Tag Archives: cartoons

Scooby Doo: I’m in Love with an Ostrich

I do a lot of things for you, my loyal readers. Other times, I do things for fun, but I claim I’m doing it for you, just to boost your self-esteem. This is one of those times.

I’ve been watching a lot of Scooby Doo. In the 2nd season, the creators started inserting pop songs into every episode. It’s the nutty lack of relevance to anything happening on screen that makes these songs so hilarious.

In “Jeepers, it’s the Creeper” the gang runs from a big green dude called The Creeper while, for no reason at all, a song about being in love with an ostrich plays.

[youtube video: Scooby Doo, Daydreamin’ (I’m in Love with an Ostrich)]

[link updated 11/13/15]

A whim one evening to watch a few episodes of Scooby Doo turned into a typically ridiculous quest to determine the original chronology of the show and to watch every episode, in order.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me sometimes.

If you don’t find this idea as exciting as I do, go to the store and buy yourself a box of BooBerry or Count Chocula. Eat a bowl or two of cereal and this project will seem like The Best Idea Ever.

Hocus Pocus! (Halloween film fest, redux)

The animation that transformed the top-hat wearing Count Dracula into a bat in House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula reminded me of my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon, Transylvania 6-5000. I hadn’t seen it in years, maybe since I was a kid, so I was excited to find it online in it’s entirety.

Bugs Bunny – Transylvania 6-5000

About House of Dracula – Glenn Strange returns as The Monster but footage of Lon Chaney (Ghost of Frankenstein) and Boris Karloff (Bride of Frankenstein) are used to pad the movie. Chaney also has a starring role as Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man who’s despair is at the heart of many of these movies. The poor immortal bastard just wants to quit chasing cars and howling at the moon, but every scientist he finds who’s willing to try to cure him turns out to be mad. Plus, they always turn out to have a fetish for reviving Frankenstein’s Monster that screws everything up by the final reel and leaves Lawrence Talbot once again in need of some new clothes and a case of flea collars. Poor WolfMan, he’s got the worst HMO ever.

The Flintstones

I’m fairly conversant in mid-Twentieth Century advertising and popular culture, but there’s always so much more to learn!

According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications The Flintstones started out as a Primetime show, it wasn’t considered “children’s programming” when it debuted. Even knowing that, this weirded me out:

The Flintstones sell us Winston Cigarettes.

Also on the Museum of Broadcast Communications site was this tidbit, doubly interesting in this context:

The Flintstones also launched a multi-million dollar merchandising business with hundreds of toys and novelties placed on the market. Perhaps the most enduring product developed in this ancillary line was Flintstones vitamins, also used as a sponsor for the program. Citing the difficulties children might have in distinguishing cartoon characters from the products made in their likenesses, critics attacked the practice of advertising vitamins to children, and such ads were withdrawn in 1972.

Granted, they dumped Winston as a sponsor long before the vitamins fracas, but in hindsight it just seems so quaint that marketing vitamins to kids would be threatening (not that I disagree).

(youtube link via digg)