After School Specialness

The 3:00 bell rings. Kids rush out of their classrooms and into waiting cars. They're rushed home, they grab some milk and cookies...and plop down in front of the tv.

As a child, this was my after school routine. It wasn't an every day thing, but some of my most vivid memories of being a kid were watching some classic television either after school, from 3:00-5:00, or on Saturday mornings.

Before I go further, I would like it to be known that TV did not run my life as a kid. My parents would never have allowed that. I spent A LOT of time outside playing sports and other random games that my childlike mind could think up with my friends. But I also watched my fair share of cartoons.

The first memory I have is, of course, Saturday morning cartoons. I can't quite remember what my favorite lineup was, but I have certain favorites I took from the era of the late 80's and early 90's. For example, every Saturday morning I would strive to be up by 8:00 AM in an effort to catch a full hour of Garfield and Friends. This might well be my favorite cartoon of all time. The one problem I had with this, however, was that as I got older and was allowed to stay up a bit later at night, 8:00 would pass with me still in bed. So as I got older, I missed more and more Garfield every Saturday morning, which was a sad state of being if you ask me.

After Garfield I remember there would be a variety of shows I would watch, including A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Captain N: The Game Master. These shows were not as strong as Garfield, but still solid in my mind. I also remember that as the morning got later, the cartoons got worse and worse. The 8:00 cartoons seemed to be the best, and 9:00 was still solid, but the shows at 10:00 or 11:00 would begin to make your mind wander to your plans for the day and whether to have PB&J for lunch, or a ham sandwich. Today, Saturday morning cartoons are virtually nonexistent. There is an interesting Wikipedia article here that provides several explanations for this decline, including the rise of cable TV and video games.

A final memory I have of Saturday morning cartoons was one of the most highly-anticipated events of every year for a kid, and that was the Saturday morning preview show. Each network would air mini episodes of several new cartoons to air in the next season as previews for kids. These would generally air on Friday nights, often in place of TGIF or other regular Friday programming. I remember vividly watching such animated TV programs get previewed, including animated versions of Tales From The Crypt and The Addams Family. However, most of these shows that would make the Saturday morning preview only seemed to last for one season.

The other hot spot for cartoon watching was the weekday timeslot from 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm. This was a time when kids were getting off of school and wanted nothing more than to relax in front of the tv with a juice box and some Twizzlers. There were two sets of shows I vividly remember from this era in my life. The first was the block of shows that aired on the Kids WB. The main shows I remember airing were Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, and Tiny Toon Adventures. The latter two, especially, were both classics that I think I would still enjoy watching to this day.

Running in direct competition to the Kids WB was The Disney Afternooon. This ran in the same timeslot and had a similar format to TGIF where it had 4 shows that changed every season. It began with the lineup of The Gummi Bears, DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers, and Talespin. It went on to include such classics as Darkwing Duck (among my favorites cartoons ever), Goof Troop, Bonkers, and Gargoyles (another classic, ambitious cartoon).

The whole point of posting was to reminisce about my childhood and some of the classic programming I had available to me on network television (we didn't have cable growing up). I find it a damn shame that kids programming is so different today than what it used to be. Kids need to be able to look at shows like Duck Tales and Gargoyles and broaden their minds and imaginations by entering new worlds with different characters. Instead, kids today are sent home after school to play Call of Duty and Halo, while watching Hannah Montana and eating organic potato chips and sugarfree Kool-Aid. When did being a kid become so boring?

Speaking to the Masses

Does anyone remember the days when commercials used to be enjoyable to watch? There was actually a time when I wouldn't flip the channel during commercials but instead sit and watch the advertisements that TV had to offer.

Now, before I begin I will concede that part of the reason the commercials I watch suck is because I don't watch cartoons anymore or programming geared towards kids (at least for the most part). Instead, I watch "grownup" shows, and because of this the advertisements are geared toward adults. But even these commercials are terrible. What happened to the days of the jingle? People don't write commercial music anymore. My cousin Steve points out the fact that most commercials rip off songs that used to be popular in place of jingles. So instead of getting some unique music, we get to hear the overplayed classics of Journey, The Cars, and other classic rock bands because they will somehow make us want to buy a Ford Fusion or the latest gadget at Office Depot.

But I began to write here because of my fondness of 80's and early 90's toy commercials. Back then if you watched kids shows you were bombarded with loud, obnoxious commercials full of kids shouting while playing with their new toys. These commercials always consisted of at least 6 kids, or even more, and were filled with constant action including but not limited to: rolling dice, holding the advertised toy out in front of you to show the camera while yelling its name, running as a group to a place where the toy is conveniently set up, and playing with the toy or game while the rest of the group circled around and watched. Perhaps advertising agencies didn't want to pay kids to play with toys, or perhaps in our modern, PC world they didn't want to try to represent every ethnicity. The classic toy adverts were made before the days of Barney and did not include a white boy and girl, 1 African-American, 1 Latino, and 1 kid with a physical handicap. They were made up of mostly white boys and girls. I guess searching for diversity is too time-consuming.

Today, with VERY few exceptions, kids are subject to commercials for video games that look like live-action shots, and the occasional halfway decent cereal advertisement. If I ever see an old-fashioned toy or board game commercial while flipping past Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon, I stop and enjoy this blast from the past. I'll end here with a few links to classic commercials from back in the day:

Skip-It
Crocodile Mile
WWF Action Figures
He-Man Action Figures

Canteens of Cleanliness

Well, science has dropped another bombshell on the world. You always hear people say that just about everything these days causes cancer, and it's all because every 6 months, scientists come out with a new study saying something new does just that. Before we know it, scientists will tell us that breathing causes cancer, so we all need to have oxygen pumped straight into our lungs in order to avoid this.

The latest cancer-causing agent is plastic water bottles. Now I've heard over the past several years that the bottles you buy water in at the stores are bad for refilling, but I've done that anyway. What I've always been told is that you can use one of these about 3 times before the plastic starts breaking down and leaching chemicals into your water. So for about 3 years in high school, I drank quite a bit of cancer-laced water. In an effort to avoid this and also to help the environment I decided about 2 years ago to begin using one of those large plastic bottles they sell in stores that can hold about 32 oz. of water and can be re-used countless times. Now I'm not only avoiding cancer, but I'm saving the environment. WRONG!!

Now it seems that these bottles also leak chemicals into your water after several uses and after washing. So that brings my tally up to 5 years of chemical-laced water ingestion. So what's the answer? The answer, of course, is for some company to take advantage of this fact and the fear of death that runs rampant in our country and try to make a profit. Enter the Klean Kanteen.

These bottles were made entirely to take advantage of the fact that other water bottles cause pollution, cancer, and probably herpes. So now, for the low, low price of only $19.95+shipping you can buy a Klean Kanteen. This bottle is made of stainless steel and is advertised as NEVER leaking cancer-causing chemicals into your water. They are incredibly durable, do not break down, and are good for the environment. And the best part: You won't DIE from drinking water out of them.

Now I'm not saying this is some rich American corporation that is trying to take advantage of people's worst fears, because there are other companies all over that make the same bottles. And they really are good for the environment, because when you think about it, how many plastic water bottles are really ever recycled compared to those that just get thrown out. So this is definitely a good thing for our planet, but the fact that you need to pay roughly $25 to get a 27 oz. metal water bottle in the mail is absurd. But I guess that is the price you pay to feel safe while drinking water. I never knew that in the act of hydrating, I was slowly killing myself. So is $25 worth spending to save myself from a slow, painful death?.....

My Klean Kanteen came in the mail last Friday.

WWKSD (What Would Kathy Santoni Do)??

I was reminiscing on my childhood the other day, and for some reason I stumbled upon a memory of Hanna-Barber, especially The Jetsons. This made me think of the little-known "The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones." This was just a crossover of the two popular shows, but it reminded me of a few other failed crossovers. Remember TGIF, and the crossover night they did. I believe at the time , the lineup included Family Matters, Boy Meets World, Step By Step and possibly Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. All I remember is Dana from Step By Step showing up at Disney World and talking to Cory about his relationship with Topanga.

And speaking of TGIF, who didn't love that staple of Friday nights. Maybe I was just a loser and watched too much TV as a kid but TGIF was awesome. I didn't realize that it dated all the way back to 1985-86. The original lineup included Webster, Mr. Belvedere, Diff'rent Strokes, and Benson. My personal favorite lineup was one of the earlier "official" TGIF lineups, which was Full House, Family Matters, Perfect Strangers, and Just the 10 of U. The only one of these shows that didn't do well was the last one, which was a spinoff of Growing Pains, featuring Coach Lubbock. My other favorite came a bit later on, and included Family Matters, Boy Meets World, Step By Step, and Hanging With Mr. Cooper. This was probably its most powerful lineup, and just looking at these shows, who can really question why? I really doubt there could ever be another successful run of TGIF just because TV is different right now, but people of my generation can no doubt look back on this era of ABC television with the fondest of memories.


This TGIF stuff is just opening the vault to memories. Who remembers Kathy Santoni? If you don't remember, she was a friend of DJ and Kimmy in Full House. She was one of the most influential characters on the entire show, even though she only actually appeared a couple of times. But she was the benchmark of teenage life in the late 80's and early 90's. Whether DJ was losing a boyfriend to her or mimicking her style of dress, she was regularly mentioned on the show. Eventually she graduated high school and got married and had a kid. That was the last anyone heard of her, but she was possibly the most powerful non-character in TV sitcom history.

Milton Bradley and Beyond

Whatever happened to simple board games? I remember growing up, my family had a toy closet. In this toy closet were several shelves, full of toys and boxes. But more importantly, we have shelves and shelves literally FILLED with board games. These were the backbone of my indoor entertainment growing up. I guess the children of the 80's had a different childhood than children of today and for that I am sad. However, today I have been brought back to my childhood by the simple pleasure of playing Battleship with my cousin. Playing this game got me thinking of all the different board games I had growing up.

Fireball Island This game was one of those wonderful inventions with a ginormous board and box, that forced your friends to come to your house because it could not be transported well. The point of the game was to safely reach the top of the plastic mountain without being knocked off and sent back several spaces by the "fireballs" (red marbles) that were placed randomly around the board. There was a certain amount of strategy that went along with this game, with cards and caves that allowed you to hide from the fireballs. I will have to brush up on the rules a bit more, but the ultimate goal was to reach the top and retrieve the jewel before anyone else did...very Indiana Jones, if you ask me.

Mouse Trap Another large game that was definitely not made for really young kids. This game could be played in several different ways. You are a plastic mouse moving randomly around the board. As you move along, you build the mouse trap. Once the trap is built, the goal is to trap every other mouse in the game in the trap and be the last mouse standing, so it's really like a Battle Royal of mice, fighting to the death over cheese. I think I always played with the trap already built and went from there. But this game was an icon of the 80's, though invented long before I was around. The pure absurdity of the trap made this game well worth it...except when the trap would not work properly, which was often.

Crossfire This was an intense game made for older kids. Made for two players, you sat opposite your opponent, each of you with a marble-shooting gun. In the middle of the board were two pieces, one for each opponent. The marbles shot along the board and the point was to shoot rapidly until you pushed your opponent's piece into their goal on the opposite side of the board. This game was so intense because it left your hands aching from the constant shooting and your heart racing. Typical games could last from about 10 seconds to minutes on end. Definitely not for the weak of heart.

Guess Who This game came along later in my childhood, but was no less memorable. The game basically served as a child's First Guide to Physical Stereotypes. Each player has a rack filled with stupid-looking cartoon characters, with overwhelmingly obvious physical characteristics. To start, you drew a card which had one of the characters on it. You then proceeded to ask a series of questions to weed out which character your opponent had drawn. Is your opponent a man? Yes (eliminate the women). Does he have glasses? No (get rid of all those guys with huge spectacles). And the game went on like this until you had narrowed your board down to one person. The first person to successfully guess the other person's character was the winner. This game unwittingly developed a whole new generation of racists and sexists, because the last character you wanted to draw was a black guy or a woman...because there were like 2 of each and if you had one of them, you pretty much were guaranteed to lose.

Perfection This was a game that was played solo, and helped to develop me into the recluse I am today. Basically, you had a board with about 20 different shapes cut into it, and 20 pieces corresponding to those shapes. The board pushed down and had a timer. The point of the game was to place all the pieces correctly into the board before the timer went off or, "POP!! Goes Perfection." Another game not for the weak of heart, because that timer ticking away was like a time bomb, and if that damn board popped, you basically jumped 10 feet in the air because you were focused solely on the pieces and it shocked you every time. To this day I wonder how many kids had fatal heart attacks while playing this game. I guess this was made to prepare kids for future careers in Bomb Squads, but all it did for me was to cause me to nearly crap in my pants on a regular basis.