Welcome to another installment of Retroville, where we take on commercials and advertising characters. Today we’ll be chronicling the mascots of Freakies cereal.
Freakies was a brand of sweetened breakfast cereal produced by Ralston and sold in the United States. The cereal was Ralston’s first major venture into the presweetened RTE (Ready-to-Eat) cereal market. The Freakies were made up of seven creatures named Hamhose, Gargle, Cowmumble, Grumble, Goody-Goody, Snorkeldorf and the leader BossMoss. Why was BossMoss in charge the Freakies? Why, because he spoke with a John Wayne sound-alike voice, of course. And also because he beat the last guy who tried to challenge his authority to death with an electric mace, skinned him in front of everyone and now drinks root beer from his empty hollowed out skull. Bottom line: don’t screw with BossMoss.
The seven Freakies went in search of the legendary Freakies Tree which grew the Freakies cereal. They found the Tree, realized the legend was true, and promptly took up residence in the Tree which then became the backdrop for all the TV spots and package back stories. A Cocoa version of the cereal called “Cocoa Freakies” was available in 1973 and a fruit version titled “Fruity Freakies” was available in 1975-1976. Here’s an ad:
Freakies cereal entered the marketplace in 1972 and was taken off the shelves in 1976, when they were forcibly evicted from their tree by the thugs from Keebler, who wanted the tree as their latest base to expand their ever-growing cookie empire.
“We were completely in the right to kick out the Freakies. You see, Mother Nature hates freaks. Besides, they were making this tree smell like feet!”
The Freakies bummed around for a bit in obscurity after that, only resurfacing briefly for some odd gigs. Snorkeldorf started jazz noodling with Wynton Marselis’ band for a time, but an unfortunate backstage incident involving pineapples (don’t ask) prevented him joining the band full time. A new TV series starring the tribe entitled FreakiesUniverse was planned, but for some reason the show’s initials (F.U.) didn’t test well with audiences. BossMoss and Grumble strong-armed their way into a Hollywood press agency and hired a publicist (it’s amazing what a ton of complaining and a set of brass knuckles can accomplish), and In 1987, a new Freakies cereal was made, depicting the characters as aliens from another planet. (The publicist was a huge sci-fi nut who thought that anything involving aliens would sell.) Boss Moss and Grumble kept their original names, but the other characters were given new identities, and were renamed Hugger, Sweetie, Tooter and Hotdog.
“Hot Dog”?? That’s a stupid name for an alien!”
“Yeah, real stupid!”
Unfortunately, this move proved to be a War of the Worlds kind of deal; the campaign resulted in the Freakies getting captured and detained in Area 51, where they’re said to be residing to this day.
However, this may not be the end of the Freakies story. Rumor has it that Gargle has been studying and learning how to use the alien technology at Roswell (maybe he is a smart guy, after all), and there have been stories of a particular text message circulating around the web, reading:
It’s time for another segment of Why (blank) is Awesome. Today, we focus one of my favorite mad scientists, Washu Hakubi from Tenchi Muyo!
WHY WASHU HABUKI IS AWESOME!
She describes her self as :”The greatest scientific genius in the universe!”
She’s short. We short people have to stick together.
The pink hair. You’ve got to love the pink hair.
She has innate powers, but prefers to use reason and hi-tech to solve her problems.
She’s one of the Chousen, three sister goddesses who created the universe.
She created an inter-dimensional laboratory in the closet of the Masaki house. The folks on Home Makeover have got nothing on her!
She altered her body to that of a teenage girl, but can return to adult form whenever she wants to. Who wouldn’t want to keep on looking young and hot?
She built 2 little robot sidekicks who (literally) sing her praises.
She’s invented devices which make Apple look like a flea market.
She invented a device which could destroy the universe. Not that she ever would, but just in case…
Welcome to a new segment of Twinsanity called The Couch, in which we unearth some of the the most unique, obscure and in some cases downright odd shows which many people have long forgotten (or just plain didn’t know about in the first place), but which we thought were kind of good, fun or at least had potential. Basically the flip side of The Retro Bin. Today, we’ll be looking at a forgotten toon titled Les Kikekoi, or as we Yanks called it, Saban’s The Why Why Family.
The Why Why Family was a French-produced animated children’s series which originally aired in syndication in 1996, written by Annabelle Perrichon and François-Emmanuel Porché and produced by Saban Entertainment and CineGroupe. Later, in 1998, the show was broadcast in the United States by Fox. I personally only saw a single episode of this during its’ initial run; I had to catch the rest of the series on YouTube. It centered on a family unit who all lived in a bizarro hodgepodge house which was a mishmash of several different structures, sporting an astronomical observatory, a rocket hangar, a greenhouse, a giant microscope, a zigzag slide and several platforms.
I hear the architect who designed the Why Why home used it as a prototype for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.
The plot was simpler than ABC: in each segment, the lone child of the family, one towheaded toddler named Baby Victor, would pose a question inquiring how a particular thing worked, then another respective family member would proceed to explain it in a fun, quirky way. There were 5 segments per show. Laugh, learn, wash, rinse, repeat. The Why Whys themselves were a unique and eclectic bunch, with each adult member specializing in a specific science, field of learning or expertise. Why Why-Keteer Roll Call:
MILF, er, um, I mean Mom Vanilla with Birds Kwik and Kwak: Botany and Zoology (aka Flora and Fauna for you laymen)
Dad Max: Technology and Electronics (curiously, Max was the only family member who ran through his segments without the aid of any partners, except for Victor, of course, or sidekick pets)
Grandma Eartha with shapeshifting polka-dotted dragon Basalt: Geography, Geology and Meteorology
Uncles Micro and Scopo: Biology of the Human Body (FTR, Micro is the short dude in the 10-gallon hat, Scopo is the somewhat goony looking big lug in the Polo shirt with the Popeye forearms)
Zygo the dog and Grandpa Matik (together their names spell out the word ‘zygomatic’, because….clever??): Astronomy and the Universe.
Here’s a little taste:
Well, all right then.
The Why Why Family never went beyond 26 episodes, and in retrospect, it’s not hard to imagine why. For one thing, the show was syndicated; many of the local stations that carried it (including the ones in my area) aired the show insanely early in the mornings opposite the Farm Report.
“Well shucks, why would yew wanna sit in front o’ that there teevee box when yew could watch corn a-growin’?”
For another, the show aired back in 1996. In the late 90’s most cartoons had to be “edgy” and “extreme to the Max”….
“DUUUUUDE! The toons of the 90’s were righteous to the extreme! BUST IT!”
…And The Why Why Family was neither of those things. The show wasn’t ‘hip’ or ‘cool’ by any stretch, in fact, it was almost radically square. There were no hip teenagers on the show: except for Victor, the family members were all adults with various degrees of learning, 2 of them elderly adults. The series’ art style was also notably retro: the cast resembled 1930’s cartoon characters (only in color), with Mickey Mouse style white gloves and Pac-Man dot eyes, and conventions like talking animals and inanimate objects suddenly coming to life with no explanation of why or how. The show’s style was also not edgy or extreme, leaning strongly towards gentle slapstick, squash-and-stretch physics (characters could get flattened like pancakes and just reform themselves an instant later without a scratch), corny retrofied music, groan-inducing puns and silly sound effects. Each characters’ segments were book-ended by individual title cards (ex: So-And-So Character in “Such-And-Such Pun-Filled Title”) and even “The End” title cards, something you almost never see on cartoons these days.
While The Why Why Family was a bit corny (OK, a lot corny), at the same time, I can’t bring myself to dislike this show. Having revisited this show, I actually enjoy it in an odd way. It was silly, but a fun and harmless kind of silly. I did think it was kind of cool how each character represented a particular field of science and learning (science geek here), I loved that kooky house of theirs, and I must admit to having a bit of a mom-crush on Vanilla at the time; with her big blond hair and midriff top, she looked like a NASCAR racer’s trophy wife. Plus, one of their pets was a fracking dragon. A talking, shape-changing flipping DRAGON. I just can’t hate on a show with that. I kind of wanted to have seen a side episode which showed what these guys did when they weren’t doling out lessons; oh well, there’s always fan-fiction.
So here’s to you, Why Why Family. One things for sure: in a time where most cartoons were assembly-line carbon copies of one another, The Why Why Family was a red-blooded original.
It’s that time again! Time for another installment of The Retro Bin. Remember that great animated series that featured all new versions of those beloved classic cartoon characters that we grew up watching? The one that debuted in the early 1990s? The one that had all of those great jokes and well written stories? The one that gave us a reason to start watching cartoons again? That show was Steven Spielberg’s Tiny Toon Adventures, but we’re not going to be talking about that show today. Instead, we’ll be talking about a cheap Hanna-Barbera produced knockoff of that show. A Saturday morning “quickie” (as in quickly gone and forgotten) from 1991 titled Yo, Yogi!.
When the shows’ title is a worn out buzzword, that’s not a good sign.
Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies begat The Flintstone Kids, which had sex with Tiny Toons to spawn this show. Yo, Yogi! was like Tiny Toon Adventures, only without the memorable characters, clever writing or funny jokes. Yo, Yogi! was one of the last Hanna-Barbera produced Saturday morning shows before NBC abandoned Saturday morning cartoons in favor of live action, teen-centric programming (i.e., Saved By the Bell clones) the alphabet networks did away with SatAM cartoons altogether. Yo, Yogi! ran for only a single season (1991) on NBC. Apparently, someone at H-B studios thought that shrinking Yogi Bear down to half of his height and dressing him up in a lime green puffy jacket and red hi-top sneakers would be a good idea.
“DUDE! The green jacket and rd hi-top are so 90s! It’s AWESOME!!”
Anyway, here’s the premise:Yo, Yogi! takes place in Jellystone Town (so it’s a town now?). Yogi Bear, along with his sidekick Boo-Boo and their pals Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss and Cindy Bear (voiced this time around by Kath Soucie) have been de-aged into 14-year-old teenagers. The characters hung out at Jellystone Mall (which appeared to be patterned after the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota) owned by “Diamond” Doggie Daddy with Augie Doggie as his heir to the mall business. Yogi and the gang work at an agency called L.A.F. (short for Lost and Found – The initials spell out LAF, as in ‘Laugh’, get it?) where they act as detectives trying to solve mysteries under the supervision of the mall’s security guard Officer Smith. Dick , or “Dickie” Dastardly as he was called here (doing his best Montana Max impression) and his sidekick Muttley would cause trouble for Yogi and his gang. New character Roxie Bear was a teenager who was causing trouble with Dick Dastardly and she was Cindy’s rival and Yogi’s competitor. The characters were never seen at home or school. Some other H-B characters were also turned into teenagers, such as Top Cat, Wally Gator and Hardy-Har-Har, while other characters such as Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole, were featured as young children. Magilla Gorilla appeared in 1 episode as a famous rapper named Magilla Ice (groan!)
A lot of this show didn’t make much sense to me. First, if this series is supposed to take place before the old shorts, does that mean that Jellystone started out as a mega mall and was later torn down to make room for a national park? Second, why did Yogi and his friends wear more clothing as teenagers than they do as adults? And why was Dick Dastardly always trying to mess with the L.A.F. Squad anyway? What did he get out of it? At least in DD’s previous incarnations, he had clear motivations. In both Wacky Races and Fender Bender 500, he wanted to win the race, and he preferred cheating to achieve this goal. In Yogi’s Treasure Hunt, Dick wanted followed Yogi’s Gang around so that if they found any treasure, he could ambush them and claim the treasure for himself without having to do any actual work. Here, he just meddled in the gang’s affairs simply because he seemed to have nothing better to do. And like in his previous appearances, if he didn’t devote so much of his time to trying to screw over the good guys, he’d probably do all right for himself. And it didn’t make sense how some characters were de-aged for the show, while others weren’t. If Yogi and company all hung out with Auggie Doggie and Doggie Daddy in the present, how is it that Auggie and his dad are still the same age here? Unless the Auggie Doggie on Yo, Yogi! is actually Doggie Daddy as a puppy and the Doggie Daddy on this show is his father, who’s also called Doggie Daddy…
Sorry. Didn’t mean to blow your mind. I think that it’s best to think of Yo, Yogi! as an alternate reality rather than a flashback, as that would make a tad more sense. Tiny Toon Adventures was one of the best written TV shows of the 1990s. Yo, Yogi! didn’t seem written at all.
The main problem that I had with Yo, Yogi! was the entire mentality of the show’s supposed appeal smacked too much of this:
Or to put it another way, if anyone remembers that one episode of The Simpsons titled “The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show”, the worst thing about Yo, Yogi! was that the whole series was a “Poochie”; a soulless by-product of committee thinking. It was based on the premise that kids would be more willing to watch a show with established cartoon characters from several decades earlier if they were remade to be “cool”, and it seemed like the entire series was concocted in board room by executives who don’t have a creative bone in their collective bodies. I doubt that the producers of Yo, Yogi! even knew what a writer was. The shows’ producers and writers tried to make Yo, Yogi! like Tiny Toon Adventures without realizing what is was that made TTA so great. Quite frankly, if taking established characters and trying to update them for younger audiences by making them desperately cool and hip is the only way to get them back on the air, then I think it’s better that they stay buried.
Hello and welcome to a new segment on Twinsanity entitled Why (blank) is Awesome!, in which we list the things we like about our favorite characters. Think of this as a sneak preview; a little sample of some of the new stuff you can expect from us in 2014. First up:
WHY ROBIN IS AWESOME!
He’s the leader of the Teen Titans, despite not having any superpowers. Powers are cool, but if you can kick ass without them, well…
He gets to live in a giant T.
He’s a talented circus acrobat. Think a butt-kicking Flying Wallenda.
He can wear a combination of Christmas tree colors (red, yellow and green) and pull it off.
He was trained by the goddamn Batman.
That stylin’ black-and-yellow-cape.
The spiky hair, man. Chicks dig the hair.
He’s mastered several martial arts, having sparred with a bear, a snake, a monkey and the True Master herself. Take that, Kung Fu Panda!
He has a keen understanding of various sciences, like computing, physics and chemistry, and is a skilled mechanic and engineer, building all of his own gadgets and equipment. Who says nerds don’t make good superheroes?
He rides a tricked out red cycle with jet-thrusters and his initial stamped on it.
Birdarangs, baby. Birdarangs.
He once went into battle wearing a Gatchaman style outfit, unironically.
He owns a collapsible metal staff, which can be split into 2 Eskrima sticks. You can’t get that at Sports Authority.
He owns energy disks which can explode, shock or emit foam. And play mp3s.
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