Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know The Happy Place of Saturday Morning Cartoons About this episode The greatest period in the history of humankind took place in the short era between 1970 and 1995. During that time kids could tune in every Saturday morning between 8 and noon and find the most amazing cartoons ever created, plus tons and tons of ads.
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Transcript 10,871 words · 10 speakers
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0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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1:10 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:19 Josh Clark? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry, and we are practically perfect in every way here on Stuff You Should Know.
1:29 Speaker 02 That's right. I'm just a bill, only a bill.
1:33 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah?
1:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:36 Josh Clark? Have you ever been to Capitol Hill?
1:38 Speaker 02 Oh, I'm just sitting here on Capitol Hill.
1:40 Josh Clark? Do you remember we did a whole episode on Schoolhouse Rock once? And you had Bob Nastanovich on?
1:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, of Pavement, who, by the way, I finally met him in real life.
1:51 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah?
1:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was at a hardcore tet show, the new super group with Matt Sweeney and Stephen Malkmus and Emmett Kelly and Jim White in Atlanta. And I turned around in the Variety Playhouse lobby and Nastanovich comes strolling in. And I was like, hey, man. I was like, and I'm sure he gets hey manned a lot. So he had his, you know, his guard up. Actually, he didn't. He was nice. But I was like, hey, I said, it's Chuck from Stuff You Should Know. I was like, good to finally meet you in person. And he, he's like, oh, hey, man. And we chatted for a minute and it was great.
2:25 Josh Clark? Oh, that's cool. He remembered you, huh?
2:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, we've emailed and texted here and there.
2:30 Josh Clark? Oh, gotcha. Wow, that's great, Chuck.
2:32 Speaker 02 So that's my Bob Nastanovich story.
2:34 Josh Clark? That's a great one. That's about as good as a Bob Nastanovich story gets.
2:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I got to meet a pavement guy. So that was like bucket list complete.
2:43 Josh Clark? So I guess, I guess I can't think of a segue from bucket list. I mean, I guess it would be an uncrossed off thing on my bucket list to build a time machine and go back to 1983 and watch Saturday morning cartoons again. How's that?
3:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, I mean, what was your routine in your house?
3:07 Josh Clark? Oh, baby.
3:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, let's hear it.
3:09 Josh Clark? I don't ever recall having to worry about my sisters trying to change the channel. Like when it was Saturday morning cartoons, it was all me.
3:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:22 Josh Clark? The whole morning. Yeah, it was great.
3:24 Speaker 02 So they weren't watching?
3:25 Josh Clark? No, Amanda's five years older than me. Karen was 13 years older than me.
3:29 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
3:30 Josh Clark? So neither one of them had much interest in Saturday morning cartoons when I did. The interest didn't overlap.
3:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, we were close enough. Scott's three years older, Michelle's six, so we overlapped a bit. And our routine was, it was, you know, Saturday morning cartoons, but it was always a race to the big yellow chair to see who could, who could claim that first.
3:50 Josh Clark? That you sat in a chair? I sat like three feet from the TV on the ground, cross legged in front of it.
3:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, you were one of those guys.
3:57 Josh Clark? Yeah, for sure.
3:58 Speaker 02 Well, because you weren't blocking anybody.
4:00 Josh Clark? No, it was totally cool. It was just me.
4:03 Speaker 02 I love it.
4:03 Josh Clark? Yep, with my ET cereal.
4:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, parents sleeping in.
4:07 Josh Clark? Yep, for sure. Actually, I can't say what anyone else in the house was doing during 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM every Saturday morning.
4:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, I don't remember watching them like the whole block, but maybe I did.
4:21 Josh Clark? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did, except I know we've talked about it before. I don't remember what episode. But um, Thundar the Barbarian.
4:29 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
4:30 Josh Clark? I would miss it. I would get to watch like the first seven, eight minutes and then my mom would be like, it's time to leave for swimming lessons.
4:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:36 Josh Clark? And it was such a bummer.
4:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:38 Josh Clark? And I know I've talked about it before on the um, show because a listener was so kind that they bought the complete um, series of Thundar the Barbarian and mailed it to me so that I could see it. Yeah.
4:52 Speaker 02 That's amazing.
4:53 Josh Clark? Yeah.
4:53 Speaker 02 Was it VHS?
4:55 Josh Clark? No, DVD, man. They really, they've styled me out, so thank you.
4:59 Speaker 02 That's amazing.
5:00 Josh Clark? So um, all right, let's get into this because I'm sure we're gonna pepper our own like favorite cartoons that we watched throughout this, right?
5:08 Speaker 02 Uh, I might mention a cartoon or two, you never know.
5:11 Josh Clark? Okay, I mean, you were into this, right? Like for years and years, you you spent Saturday mornings watching cartoons, right?
5:17 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh, I mean, as you've reminded me over and over through our lives, I'm a bit older than you, so there will be some overlap, but also, you know, as evidenced by like your love of like the G I Joe stuff. That was a little bit after when I was into that kind of thing, so there'll be some misses here and there, too.
5:36 Josh Clark? I'm sorry, you left out the um, adjective, superior G I Joe stuff.
5:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is a fun trip down memory lane, though, and big thanks to Julia for this.
5:48 Josh Clark? Yeah, for sure. So um, for those of you who were born after the mid 90s or even the early 90s, I guess, because it took a few years to to come to realize that there was such a thing as Saturday morning cartoons and then get into them. You might not really get what we're talking about. Maybe you've heard of Saturday morning cartoons, like Gen Xers love to talk about it all the time, clearly. But it was a very special. Thing like a, a point in time every week where essentially every child in America, and I've read also Australia had their own, the UK had their own to an extent. The Canada, other countries in Asia had like Saturday morning cartoons.
6:31 Josh Clark? And you came and you sat down and you watched four straight hours of cartoons.
6:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:38 Josh Clark? Peppered with ads directed to you, a five, six, seven, eight, nine year old. Um, and loved life. And that was like your time in the week because like you said, parents tended to sleep in during that time. They were totally happy with their kids amusing themselves for the first four hours of the morning, watching TV and eating sugary cereal. And like it's, there was a real loss when it went away. Like I was well out of watching Saturday morning cartoons by the time they went away.
7:10 Speaker 02 Same.
7:11 Josh Clark? But I remember feeling like a real like sense of like younger kids and like subsequent generations, like really missing out on something that we were in retrospect, really lucky to have.
7:23 Speaker 02 Yeah. And you know, I'm sure the counter to that could be like, yeah, bruh, but we can watch anything we want, whenever we want, all the time, including Saturday morning. But, and, and not to say like, oh, things were better then, but
7:38 Josh Clark? Right.
7:38 Speaker 02 There, there was something special about a block, uh, when you didn't have choice like that.
7:43 Josh Clark? Yeah.
7:44 Speaker 02 Dedicated to you, aimed squarely at you for a certain amount of time, saying, we see you kids. And we want to sell you things.
7:52 Josh Clark? It's true. Like when I read about, you know, just how shamefully bad the commercialism was in the eighties.
7:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:00 Josh Clark? I, I still am like, I don't, I don't care. Like I loved all, I loved every minute of it.
8:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, and the commercials, as we'll see, were not that much different than the content. And I saw this in action when Ruby was younger and she would watch commercials with the same fervor. And I would be like, yeah, I guess I did the same thing, you know?
8:20 Josh Clark? I remember when we first started podcasting with ads, the whole, the whole idea was, yeah, just all of a sudden start talking about the product so no one gets that you're talking, you're giving an ad. And we were both like, we're not doing that at all. And that's where the idea for the, the fan submitted jingles came about was to make sure everybody knew an ad is coming. We're not just suddenly going to start talking about how great our Casper mattress is.
8:45 Speaker 02 Right, because I love cartoons and I love printer ink now that you mention it.
8:49 Josh Clark? Yeah, I do too. And you know, I've got one of those Epson printers and they have like a tankless or a bottomless tank where you just refill the cartridges. You don't even have to go buy new cartridges.
9:00 Speaker 02 Do they?
9:00 Josh Clark? Yeah, Epson.
9:03 Speaker 02 I wonder if people are going to suspect that's real and not a bit.
9:06 Josh Clark? No, it's a bit, everybody.
9:07 Speaker 02 They should send you some dough, though, you know?
9:09 Josh Clark? Yeah.
9:10 Speaker 02 But what we're talking about is a span of time of a few decades, about 65 to 2000-ish, although there, you will see there was some, one straggler at least beyond 2000.
9:22 Speaker 02 And cartoons had been around, but they had mainly been in, in movie theaters. Like they would play them before, like you go to like a fancy movie theater and there'll be like an organ player and you would see a cartoon and maybe a newsreel. The first sort of regular running TV cartoon was something called Crusader Rabbit in 1950.
9:40 Josh Clark? Yeah.
9:41 Speaker 02 Just ran for a couple of years, but the first big breakout was the Mighty Mouse Playhouse. Mighty Mouse had been around since 1942, but it made its big Saturday morning television debut in 1955 on CBS.
9:55 Josh Clark? Yeah, and that changed everything because prior to this, there was Saturday morning programming, apparently all the way back to the days of radio. If you were a kid, you would tune in either after school or on Saturday mornings to get, to hear your favorite program. So they were well aware that this is when kids listened and then eventually watched TV, but if you're You were a kid on Saturday morning, you were probably watching like some clubhouse style show where
10:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:19 Josh Clark? some local dude who might or might not be dressed as a sad clown. Is interacting with puppets in the studio audience. It's nothing but kids. There's a single camera. It's produced by your local TV station. And like, that's what you watch because they were so dirt cheap to make. And then when Mighty Mouse came along, it basically showed, these things are maybe a little more expensive than that clubhouse style show. But they're way cheaper than like The Lone Ranger or our gang or some of the other stuff we're showing on Saturday mornings. And there's something else that's really, really important to remember. We talked about it, I think in our political cartoons episode.
10:59 Josh Clark? Cartoons are a super stimuli. They hit our brains differently than watching Alfalfa. Or The Lone Ranger or that sad clown who are live action, real life people. They hit us differently. They capture our attention differently. And so Mighty Mouse essentially showed like, hey. You want to like get into a kid's brain and sell them stuff?
11:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:20 Josh Clark? This is the way to do it. Cartoons are the wave of the future.
11:23 Speaker 02 Yeah. Way that you get a load of Droopy.
11:27 Josh Clark? Droopy was great, wasn't he?
11:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, although I don't remember stuff like that Saturday morning. I, I remember stuff like Droopy more of like afternoon, after school kind of hours, but. Cartoons became a big deal shortly after they hit the small screen and in 1960. And this is, I don't know, one of those little weird factoids that I think some people might not realize is that Flintstones is actually a primetime show. A lot of people do know that, but a lot of people don't. So was the Bugs Bunny show at first, the Jetsons. And the New Adventures of Johnny Quest, they were all primetime, you know, major network, which is to say either ABC, CBS or NBC. This is pre Fox even, there were only three.
12:08 Josh Clark? Right.
12:09 Speaker 02 And not too long after, 1967 was when they said, you know what? We gotta consolidate all this stuff to Saturday morning. And that was it. It was, it was a new thing. And like you said, it was pretty cheap to make, especially. I mean, some of the cartoons were better than others. There were some that were really cheap and kind of poorly made where like just the mouths moved and stuff like that.
12:30 Josh Clark? Yeah.
12:30 Speaker 02 And it was the same person voicing every character like kind of clearly. And they were like, hey, what we can do here is we've got these kids, we've got this captive audience, tons and tons of kids named Josh Clark, sitting three feet in front of their TV, crisscross applesauce. And that means we can sell them toys and sugar.
12:51 Josh Clark? Yes, and they were already doing this. I mean, those clubhouse style TVs, the guy would do like what the original podcast ads were supposed to do. He'd just suddenly be talking about a brand new toy that he loves.
13:00 Speaker 02 Right, yeah.
13:01 Josh Clark? Right? So they've been doing this before, but again, cartoons, they just were operating on a different plane. And I think 1966 was a pivotal year, according to, I found a pretty good article about this by a guy named Paul F. P. Pogue, it's a great name, on encyclopedia.com. And he basically says 1966 was the, it was the year, because that was the first year where all three networks showed cartoon blocks on Saturday mornings. And from that moment on, until, I would argue, the late 90s, really?
13:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:38 Josh Clark? Was a golden age for cartoons on Saturday mornings.
13:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. And you, you know, you didn't have DVRs or TiVo or anything like that to record stuff, obviously. You didn't really even have VCRs to record things.
13:53 Josh Clark? Right.
13:54 Speaker 02 You probably just had the one TV, at least until, kind of mid to late 70s is when multiple TVs really started showing up a little bit more, unless you were, you know, like the rich kid.
14:03 Josh Clark? Yeah.
14:04 Speaker 02 And so you had to figure out and debate with your siblings, if they were around, what to watch by reading, most, you know, a lot of people got TV Guide, but we did not pay for that, because we didn't pay for extra things in our family.
14:16 Josh Clark? Sure.
14:17 Speaker 02 But, you know, we had the local paper, which had the TV listings, and so you'd pour through. Some made arguments that, you know, it had kids reading on Saturday morning as a result. And you would, you know, sometimes there were real Sophie's choices to be made on what to watch.
14:30 Josh Clark? Right. And the reason why, and this is what's hard to understand if you're like Gen Z, or even like a late millennial, there was no...
14:40 Josh Clark? Choice in what you were watching. When you sat down on Saturday mornings, the, the networks that you were watching were showing you the shows that they decided they wanted to run. So a show you watched was on a specific time, on a specific network, on a specific day, in this case, Saturday morning. So you just sat down and I think there was something about not having that choice that made it even more enjoyable, so long as the stuff was good.
15:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, they were serving us exactly what we wanted. I never had any complaints, did you?
15:13 Josh Clark? No, the only complaint I had is that I didn't have three TVs that I could watch them all at the same time, or even better sequentially.
15:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. And while this is all, you know, kind of fun and games, or not all fun and games, mostly fun and games, there are people out there, you know, kind of smarty pants people who have made arguments for things like, hey, it introduced a new generation to the Beatles, because I certainly remember watching that Beatles cartoon when I was a kid.
15:37 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah.
15:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, it came out in 65, but by, you know, it was still running somewhere, because I, I watched it, and that's where I kind of got my love of the Beatles. It introduced kids to, you know, concepts like what might happen in the future with the Jetsons. There's a historian named Joel Rhodes, who said that the cartoons perform what the scholars call the bardic function.
15:57 Josh Clark? Yeah.
15:58 Speaker 02 As in like medieval bards, and people would sit around and listen to the stories, and it would give kids on the playground, like they knew the same jokes, they had the same reference points. It bonded a generation.
16:10 Josh Clark? Because they were all watching the same thing on the same day at the same time. So yes, that was the, the culture for kids. That's where you got your culture largely. I mean, not entirely, there was Mad Magazine after all. But like, that, that was because there wasn't choice, because you couldn't be like, hey, have you seen Black Dove? No, I haven't seen that, but have you seen Time Crimes? It's a great movie. Like, those conversations didn't happen. It was some kid yelled out like,
16:40 Josh Clark? exit, stage left. And every kid on the playground just cracked up because they knew exactly what they were talking about. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, just look up cartoon exit, stage left.
16:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right. Was that Snagglepuss?
16:53 Josh Clark? Yes.
16:54 Speaker 02 Okay. I get some of those confused sometimes.
16:56 Josh Clark? No, you nailed it, buddy. You nailed Snagglepuss.
16:59 Speaker 02 We also hammered this home in the Schoolhouse Rock episode, but we do have to mention that how pivotal Schoolhouse Rock was in literally teaching kids things about history and about politics and civics and government and math and English. Like, you name it, it was all there and like, real learning, like legitimate, awesome, learning awesome stuff.
17:22 Josh Clark? Yeah, that was a good episode. I remember I cracked myself up and we almost like had to take a longer break.
17:28 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
17:28 Josh Clark? Yeah, if I remember correctly.
17:30 Speaker 02 Do you remember the joke?
17:32 Josh Clark? I think I did some weird impression of Chuck Jones, the Looney Tunes guy.
17:38 Speaker 02 Oh, man, I gotta listen to this one now.
17:40 Josh Clark? Yeah.
17:40 Speaker 02 Maybe we should put Schoolhouse Rock as our select on Saturday.
17:43 Josh Clark? Oh, that's a great idea.
17:44 Speaker 02 When this one comes out.
17:45 Josh Clark? Good idea, yeah. That's a wonderful idea, Chuck.
17:48 Speaker 02 Jerry, make a note of that. And then now I'm doing the Flintstones, hammering something into a stone tablet.
17:56 Josh Clark? Oh, man. I looked up the Great Gazoo, because any time I hear Flintstones, I think Great Gazoo.
18:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:02 Josh Clark? And did you know he was, he was an alien who was banished from his planet for creating a doomsday device?
18:10 Speaker 02 I don't, I don't remember that part.
18:11 Josh Clark? I didn't either.
18:12 Speaker 02 I remember him floating around, but yeah, that's about it.
18:15 Josh Clark? And being extremely condescending.
18:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. He was a real jerk.
18:19 Josh Clark? A dumb dumb.
18:20 Speaker 02 Shall we take a break?
18:21 Josh Clark? Yeah, let's take a break.
18:23 Speaker 02 All right, whenever you call me a dumb dumb, that means I have to go reset. We'll be right back.
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19:37 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
19:40 Josh Clark? Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.
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19:59 Speaker 03 It was going to rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
20:07 Josh Clark? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
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20:30 Josh Clark? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.
20:34 Speaker 04 Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
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21:40 Josh Clark? Chuck, there's one other thing that, one other place you could find out what was running at what time on what network.
21:47 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
21:48 Josh Clark? For Saturday morning cartoons. It was the annual ad, full-page ad in the comic books in the fall that announced like the Saturday morning cartoon lineup.
21:58 Speaker 02 Really?
21:58 Josh Clark? Yes.
21:59 Speaker 02 Huh. I didn't know that.
22:01 Josh Clark? Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, go look them up, because they're very nostalgic, but they're, they're just awesome. They're just so great, and they would tell you what time it was on, and then it was all starting in two short weeks, and you just couldn't wait.
22:14 Speaker 02 Well, and how sweet that you could publish a one-time thing, and that was the lineup.
22:18 Josh Clark? Right.
22:19 Speaker 02 It's like, it's not changing.
22:20 Josh Clark? No, for sure. Although apparently, they would change lineups in spring for shows that weren't working, but more often than not, you, you were seeing largely the same shows.
22:31 Speaker 02 Yeah. So, yeah, I remember that, when things would change sort of mid-season, and that was always disconcerting.
22:38 Josh Clark? Yeah, and one other thing I just barely touched on, there was a subtext to it. All this started right after summer ended. So you had all of summer to have a great time, summer stops, school starts, and then Saturday morning cartoon kicks off a new season.
22:53 Speaker 02 Oh, man. I love it, the fall TV season. So, we mentioned advertising, this is gonna be a big part of this episode, because it really goes in lockstep with, with Saturday morning cartoons, and all children's programming of all time. But at one point, you know, like I mentioned, they, they realized they had a captive audience, they could sell them toys and sugar, but the lines started to blur in the 1970s between content and advertising in such a way, it was sort of like, the beginning of, in fact, I'm curious when the people started using words like IP. Intellectual property because now we would just call it IP. Back then it was like, hey, we got the Jackson Five. They're a successful musical group. Let's give them a cartoon. We got the Osmonds. Kids love the Brady Bunch.
23:38 Speaker 02 Let's do the Brady Bunch Kids. We got the Flintstones. Hey, let's give them a cereal. And things started just kind of crossing streams such where, yeah, like we would just call that IP today. It's like, let's take a thing and exploit it in as many different ways and sell it in as many different ways as we can.
23:56 Josh Clark? Right. Yes, exactly. It was, they were cartoons starting, like you said, in the seventies became marketing tools. And at first it was to basically extend the advertising power of an existing TV show, like all the ones you listed, right?
24:13 Speaker 02 And more.
24:14 Josh Clark? Yeah. But then they started saying like, hey, we have this line of greeting cards. The Care Bears started out as a greeting cards line. So did Shirt Tales, as a matter of fact.
24:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:24 Josh Clark? And they would say like, people are going crazy for these mugs with these adorable characters on them. Cause Care Bears did have the loveliest animation potentially of all time of all Saturday morning cartoons.
24:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think so.
24:36 Josh Clark? And then they said, okay, mugs are not enough. Greeting cards are not enough. Let's like really blow out this, this IP, if they were calling it that, and turn it into a kid's show and then start selling like dolls and figures of these cartoons to the kids watching these shows. And you could take something like the Care Bears as a greeting card line and turn them into a hot property.
25:00 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, we'll read through a few of these. There was a Pac-Man TV show, of course.
25:06 Josh Clark? That was good.
25:07 Speaker 02 Which was an arcade game, of course. There was a Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.
25:11 Josh Clark? That was pretty good.
25:12 Speaker 02 Role-playing game? I don't think I ever saw that. There was, let me see here, obviously the Transformers.
25:19 Josh Clark? Yeah.
25:19 Speaker 02 Long before they were not so great Michael Bay movies. They were toys and then a cartoon. And as you'll see, some of these things kind of, it's hard to remember which one came before the other or if they were like developing toys just to sell a cartoon or developing a cartoon just to sell toys. It kind of, except for, you know, Rambo and Chuck Norris, which were actual shows in 1986. Rambo, The Force of Freedom and Chuck Norris, Karate Commandos, Double K.
25:47 Josh Clark? Right.
25:49 Speaker 02 I think the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the one that started out as a show just to sell the toys, right?
25:54 Josh Clark? Yeah, they were basically co-developed at the same time was part of a grand scheme. I know Jim and the Holograms was a cartoon before the toys, about a year before the toys.
26:06 Speaker 02 Okay.
26:08 Josh Clark? There were Smurfs, when the Smurfs came out, that was a big deal.
26:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:14 Josh Clark? Because there was, there was like, was it a hundred or a hundred and one Smurfs with Papa Smurf? And they made little, like, really collectible size action, well, not action figures, because they weren't action at all. But just little figures of the Smurfs, you remember those?
26:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, you could Smurf them all.
26:30 Josh Clark? And yes, exactly. I'm pretty sure they had like a hundred different ones that you could collect. And people went bonkers on those things because they were just so cute and you could put them on your desk or you could play with them or do whatever. The Smurfs came first, and I think that they really kind of helped kick off that, that genuine, like, we can really market the heck out of these cartoons if we make figures based on these.
26:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, see, that, that's a slight divide. It was a little bit old for Smurfs.
26:58 Speaker 02 Little bit old for Smurfs, full stop.
26:59 Josh Clark? Smurfs is still pretty good.
27:02 Speaker 02 Hey, they're still making those movies, man. That was one out last year, wasn't there?
27:05 Josh Clark? I have not seen the, you mean like the CGI movies?
27:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
27:09 Josh Clark? I've not seen them, but yeah, I think they're, they've got several out.
27:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think it's the same thing. They're still smurfing at the box office.
27:15 Josh Clark? That's great. And then there were other ones like Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, where like you said, the, the lines between, did the cartoon come first? Did the toys come first? It really doesn't matter because they were all part of the same package by this point. We're well into the eighties, which not coincidentally was the deregulation minded Reagan era. And cartoons at this point had evolved into half hour essentially commercials.
27:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:43 Josh Clark? For the actual toy. And in the most pronounced cases, the actual commercials were for the toys in the cartoon that the toys were based on.
27:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, I've got some stats here because in the late 70s, the FTC and we're going to talk about the FCC and the FTC quite a bit because parents and the government started to get a little upset, basically. They saw the writing on the wall. And in the late 70s, they released numbers by the FTC that highlighted what they called it like a real health problem for this programming. Companies every year, and this was back then in the 70s, spent 500 to 600 million dollars on ads targeted to children. Of all the foods being advertised to kids, two thirds, I'm surprised it wasn't more than this, honestly, were highly sugared products.
28:36 Josh Clark? It was. By my Josh Math calculations, it was over 95%.
28:41 Speaker 02 Okay, that feels about right.
28:43 Josh Clark? Yeah, for real. Because of all the foods. But even of all the ads, Chuck, most of them were first sugared foods. There was a study, or that Trade Commission study, looked at some data that looked at nine months of 1975, not even the whole year, looked at 7,515 ads. 7,182 of those ads were for sugary foods. 95.7%.
29:11 Speaker 02 Was there anything for good food?
29:14 Josh Clark? Yes, actually. There were four, four ads over nine months, four different ads for meats, vegetables, milk, or cheese.
29:24 Speaker 02 Wow.
29:25 Josh Clark? And milk, cheese, and I think meats maybe, had zero. So vegetables somehow was basically carrying that. And I would guess all four of those were different V8 ads or fruit juice ads.
29:37 Speaker 02 Who was the guy, it was like the Dairy Council or something, the guy that danced around and sang about cheese?
29:45 Josh Clark? I think it was Time for Timer. Was he like a
29:50 Speaker 02 Was that it?
29:51 Josh Clark? A big circle with real long skinny legs in the
29:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
29:54 Josh Clark? That was Timer.
29:55 Speaker 02 Okay, yeah. That was, what was that? Was that the Dairy Council?
29:58 Josh Clark? I know, he was actually a response to the government actually doing something in the late 70s, which we'll talk about, which was
30:07 Speaker 02 Oh, so he was a good thing?
30:08 Josh Clark? We need PSAs to kind of counteract this stuff. Yeah, it was a good thing.
30:11 Speaker 02 Okay.
30:12 Josh Clark? He talked about eating proteins and stuff rather than sugar.
30:15 Speaker 02 God, what a very weird, he looks like Twinkie the Kid a little bit.
30:18 Josh Clark? Yeah. I couldn't put my finger on it, Chuck. You're absolutely right. That's who it was.
30:23 Speaker 02 All right. So the writing's on the wall. These studies are coming out and people are saying like, really? Four ads for good food and 7,000 plus for sugary stuff. And so people started getting upset. Not just about the ads though, but about the content. Cartoon violence is a real thing. Every time there was an adult in a cartoon, they were buffoons and morons.
30:43 Josh Clark? Or they had like an evil plot that the kids had to foil.
30:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. Like they were bad people. Like Scooby Doo kids were, they were always foiling the adults' evil plans.
30:52 Josh Clark? Exactly.
30:53 Speaker 02 They were never going against fellow whatever. I mean, how old were they even?
30:57 Josh Clark? They were late teens, maybe even post-high school. Yeah. I think they were bumming around before college.
31:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:03 Josh Clark? Yeah. I think it was right before college.
31:06 Speaker 02 Okay. Consumerism, of course, was very much glorified in the cartoons and the ads. And by the late 60s, you know, jumping back a bit, there were, there were groups that were forming. The Action for Children's Television got together. They were lobbying the FCC. Obviously, they, they regulate the media on, not cable, as we'll see, but just regular TV. And they were saying like, hey, this is, this stuff is, we gotta pull this back some. Like, we're getting out of hand with what we're feeding children four hours at a time every Saturday.
31:37 Josh Clark? Yeah. Yeah. This was, like you said, the late 60s, it started to really kind of pick up in the 70s. Because the reason why is more and more research was funded studying what effect television had on kids. And Saturday morning cartoons were a deep focus of those studies too. There was a 1975 study from the National Science Foundation. It was a meta-analysis. Yeah.
31:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:58 Josh Clark? And they said, Saturday morning cartoons are creating conflict within families. Because kids are going to their parents, saying, I want this. The parents say, no. And then the kid gets upset and starts arguing and that's, that's internal family conflict, familial conflict. And the, this same, one of the surveys found that kids, I think a third of kids reported arguing sometimes when their parents said no, a sixth of them argued, quote, "a lot." So the reason why Saturday morning cartoons in particular were causing this conflict is because there were so many ads for so many kids products that kids saw every Saturday that it increased
32:42 Josh Clark? the frequency of kids asking for stuff, which increased the frequency of being told no, which increased the frequency of arguing and conflict.
32:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. Parents didn't like that, of course. They also didn't like that they learned that, and they did, you know, studies on this too. And they found that young kids, or kids in general, basically couldn't tell the difference between cartoons and ads because sometimes it was the literal characters from the cartoon telling you something. Sometimes it was kids playing with toys and showing you the action of the toys and kids just love watching that. And the old, you know, the younger you were, you really couldn't tell the difference. Once you got a little bit older, you could tell the difference just by the length and be like, well, those are the short cartoons.
33:27 Josh Clark? Right, exactly. Yeah, because these ads were all like, there would be a mini cartoon within the ad, you know, like Frank and Barry would almost fall into a pit or something like that. And Count Chocula would have to come turn into a bat and rescue him or something like that. And then they both end up eating their cereal. That like, if you're a little kid, you're like, this is great. This is some weird short that they just put in the middle of the show, but it's not an ad.
33:54 Speaker 02 And I'm hungry all of a sudden for that cereal.
33:57 Josh Clark? Mom, I want some Count Chocula.
34:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:00 Josh Clark? That was actually captured really well in a Simpsons, just this almost in a side where Itchy and Scratchy are up for a cartoon award. And one of the other, one of the other cartoons in the running for best writing in a cartoon series was Action Figure Man, the how to buy Action Figure Man episode. Where it just shows a little kid and goes mommy, I want it.
34:25 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
34:26 Josh Clark? He's pointing to the action, like not even an ad, that was the episode.
34:30 Speaker 02 That's really funny.
34:31 Josh Clark? Yeah, they nailed it on that. They nailed it like snagglepuss.
34:34 Speaker 02 They always do. So the long and short of all of this past few minutes is that kids didn't know that they were being sold things.
34:41 Josh Clark? Right.
34:42 Speaker 02 And parents didn't like that. I think the authors of the paper were fairly kind when they said, certainly, most advertisers do not deliberately set out to confuse or mislead children, nor to promote unsafe, unhealthy, or socially undesirable behavior, which is very naive, I think, but maybe they were just trying to soft sell it.
35:01 Josh Clark? Right. So you put all this together that again, started in the 60s, this kind of agitation. And also, this is where, this is the climate that Sesame Street grew out of and probably made Saturday morning cartoons look even worse because it showed you could make kids shows that didn't poison their minds.
35:15 Speaker 02 Right.
35:17 Josh Clark? And then it picked up in the 70s and by 1978, the Federal Trade Commission said, hey, we need to do something about this. We're not going to do anything about it, but we're going to make some recommendations through their staff report on television advertising to children. They said, we should ban all television advertising for any product whatsoever that's directed at very young children.
35:40 Speaker 02 That's a big one.
35:41 Josh Clark? Right. So you can kiss my buddy goodbye, right? Ban advertising directed to older children for sugared products, which makes sense. But the, the thing they predicated this concern on just cracks me up because those things can pose serious dental health risks. Like that was the extent of the concern with sugary products back then.
36:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:00 Josh Clark? It could rot your teeth.
36:01 Speaker 02 Right. Yeah. That, I mean, that's what you heard. That'll rot your teeth. Not like just eating tons of sugar is not good for you.
36:06 Josh Clark? Right. I remember having like a, we did a module that included a play and some other stuff in third grade that was sponsored by Crest. There was a big Crest like cut out stand up and like we just, in class, we just did this whole thing about brushing your teeth with Crest brand toothpaste. It was like that pervasive.
36:27 Speaker 02 We make holes in teeth. Do you remember that?
36:30 Josh Clark? Yeah, I do, but I can't place it.
36:31 Speaker 02 It was, uh, oh, man. I mean, I think it was Crest, but it was, um, again, a cartoon that Crest was running and it was the cavity something would, that they had to fight. And that, that was what they would chant. We make holes in teeth.
36:46 Josh Clark? Yeah, that might've been one of the things that kicked this off.
36:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, probably so. And then the final requirement was advertisements directed to older kids for other sugared products that they could, you know, put on TV would be balanced by ads for other nutritional products or health disclosures.
37:08 Josh Clark? Right.
37:09 Speaker 02 At the end of the sugared product ad.
37:11 Josh Clark? That's where Timer came from.
37:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, okay, I got you.
37:14 Josh Clark? That's also where Bod Squad came from. Don't drown your food. Remember that one?
37:18 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
37:20 Josh Clark? There was, the cool thing about Schoolhouse Rock is they'd already been doing this for half a decade by the time other networks started to do something about it by running these cute little cartoon PSAs. So essentially, they were 10, 15, maybe up to 30-second commercials that the networks had to run that were cartoons too. So they appealed to kids, but they, rather than telling kids to buy fruity pebbles, they were telling kids to brush your teeth or to exercise your chompers with things like carrots and apples, that kind of stuff.
37:53 Speaker 02 Right. Shall we take a break?
37:56 Josh Clark? Let's talk about the rest of these. There's some other stuff that you just kind of take for granted. I didn't realize came out of an actual deal between the networks and the FTC.
38:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, there was also, and all this stuff I didn't remember necessarily in the moment, but once I started reading about it and studying it and obviously watching on YouTube, it like washed over me. NBC had one to grow on from 83 to 89, and that was just usually some famous person sort of giving some life lesson advice, and they'd be like, well, that's one to grow on. What else? Nancy Reagan, of course, and just say no to drugs. You couldn't forget that.
38:32 Josh Clark? Yep. Betty White taught you who to call in an emergency.
38:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, call Betty White.
38:36 Josh Clark? Right, exactly. Because Betty White could handle basically anything. She was just that kind of person. There was also The More You Know with the star that went over your head. That was the 90s on NBC and all of the NBC stars at the time. Because remember, NBC ruled the airwaves.
38:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:55 Josh Clark? Must-see TV Thursdays.
38:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
38:58 Josh Clark? They had their stars basically doing 30 second spots, which are PSAs and about how to, how to, you know, maybe get into teaching, maybe stay in school. All just, just little life lessons like that. There were a bunch actually about abusive parents and how not cool it was for a dad to beat up on a mom.
39:19 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
39:19 Josh Clark? Yeah, a real like kind of rugged and raw stuff here or there, but presented in these vignettes that kind of got through to kids, although you can tell they were geared towards slightly older kids.
39:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. And then, of course, your beloved G.I. Joe talked about stranger danger and always finished with the famous line, now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
39:38 Josh Clark? Mm hmm. And you've seen those parody videos of that before, right?
39:42 Speaker 02 I don't think so.
39:43 Josh Clark? Oh, there's about 30 or so, maybe more parody videos that are just totally off the wall, but hilarious, where they just take out the, the sound and put in their own sound and vocals and edit the stuff up, kind of mix it up. So that they're just, it's just amazing. Look up G.I. Joe PSA parody videos and you'll thank me later.
40:04 Speaker 02 Or just watch probably any episode of The Family Guy.
40:08 Josh Clark? Uh, yeah, probably.
40:09 Speaker 02 He did a lot of this stuff.
40:11 Josh Clark? Yeah, he did.
40:12 Speaker 02 Uh, shall we take a break?
40:14 Josh Clark? Yes.
40:15 Speaker 02 All right, we'll be right back with more on Saturday morning cartoons.
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41:28 Speaker 06 This mood check is brought to you by State Farm. Porque tu bienestar también merece protección. ¿Qué tal, mi gente? Honey German checking in contigo. Take a second. Literalmente, un momentico para ti. How's your corazón feeling today? If it's a little tired, a little oof, you're not alone. Have you eaten algo rico? Taken a deep breath? Maybe even turned off your phone for cinco minutitos? I promise, the memes will still be there. Sometimes self-care isn't candles and meditation. It's just saying no. It's drinking a little bit of agua. It's letting yourself rest sin pena. You don't have to prove anything today. Just be. Breathe. Estás haciendo lo mejor que puedes. And yes, that's enough.
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42:16 Speaker 07 Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by rising star Sienna Spiral. What is so fascinating to you about impermanence?
42:38 Speaker 08 Everything about us, everything we do, is temporary. And I just got terrified of that. You know, what we do with our time and how I feel like the way the world is today and how fast-paced it is and how much we don't even acknowledge anything around us. How I felt temporary to the people around me and how that made me scared and how much I wanted to last and make an impact on people. And I guess to change the way I looked at things and to change myself and to change how I guess I approached everything in my life. It's important that things are impermanent because nothing would feel special. And enjoying, you know, learning to love with knowing it's not gonna last.
43:12 Speaker 07 Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
43:34 Speaker 02 All right. Oh, by the way, I remembered it was the cavity creeps.
43:37 Josh Clark? Oh, great. Memory.
43:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, it just popped back. So before we left, we talked about, you know, some of these things they were doing to offset the effect of cartoons. It's called pro-social programming, and it was, it came about because of an actual deal that was made.
43:52 Josh Clark? Right.
43:53 Speaker 02 There was FTC hearing in 1978 where Kenneth Mason of Quaker Oats was up there because, you know, they were like, hey, Captain Crunch is rotting our kids' teeth out, and you make it. And he, he actually, like, he didn't think they were the problem. He thought the content was the problem, but he did come out and had a statement, basically where like, he said, you know, I think we do need to change what's going on in our cartoons and change the way our society is, is using this medium to communicate with kids. So it took a lot of nerve, I think, for, for that guy to say that. But he didn't blame the ads, like I said. So they struck a deal, basically, hey, you can keep these ads if you add this other programming that we were talking about before.
44:37 Josh Clark? Yeah. And apparently, the way that I took it, he was, it was a very crafty thing to do by blaming the content because it took the onus off the sugary product advertisers, and everybody started looking at the cartoons themselves. And the cartoons were probably like, hey, hey, we're not nearly as bad as Fruity Pebbles, but, okay, we'll start doing something about it. And the, I guess cartoons themselves started to get a little more pro-social. Like, this is where Fad Albert came from, I believe. But then also those PSAs that we were talking about.
45:08 Speaker 02 Right.
45:08 Josh Clark? That was the advent of them.
45:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. But this was late 70s. I think that was 77, 78. Ronald Reagan would come along in the 1980s and sort of just deregulate the United States as a whole and said FCC, stand down, and don't worry about this stuff. They didn't officially, I mean, there were recommendations anyways and not laws. So a recommendation is only good if you sort of follow up on that. And FCC started not to in the 80s. They kind of didn't try in some cases. I think between 1980 and 1990, they actually saw a rise in the number of violent acts per hour on Saturday morning cartoons from 18.6 to 26.4 per hour.
45:51 Josh Clark? Which is pretty nuts, but it gets even more nuts when you compare it to what was on primetime, what the adults were watching.
45:58 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
45:59 Josh Clark? Between 1980 and 1990, it pretty much held steady at just five to six acts of violence per hour, as opposed to the 26 per hour on cartoons.
46:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, and you know, it's cartoon violence, but it's still, it's not all Roadrunner falling off a cliff. Like, a lot of it was, you know, depiction, like, you know, there was a Rambo cartoon, like I mentioned.
46:21 Josh Clark? Right. Yeah, but there is research, and I'm not taking a position on either way, because people have said, like, violent video games cause violence.
46:29 Speaker 02 Right.
46:30 Josh Clark? This is like the predecessor to all that stuff. Violent cartoons cause violent kids. One of the, I guess, arguments of that is that even if it was cartoon violence, like Roadrunner, it's still desensitized kids to the consequences of violent acts.
46:45 Speaker 02 Right.
46:46 Josh Clark? Because there was accompanied with humor.
46:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. So the 80s are kind of the most unchecked time, it seems like.
46:53 Josh Clark? Yeah.
46:54 Speaker 02 And the 90s come along, and finally, they were like, all right, we gotta do something. Congress steps back in, and the Children's Television Act of 1990 required the FCC to enforce those original FTC's recommendations in 1978, and said, "You gotta reinstate restrictions on advertising during children's television and enforce the obligations of broadcasters to meet the educational informational needs of the child audience." And a couple of years later, NBC was like, "All right, I'm done. It's not even worth it anymore."
47:24 Josh Clark? Forget this, yeah. Although, one good thing that came out of this is this was the origin of Saved by the Bell, because NBC went all in on slightly older kids, teen programming on Saturday mornings, and the flagship of it was Saved by the Bell. So much, they showed two episodes of it at morning, new ones.
47:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I mean, this is also where you got things like The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and of course, Peewee's Playhouse was a little bit before this.
47:52 Josh Clark? Mm-hmm.
47:53 Speaker 02 Or was it in the 90s?
47:54 Josh Clark? Was that the German pronunciation?
47:56 Speaker 02 What'd I say?
47:57 Josh Clark? Peewee's Playhouse.
47:58 Speaker 02 Did I? Peewee's Playhouse?
48:02 Josh Clark? Perfect. Yeah, I think that was like 85 or something like that.
48:07 Speaker 02 Okay, I never watched Peewee's Playhouse. I know we've talked about this, but I guess I was 14 by then. Not that you, I mean, I could watch it today and probably really love it because Peewee defies age groups. But it was just one of those things that maybe at the time I didn't know about it and didn't think it was for me or something. I don't know. I have no excuse.
48:26 Josh Clark? Yeah, I wasn't into him either for sure, but I did get to see his live version of the Peewee's Playhouse.
48:32 Speaker 02 Oh, you went to that?
48:33 Josh Clark? Yeah.
48:34 Speaker 02 Amazing.
48:36 Josh Clark? So there were a few other consequences of this, but the big one, the upshot was that the government congress essentially nanny stated Saturday morning cartoons out of existence.
48:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:48 Josh Clark? Because of these rules, they just weren't profitable anymore. There were certain restrictions on advertising. You could only show so many ads during kids programming. Like there was, there was just a lot that took away the profit drive that made Saturday morning cartoons so attractive, right?
49:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:07 Josh Clark? There were a lot of other factors too that put the writing on the wall. Not the least of which was the rise of cable TV.
49:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:15 Josh Clark? Which you mentioned was outside of the purview of the FCC for a long time. And from what I could tell, even today, networks are required to show three hours of educational programming geared to kids. So if you ever are up on a Saturday or a Sunday and you were watching, say, By the Bell reruns, like, I don't know, some people do. It would say, it would flash like a logo that says EI and it would say, this program has been labeled educational and informative.
49:46 Speaker 02 Oh.
49:47 Josh Clark? That's because of a government mandate that they have to run three hours of shows, educational shows, I guess a day?
49:55 Speaker 02 Maybe.
49:56 Josh Clark? Maybe a week, because I only remember seeing it on certain times of certain days. But there were mandates that said you have to show educational programming. And that's why you see that today. But cable, that didn't apply to. And so not only did cable not have to show and take up valuable real estate with educational programming that nobody wanted to watch unless it was saved by the bell. There were also cable networks that were geared exclusively to kids that wasn't just on Saturday mornings. These were 24-hour-a-day children's programming, like Nickelodeon and the beginning, the first iteration of the Disney Channel.
50:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, and stuff like the WB and CW, too. Those weren't exclusively kids, but I feel like most of that was. And like through teen years, basically. You also had the rise of, like, even though I love my Atari and stuff like that, it wasn't anything like what was to come with at-home gaming. That certainly put a dent in things because now kids could just get up on Saturday morning and play whatever, you know, new system was out.
51:01 Josh Clark? Right.
51:03 Speaker 02 DVRs came along and then, you know, so you didn't have to crowd around the TV at a certain time together. They all just started getting out of it. I think I mentioned NBC got out in 92, CBS got out in 97, and ABC, wow. ABC hung on to Saturday morning cartoons till 2010.
51:22 Josh Clark? Yeah, yeah, for sure.
51:23 Speaker 02 Not bad.
51:24 Josh Clark? No, and I think WB and Fox had only stopped just a couple of years before. But again, it seems like the whole thing peaked and ended by the late 90s, very early 2000s. And from what I saw, the last Saturday morning cartoon block shown in the United States happened on September 27, 2014, on the CW. And the last cartoon show that was shown in the history of Saturday morning cartoons was Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal. Which is nothing I was ever into, but I know there are a lot of kids who just like drooled with nostalgia. And that was the last Saturday morning cartoon ever shown. There's a little piece of trivia
52:09 Josh Clark? for you.
52:10 Speaker 02 Wow. Did they, did they have a lone bugler play taps afterward?
52:15 Josh Clark? They should have for sure.
52:16 Speaker 02 Man, what a, what an end of an era for sure.
52:18 Josh Clark? Yeah. But also, I mean, when I look back and, or look at all of this info and I'm like, I was smack dab in the most manipulative stretch of Saturday morning cartoons.
52:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:31 Josh Clark? And it makes me wonder like, what had I been watching in the early seventies or had I been watching in the nineties or two thousands after like all of these restrictions? How different would, would I be?
52:44 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah.
52:46 Josh Clark? Like I can recite a specific fruity Pebbles ad that they used to show around Christmas.
52:51 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah?
52:52 Josh Clark? Yeah.
52:53 Speaker 02 Can you now?
52:54 Josh Clark? Yes. So I think Fred, no Barney was pretending to be Santa because he wanted to slide down the chimney and get Fred's fruity Pebbles. And he said, ho, ho, ho, I'm hu, hu, hungry. And then he slid down and he found Santa was already there. And he goes, Santa, my Pebbles. And Fred goes, your Pebbles, Barney. And this would like get in my head as an earworm. And it does still sometimes today where like for days, it'll just be going on a loop in my head.
53:24 Speaker 02 That's so funny.
53:25 Josh Clark? And I can even top that Chuck.
53:27 Speaker 02 Okay.
53:28 Josh Clark? As I was thinking about it today, I was highlighting like my notes for today and I started drooling. So like, that's how, that's the Pavlovian response that was trained to me for fruity Pebbles. Thanks for Saturday morning cartoons in the eighties.
53:45 Speaker 02 I love fruity Pebbles. Not as good as Captain Crunch Peanut Butter to me. That's my all time favorite, but boy, I love some fruity Pebbles.
53:51 Josh Clark? Did you ever have that ET cereal that I mentioned earlier?
53:53 Speaker 02 Uh, I don't think I ever had that. I mean, we didn't, we weren't, you know, we didn't get a lot of that stuff.
54:00 Josh Clark? If you could afford Captain Crunch Peanut Butter, you could afford ET.
54:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, but Captain Crunch peanut butter was a rarity and oftentimes it was the the generic brands of all that stuff. So instead of fruity pebbles, it was like Fruitstones or whatever.
54:15 Josh Clark? Fruit tonsil stones.
54:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. Gross.
54:18 Josh Clark? Yeah. As far as peanut butter cereals, Go ET was the best, I think.
54:22 Speaker 02 Oh, it was peanut butter?
54:24 Josh Clark? Yes. And it was not peanut butter and chocolate. It was just peanut butter. Cause remember Reese's Pieces were ET's favorite.
54:29 Speaker 02 Oh, of course.
54:29 Josh Clark? Candy. And it had like a glossy coating to it too, that somehow made it even more sweet peanut butter. It was so good.
54:38 Speaker 02 Was it ET's head or something?
54:42 Josh Clark? No, I don't remember what it was, but it was, I don't, I don't think it was. It may have been E's and T's. I'm not sure.
54:48 Speaker 02 I was just about to ask if it was E's and T's.
54:51 Josh Clark? It may have been, but on the box, it was obviously just a big picture of ET.
54:56 Speaker 02 I bet you they could bring that back and people would like it.
54:59 Josh Clark? I would buy all of it.
55:01 Speaker 02 I think it, I'm looking now, buddy. I think it's E's and T's.
55:04 Josh Clark? It's so good, Chuck. I, it was so good. That, and remember the lemon lime Bubble Yum? Where it was like a lemon center wrapped in lime outside?
55:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:15 Josh Clark? Those two things are like, that was the pinnacle of my childhood as far as eating stuff goes.
55:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was a grape hubba bubba guy generally. I found that they had the best tinsyle strength or the biggest bubbles.
55:26 Josh Clark? For sure.
55:27 Speaker 02 But I would also do hubba bubba or Bubbleicious and Bubble Yum too.
55:31 Josh Clark? Yep. Yeah, Bubble Yum probably had the least bubble blowing ability. Hubba bubba definitely had everybody else beat.
55:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:40 Josh Clark? One last question. Did you have a license plate that you got out of a Honeycomb box that you put on your bike?
55:47 Speaker 02 Oh, you bet your sweet bippy I did.
55:49 Josh Clark? Me too, buddy.
55:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:51 Josh Clark? I don't remember what it said, but I'll bet it was bitchin' and pro America.
55:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, I didn't even like Honeycomb cereal. So that they got you to buy stuff just because you wanted the prize.
56:00 Josh Clark? That's awesome. And I'm sure you learned all about the license plate being in the box of Honeycombs on Saturday morning cartoons.
56:07 Speaker 02 Yeah. And oh man, nostalgia's coming hard now. But if you weren't sitting down for Saturday morning cartoons, you would just have your bowl in front of you, of course. If you're at the kitchen table, eating cereal, what were you doing?
56:19 Josh Clark? Reading the back of the cereal box.
56:21 Speaker 02 You got it.
56:24 Josh Clark? So good. Which is probably another ad for something else too.
56:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, or like a puzzle or a word find or something.
56:30 Josh Clark? Yeah, if you're lucky.
56:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:33 Josh Clark? Phew, we should probably stop because I'm getting dizzy. I'm about to faint.
56:37 Speaker 02 I'm drooling now.
56:39 Josh Clark? If you want to know more about Saturday morning cartoons, I have a great little piece of advice for you. Some saintly humans have put entire three, four hour blocks of Saturday morning cartoons, complete with ads, the original broadcasts on YouTube and all sorts of other video playing sites. And if you want to just lose yourself, go watch some of it. You will love it.
57:03 Speaker 02 Amazing.
57:04 Josh Clark? Chuck said amazing, which means it's time for listener mail.
57:09 Speaker 02 I'm going to call this grossest cockroach story ever. Hey guys, not to be a one-upper, but I believe I might have the worst cockroach story on earth.
57:16 Josh Clark? Yikes.
57:16 Speaker 02 A few years ago, I let my little three-legged best friend Trip, I guess he's got a little tripod dog. I love those, out on the front porch because he loves laying on the porch at night to listen to the bugs. He's the best dog one could dream for, but on this night, he let me down for the first time ever for not protecting me. As I opened the door to let him out, as I turned around to walk back inside, I felt something hit my head and start crawling, quickly ripped off my hoodie and threw it to the ground. I searched and searched, but ultimately couldn't find the culprit. After a few minutes of searching, I decided to open the front door to see if Trip wanted to come back in. Right as I began to call out for him to come inside, a roach the size of a Milano cookie buzzed around from inside the house and flew directly into my mouth.
57:57 Josh Clark? Oh my goodness.
58:00 Speaker 02 Yes, all the way into my mouth, I quickly spit it out and tried my best to smash this thing into oblivion, but saliva only made him stronger, I guess, as he evaded me with ease and flew off into the warm summer night sky. I think about this far too often and wouldn't doubt if it only added to my ongoing anxiety. He had mentioned at the beginning that we help with anxiety for Buck, so, and that his wife appreciates that. So, part of the reason for Buck's anxiety might be recounting this roach story.
58:28 Josh Clark? For real.
58:28 Speaker 02 Again, thank you guys for the years of joy, knowledge and laughs. May your mouths be free of para planita americana for forever and longer.
58:38 Josh Clark? Nice. Thanks Buck. That was a good email.
58:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, good writer.
58:41 Josh Clark? I can ima- yeah, I can imagine that there are some people out there listening that are like, what does he mean a flying cockroach? Yes, indeed, there are flying cockroaches.
58:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
58:49 Josh Clark? They're called palmetto bugs and they're giant and they're flying and they're cockroaches. And apparently if you're Buck and you got your mouth open, a Milano-sized cookie cockroach is going to find his way right into that gaping hole.
59:02 Speaker 02 Terrific.
59:03 Josh Clark? Uh, I think I already said, thanks again Buck, but that was such a good email. It's worth saying again. So thanks again Buck. And if you want to be like Buck and send us an email, send it off to [email protected] .
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