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Bad airbrushing! A 90s direct-to-video tradition!
After the first half, we take a break and come back with Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue, a crossover cartoon filled with anti-drug propaganda that could only be enjoyed by pasty old white people who have no idea who these characters actually are.
Topics:
Bad VHS Covers
No timeline theories!!!
The color of the Statue Of Liberty
The color of cheese
Pacifist Native American mice who make death traps
The magical scarf that hides your race
“Will everyone just go and do?!”
“What’s up, Doc, is your life!”
Don’t do dope, but obesity is okay.
Shut up, Michelle Obama!
An anti-drug message that’s probably more entertaining if you’re high on acid.
Hello guys, I think this All-Star cartoon was my first cross-over cartoon, which is why I liked it back then. It did some good with the anti-drug message. At least they had good intentions putting that together, and weren’t just being paranoid with the anti D&D movie with Tom Hanks. I can’t remember the Dare song either, there was a Dare song?
The song in the middle of the movie always made me feel weird. Probably because I was cringing at the sappiness and didn’t know it. I may hate the movie now.
OK so Feivel Goes West was a dream, then it was retconed back in? Maybe Miyamoto will retcon the Koopa Kids to be Bowser’s again, those are STILL his-he’s not fooling anyone. Heh heh there’s An American Tail 4, ha! I learn so much from this cast, enjoyed it.
One last thing, I noticed RIGHT AWAY that music playing during the Webcast Becon promo was stage 2 from Double Dragon Neon.
That was your doing wasn’t it Mr. Neil? I know you’re playing it too.
I haven’t played it as much as I would like. I’ve been something of a cheapskate this last console cycle and have stuck with my retro consoles. I’ve been able to play through a lot of SNES and Genesis games that I never touched. I get my Wii fix over at my sister’s house.
Way Forward is an awesome developer. I think DDN is awesome, and the second stage music is excellent. It’s so aggressively 80s. I could totally imagine people of the era listening to that song.
And yeah, the Koopa Kids retcon is total bullshit (almost as much as the Zelda timeline). The manual for Super Mario Bros. 3 states, in no uncertain terms, that the Koopa Kids are the offspring of Bowser.
Not that Mario ever had much of a canon to begin with. If you ever tried, you’d have to conclude that Mario 2 is a nightmare fueled by the events of Yoshi’s Island.
And don’t even get me started on what the sports games imply.
DDN is better than some people say. Those kids need to man up, learn how to duck, and sweep the leg-Billy actually says that in the game.
I wish I could’ve heard those Gadget jokes when you all watched AT3.
There’s a chance we could release the commentary track later on. The commentary is mostly fine. It was only later, during the show, that Kittyhawk’s bandwidth began to cap. I’ll have to dig that out soon to make sure it’s preserved.
Commentary, ey? Sounds good. Thanks Mr. Neil.
I love me some Ga-I mean commentaries.
“…a poor attempt to try and teach kids about addiction…” Correction. They’re ALL poor attempts to try and teach kids about drugs. I could rant about these things for HOURS! I hate them so much. I think the problem that I have with all of these “anti-drug campaigns” is the fact that they completely pussy foot around the issue to the point where they’re not really talking about anything. Or they’re so afraid of offending parents that they take a real issue and catapult it to the border of reality and pure fiction.
It’s like that Captain Planet episode where Linka and her cousin start doing drugs. And by drugs I mean magical glowing radioactive pills given to them by a giant, mutated rat man. Or the Tiny Toons episode about drinking, where three of them share 1 beer and end up killing themselves.
I think it’s phenomenal that organizations want to keep children from developing bad habits and potentially harming themselves, but just saying “Dope is for dopes!” while wearing baggy jeans is not effective.
As for D.A.R.E., I had a totally different experience with them. I was 6 when they were at their peak of popularity. They would visit my class and just say “Don’t do drugs kids.” and I’d always wonder, “Ok, but what ARE drugs?” I had NO idea, and when I asked, they didn’t tell me (hopefully this isn’t typical).
Later on in that school year, I got sick to the point where I almost died. When I got medicine in a bag that said “[blabla] Drug store” I threw a fit. All of those cartoons and useless D.A.R.E. talks flooded my little brain and I started yelling hysterically: “No! Drugs are bad! I can’t do drugs!” so yeah…
Now that I re-read my rant, I think I’m repeating a comment I made in the Environmentalism in Cartoons reply section. Whoops lol. I guess I’m just passionate about drug issues in cartoons, maybe because they made me think I was going to hell for taking Flintstones vitamins (aka DRUGS!!!).
No, that was pretty typical for the DARE program. It wasn’t created with the intent to teach kids about the dangers of drugs. Rather, it was designed to teach them how to be assertive idiots who have no idea what it is they’re saying no to.
I was shocked that this cartoon even mentioned certain drugs by name. Usually they’re super vague, as you said. My favorites are from two episodes of Saved By The Bell. First, there was the one where Zack and Slater crash into a house after having A SIP of alcohol. And then there’s the epic Jessie Spano meltdown over caffeine pills.
I find that most anti-drug messages are pretty cynical toward the intelligence of children. Giving kids real information is too risky, so these anti-drug programs just bombard them with pressure; an irony that was not lost on me when I was kid. They never say what’s actually dangerous about drugs. Even in this cartoon, they gloss over drinking and concentrate primarily on marijuana, even though the dangers are the inverse.
Hell, there are things that kids can legally ingest that are more dangerous than marijuana, which is the point I was trying to make when Ben derailed me. My point was about giving kids actual information about the stuff they put into their bodies.
That’s my biggest gripe about this show. It has no useful information. It ends with a bunch of warm fuzzies and gumdrops.
A bit off subject but have you guys ever considered doing more of the late 80s to 90s anime? I think your shows on stuff like Bubblegum Crisis and Dirty Pair were really good because no one really really talks about that stuff now, at least not in any meaningful way.
I’d like to. I mean, that’s kind of my bread-and-butter. I was so disappointed in American animation at the time that it’s literally all I watched for a while.
I’m glad you enjoyed our Bubblegum Crisis and Dirty Pair eps. I’ve also noticed that other podcasts rarely talk about them. Or if they do, it’s usually in disdain, which saddens me, because I typically think of that era as the golden era.
Stay tuned, because episode 100 might be up your alley.
I was just feeling nostalgic for Patlabor the other day, you guys ever consider covering that?
Hey, these guys at alphacounter.com love them and that era.
http://alphacounter.com/2010/04/06/method-to-madness-podcast-dirty-pair-tv/
http://alphacounter.com/?s=bubblegum+crisis
Perhaps you could crossover?