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A Few Minor Adjustments

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The following is NOT big news. Nothing Earth shattering to report here. This is just a quick heads-up regarding some recent adjustments that will likely be made to a few of our recurring segments in the near future.

Presently, there aren’t any plans for a new TV Special Showdown segment, but when we do write another one, the segment will likely be getting a new name. Why? Because when I first conceived TV Special Showdown, I was very much inspired by Matthew Buck’s Bad Movie Beatdown segments. However, while the segment was initially inspired by BMB, over time as it progressed, the segment became more of its own thing. The TSS segments became more smart aleck-y than angry, primarily because we both have grown weary of the “angry review” type of presentation and I never wanted to be known as a reviewer, as I don’t consider what we do on TV Special Showdown to be reviews. To me, including the word “showdown” in the segment’s name comes off as being needlessly confrontational, like I’m coming into it angry and ready to rip the special apart, which isn’t always the case. Therefore, whenever the segment resumes, it will have a new name that better reflects its current style. I haven’t decided on what exactly the new name will be just yet. One name that we’re considering is one that Damon suggested for the segment initially: A Very Special Special. I thought about calling it Prime Times, but that name sounds more like it’s about prime time TV in general. We both like the title ACME Night and I like the title of Allison Pregler’s Movie Nights!, so perhaps we could give the segments a name similar to one of those. I won’t be going back and changing the names of all the previously written Showdown segments because there’s too many of them and I am lazy. When there’s a new segment written, you’ll notice that it has a new name. Like how Videots was recently renamed Player Two Start this year or how Cartoon Country was morphed into That’s Warner Brothers!.

Toon Adjacent and Ad Nausea won’t be going anywhere, but our more recent segment idea Retroville contains elements of both. On Retroville, we plan to cover old ad campaigns, defunct store chains, theme park attractions, toy lines, that kind of thing, and so having this new segment and the 2 earlier ones floating around separately seems redundant. When we want to write something about an old commercial or a store or a collectible or something similar, we’ll cover it on Retroville.

We may be putting The Retro Bin on ice for a while, not so much because of the content, but more so due to it’s presentation. Like with TV Special Showdown, we both were very much into the “Angry Reviewer” phase when Retro Bin was launched. So much so that Damon later created an alternative “nice” version of The Retro Bin called The Cartoon Couch (which was basically the same thing, except the shows covered on Cartoon Couch were shows or ideas that we liked and would like to see more of), which has since become one of our favorite segments to write. As is the case with TV Special Showdown, there aren’t any current ideas for a new Cartoon Couch in the works, but we would like to do more of them. It’s possible that we could be combining both segments into one. However, presentation-wise, it would be closer to The Cartoon Couch than The Retro Bin. In fact, one name that Damon is currently considering to call this combined segment is The Couch, which is kind of ironic because there was an unsold Comedy Central pilot called The Couch which is what inspired the Cartoon Couch name. Again, like with TV Special Showdown, we’re not going to go back and change the names of all the previously written Retro Bin and Cartoon Couch segments because there’s too many of them and they go back too far. Once we have a new name, the segments will have that name going forward.

Just wanted you all to know this so when any of this actually happens, you won’t be surprised. Thank again for reading and staying with us.

“And we thank you for your support.”

We’re Not Dead!

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We know.

We know.

We haven’t posted anything new here in over a month. We’re not happy about it either.

We’ve just been sidelined by the usual real world jackassery, then in addition to that we’re now coming into the holiday season, which is a notoriously bad time to try to do anything creative. We do have some new stuff planned, but we more than likely won’t be posting any of it until after January. If something quick and spontaneous comes up we can probably post that, but the more detailed stuff requires time and attention, which we just don’t have right now in the midst of all of this holiday havoc.

Just to give you guys a little taste of what’s to come, here’s a quick preview of some of what we have in the works:

We’re planning to do 2 “Why We Like…” posts: one for Dreamworks’ Trolls…

And one for WB’s Jellystone! (I’ve been wanting to do an updated, more detailed post about this show after that Peeks, now that we’ve actually seen it.)

Both of which likely won’t be ready until after January.

Speaking of Jellystone!, we’re also planning to do a What The Funny for J!; of course a miniseries requires even more time and research, so that probably won’t be ready to post until spring. The earliest I would expect to see this one is late February or early March. (If I want to be super-duper optimistic, maybe late January at the very earliest, but more likely the latter.) The good news is that both of us will be working on this one together, so we should get it done in half the time of past miniseries, and the gaps between the individual entries shouldn’t be as long this time. (And no, we haven’t forgotten about the Regular Show What The Funny or the Animal Jam Pop Dream; we do plan on resuming those miniseries, but we have to be into them in order for them to be good, and neither of us are feeling those right now; the spark for those just isn’t there at the moment.) Also, the miniseries from this point forward will no longer be numbered; when Pop Dream and What The Funny were originally conceived, they were each just going to be one-and-done; when we started doing more and they became semi-recurring segments, we no longer felt it was necessary to number them; we didn’t be doing Pop Dream #35 or What The Funny #46, so from now on the miniseries won’t be numbered. We originally planned to stop numbering them after #10 because we didn’t think either segment would get up to 10, but in the case of each, entry #10 coincided with miniseries we were doing at the time and each still had more entries to go, so we kept the numbering at least until those were complete.

We’re also planning to make more detailed dives into the Cartoonito show Bugs Bunny Builders…

And the new WB produced brawler, Multiversus…

But of course we can’t do that until after either of them debut, which won’t be until 2022.

We’re also planning to do an opinion piece on Mickey Mouse; we’re going to make the case that Disney should start treating him as a character again and not just a corporate mascot…

Again, we expect this one won’t be ready to post until after the holidays. Once more we’re thinking January at the earliest.

So yeah, there is more stuff coming to this site, as soon as we don’t have these pesky holiday preparations and commitments to distract us. In the meantime, we still make the occasional Tumblr post from time to time, and we’ve recently returned (after a self-imposed 5-year sabbatical) to the Anime Superhero Forums; not posting as frequently as before (this is by choice) but we’re there again.

So we know.

And we’re working on it.

Thank you for your patience.

That’s Warner Brothers!/Unpopular Opinions: This Must Be Bizarro World

silverstar 6 Comments
“The following am very important and worth everyone’s time.”

Htrea, aka Bizarro World, is an imperfect, messed-up funhouse mirror duplicate of Earth where everything is the opposite of our world: cats chase dogs, jokes make people cry, boy bands play instruments and Bizarro Joker is the only sane person on the planet.

These days I swear I must be living on Bizarro World, because there was a time if someone told me that Bugs Bunny Builders, an upcoming preschool show for Cartoon Network’s Cartoonito block, would be the show that interests me and that I’m curious to see an episode or two of…

And Tiny Toons Looniversity, a new adaptation of the wonderful 90’s series Tiny Toon Adventures, would be the show that I couldn’t give two squats about…

I’d have told them they were crazy.

But here we are.

I don’t get it either. I’ve tried, folks; I’ve legitimately tried to generate some interest in Tiny Toons Looniversity, but it just ain’t happening. I have zero interest in this show. I’m not even slightly curious about it.

The show I am interested in seeing is Bugs Bunny Builders, the Cartoonito show with squashed versions of Bugs, Lola, Daffy, Porky and Tweety as construction workers taking on all the jobs that Bob the Builder rejected.

“Can we build it? Eh, maybe.”

I know TTL is the show I should be psyched for; I was a big fan of Tiny Toons back in the day, but I’m just not. I think I know why, though: One reason is Reboot Fatigue: I’m legit getting tired of all of these studios strip-mining the nostalgia of Millennials. Another reason is one that I brought up in an earlier Talkin’ Nerdy: I simply don’t think we need another Tiny Toons show right now.

Don’t get wrong; as previously stated, I was a fan of the original Tiny Toons. It definitely filled a need: TT premiered in 1990; back then there was almost no Looney Tunes media aside from The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show on ABC and assorted VHS compilations (anybody remember VHS?), but those were all just collections of the old theatrical shorts, Warner Bros. wasn’t making any new stuff with the Looney Tunes (Space Jam wouldn’t happen for another six years, and this was even before shows like Bugs & Daffy or The ACME Hour — Cartoon Network wouldn’t launch until 1992), so Tiny Toons was as close as we could get to a new Looney Tunes show at the time. It also didn’t hurt that TT was one of the very few syndicated animated series which was all-comedy in an era when most cartoons were action-based or action-comedy hybrids. So I’m not knocking what Tiny Toons contributed to the cultural lexicon.

BUUUT that was then. Today we’re experiencing a kind of Looney Tunes Renaissance: we’ve since gotten no less than 3 new Looney Tunes shows…

Count ’em. Three.

We had a movie this past summer (Space Jam: A New Legacy) and we’ve got 2 new Looney Tunes shows waiting in the wings: the aforementioned Bugs Bunny Builders…

…And Tweety Mysteries. Not to mention that Wile E. Coyote VS ACME movie which is supposedly still happening and will be out…sometime.

So with WB doing all this new stuff with the Looney Tunes, what do we need a new Tiny Toons show for? If you own a designer original, what do you need with a knockoff?

Again, I enjoyed Tiny Toons back in the day, but there’s nothing WB can do with Buster, Babs, Plucky, Hamton and Dizzy that they can’t already do with Bugs, Lola, Daffy, Porky and Taz, and when you strip Tiny Toons down to its’ bare bones, Tiny Toons was just a kiddification. I didn’t think we needed a new Animaniacs either (and still don’t), but at least in the case of A!, the characters, while created in the spirit of Looney Tunes, are still original characters with their own shticks. TT, by contrast, did some great shorts, but the characters will always just be junior versions of the Looney Tunes and consequently will always be in their collective shadow.

“You are wrong! The Tiny Toons are original characters! They’re teenagers, unlike the Looney Tunes! There’s all kinds of stuff they can do with them! You’re just a hater!”

Really, what can the producers do on a new Tiny Toons show? A show devoted to part-time jobs? They did that in the first series. Dating and the prom? They did that too. Cramming for exams? They did that. The big football game? Done that. Field trips? Seen that. The only thing they can’t do in this new series is constantly remind us again and again that it’s the 90’s.

Sure, the producers are doing the world a favor by dropping the odious Elmyra from the show, but that’s still not enough to make me interested in it.

By contrast, Bugs Bunny Builders offers things I haven’t seen before.

For one, the cast.

Rather than centering the show on all of the Tunes as a whole, BBB looks like it’ll just be focusing on a crew of 5: Bugs, Porky, Lola, Daffy and Tweety (Tweety being there without Sylvester is kind of weird, though). I’m sure other Looney Tunes characters will make appearances, but I like the minimalist approach the producers are taking with this show.

Second, it looks like we’ll be getting a version of Lola Bunny that’s actually funny. Dare I say, LOONY!

I’m definitely looking forward to that after the comparatively bland version we got in Space Jam: A New Legacy. It’s quite a leap from a “too cool for school” Lola who sounded like Zendaya to a bubbly, silly one who sounds like one of the Chipettes, but I’m not complaining.

But what really sold me on BBB is this:

If this image is any indication, then it looks like Daffy on this show will be his earlier “crazy, darn-fool” version, which again we didn’t get in New Legacy.

Plucky Duck from Tiny Toons was straight-up 1950’s Daffy, which is fine, but I prefer the nuttier 1940’s version overall.

It looks like we may finally be getting the long-awaited Bugs and Crazy Daffy team-up for the first time…on a preschool show! I tell you, we’re in Bizarro World!

To (finally) sum up, I guess I relate to what producer/writer Paul Rugg said when asked why he wouldn’t be participating in the Animaniacs reboot:

“Here’s the thing: I did that. 20 years ago.”

That basically sums up my feelings about these reboots. Tiny Toons was great. Animaniacs was great. But both shows were products of the 90’s that I don’t need to see more of. It’s like Eek! The Cat.

I watched Eek! when it was on, I got a kick out of it, but I don’t need to see Eek! suddenly pop back into existence and find out what he’s been up to these past 20 years. I saw the originals, I’m good.

I haven’t seen 5 of the top tier Looney Tunes try to build stuff with kooky stylized vehicles and equipment, so I’m more inclined to check that out.
“That been very bad post! This will be very unpopular and earn you many, many dislikes!”

-Yeah, I know.

How Comezit? Why is There No Banana Soda?

silverstar 3 Comments

It’s a question that has boggled the minds of humankind for years:

Why is there no banana soda??

“It’s a PLOT, I tells ya! A CON-spiracy concocted by ‘The Man’ to keep us primates down! ‘They’ want to keep the formula for banana soda under wraps just to keep my species from taking our rightful place as the true rulers of Earth! THE BANANAS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM!!”

“Ah, no, actually. The reason is very simple: the reason that you don’t see banana flavored sodas and juices in wide circulation is simply because a banana doesn’t contain enough liquid to be made into a beverage. Any banana flavored beverage would/will have to be artificially flavored.”

There are, in fact, some banana flavored beverages, all artificially flavored, of course. Among the most notable being Filbert’s Old-Timey Banana Soda…

…And Banana Wave, a soy-based, plant-based banana drink which combines artificial banana flavor with other tantalizing flavors.

Such as Mango, Strawberry and Chocolate.
“Gotta try ’em all!”

There is (or was at one time) even a banana flavored Fanta!

Hope that clears things up.

-Say, while we’ve got you here, Professor, maybe you could fill us in on something semi-related: why is it you never see grape flavored ice cream?

“GRAPE APE! GRAPE APE! That had no relevance to anything, I just didn’t want to be left out of the discussion!”

Oh, that’s a good one. Well, the common belief running around on the internet is that the absence of grape ice cream can be blamed on the Food and Drug Administration, which banned the flavor because of pet-related hazards.

The legend goes that Ben & Jerry’s created a delectable grape ice cream which was then served to a lucky customer who loved it so much that they fed a bit of it to their beloved dog, who immediately died of anthocyanin poisoning. (Anthocyanin is a chemical found in grape skins, and it’s poisonous to dogs and cats.)

After the incident, the FDA ruled that no ice cream manufacturer may sell grape flavored ice cream.

However….

The FDA would never intervene on grape ice cream. After all, chocolate is also poisonous to pets, and you can still buy it practically anywhere.

The actual reason is that when making ice cream at home, you can get fruit like grapes pretty close to a puree, but when you are using fruit as a base on a large scale, that’s when you run into problems. Basically, grapes have high water content, and when manufactured on a large scale, will leave you with unappetizing ice chunks in your ice cream.

It’s also simple supply and demand: there is simply not a huge demand for grape ice cream like there is for, say, chocolate or strawberry or vanilla or even cookie dough.

-So there you have it. Some literal food for thought. That was very informative.

“Say, if you’re interested, I also know a way that Mac Davis’ ‘Baby, Don’t Get Hooked on Me’ can be broken down into an equational algorithm which when applied correctly can control peoples’ minds!”

-Uh, stick a pin in that. Maybe next time.