have to just that is what this is. The color of the character skins doesn't dictate the story. It kind of feels like they want to. And I'm glad that there's no white Savior character either.

No. I think it affects the style of the music, right, which I think they said, okay, well, this should be hip hop, this should be you know, soul, this should be you know, there's a little bit of rap in there for two thousand and one, and it's like, oh, okay, so that's that's where that is. I will say that Coca Cola because one of the best parts of the Coca Cola Museum is this little theater and so as you're wandering through, you can just sort of take a little you know, right, turn into this little theater area and it's this on an endless lay, this sort of a document not even a documentary, just like, okay, here are the Coca Cola commercials throughout history, throughout the world. So it'll be like, you know, Portugal nineteen ninety, you know, and you'll see the commercial or America, you know, nineteen seventy one, back when it was you know, I want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

I want to buy the world a code. That was one of Don Draper's best But yeah, Don Draper, you right that one. Oh okay. But they have been typically extremely diverse from the beginning. I mean, I think they can claim that in terms of they're advertising now advertising of course, is by its own nature sort of predatory.

It's going to try to appeal to everyone, and Coca Cola was like, well, we want people. We don't just want white people buying our product, so we're going to have people of all cultures represented. I'm surprised that the guy who gave us The King and I, which we thought, oh my god, ago as He and Collins were a writing duo for several things, because they worked on Generation Oh, the Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, which is interesting that that was a Asian girl led series from nineteen ninety eight that I didn't know existed. But I'm glad that he didn't play into the racial stereotypes like he did with The King and I. So at at least the talking animals here are not too offensive, and neither are the villains.

Though the biggest villain of the piece basically is the Scrooge character. I thought that was kind of nice that they made the I guess he's the landlord or something, maybe even to the back he's like the superintendlord of the building. Yeah, he doesn't like animals, he doesn't like bad guy, and I can't blame them when they have such a weird mix of animals that he keeps chasing, including a lobster which is just running around the streets, a giant pig, a giant pig, yeah, and a lizard of some sort. And I think, guy, you know your dogs and cats stuff, including the cat that forms a bond with him and really melts his heart, makes him into, you know, a better version of Ebenezer Scrooge. Yeah, yeah, this one is very low stakes.

This special is just for fun. No, you're not going to get scared. Like like when I was a little kid and I watched Rudolph, I got scared. The bumble was scary. I was afraid of the magician in Frosty, you know Frosty, the snowman.

I'm like, he's killing Frosty. He's locking him in a greenhouse. This is fucked up. There's nothing like that here. This is We're here to have a good time.

A guy needs to write a song. There's a lot of fun animals. The bad guys aren't so bad. The good guys are all really good. He's in a good marriage, he's not a mean guy.

It's like, this is not supposed to stress anyone out. I think the real missed opportunity in the special is having the main character be the daughter because she is an uninteresting character and again, you're just a precocious little child who we like, give I mean, she even has that like annoying child patois that uh that they I mean they trot this. They trot the little child like cute, precocious child thing out immediately and I just, oh, for fuck's sake, Rankin and bast has not done that for the most part. They have not gone to the well of like, oh, I need help get ye Like no, most of the time the children have more autonomy than that. I mean a lot of the times.

In some of the earlier specials, the children were the ones helping to resolve the outcome. Here, she just goes, I want my daddy to have a wish, and then again Patty LaBelle the pie slinging Bird goes, fuck you, I can't do that wish. Which is the weirdest part of this for me is again like we're not really clear as to what the rules are with any of this, and how strange the special gets at the end where all of a sudden you think it's over and it's like, oh, there's ten minutes left. All of a sudden it becomes Tim Allen in the Santa Claus I out of nowhere, Yeah, completely randomly, and I was like, wait a second, so she was an agent of Santa Claus this entire time. It almost feels like that's like in a contract somewhere.

It's like the final minutes have to be Santa's ride, and however you want to get there is up to you, but you got to get there. I really found I mean, I didn't find this special to be that I don't know grading, but I did not feel like it justified the length that it had, which is forty four minutes. And again that just comes back to this whole idea of like, all right, we're used to the ranking and bass style of storytelling. This is very much in line with that. But I don't know, it feels like it just can't come out and say what it's trying to say very quickly.

It seems like it just wants to do everything it's that these specials have done before, but this time it's in two thousand and one as opposed to nineteen sixty five, you know, and then it's like we've seen this again. It's not a problem. But it's weird because I'm telling you with with especially with Christmas stuff, but I mean, for me personally, I'm going to say, with everything, if you don't nail theme early on, and if you don't nail the main character's issue early on and just say it, then we're all kind of sitting around going, well, what are we supposed to care about? Like I actually think they should have done a little more about going, hey, you're kind of ruining Christmas because you're so obsessed about this thing and there's people in the world who have much bigger problems, and then we need him to go well, it doesn't matter.

All I care about are my problems and the reason I need to do this. Because that's also unclear. It's like they live in a pretty nice apartment. It looks like it's not like you don't understand. If I don't have come up with a hit song, we're out in the street with the rest of those losers outside the window, we're gonna be in worse shape than those animals.

Like there's it's as didactic as that is, it actually helps an audience go, well, okay, at least I know what the game is about. And what the game board is and what I'm hoping for along the way. Otherwise, I'm like when they turn him into Santa Claus and they PLoP them down in the street and that's the end of Act one. Yes, there's a part of me that knows what it's going to be about, but there's a part of me going, why am I caring about any of this? And why is this particularly difficult for him?

It's like, Okay, you're dressed up as Santa, so who cares for embarrassed? And he's like, oh, I can't let my wife see me like this and keeps trying to hide from them, right, and then she shows up and loves it. She's like, this is hot. You're my Santa Baby. I'm like, this is the greatest thing that ever happened.

I keep that suit in the closet upstairs for date night. I think the issue with any of these things boils down to setting it in the real world, because almost all these Rankin and Bass specials have not been set in what we again would consider some sort of like relatable reality. It's understood that when the Bumble and you know, Hermie are existing, that they're existing in a fantasy world. This is meant to be New York City in the early two thousand again. Like right, it all rings very hollow because all of these Ranking and Bass specials don't take place in they're other than the ones that I guess.

I guess the first Christmas snow again is kind of the real world. But again they're not interacting with real world problems. It's more of like the problems of the season. This is not the problems of the season. This is like a real life problem that's now becoming like a Christmas story because you could just say, well, I don't know how to write Christmas music, or you don't know how to write music period Christmas or not, and it's like, well, then why does this have to be set at Christmas?

Oh, because it's a Rankin and Bass thing and they're known for Christmas stuff. That's I mean, ultimately, they're known for Christmas stuff. This is set at Christmas. Right. The other way to go, which I think could have worked for this is the old you don't believe in magic.

We got to get you to believe in Christmas magic, so he could be the one going honey, we gotta tell her it's not Santa Claus. I mean, she's ten years old. We got to let her know, and she thinks that some magic is going to happen and find a home for all these animals and magic. Just hey, look, we're in New York. We're in not the best part in New York.

There's no magic. And it's like, well, honey, but not even at Christmas. Can't we just let her dream a little longer? No? I think we gotta tell her, you know, we do that, and then the magic bird comes along, and then I have a wish and then by the end he's like, you know what, there is magic.

If anything proved it, it's that goddamn bird. And I wrote a song and suddenly my fortunes have turned around. You know what. I was wrong? Always believe in magic, honey.

I think that almost would have worked better for this, for exactly all the things that happened in this special. Here earlier pointing about the snapping AnimagiC, I don't know why they didn't hire the company that was doing the PJS, because they were working at this exact same time. I think the PJS ended in two thousand and one, and that would have been perfect. And I think they were also a Fox TV series, because we forget that Fox in the pretty much all through the nineties was very African American centric. I mean, that was the channel that In Living Color was on, and it just kind of started from there and took off, which was great.

I mean, it was a really nice thing to be able to have African American programming. Yeah, and then that again, that's why to me, it's just like, this feels like an attempt to cash it. It doesn't really feel like I don't know. And again, but having Patti LaBelle and Gregory Hines and Minessa Williams obviously helps. I mean, I'm not going to say at least there's no voice of Paul Freeze, but it would have felt odd in this if he had been I mean again, if he had been one of the main characters in the world that he's been before.

Uh. Yeah, I don't know. There's part of this that feels like decision by committee. I don't know. It's this feels like it's lost the soul of Ranking and Bass and it is very much like a corporate y thing that, oh, we're gonna try to make a modern Christmas classic.

This came out December seventeenth, two thousand and one, the same year Nine to eleven had like it's you know, like it's weird because it's a New York thing, and then nine to eleven happens the same year, And I don't, I mean, I don't know why this isn't a modern Christmas classic. I have my druthers, and we've kind of already mentioned a little bit of it. But isn't that the intent of any Christmas thing by Rankin and Bass is to try and recapture that, you know, being being part of the zeitgeist the way that they were in the sixties and seventies, and this just they swing really hard. But man, I don't, I just don't their heart it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like that the heart wasn't in the right place.

It's just I don't understand why some decisions were made that kind of makes us feel a little bit more hollow than most of the rank and In bat specials we've seen. Yeah, especially when you do have a ton of musical talent, voice talent, and it's not I mean again, it's not it's not hard to watch, it's just a little it's not as engaging as it should be, and the music is nice, and I'm my understanding is that it you know, you can listen to the soundtrack on Spotify, like the soundtrack exists as a thing that you can, you know, put into your Christmas Eve mix or whatever. But but I didn't. I didn't stumble upon any song that I loved so much that I was like, Oh, that's the one that's what I want to hear again and again.

So I'm gonna pull that and put it in my mix, you know. And it's definitely not the song that Noel's trying to write throughout because heart and soul of Christmas again, it verges on kind of being offensive, like again like oh I gotta get that soul back into Christmas. Like this is kind of sort of a little bit not great, Like I don't know, it's just it's not a memorable song. So the moment I stopped thinking about it as a song worth listening to, I just started listening to it for what it feels like, which is an attempt at cashing in on what we've been known for being successful. This is this is so corporate y, even more corporate feeling than the King and I felt, which again we kind of roasted that for having the talking animals and that like this just has this checks almost every single box of like things that Rankin and Bass has done.

That's just like, wow, congratulations for trying. But well, I would I mean, to me, this leaves far less of a bad taste in my mouth than King and I. And I love King and I. I mean, that's music that I love. I would say, I would say, if you're if you're out there and you love Ranking In Bass and you and you're kind of interested in like exploring deeper into their Christmas shelf, you know, give it a shot.

You may you may find it charming, and you may go you know what. I like it. I like the songs. I don't mind having this on in the background while I'm making cookies. Well, I would not necessarily warn anyone off of this.

I will say good luck finding it, though, because Rankin and Basques clearly doesn't have any interest in making it available the way that they've made oh essentially everything else available. Well, you can get it on Amazon Prime, I know, but but I mean, like in terms of like they're not touting this. This is not in any of the box sets that they release with anything else. It's just a forgotten thing that, yeah, like you said, you can go watch it on Amazon Prime, but it's not being mentioned in the same conversation as Oh, look, I've got the bumble merchandise on my desk or you know, right myser tiki mugs type thing. Like, there's nothing from this that is even memorable to the point of Ranking and Bass attempting to make it memorable.

And look, now in twenty twenty three, I kind of feel like this might have you know, Patty Leabell is probably as big or bigger than she's ever been, and she's a main part of this. I mean, most of the people in this at least I guess Gregory Hines has passed away, but Vanessa Williams and Patty Leabelle are both around. So I don't know, Rankin and Bass, could you know, whoever owns the rights to this could take advantage of it, because again it you know, it is still an African American led Christmas special and it's not like there are still a lot of those at the moment either. Well, it's funny, it's like there's there's just a handful of things that are classics and then the giant slag pile that are not that are you know, range from okay to unbearable.

But it's the same thing with Charles Schultz. It's the same thing with Charlie Brown. There's the there's the Triumvirate. You know, h Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Those are the three Charlie Brown specials you want to watch, and frankly, you basically just want to watch the Christmas one.

And yet there's a million others. They made a bunch and they're not terrible, They're just not It's not Charlie Brown Christmas, so they're not No one's no one's pushing them, no one's worried about. Hey, you're not watching you know, you're you know, it's time to go to camp Charlie Brown. Oh, let's dig deep. Let's talk about comic strip.

The comic strip. Oh boy, I'm so excited to watch this. Mike, Well, I was more excited about we. I mean, I think we all collected, just the two of you. I was not.

I was dreading this like like I was taking poison and I want to and I just want to say it right now. I was correct. Yeah, this is a collection of four different cartoons, and then inside of those sections they have multiple episodes, which I was very surprised about. I thought it was going to be like a half an hour episode for segment, but no, it's like two or three. Oddly, the one that we watched there are credits after the first episode of Tiger Sharks, and then there are more Tiger Sharks on that same recording, which is odd Tiger Sharks, karate Cat, Street Frogs, the Mini Monster, where do we start?

Whant to start? Mini Monsters talking about these two disgusting shit children that go to camp, which it's very similar to the Monsters for me as far as these kids. These two kids are very unfazed by everyone around them being monsters, which is kind of nice. Actually, I take that back, Well, yeah, I guess that was correct. But yeah, so they just want to be at camp because they hate their life and they want to be away from their parents, their parents that never remove the objects in front of their faces, which is kind of nice.

And yeah, they send these kids to camp and then they have adventures with like Dracula Junior, Frankenstein's son. I don't know how that works. Dracula Sorry, Wolfman's Son creature from the Black Lagoons son, the Mummy son, the Invisible Man's son. They all had sons. Yeah, nobody had a daughter except for Jinx the which yeah, even even Merlin has his son here.

Some of the names are really creative and some of them are really lazy, like Racky Jackie or Frankie Wolfy, Racky Wolfy, Frankie Mommy Mumbo Mumbo, yeah, lagoony. Like I think what the Invisible Man's son is named Blanco. I believe it is his name because invisibly he just doesn't ring. This doesn't ring as well as Blanco does. That's a weird camp counselor guy who just announces things in the distance.

I guess, okay, it's uh yeah, I mean this. Julian P. Gardner wrote this, which I think isn't that? Isn't that Jules Bass Again? Isn't that his pseudonym?

Once again? You're right, yeah, it's not siout this on the last episode, remember, because there was a I don't remember the last episode. That's not on me. What was it that we watched the last episode? I go, I have myself partially lobottomized.

Watch another watching some of this content would lead me to believe we've probably all already been lobottomized partially, but I'm pretty sure that that's Jules Bass again it does yeah, yeah, so it's yeah because Julian Jardenaiir or whatever he directed whatever you watched last time. Yeah, the Many Monsters is is shockingly disappointing. I think it's the one I'm disappointed by the most because it was the one I felt like had the most potential, just given the setup of like, oh, you're gonna get to see all of the it's like animania or not animated like fucking tiny tunes, but universal monsters. Like how does that not sound like a good idea? Oh let me show you.

Yeah, yeah, this is like we want. I mean again, the only way I can sort of reconcile at least the first three Karate Cat Many Monsters and and not Thundercat Frogs Street Frogs, is that like, what age is this aimed at? Like this is not eight, this is not twelve year olds. This is aimed at like eight year olds. I mean it's very young.

So it's like the monsters aren't gonna be scary, They're gonna be goofy. All the jokes are going to be very like the oldest, oldest ponds and the oldest turns of phrase, because this is this is mad Monster Party again. Yeah, it's what it I mean, like, it's what it feels. That's all I can think of is Mad Monster Party again. But even like not even as edgy somehow, yeh, like this has to just be like non offensive.

There's no Phyllis Diller in this one. Yeah. Yeah. If I were twelve, I would be bored by this, I think. I mean, it's so hard to know.

I'm fifty six. I'm watching this and I'm going, okay, I know my physical reaction to this. But if I was eight years old, would I be like, no, this is cool? No, no, not me. I would have had to be four years old to tolerate this.

By eight, I was watching our long dramas on network television. I would have called bullshit on this, or just watching The Paper Chase. If you were watching The Paper Chase, yeah no, But I was watching The Night Stalker when I was eight years old. It's true. We do know that for a fact.

Yes, yeah, we see. If I'm watching the Nightstalker and then you show me this bullshit, I'm gonna be like, fuck, no, where's Vincenzo? Right right? Well, that kind of is. I mean, you mentioned the big problem here, and the problem is like all of these comic things are fine separately, but when you mash them together.

I have really no idea who is meant to enjoy this show because this first one is for children, and then Street Frogs. I think it's the most shameless of shameless, which is, oh boy, it's just teenage U ninja turtles, but really, really, lay, I mean, it's it's not even Battle Toads worthy. No, oh no. And look, TMNT is you know. TMNT has been around since what eighty four, so this is three years post the start of the comics, but the cartoon was not out yet.

I it was because the first TMNT movie came out in the very early nineties, and I was playing the arcade game at the theater I worked at, and that was nineteen ninety Okay, so it was eighty seven. This was the same year as the cartoons, so they probably didn't even see the cartoon yet, they just knew that it was coming out. These all just feel like derivative ripoffs of things that already exist. That's what this really feels like just like like Tiger Sharks is clearly ThunderCats, karate Cat is for Hong Kong food, Yeah yeah, and then yeah, Street Frogs is TMNT and Mini Monsters, I guess is like their attempt at a Looney Tunes style of cartoon where it's like, oh, we've got all these recognizable characters being zany and wild, except it's not fun.

It's just so boring, like how did you fuck up Mini Monsters this badly? Because it's just like, well, it's just enough that we have these recognizable characters. That's what it feels like. Yeah, no one's breaking a sweat making these things, and you can you can see it. They are, They're they're phoning it in.

And yeah, I mean the frogs I didn't get at all. I like the frogs. Actually, if we're talking the things that were the best of the four, the Frogs are the best one because it's just it's so bizarre and nonsensical and strange that it's it looks like TMNT but that it ends up being happy days, Like is that not what it is? Like all of a sudden, you've got these rocking frogs who are performing music together, like what it's like Squiggy and the squig Tones. Like there's they're they're not fighting, they're not doing karate, they're singing songs on the street.

Does the street Frogs? Well, they're like the Jackson's and the Osmond's. Yeah, there's just a bunch of plucky kids trying to get a record contract and they and you know, they hang out at a diner where the guy who owns the diner is a complete degenerate dickhead. He is a turtle and these are frogs. Yeah, that's very never the Twain shall meet true.

Yeah, because I mean, frogs are amphibians and turtles are reptiles. You don't want to mix those too. It's like the Bloods and the crips. It's true. But I did want to mention something in Many Monsters that we didn't get a chance to mention, which is a child being turned into a cat two minutes into it and then just being like, oh, hey, you know what, like nobody gives a shit anymore, so you're a cat now for like a while, it's just like, what this horrifying?

Now it's horrifying too, Like it went from like kind of being fun too. Now your brother's a cat. What are you going to do about it? The steaks are just very low in this show, like the Alien Invasion one where it's like this little Marvin the Martian who's just like, these people are idiots, I'm going to take over this whole place, and just keeps calling the yeah, the chief Alien, and just keeps talking about how fat the alien is. I'm like, what it's that?

And then there's no interaction between the kids and the monsters. It's like, well, shouldn't this show be about how the kids and the monsters are developing a friendship, you know, together and learning from each other. It's like, oh, you guys are weird because you're normal, you know, like you said the monsters things, but we thought you guys were weird because you're monsters. Oh, but over this summer we're going to become friends. But in that episode they don't interact at all.

The monsters are totally unaware that there's an invasion going on. The boy and the girl are they do something. I guess they sneak into the UFO and kind of re engineer it to malfunction, and then they physically threaten the alien and the alien flies away. In a broken ufo in a huff in a huff yeah, and if he doesn't leave sooner or he'll leave in a minute in a huff he's flying around it an h ufo, yes, huffo. Yeah.

And the third ones about a belly ache that they have. I'm just like, what what are we doing here? This? Yeah? It was it was all very rough, but yeah, Battle Toads was not a favorite, even though Yeah, I like the idea of uh it being happy days with sorry street frogs.

They don't engage in any violence. No, nobody can hip hop better than a frog, It's true, which is something weird. I never knew that before, Right, Who can do hip hop better than a frog? Can? No one?

No hippity hop all the time because they're hip hop and frogs they hip and hop to move around. Richard, you mentioned how old you are right now, and I'd like to point out because we we'd mentioned we were going to talk about commercials. The commercial that stood out to me is Wilford Brimley's fifty three years old. In that commercial for fifty three years old, he looks like he's ninety years old selling, OK, well, I'm all make some oatmeal for your sister. I'll take you about thirty seconds.

What a magical thing. How how quaint it is to be excited to make instant oatmeal? Am I right? Quaker oats now brought to you by Wilford Ridley? Yeah, yeah, well you could do.

He was very popular in the eighties. He was in you know, a few movies that you would have known him for. And then yeah, I mean, you know it is funny though, because it's these are commercials that were playing in nineteen eighty seven. I graduated college in nineteen eighty eight. Wow, so you're live with these?

I got it. Mean this was not prime cartoon viewing time for me. I was twenty years past. That tell me you did get drunk on a Saturday morning or hungover and we're watching the comic strip with your college roommate. Dude, Let me just tell you too depressing facts.

I lived at home when I went to college, and I never drank. Wow, that is depressing. Third depressing fact, you did watch this. That's exactly what I was up early watching this while I did my sit ups. You know.

The crazy thing is is what we watched is like two hours because it had the thirty minutes of commercials like you mentioned, Mike, Uh, it didn't stop here. It ran for a whole year of this, Like why rank in it? Like the you know what, Richard, here's the answer to your question. Kids in the eighties must have liked it because it ran for a year. Well that doesn't mean anything.

I know for a year they delivered a year. Yeah, but that had nothing to do with it. Zero people could have watched it, and it's like it doesn't matter. I don't think zero pier watching it. Though I don't think zero people were watching it.

Well, it was weird because you can look at those comments on the YouTube video and it's like, oh, this theme song is burned by rad Yeah, yeah, that's okay. That's what I'm getting at. Like I think this was good enough. I just don't understand, Like I don't understand how it could have been good enough? Is more the problem?

Like at the time there were better things like ThunderCats, like Transformers, like things that that if you were watching this, it's like, why aren't you just watching ThunderCats and transform But I'll tell you why because you didn't have that option, right, you are thinking if you wake up on a Saturday morning, you can just you know, wander through cable and play the show that you want. But in nineteen eighty seven you still couldn't do that. That was way off. So there was nothing else. You either watched that religious services or major League sports, And if you're an eight year old kid on a Sunday morning, those are your choices.

So you're not gonna watch the seven hundred Club or the fucking you know, faith healer Ernest Angley or whatever the bullshit. So you're gonna watch this. You've got no other choice. You're a captive audience. You're gonna eat cereal, and you do want to see those toy commercials.

You want to know, Hey, I want to get little Sister. I want s'mores cereal. That's what I want. Oh, I crunch. I'm still just all about that light bright.

I never had one of those. One of his kids. I just had. I had so many life rights. We burned through those things.

Oh these are products you could never have now. It's like, well and an incredibly hot light. The lights up to the point where you'll go blind or burn your hand, and then and then we're gonna give you a giant bag of chokeable plastic darts that you fram into a peg board. I mean these things were not that, there's no but I owned them. They were all over and boy, and you knew when your parents were vacuuming and they got they started sucking up a few of those little pegs.

Oh boy, oh you heard about it. Let me tell you Mom and dad on their Sunday morning. Yeah, they weren't too they weren't too cool about that. I was very fortunate because around Detroit on the wxo N channel twenty, they would play a mix of boys, Abin and Costello and the Blondie movies. So I had those on Sunday morning.

Otherwise, yeah, I was sunk. Sundays sucked for TV. Yeah, Sundays were bad. We had Abin, Costello and Bowery Boys on Saturday Sunday. We had Davy and Goliath.

You guys know what that is, right? Oh yeah, yeah, that was the anti magic stop motion cloak. That was dumb theater doing that. Yeah, but it was the Latter day Saints. It was Mormons, and it was we're teaching religious Christian lessons.

You know, Davy, No, Davy, you shouldn't do that, right, Davey's you know the new kid at school. Everyone's making fun of him because he's in a wheelchair. So Davy makes fun of him too. But his talking dog, which is a sign of Satan, must be the son of Sam. Why don't you, yes, don't, don't make fun of your friends.

Light them on three six and we'll take them out in one shot. So you've got that. Then you also had a show, Mike, do you remember this thing called Make a Wish? I don't know if I do this hippie guy look it up. There was some hippie guy and the show made no sense.

It wasn't even a show. It was a guy with a guitar or something, and his whole thing was welcome to mate. It was very hippie. Make a Wish could have been a local thing because we had things like hot fudge, which I don't think made it past like Toledo. That was oh I never had hot fudge.

Yeah. That was great because there was a local comedian and a local singer songwriter and they had puppets. It was There was Seymour the Sea Monster. I think he was well, now wait a second, Seymour the Sea Monster. That's oh no, that's Sigmund.

I'm thinking about Sigmund Yeah, I know, Seymour was a different guy. And speaking of hippies, he had like like a black top hat that he wore and it had like, you know, stuff around the top of it and everything. Yeah, he was very much a hippie creation. But yeah, the guy who was the singer, he ended up doing a couple of local commercial jingles, so you would hear him every time, like the Dietrich first commercial would run d Trick Foods. Do you guys have Dusty's tree House?

Does not sound right? Oh my god? Did you have New Zoo Review? Yes? Yes, nows is good news.

Yes, it's the New Zoo Review and it's coming. Help. Yeah, with Doug and Emmy Joe, every day is a different show. I was thinking of the Great Space Coaster Get on board. That wasn't gery.

Oh yeah, that was probably a little you're slightly older than me, I think so. I think that would have slightly older than everybody. Well, since you guys are older than me, can you answer the question as to what happened to the other two gentlemen in the Cinnamento's Crunch family that are no longer visible anymore? Because oh they did you notice that in the Cinnamento's Crunch commercial there are two men who are dancing around with the Cinnamento's crunchmen that are no longer used in advertising. Yeah, that was odd.

I don't know what what are you talking about? What is this? What crunch as Wendell p Crunch or whatever? The fuck? The guy would like the hat and the glasses now, but in the eighties there were clearly two other gentlemen who were dancing around with him, like similar to the key blerels, clearly, but they're no longer used in advertising.

It's just the one. Actually, I guess they don't even use him anymore. It's just a little it's just the little pieces that dance around. Now. Did you guys know that Karate Cat had twenty six episodes that were mixed by Roy Yokelsen for Antland Productions.

I did know that. I did know that. You knew that because it shows up on screen a few times while we're watching Karate Cat. Yeah, yeah, YouTube wanted us to know that. I don't know, but there was an other weird thing.

And I'm not complaining, but we only got it. Feels like we only got one karate Cat and then we got a ass load of the tiger Sharks. Yeah. I was actually kind of disappointed we didn't get to see more Karate Cat, not because it was good, but because I would like to have seen if the other segment was better than the one that they gave us. Yeah.

Well, it's like, is every week just going to be you know, this gangster cat with his divorced wife and they're angry at each other, and Karate Cat gets mixed up in the middle. I'm like, some kids would love I know, I know it's the cat and he's a private eye and he's facing off against gangsters. It's very much a film noir but with cats. Oh, but he's clearly stolen. He's stuck in between these a divorced couple, right, they're angry at each other.

The woman looks like a lesbian from what I'm saying, hair with that haircut or is that the other? Is that like the other bad gangster? Is she the ex wife the other bad gangster? Oh? Yeah, and she is.

She's there's she is like stocky, a stocky cat. And then there's two sort of slim, willowy cats oh right, who stand around behind her. So I don't know. You might be right, I don't. They never really got into the reasons they got divorced.

I don't know if she discovered something about her sexuality. I don't know. They didn't get into it. Okay, she probably wasn't a huge fan of fruit wrinkles. Okay, there was a commercial when we were watching wrinkles because you know, we couldn't call them raisins.

You were referring to the male fruit wrinkle. Yes, I mean that's that's got to be the other reason they weren't selling it was because the fruit wrinkle sounds like a ball sack. That is what it sounds like. I mean, look at euphemism don't touch your fruit wrinkle at the table. I genuinely was all about the tiger sharks really, just because it's so freking bizarre, like seeing these quote unquote normal people being transformed into like when the woman's head turned into the octopus and when the fat guy turned into the walrus.

I'm just like, wow, Okay, signed me up. And that the plan is same as what taro, and that they're being plagued by this hammerhead shark guy with his very gollumn esque henchman. I was. I was there for it. Man, I loved it.

The Gollum esque Henchman is my favorite part of Tiger Shark. That is just the Gollumn design so late. It's not just needed brother Theodore being like Hobbits is. Yeah, it is every single eighties cartoon cliche rolled into one. They have cool transforming things, they transform themselves.

There's a couple of them in the group. They're all of different sizes. This does something that tmn T well, I guess April O'Neil, but TMNT up until you know, the early two thousands didn't have a female member. They have a female member, which is closer to a underca. Yeah.

It just it just feels all very derivative, but not like in a bad way. I mean, it was the most cartoony of any of the thing. It was the most thing that had things happening because uh yeah, Street Frogs was pretty as fun as the theme song was, and the theme song might be the best part. It was very boring. At least you couldn't say Tiger Sharks was boring.

It was just like you said, actually fucking like a fever dream. Oh, it totally was. And it had that look it was like a very distinct look like I will sow Japan animation. Yeah, it was like we're a fighting force of some kind, and there were ten thousand things like it, and I will I'll give them that that that as we moved through the two hour block of cartoons, like if this is how it aired, it started with the youngest and then and then got maybe a little older, and then a little older and then a little older. So that as you know, the kids who are away at six am as opposed to the kids who are awake at you know, eight thirty, it's like, okay, the one you're watching at nine thirty am is aged up a little bit compared to the one that was on an eight am.

So there may have been some interior logic to that, and it's more about, you know, well, we're you know, this is serious. We're not goofing around and saying funny things. We're fighting the evil whatever. So I but here's my problem though, because it was the fourth of four, I had been so beaten down and demoralized. I know, yeah, that I couldn't take it.

I'm like, I'm done, I'm out. If I just like watched one a day, I'm sure I could have come to the the the Tiger Sharks with the feeling of, Okay, this sucks, but at least it's insane well, and I really felt like I was having a fever dream watching it, and for me, by the end of it, I was like, Okay, I mean, if any of the things deserve to be their own thing outside of this, it's probably tiger Sharks because it has the most liability. But then again, like like you mentioned, Richard, and like you kind of already alluded to, Mike, like there was so much other shit like this going on. It's like, how are you going to compete other than oh, it's underwater and their dolphins and sharks and walrus like as opposed to anthropomorphic you know, frogs even in this show's own case, or anthropomorphic turtles like, And that's the thing.

It's it's there's nothing about this that's anything unique. It's just it's different, which is the is the benefit. I don't understand how they showed this because this ninety minute thing was in syndication, but then the show was only for twenty minutes, so was it just I guess it was one of each and there are four, so they only had one an episode of each of them, so those other ones were short. Yeah, like like Mini Monsters was not twenty minute episodes, where it was three three episodes stuck in there, yeah right, well three ten minute episodes or eight minute episodes with commercials. And I wonder if this show, if you watched the original version, if it was like three minute Mini Monsters episode a five minute and like each one kind of had a differing length as well to take advantage of it.

Because does a Mini Monster's episode need to be more than five minutes. No, I don't even think it needs to be that long, but this necessitates it because it's trying to actually tell a story and give the characters a moment to do things. But I think to your point, Richard, you know, I watched it all at once, and then I came back to it and rewatched each of the segments, it doesn't really help because you have to, like you said, keep in you know, mind that people were watching this all at one chunk, So if you got to the fourth one, you probably were like, I'm kind of done. No matter, you know, again, regardless of how you watched it, But I mean, watching it all at once will not make that any easier.

But that's the that's the joke of what television watching was up until, you know, the turn of the century, which was you watched what was on when it was on commercials at all, commercials at all, and you didn't have a chore. So again, if you're a kid, you're you're you know, and you're twelve, you're gonna sit through an hour of Karate Cat to get to the cool tiger sharks that you like. And then the other kids are going to watch up until the point where they just simply lose interest and it's like, well, I like the frogs, but I don't care about the criminal cats, So I guess I have to go go play with my light bright in my room alone and burn myself. That's when you're using your what was that the oven?

The big well easy, yes, or the creepy croller machine too. Oh, the vacuum or the vacuum form machine as well. Those were all hyper dangerous things that have been toned down in recent years. Yes, well, there were those color forms or whatever that you had to stick an oven. They would shrink shrinkings.

Those were shrinkings. Yeah, I had those. I had those as a kid. I had those as a kid. They still had that.

Chris, did they have super elastic bubble plastic when you were a kid? No, Mike, do you remember super elastic bubble plastic? I remember the name for sure. Yeah. You would get you'd get this goo like out of a tube that I'm sure was you know, just ninety percent cancer, and you'd squeeze it out of a tube and it was this like weird sticky plastic and you'd put a glob of hard straw and then yeah, weird paced that.

Yeah, that stuff smelled very toxic, like like you I thought. I was like, it's like, oh, but don't breathe it in too much or you'll get I don't breathe it in as you're expected to blow into the end of a straw that it's connected to. Yes, I mean you're interacting with it through your lungs and it's called super elastic bubble plastic, and yeah, that and then but they were kind of like the bubble had some solidity to it, like you could sort of like, oh, you could sort of move like catch it and then throw it. You know. It was weird.

Yeah, I think I probably grew up on a lot of similar things to not y'all, but like the cartoons and stuff like, I don't know, kids today are watching cartoons and stuff like they used to, which is perfectly fine. I mean, YouTube exists and you can do whatever the hell you want and watch whatever you want. But I do remember being beholden to the you know, Saturday Morning offerings. I mean again, I think after after a certain age, that's not a thing anymore for a certain group of people. But I think my generation can can empathize with that feeling.

Yeah, sure, they're definitely still watching cartoons, just so you know, they might be taking them in in a different way like that too. Yeah yeah, I mean, like you know, my my granddaughters will watch Cocoa Melon on Netflix, right, but then you know they'll turn on Luckily there's on demand so you can watch like a whole bunch of bluey all in a row, or you can just watch like a blue block on Disney Plus or something, so they're they're not Disney Plus Disney kids, so they will watch stuff through cable. But now, like as like you're saying, Richard, like there's Nick, there's there's Nick Junior, there's Disney, there's this, there's that there's all these things, so you can watch a lot of stuff on demand, and yeah, like so many kids will use like their parents' phone or they get a tablet and they'll watch stuff through that.

So yeah, so many more watching this. But the programming itself is very it's very similar to what we had when we were kids, Like Blues Clues and these kind of things are now things like Blippy or you know, you've got your yeah, Bluie, You've got Blue's amazing. You've got so many different uh just cartoon types. I mean even I guess you could say like pap Patrol is basically like this Tiger Sharks show. It's very similar as far as having the team of dogs that do all these things together and they each have their specialty.

Yeah, and and kids still be because of the way they're growing up. I mean they're all, you know, going to preschool or school together, so they they will talk about what they want and then the other kids will seek that out and watch it. I know. Like as far as I know, one of the last big shows and it was only because parents liked it too, But Phineas and Ferb was a show created by a friend of mine. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Dan Poveenmeier and and it's like it's like, okay, kids love it.

It's it's got a level of humor that's stepped up. Adults find it clever and funny, very very funny. Yeah. Yeah, And so there is like I kind of want to say, well, kids don't have this shared experience, but they do. They do.

They talk about that stuff and stuff on Nickelodeon a little, you know, decade earlier. You know, they all watch the same stuff at a certain point because they're all talking to each other. Yeah, I should clarify. I more meant like watching it on a Saturday morning on TV like that just don't see that being a thing. Like I know that they're watching cartoon.

It's just like this shared experience of not having anything else on a Saturday morning is not That's not a thing, Like yeah, not if you could just get your phone or your mom's phone or your dad's phone or your iPad that they bought you for Christmas and just watch whatever the hell you want, Like, yeah, you're never gonna be bombarded with commercials and you're never gonna be bombarded with stuff like this because again, like this would have been separated as their own thing standalone, and probably by putting the four of these things together, it's either them tacitly agreeing none of them are strong enough to stand on their own, or they're attempting to spin them off on their own by doing this, and clearly neither of those things work.

M Yeah, all right, guys, before we have out, Chris, what are you working on these days? Sir? Just everything that I'm working on is over weirding Way Media, which is primarily podcast, though I did write an article in a zine recently about some Indian cinema. But uh yeah, just Weirdingwaymedia dot coms where you can find the audio things that I work on. So, and mister HadAM, now that the strikes over, what are you up to?

Just sitting by the phone, good, waiting to get called back into action to fight crime. The way I've been trained, you can do hip hop better than a frog can Richard apparently. So next month, guys, we're coming back. We're going to talk about Pinocchio's Christmas and the New Adventures of Pinocchio. It is our last official ISH episode, and then we'll do one more where we just kind of wrap up this whole experience, so come on back.

Be sure to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform. Before we head out, I want to thank Abby Stabby for our art work, as well as the Great Octopus for our theme music. Until you hear from us again, be sure to rate and review the show, Tell your friends, tell your family, and please stay weird to show