Today’s 2 Funny is a classic (?) from Robot Chicken, “The Amazing Adventures of the Olsen Twins”. Given that this is The TWIN Factor, I’m surprised we haven’t shown this one already. It’s gloriously ridiculous. Call me kooky, but I’d kind of like to do a cartoon similar to this about a pair of twins. Plus, any skit that references the Wonder Twins is A-OK in my book. Enjoy.
-There’s a slight continuity error, though: originally, Mary-Kate is the one who transforms into a giant eagle a la Jayna, and Ashley transforms into the bucket of water a la Zan, but when they arrive in the city and change back, they’ve switched. Eh, it’s still more entertaining than New York Minute.
She’s among the small but eclectic number of non-white superheroes. Represent.
She’s a supermodel. Hawt.
She’s of native African ancestry. Foreign often translates to exotic.
Catsuits, baby, catsuits.
She’s one of the few female capes who’s a heroine in her own right, not just an extension of a male hero. Word, sista.
Her powers are mystical in origin. It’s maaaaaagic!
She can channel the powers of animals: strength of a lion, weight of an elephant, speed of a cheetah, night vision of a cat, echo-location of a dolphin, tracking ability of a wolf, etc. The skills of the entire animal kingdom without that annoying zoo smell.
She once dated John Stewart–not the host of The Daily Show, although that would REALLY be awesome.
She’s getting her own animated web series online. There’s your plug, DC, now pay us.
Hey, remember that Wild Cartoon Kingdom Nerdvana Goldstar did back in December? We’ll we liked that so much that we’re going back to that savage land.
Today I have an idea for big budgeted animated movie set on a wild tropical jungle (think Swiss Family Robinson meets Donkey Kong Country meets Jurassic Park), and I already have the perfect title for it….
Eat or Get Ate: A Family Movie.
Eat or Get Ate takes place on this untamed tropical jungle island whose major abundant resources are bananas and savage beasts. The island is called Terratopia. (Yeah, I know there was already a book series with that name, but kids don’t read anymore so nobody will remember it.)
Terratopia is teeming with crazy primates. And I know the perfect theme for the soundtrack:
“Crazy, man. That was an ORANGUTAN JOKE!”
The island itself is extremely large and has drastically different climates in various areas, including jungle, beach, ocean, grasslands, bayou, frozen wasteland, and desert. There are several mysterious ruins on the island primarily resembling ancient South American architecture, so Cusco can perform the soundtrack. In addition to apes, Terratopia has a variety of critters living on it:
Rampaging rhinos! Enormous elephants! Brightly colored birds! Giant spiders with sneakers! Snakes! Frogs! (including the poisonous variety!) Whales! Dolphins! And since Terratopia has a frozen wasteland area, let’s throw in some penguins as well. People like penguins.
“Eh, OK. We’re in. Quite frankly, Dreamworks could use a hit!”
Yes, there’s a wintry area, but horn-dogs need not worry: thanks to a climate anomaly or ancient magic or lazy writing or whatever, the natives of Terratopia are incapable of feeling cold, so they can go barefoot in the snow.
Our movie’s protagonists are a family of nature documentary makers who somehow wind up on this savage land. Similar to The Wild Thornberrys….
…only not boring and with more fan service.
“Dat’s cool! I like dat. With the waterfalls, an’ the RV an’ the cameras an’ the wild animals an’ the apes and the loincloths and the bare feet..”
Yeah, we’ve covered that, but glad you like it. While we’re at it, let’s add some friendly dinosaurs onto the island…
…In every color of the rainbow. Kids’ll eat them up. They’ll look great as Happy Meal toys.
But of course there are also threats on the island, hey it wouldn’t be the wild without things waiting to snap you up like endless breadsticks. There can be diabolical floating tiki masks…
“We’re gonna put the voodoo on you!”
..which can only be contained and controlled by a wily witch doctor…
“Who do voodoo? I do voodoo!”
And if we’re going to have cute toyetic dinosaurs, we might as well also have some of the man-eating variety.
“Come to Terratopia, humans. Where you don’t have to slather yourselves in creamy ranch sauce, but it wouldn’t hurt!”
OK, there’s still some little details to work out, you know, like plot, but I think we’ve got a movie.
“I like it! But say, how about we change the lead characters to the cast of ‘Jessie’? And maybe throw Chip ‘n’ Dale in there too, since we’re thinking of making a sequel to that ‘Rescue Rangers’ movie that hasn’t come out yet. We could also make it a team-up with Ultimate Spider-Man, and get One Direction to do the soundtrack. Say, we could make this a ride at Disney World, and have the dinosaurs sing “Walk the Dinosaur” in 80 different languages again and again and again…”
Yes, this is another musical Nerdvana; this time it’s one of my favorite 90’s songs, “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” by the band Radiohead. Despite being described by band member/songwriter Thom Yorke as “one of the saddest songs ever written….about a dark tunnel with no light at the end”, I guess I sort of tune out the lyrics, since I never associate this song with bleakness and darkness; rather I focus of the song’s overall beauty and the dreamlike quality of the video, so my memories and imagery of this song are actually pleasant and whimsical.
Interestingly, and probably because I was first exposed to both around the same time, in my mind “Street Spirit” is inexorably tied to the Oh, Yeah! Cartoons short The Twins Crimson and Those Amazing Robots by Carlos Ramos. In fact, if played together the 2 almost sync up. Try it sometime.
Let’s talk for a bit about The Flintstones character Betty Rubble, shall we?
For a time during the years of 1995 through 1996, the good folks at Cartoon Network seemed to be bizarrely fixated on this character for some reason. Odd cameos, references and allusions to Betty kept popping up on the channel during this time. Some examples:
Cartoon Network once aired a special marathon in the guise of a fake award show in which the categories would be specifically tailored so that only one cartoon character or short could possibly be the winner, thus leading to an airing of said short (see also NBC’s Saturday morning preview special The NBC Yummy Awards). The “show” was titled The Golden Betty Awards, represented by a golden statuette of a miniature Betty Rubble.
CN of this period aired not one, but two promos implying a tryst between Betty and Race Bannon from Jonny Quest, in one of which Betty is nearly caught chatting it up with Race over the phone by Barney, but she quickly covers it up. Our mother wasn’t fond of these.
A spot for Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, in which Zorak asks Space Ghost who the vocalist yodeling the Space Ghost signature tune at the start of the Coast to Coast intro; after some prodding and comical misunderstanding, Space Ghost finally replies “Betty Rubble”.
Now, these repeated ‘Betty-isms’, we’ll call them, could just be seen as harmless loony non-sequiturs, but they could also give one pause as to what exactly was going on at Cartoon Network Studios during those days. There must have been some pretty interesting water cooler conversations going on there…..
Anyway, apparently CN execs weren’t the only ones hot for Betty, as around this same period of time a long drought was finally brought to an end: namely, Betty Rubble’s 30 year absence from Flintstones’ Vitamin jars.
Fun Trivia Fact: the vitamins were first introduced in 1960 by Miles Laboratories as “Chocks”, the first chewable multivitamin marketed directly for children, and their stop-motion commercials offered a series of fun, though unfamiliar, characters. That all changed in 1968, when Miles swapped the Chocks characters for the cast of The Flintstones. Nearly all the characters were available to be chewed up and swallowed – Fred, Wilma, Barney, Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, Dino…even that weird green space alien, the Great Gazoo at one time. There was one glaring omission, however – Barney’s wife, Betty!
There were (at least) two possible reasons why Betty didn’t have her own vitamin: First, manufacturers claimed that Betty’s waist was too thin and kept breaking during production. Second, Betty was virtually indistinguishable from Wilma.
Though there was a small Betty for vitamin movement, including an Atlanta rock band that called itself Betty’s Not a Vitamin….
Another Fun Trivia fact: Betty’s Not a Vitamin was named one of the 100 best band names by Paste magazine.
..they may as well have just banged their collective heads against the wall (or banged each other about the heads with clubs, if they wanted to be authentic about it). It wasn’t until actress and comedienne Rosie O’Donnell, who played Betty in the 1994 live action Flintstones film, brought Betty’s plight to the attention of the nation that anything was really done about it. O’Donnell, during a television interview about the film, complained that all the other characters were represented, but not Betty. A savvy marketing agency seized the opportunity to involve the consumer in the direction of the brand and launched a nationwide campaign to determine Betty’s fate. The agency set up prehistoric style voting booths in regional shopping malls across the country, as well as a 1-800 number, to allow consumers to decide whether Betty should be let in the club.
The public didn’t let her down. More than 3,000 kids and their mothers voted in person and more than 17,000 calls were logged, with 91 percent in favor of bringing in Betty. She finally became a vitamin character in December 1995, replacing the Flintstones’ car.
Thus rendering the band Betty’s Not a Vitamin’s name outdated (but if they’re still performing, they can always just swap the ‘t’ in ‘Not’ for a ‘w’ and rename themselves Betty’s Now a Vitamin) and if those Bettyphiles at CN are still around, they can now nibble on a Betty vitamin to satiate their cravings…assuming they don’t just bite down on a rubber hockey puck when it’s time for that high voltage fun.
Twin Images 
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