Let's Talk About The Banana Splits

One of my favorite shows from my childhood was The Banana Splits Show.

For those not in the know, it was a variety show that was produced by Hanna-Barbera back in 1968 that starred the titular group as a fictional rock band doing funny skits and fooling around in their clubhouse. You had Fleegle the dog (Paul Winchell), Bingo the ape (Daws Butler), Drooper the lion (Allan Melvin), and Snorky the elephant (he only honked). After Beatlemania, fake rock/pop bands were all the rage like the Archies, The Monkees, and the like and Hanna-Barbera wanted their own slice of the pie. And like most fake bands, how they sounded when they talked vs how they sung were wildly different.

Here's a music video of one of their songs.

And here's a video of some of their sketches:

See? The kids of the 60s were easily fooled, I guess. If the style of the costumes and sets seemed familiar, they were made by Sid Marty Krofft in their first TV gig. The show only ran for 31 episodes, and would've continued on if the Kroffts weren't offered a better deal to start their own show. HR Pufnstuf was made in its place and the rest was Krofft history.

Since it turns 50 years old this year, it's admittedly before my time, but I used to see it in the early mornings on TV back when I was young. I want to say it was on TBS? I know it didn't see it on Cartoon Network since my house never got it until at least 1996. The sets, the costumes, the colors really hit a bunch of my buttons and I couldn't get enough of them. It was a long stretch of time before I rediscovered them on Boomerang around, jeez, seven years ago? And it was worth the wait, it was like waiting for the bus for summer camp all over again.

But you can never forget that famous theme song:

I love that intro so much. They're just dicking around an amusement park, it's every kids dream. The first season they're running around Six Flags Over Texas (the OG!), but the second season they were doing stuff in the now-defunct Coney Island in Ohio:

The second season also made Snorky furry for some reason. But like most things concerning the Kroffts, we don't tend to ask what led to their creative decisions. And like everyone else, I wanted one of those Banana Buggies for myself.

And since that theme song is stuck in your head, I can't let that go by without mentioning the time Liz Phair covered it for Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits, one of my favorite albums ever.

And even earlier by The Dickies.

Amazing to see people who have only learned about this show through Kick Ass.

Each episode had a variety of segments. You usually had a few short segments with the Banana Splits themselves, but they also had a live-action serial called Danger Island:

It was about a group of explorers fending off pirates with the help of a native man named Chongo. ("Uh-oh, Chongo!" was the famous catch phrase of the show) Notably starring Jan Michael Vincent and directed by a before-he-was-famous Richard Donner, this was usually the best segment in the show.

And depending on the episode, the cartoon you saw were either The Three Musketeers

or The Arabian Knights.

They were pretty much the same cartoon, but in different settings. A team of heroes, an animal sidekick and some kids fighting bad guys. In syndicated runs, some of these segments (usually Danger Island) would be replaced by shorts from the Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show. The Boomerang cuts thankfully restored everything.

In addition to those segments, sometimes you saw really bizarre ones like Hold The Bus.

I can't explain that, either. All I know is that it's one of the oldest videos on all of youtube.

In 1972 they starred in The Banana Splits in Hocus Pocus Park, their only full-length adventure.

After YEARS of looking for it, someone uploaded the whole thing to youtube and I immediately had to watch it. It was mostly animated with live-action wraparounds and sadly what you see above is only the live-action parts. I'm gonna cut to the chase, that's the best part as the rest of the movie is a boring, plodding mess.

The plot is that a little girl the Banana Splits were giving a tour to was kidnapped by a witch that lived in a cartoon forest and the band rushes in to rescue her. There's lots of arguing and dumb puns and schemes that go nowhere. The two henchmen that try to fend off the Splits end up teaming up with them, rescue the girl, and then they hold a concert. The end.

Lot of great faces though. Like this one with Drooper:

And these:

Good thing I managed to screen cap as much as I could, as I'm afraid it's lost to the ether again.

I was warned that I wasn't going to like it, and I didn't listen and I hate that I didn't listen. It's still worth watching not because it's the only time the Banana Splits have been animated, but all of the early Kings Island footage is frankly incredible. There's not a lot of good footage of theme parks before the 90s with all the advances of camcorder technology, and the footage in that cut of the movie is as crisp as you can find it.

They've had a few attempts at revivals over the years, like some shorts that aired on Boomerang several years ago:

Plus this really creepy video from Web Premiere Toons that was made during the early days of internet videos where we had to watch on a dialup connection.

The video cuts off before the audio does and I'm honestly scared by it.

And just last year, they teamed up with the Suicide Squad of all things in a comic.

I'll tell you, that story is NUTS and certainly worth the read. They're just as dumb and corny as you remember, but now they're realistic animals and they're packing heat.

How much do I love the Banana Splits despite much of it being not that good?

I currently have a poster of this hanging over my couch. Yes ladies, I'm single.

And I managed to pick up two of Funko's Dorbz Ridez of Fleegle and Drooper (my favorites) from New York Comic Con a few years ago. Since all four of them were limited to 300 pieces each, it’s gonna be kind of a hassle to get Bingo and Snorky’s since those two were never released outside of San Diego Comic Con and their going rate is around $60 each.

And that's all a buildup to my latest mail call:

Banana Splits Funko Pops!! Ever since the Dorbz were made I’d been begging Funko to make pops of these and this year they finally delivered! When SDCC came around, they announced these guys and I was so excited...until I saw that they were limited to 4000 pieces each, with a small portion of that being released to their online store...which tends to sell out their exclusives within minutes. If I know my math, 4000 is a lot more than 300 and even though exclusives with that large of a run tend to not go for much money on the secondary market, I already resigned myself to paying far more than their original $15 price tag for each of them. These were going to be another one of my white whales, like the Frankenberry pop turned into.

But as luck would have it, I was on the Funko shop on the first day of comic con, thinking the sale list that was leaked to collectors was fake, there they were available to buy. There were not many things I have done in my life as fast as I bought these, folks. I know consumerism is the devil and I almost gave myself a heart attack over literal stuff, but I managed to beat everyone to the punch. Hell, I went to a toy show the next weekend and I talked to vendors that were pretty mad that they missed it and I got to rub it in their faces.

I'll confess that Bingo was never my favorite, but his pop won me over. It look fantastic and his big grin is what draws me in. When people tell you that Funko Pops look bland and ugly, I advise you to point to these guys. These are three inches of sculpted art, and I'm sticking to that.

The main problem I have is that the writing has been consistently terrible for these guys. I know that it's not high art and aimed at kids, but it could seriously better. Like if they were given the Pee-Wee's Playhouse or the Aquabats Super Show approach of tongue in cheek surrealism, the Banana Splits could be great again! Cartoon Network clearly has the costumes still lying around somewhere, and since reboots are all the rage lately, I feel like it could be done!

And it can be like the old show, where they have different segments. Like, a cartoon, an adventure serial, some fake commercials or music videos, and some Banana Splits shenanigans. I might be an audience of one for this, but I'd be front row center watching every day! Who's with me?

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Still a Toys R Us Kid

We've all seen the news: Toys R Us officially closed for business (at least in the states) yesterday, June 29th, 2018.

I think we've all seen the famous picture by now and whoever took this picture lacks a soul. I'm sure they had good intentions, and I know that TRU is planning a comeback, but they knew this was gonna go viral.

This is the one I went to on Thursday, in Carle Place. My attitude since then was like Milhouse right here:

So what was left in that giant store with one day left in business?

Not much, I'm afraid. Literal crap in baskets. This is the only picture I took inside because the rest of the store looked this empty, and also it was too depressing. If anyone wanted the Duck Dynasty game for PS4, the store still had half a dozen copies in what was left of the video game section.

I did, however, not leave the store empty handed.

I don't even know if I actually have this amiibo (not likely), but I liberated it from the store for two bucks and change.

Someone asked me if I walked away with this poster, but I'm sure that some employee already had dibs on it. I'd like this to go to someone who actually worked for the company. If this store had handbaskets with the logo on them, they were long gone, not to mention I wasn't able to haul one of the shopping carts home with me.

My childhood store was this one, in Massapequa.

So many memories in that store. I know I bought my SNES there, among many, many other toys.

The last toy I bought there was this Funko Pop of Sprocket from Fraggle Rock, knowing (correctly) that I wouldn't get a chance to get one once the actual clearance sales started. It sucks knowing that TRU is one less trusted Funko retailer, and that its exclusives (usually the Teen Titans Go line) have either become commons or went off to other companies. Also, yeah, it's stacked with a few of the rarer Pops that I have, be jealous.

But enough of the depressing present. Let's look back at some fond memories, shall we?

Remember Geoffrey Money? Yes kids, before gift cards were the norm, Toys R Us gift certificates came in the form of actual dollar bills. To teach kids how actual money worked, we were given this fake money that was only good at one store to spend at our leisure. Every birthday and Christmas I looked forward to getting cards stuffed with these, and I swore off any relatives that decided to get me something else instead (that weren't already toys or the like, of course). I was seriously bummed when this got phased out, but I know it was for the best. If you lost even one of the bills, there was no getting it back. I wish I saved at least one of them for posterity, though. I can always assume a trip to eBay would indulge me, but I'm afraid to look what the asking price is for one these days.

On that note, Kids R Us used to be a thing, too. I don't have much nostalgia or a lot of fond childhood memories for this place. For those not in the know, this was Toys R Us' foray into kids clothing stores, and were usually situated near other Toys R Us, much like how Babies R Us stores were usually nearby to the mothership.

Because if there's nothing kids love more than toys, it's being forced to shop for clothes with mom! It could really explain why most of them closed down in the late nineties, with the last of them shuttering in 2004. Before empty storefronts were as depressingly common as they are now, my association with dead stores were Kids R Uses that closed twenty years ago and still remain empty to this day. Well, it's not true. Out of the The two I knew of, one stayed vacant for years before Circuit City took it over, and when THAT closed, it stayed empty again until an Aldis moved in about three years back; the other was under a Bally's Fitness and when it closed in the late 90s, stayed empty until the gym finally took it over about a year or two ago. Both were host to Spirit Halloween stores on and off for a few years, but seeing nothing in that space for most of your life really stays with you.

Before Geoffrey became that cartoony giraffe, he used to look like this:

He's got my vote. Geoffrey actually had a number of looks over the years.

The 1988-1999 versions are what I remember the most. I was not a fan of that freaky live-action giraffe. All I remember from that era is this one commercial:

And Geoffrey used to have a family!

In case you're wondering, the wife is Gigi, the son is Geoffrey Jr., and the daughter is Baby Gee. They got phased out over the nineties, but most old stores still had them plastered everywhere well into the last decade. Newer versions of Geoffrey made him a swinging bachelor, the fools.

And who could forget how you bought video games back in the day? You took a slip for whatever you wanted, then brought it over to the window in the corner of the store and then the guy went through that dungeon and brought out your copy of Donkey Kong Country. I was both scared and really intrigued by that little window.  It's a shame that the video game section became open air by the time I could drive myself to these places. You could actually SEE all those games behind the glass case, but it wasn't the same.

And I REALLY miss when aisles looked like this. The 80s/early 90s was a magical time, long before three toy companies owned everything and kids actually BOUGHT toys. It's so stuffed with toys, I love it! It's a shame I can't find any pictures of the old school Transformers section, but it looked exactly like this.

Farewell, Toys R Us. We'll always have the commercials.

The reason why I refused to grow up was I always wanted to remain a Toys R Us kid. I may be growing older, but I'll always be a Toys R Us kid...

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Absolute Units

Starting earlier this year, you might've seen folks describe big ol' things as "an absolute unit." I myself, can't get enough of the term.

The meme technically starts here, back in December, and this guy definitely earned that term. The English definitely have a better way with words than we do, eh?

But THIS is when I believe the term officially entered the lexicon. It's also my favorite variant of these. There's fluffy, and then there's...this. It's like if a cloud could kick your ass.

And of course they dug up the source like any good museum would:

"Black Welsh Mountain" certainly has a ring to it.

And this really represents the four elements: Air (Ram), Fire (Tiger), Earth (Raccoon), and Water (Seal). I don't know what it is about really fat or really buff animals, but I'm just really delighted by this.

Or just really tiny. Or any Bearded Dragon, really.

They introduced Alolan Form Exeggutor to Pokemon Go the other day and this is seriously what it looks like when you encounter one. Its Pokedex entry doesn't even show its head!

And speaking of Pokemon Go, I managed to catch this absolute unit during this month's community day. I managed to catch eight(!) shiny Charmander, but this was the only one good enough to evolve. June's community day is gonna be Larvitar (yay), but it'll be on the day I'll be at a convention (boo).

You might've seen this picture of a really buff cat making the rounds the past few days, and I seriously can't take my eyes off of it. Fat cats are common, but one like this makes we want to know its backstory. It reminds me more of a clip art picture of a bulldog.

You joke, but this clip art was my high school's mascot. I'm not kidding, this is the official one.

And finally we end on this nonsense. I caught this just earlier tonight while watching the National Spelling Bee finals. We finally managed to find a single word for "absolute unit" and it's of course German in origin. I couldn't for the life of you tell you what this word actually means (it's a medical term of some kind), I just had to rush to take a picture of this and share it all over the internet.

When the spelling bee is down to the last two spellers, it delves into the obscure pages of the dictionary and starts the "okay, you clearly made that one up" round. The past few years have had finals go on forever, and from 2014-16 there were ties. Scripps wanted to go to bed early this time and pretty much ended the competition right here. This was the VERY FIRST WORD in the round, and Naysa of course messed it up, allowing the winning word to be this:

From the pronunciation, I wouldn't have guessed that spelling in a million years (I assumed a Q was in there somewhere), but if you asked anyone watching, he was pretty much given the equivalent of "apple." PRONOUNCER SAYS WORD doesn't help at all, either.

You got hosed in favor of a kid on his last year of being eligible, Naysa. I hope you continue to kick much absolute unit ass later on.

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Marvel and the Fancy Glove Man Magic Beans Movie

So how about that Infinity War, eh?

Unlike the rest of the internet, I'm gonna leave this space with as few spoilers as possible, but that picture pretty much sums up everything.

Speaking of spoilers, with a movie as hyped as this one, I didn't take any chances and muted as many trigger phrases as possible on Twitter. You can thank Lindsey Ellis for "Fancy Glove Man Magic Beans Movie." It was hard enough trying to avoid anything about it until Saturday afternoon, and now spoilers are EVERYWHERE. Seriously, any post on the internet not even related to Avengers will have someone detailing every single plot point as the first comment. People are asses, folks. I got spoiled for the past few Star Wars movies mere hours before seeing Force Awakens and Last Jedi, and I'm actually proud of myself for being able to go in to this one as blind as possible.

It was good, but ultimately left me incredibly wrecked. You know there's an Avengers 4 and several other sequels coming and that cushioned the blow, but an manipulative emotional ending was still an emotional ending. Seriously, I was a wreck for the rest of the day, I don't know when a movie did that to me. Maybe Logan?

I also can't believe that this movie made me sympathize with Thanos. He is crazy nuts, wants to genocide half the universe, and has a warped view of love, but damn it, I didn't want to root or him, but I did.

And you know what? I thought it was freaking cool seeing so many characters on screen at the same time, and in some all-out brawls to boot. We're all sick of the "most ambitious crossover" meme, but man, did this movie deliver. I did want to see more of the Guardians of The Galaxy with the other characters (maybe next movie), and Black Panther needs to be formally introduced to Thor, he's like the only A-Lister Thor didn't meet yet. Well, I guess when they filmed the movie, Black Panther didn't make like eleventy billion dollars at the box office yet, but I know Marvel's got more screentime for T'Challa coming our way now.

And speaking of screentime, this sums up my feelings for another character:

You just know Hawkeye is the one that's gonna save the universe in Avengers 4, I'm putting my money down on it right now.

With that out of the way, there's my usual monthly update on the cool stuff I did.

And I did do cool stuff, like I went to the flea market again last week and saw some things.

Like this chair! It doesn't look like much, but these weird, round chairs are everywhere in motels up in Lake George and these yellow ones were used at the motel my family stayed at every summer, the Dutchess Motel (RIP). I honestly can't believe I found two of these things right at the local flea market! Well, if they weren't $100 apiece and if I was able to fit it in my car, I would've taken one home. It's not every day you find a literal piece of your childhood just sitting around with a price tag, but it happened that day. The guy told me these were Italian in origin and normally run for $200 for some reason. They're a bit heavy, but I'm calling bullshit either way.

I also went to Big Apple Con in Manhattan and found some cool, weird comics!

This infamous Flash cover was only $35, but it was in terrible shape, so I put it back.

THIS famous Superman comic was only ten bucks, and picked this up! The story inside is fairly straightforward, where Superman reveals his identity of Clark Kent to a dying boy, and he's upset that Superman even has a secret identity, so Superman shows him that, yes, he's somehow two different people to make him feel better.

Speaking of ambitious crossovers, DC once had not one,

But TWO Jimmy Olsen comics with Don Rickles in them. If you notice, these issues are issues 139 and 141, and might be wondering where #140 is. I thought the same thing, but after some research I found that issue 140 was a giant-sized issue filled with one-shot stories, so these two comics are all there is. I haven't read them yet, but they're probably disappointing. The Silver Age was weird.

And THIS was my favorite find of the day. For the past few years I'd been looking for an issue of Archie Meets The Punisher, one of the most famous comic crossovers of all time. In recent years, whoever's been running Archie comics have been getting lax to what can happen to the Riverdale gang, like killing off Archie, making them star in an edgy murder mystery on the CW, and crossing over with the Ramones, Sharknado, Predator, and Batman '66 (coming soon!). This comic predates all of that, and is considered to be better than you expect it to be. Sure, I could've bought a copy on eBay, but that takes all the fun out of The Hunt. I just found it in a longbox with random comics, and bought it the second I found it. And then I found two other copies, both cheaper than this one. Such is life.

One personal holy grail down, many to go. Now I'm looking for that Spider-Man team-up with the Not Ready For Prime-Time Players, the one where the Avengers team up with David Letterman,

And the comic with all the Colonel Sanders teaming up Green Lantern style.

I think I've made it obvious that I'm a fan of weird crossovers. One of my favorite comics is the issue of Ren & Stimpy comics where Powdered Toast Man fought Spider-Man for crying out loud.

As for anything else...I'm just not that up for it today. Oh, I had this whole, grand plan to make an even longer, more detailed post with more of the stuff I saw and what a weird week this past week was. But today kinda sucked as a profound disappointment, on top of a week that was mostly a downer. You guys understand, right? Okay. Thanks. I'll be back really soon, I promise.

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31

So I turned 31 last week. It's not a special birthday, although that does make me as old as Hans Moleman.

I only asked for one gift this year: Kirby Star Allies for the Switch.

Sure, it's a pretty short Kirby game by console standards (only 4 worlds!), but it's super fun.

The gimmick with this game is that through Friend Hearts, you can befriend up to three helpers, of just about every ability in the game. The old standards like Sword, Ice, and Parasol are back, but also some older, obscure ones like Yo-yo and Cleaning make a return, too. New abilities like Spider, Artist, and Baton are also here. Since this game is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Kirby, abilities can be combined, too.

Like, you can add fire or electricity to Sword to make it a lot cooler and stronger. Not all abilities can be combined, though (boo), but some abilities have other special techniques. Spider makes a giant web to bounce on, Parasol gets bigger, and Artist summons a fridge that gives out food.

There's also guest characters to befriend, too, and they're the most broken characters in the game. Yes, that's Marx from Kirby Super Star among them, and he's playable!

Obviously, as a final boss, he has the best powers in the entire game. Man was not meant to play as him, but I'm happy. Hell, he could be in the next Smash Bros. game with the moveset they give him here. Seeing as there's a Switch game coming soon, it might be more possible than we think.

I also managed to snag this as a birthday gift to myself:

This cel from Beavis & Butt-Head! Yes, this was an impulse buy on eBay, but I managed to snag it for 40 bucks, which is a steal considering how popular this show is. Most cels from this show have a going rate just starting at $80, so I was lucky to snag such a clean picture.

If you're looking for cels, they're very common on eBay, and they range in price to incredible cheap to super freaking expensive. The show or movie itself tends to set how valuable it is, as are how many characters are in it, how complete the characters are, and if the episode it's from is recognizable. I honestly have no idea which episode this cel hails from, but it's a complete picture of Beavis & Butt-Head themselves, and that's good enough for me knowing I can now say that I own a physical piece of them. It joins cels that I have from Ren & Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life. My dream is a cel from the Simpsons, and anything good is pretty hard to come by these days. Sure, there's lots of production art floating around, but I want a cel like this one! I know I'll find one eventually.

So, that was my birthday. I hope you have a happy Easter and April Fool's Day! It's the first time they fall on the same day in 62 years!

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