90s Kid-Friendly TV Program Blocks

Parents in the 90s must not have considered the potentially detrimental effects of parking their kids in front of the TV for four or five straight hours. How else can you explain the endless list of hours-long program blocks marketed at TV-hungry kids in the 90s? Children's TV was shaping up to be the ultimate babysitter, seamlessly filling in every possible day and time slot during which kids might be loitering around the house. After all, why go outside and play with our Huffy bikes and Skip-Its when we could just experience it vicariously through the commercials? Those kids were always way more enthusiastic than we could ever be, anyway.

For a decade of children far less dependent on technology than today's kids, we sure watched a lot of TV. We can only imagine the future of children's programming as parents' growing anxiousness to keep their children satiated and entertained continues to grow. In our childhood years, though, we were content watching a few hours at a time and luxuriating in the laziness. It still had that delightful aura of the forbidden. Our parents may have tried their best to limit our TV hours, but at the end of the day (or the case of some of these blocks, the beginning) it was a lot easier to just let the mind-numbing glow of passive entertainment wash over us. It's like those parents who load up their grocery carts with organic kale and banana chips for their kids, but eventually cave to nuking some chicken nuggets. It may not be the right choice, but it's an easy one. As we grow into adults, we can certainly appreciate their laziness.


ABC's TGIF



TGIF reigned supreme when it came to Friday night kid's TV. Originally conceived in the late 80s as the "Friday Night Fun Club", ABC's kid-friendly block morphed into TGIF: Thank Goodness It's Funny. The original lineup included Perfect Strangers, Full House, Mr. Belvedere, and Just the Ten of US. A lot of pretty terrible short-lived shows cycled through TGIF over the years, but they were able to mask it with some solid favorites like Boy Meets World, Step by Step, Family Matters, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. For every miscalculated move like Teen Angel, there always seemed to be a Dinosaurs waiting in the wings.



SNICK



SNICk was a brilliant marketing tool, as it mainly catered to the then-unclaimed tween demographic. The key to capturing the interest of 8-12 year olds is treating them like teenagers. I don't mean in a current Limited Too miniskirts and go-go boots way. This was thankfully far subtler. Nickelodeon shows with teenage characters and market them at tweens, a demographic that at times is likely to act too cool for kid's shows. SNICK premiered in 1992 featuring Clarissa Explains It All, Ren and Stimpy, Roundhouse, and Are You Afraid of the Dark? Though the lineup changed frequently throughout the years, Nick was pretty masterful at holding our fleeting attention spans. They threw in some goodies like The Secret World of Alex Mack and All That and we were hooked.



Nick in the Afternoon



Another wise and undoubtedly calculated move on the part of Nickelodeon, the network aimed to capture the at-home idling demographic of kids in the summertime. They installed a popsicle stick host with the hours-deliberating-in-the-Nick-boardroom moniker Stick Stickly. It was a great means of getting more mileage out of their reruns, packaging the block as a chance for kids to request their favorite classic episodes. For Nick, this meant they didn't have to come up with anything other than a popsicle stick and some googly eyes. Not too shabby.



The Disney Afternoon



There's no doubt Disney is great at hawking its animated goods to kids. The Disney Afternoon block was no exception, featuring endless variations of their always popular characters. The block premiered in 1990 with Adventures of the Gummi Bears, DuckTales, Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers, and TaleSpin. Later shows included Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop, and the far-inferior Disney's Doug. The shows aired in the after-school hours, a perfect means of entertaining the growing number of latchkey kids left to fend for themselves with nothing but the remote control and a tube of Pringles.



FOX Kids



FOX Kids was a formidable franchise, despite the fact that it rarely aired the same shows two years in a row. Though the block opened in 1990 with animated shows like Bobby's World and the game show Fun House, the lineup changed regularly throughout its 12-year run. That's not to say there was no quality programming: FOX Kids played classics like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Goosebumps. My favorite, though, was always the magazine. For some as-of-yet unexplained reason, this block of children's TV shows warranted its own publication. Sometimes we got it free with Pizza Hut orders, others it came in the mail, but whatever route it took to my mailbox the glorified promo was inexplicably awesome.



Nick Junior



Let me just say, that Face mascot is actually pretty creepy. What is that thing? Why is it so happy all the time? I liked it as a kid, but as an adult it's almost disturbingly cheerful. Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee yet to deal with this sort of unnerving smileyness, but it definitely is weirding me out.

Nick Junior was marketed at a younger set, namely kids under the age of 5. I'll admit, though, on elementary school sick days there was nothing quite like curling up with some Blue's Clues and Gullah Gullah Island. I wasn't going to shout it from the rooftops or anything, but I sincerely enjoyed shows like Eureka's Castle, Muppet Babies, and David the Knome. Whew. Feels good to finally get that one off my chest.


Teen NBC (TNBC)



Turns out Saturday mornings weren't just for cartoons: apparently older kids could get in on the action too with these delightfully cheesy teen sitcoms. With shows like Saved by the Bell and California Dreams, they could definitely hold our attention while padding the rest of the block with total fluff. That, of course, hinges on the notion that the aforementioned TNBC shows had any substance. I'll leave that one up to you.


Nick at Nite



Nick at Nite may not have been just for kids, but it was a means of enjoying some good ol' fashioned cross-generational TV. Kids and parents could watch old favorites together, delighting in shows like I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch and Mister Ed. It introduced a new generation of kids to a lineup of classic shows. The Nick@Nite model has wavered a bit over the years, though, now broadcasting old 90s reruns in lieu of black and white oldies. When did we become so retro? It's rumored they may even add Friends to their lineup in the next couple of years. If the thought of kids viewing Friends the way you saw Bewitched doesn't make you feel the tiniest bit old, I don't know what will.


Overall, the programming blocks were a happy compromise. Kids liked the notion that they were getting away with watching an ungodly amount of TV, while parents liked the fact that the shows were at best marginally educational and at the least, appropriate. We may have lost countless of potentially active hours glued to our screens, but it's given us wonderful life preparation for our hours spent in front of our desk's computers. Thanks, SNICK!

Rocko's Modern Life

If you're going to do weird, you have to do it right. If you manage that, you can do quirky, surreal, intriguing, enthralling, and interesting=. If you do it wrong, though, it's just plain weird.

Rocko's Modern Life is without a doubt one of the weirdest children's cartoons out there. When I say out there, I mean out there as in that remote distance past normalcy and into a realm of the strange usually occupied by giant squids and Japanese gadgetry. With Rocko, creator Joe Murray managed to strike that delicate balance between strange and entertaining that so appeals to children. As kids, our imaginations have yet to be quashed by harsh cynicism, and we're far more willing to accept the absurd at face value. At least I think that's right; I'm not quite sure how else to explain the success of a show like Rocko.

Murray set out to create a show both edgy and funny, which is a lofty ambition for an ordinary show, let alone for a children's show. He and his team reworked one of his earlier animated concepts (My Dog Zero) to produce Rocko, a mild-mannered Australian wallaby transplanted to America. They packed the show with quirky secondary characters and a hearty dose of silliness that earned it a surprisingly large and loyal viewership over its four-season run.

The first episode of Rocko aired by Nickelodeon was No Pain No Gain/Who Gives a Buck, establishing the show's unique sense of humor, satire, and quirkiness. For your viewing pleasure, I present the first aired episode:


Watch Rocko's Modern Life No Pain, No Gain in Animation | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


Watch Rocko's Modern Life Who Gives a Buck in Animation | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


Let's meet our cast of characters:


Rocko

Like Madonna or Cher, our title character is without a last name. Unlike Madonna or Cher, he doesn't possess any diva-like qualities. He is the star of the show, sure, but he is determinedly non-confrontational and non-offensive. I guess they wanted him to be a fresh burst of sanity in the sea of crazy people inhabiting his O-town locale. He works at Kind of a Lot O' Comics and in his spare time enjoys recreational jackhammering and not wearing pants. How's that for a personal ad?



Spunky
Rocko's trusty canine companion, Spunky is an ordinary non-speaking domestic pet in a world of anthropomorphic animals. He also has two awesome parasites, Bloaty and Squirmy. I always liked Squirmy.



Heffer Wolfe
Heffer, a steer, is Rocko's dimwitted but well-meaning best friend. As a child, he was adopted by a family of wolves that benevolently deigned not to eat him. Though he tries to deny it, he really is a big fat cow. That guy could put away Chokey Chicken like nobody's business.



Filburt Shellbach


Filburt the turtle is about as nebbishy as you can get with his over-sized glasses, self-deprecating attitude, and overall low self-esteem. He has a sort of Woody Allen thing going on, though we wouldn't have known it as at the time as kids. He's frequently getting nauseous, cursing fishsticks, and turning a page/washing his hands/repeating. He later did some serious inter-species mating with a hook-handed cat. Like I said, weird.



Ed and Bev Bighead

Rocko's obnoxious neighbors, Ed and Bev are a toad couple. Ed works at the town's major employer, Conglom-O as manager. He generally abhors the existence of Rocko and Co, though Bev seems to like them okay.


Melba Toast

(No photo available. Obviously)

The semi-anonymous never-seen neighbor who serves as Rocko's romantic interest. Oh, and her name's a joke. Get it?



Really Really Big Man


Our resident superhero, RRBM was indeed a really, really big man with super strength. Plus, if you gazed into his Nipples of the Future, you might foresee something exciting. Yep, Nipples of the Future. Really. They spun and everything.



Dr. Paula Hutchinson

Paula eventually becomes Filburt's wife, though we first know her as a one-handed Jill-of-all-trades professional. Rocko legend has it that the good folks at Nickelodeon were none to pleased with the lack of positive female characters and asked for "a professional woman, someone with a good hook." Always ones to get the last laugh, the Rocko team gave Hutchinson a literal hook. It was, to their credit, pretty good. Mission accomplished.

The show was often crude and featured sexual innuendo and adult-style humor that usually eked by the censors. Some scenes, however, were omitted from the rebroadcasts due to their allegedly questionable content deemed inappropriate for juvenile audiences. The scene below was only broadcast once before it was cut from the episode "Road Rash":



The episode "Leap Frogs" was also pulled after its initial airing due to inappropriate content. "Leap Frogs" featured Rocko's neighbor Bev Bighead attempting to seduce our wallaby frontman. It's a wonder some of these episodes ever made it past the censors the first time around. I suppose it was a different time, when sex-crazed cartoons were par for the course.


Watch Rocko's Modern Life - Leap Frogs in Animation | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

You must admit, the show has a certain appeal, even now as an adult viewer. I got sucked into that last clip with as much interest as I had as a kid, probably more because my reaction now is peppered with the shock that this Mrs. Robinson-esque episode is exclusively about sex. In Nickelodeon's defense, I liked it the first time around and it was sly enough not to state outright its complete focus on sex. I just thought she wanted to give him some ice-cold lemonade. What's so wrong with that?

On the other hand, that part where he massages his eyeballs was enough to give me some minor-league nightmares. Part of the show's idiosyncratic charm was its almost repellent slapstick gags. Rocko's Modern Life was tough to pin down. It could be sweet, it could be funny or sardonic, and it could be gross-out disgusting. The show's charm lay in the fact that it was unlike anything we'd ever seen, particularly from a kids' show. It was sharp, it was funny, and best of all a whole lot of it was completely inappropriate.

It was all in good fun, though, and kids and adults ate it up like Pasture Puffies. Though you could certainly offer some heavy critiques to content, the show never took itself too seriously, nor did it ever ask us to take itself seriously. It was meant to be funny, and it was funny. Like I said, they did weird right. It was still weird, sure, but more importantly it was entertaining.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

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Speaking of things parents weren't all that fond of in the 90s, I'm pretty sure bone-chillingly terrifying children's television programming ranked pretty high up on their lists. It's almost shocking what kid's TV networks were able to get away with back in the 90s. Nowadays you're lucky if you can so much as say "boo" to impressionable and innocent young children without raising angry red flags amongst hovering parent watchdog groups.

In our day, however, things were a little different. Children's shows weren't afraid to be a little edgy, and by that I mean they put kids on edge. For life. No, really. I still have nightmares about that stupid clown Zeebo.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? was a show responsible for scaring the living daylights out of us while inevitably necessitating nightlights. The correct answer to the show's title question was yes, yes we are, and we may never sleep again. Thank you, Nickelodeon, for affording us a chance at nightmare-induced juvenile insomnia. As if our parents didn't have enough legitimate safety concerns for us, they were now forced to spend valuable worrying time reassuring us against the existence of mute child ghosts and evil spirit-filled magic wands. Time well spent.

There were a few episodes in particular that have stuck with me. As in they are forever stuck in my brain, briefly terrorizing me whenever they bob to the cerebral surface. Just for you, though, I'm willing to temporarily forget how pants-peeingly scary these episodes were and share them with you for the greater good of horror-themed nostalgia.

Submitted for the approval of the Children of the 90s Society, I call this story *tosses handful of potassium nitrate into imaginary roaring campfire* The Tale of the Scariest Episodes:

Tale of Laughing in the Dark



I'm with the Rachel Blanchard character on this one. I too suffer from what Kiki describes as "Bozophobia". Really, who isn't afraid of clowns these days? It's all just a little too John Wayne Gacy for me to handle.

Anyway, Cher sucks it up and we return to the ill-fated Playland, an amusement park home to the "spookhouse" called Laughing in the Dark. Catchy name, huh? I get the feeling that's going to play into things later somehow. Our story's stars are generally too chicken to enter, but like any normal kids they decided to do some good old fashioned academic research on the alleged clown haunting.

Apparently there was this clown Zeebo who was an all around bad guy, stealing money from the circus and eventually getting his comeuppance as he burned alive in the Laughing in the Dark spookhouse after an incident with his cigar. Tragic.

One kid dares another to steel Zeebo's clown nose, and the dare-ee agrees so long as the darer will wear the clown nose to school. What could be funnier, really?

Our pal Josh (the aforemention dare-ee) goes into LitD, and it's so-so scary rather than so so scary. At first, that is. Unsurprisingly, Josh is plagued by the clown's ghost, who does weird stuff like write his initials in pudding and sends threatening balloon messages. Josh obliges, returning the nose but leaving us to wonder what exactly we just saw. It may not sound all that scary, but we're talking clowns here. Clowns.

Tale of the Pinball Wizard

Are You Afraid of the Dark - S01E13
Uploaded by andrethegiant.

If we've learned nothing from these tales of terror, it's that when someone tells you not to touch something, for the love of God do not touch it! Is it really that tough a concept? Once you've erred the first ten or so times, you think that you'd realize they were probably warning you for your own horror story character good, but these fictional kids just never learn.

This episode isn't quite as scary as the others, but it definitely drew kids in with its enthralling premise. If you get locked in the mall late at night playing a forbidden pinball machine, you will inevitably end up in a life-size human version of the game. There's pretty much no other possible route from there. You're going to be in a living pinball game, and you're going to like it, dammit.



Tale of the Hatching





I used to think boarding school might be a fun option until I saw The Tale of the Hatching. It wasn't until Harry Potter that I could even think of entertaining romantic notions of boarding school. We're talking years of trauma to my prep school fantasy. Years.

Jazz and Augie are siblings sent to a mysterious boarding school. The school has all sorts of wacky (read: suspicious and inevitably terrifying) rules about being calm and quiet on the grounds. Plus, every meal consists of a substance called "spunge". If that's not a warning sign, I don't know what is. I mean, really. Spunge?

Turns out the headmasters are evil aliens (surprise!) and the spunge contains a trance-inducing mind control agent. Yikes. The kids are hypnotized into incubating the unhatched eggs. Once these mini reptillian cuties hatch, they feast on students for sustenance. I don't like where this is headed.

Luckily, our heroes are smart and realize that loud noises and certain frequencies are the auditory nemeses of these slimy overlords. They blast loud music from their walkmans and save the day...or do they? Like all good AYAOTD episodes, it's a sort of unsettling cliffhanger. In the last scene, we see a single ominous surviving egg. Does it go on to start a new boarding school? Will it inevitably eat Jazz and Augie? Will killing them off stop parents from giving their kids stupid names like Jazz and Augie? We may never know.



Tale of the Thirteenth Floor


We all know the thirteenth floor is reputably spooky, but we didn't know exactly why until we were scared witless (I'm going to say 'witless" and not a more appropriate alternative because this is a family blog) until we saw this episode.

Billy and Karin live on the twelfth floor of a creepy-ish apartment building. The kids like to go play up on the thirteenth floor because, you know, it's abandoned and spooky. Then, dream of dreams come true and a toy company moves in to the thirteenth floor. A toy company! Is there anything better?

Well yeah, if those toy company employees are secretly faceless space aliens. Just a teeny little hitch in the whole playing-with-toys scenario. They draw in our innocent little children and bam! they reveal they're really building a spaceship to take Karin back to their home planet. Billy's a wimp and can't take the atmospheric changes and almost dies, but Karin in an uncharacteristic show of heroism saves him. It's at this point we find out that (gasp!) Karin is actually one of them, a faceless alien. Ahhhh!!!!

Tale of the Dead Man's Float


As a swimmer, this episode really spoke to me. In my sleep. Through undead pool monsters.

I always thought this was one of the scariest episodes, if nothing else because the zombie thing is just so retina-scarring. Kids everywhere boycotted swimming lessons and refused to don those floaty-arm things for years after watching this episode. It's a true testament to how scary this show could actually be. I mean, even looking now at the picture of that pool thing makes me want to go hide in my office cabinets and arm myself with staple removers and letter openers.

Zeke's a nerd eager to win over his crush Clorice. They find an abandoned swimming pool at their school and think it's an excellent idea to campaign to have it reopened. Clorice is a swim team star and Zeke is working overtime to get into her good graces. Everything's going, er, swimmingly until they begin to suspect the pool is haunted, a notion later confirmed by a loner janitor type. Apparently the pool was built on an old cemetary and one body was left behind. I think we all know what's coming up next.

Because Zeke's a geek, he knows that the ghost's sulfuric smell means its acidic makeup could be detected will some good ol' methyl orange. Sweet chemistry lesson, AYAOFD. It's almost enough to lull me into a false calm until OH MY GOD THAT RED ZOMBIE THING IS THE SCARIEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN! I'm not even going to post the pictures here because I won't be able to look at my own blog if it's up here, haunting me. Just watch the video. But don't say I didn't warn you.


The show was great because it was not gimmicky. Sure, it sometimes relied on guest stars like Tia and Tamara Mowry as creepy chameleon girls or hunky Boy Meets World star Will Friedle as a guy thrown back in time by a locket, but the underlying value was in the show's uncompromising dedication to being truly scary. It haunts me still. I'm starting to wish I'd never Google Imaged "The Tale of the Dead Man's Float". Who knew such scary stuff could come out of Canada, of all places?

Rugrats

As we all know, talking babies are unwaveringly adorable. No matter what they're saying or doing, it's pretty much inevitable that it's going to be heart-string tuggingly cute . If you can throw in some subtle humor for the parents then all the better, but we're pretty much good to go on talking babies alone.

Nickelodeon's Rugrats took the simple question "What do babies do and think when parents aren't around?" and turned it into a cleverly crafted series of humorous episodes. It was heavy on imagination and light on realism, opening for kids a world of make-believe fun. With talking babies. Did I mention the talking babies?

The show premiered in 1991 as part of the Nicktoons cartoon programming block. The premise hinged on the notion that the babies could understand one another whereas the adults could not, which in itself is a pretty attractive notion to child viewers. It was essentially the underpinning of 80s and 90s Nickelodeon programming: kids have their own world that adults can't even begin to understand.This theme gave us both an inflated sense of importance and a satisying denigration of adults, making us feel for once as if we were the ones running the show and the adults were simply there to drive us around.

Rugrats from Matt on Vimeo.

Adults were fans of the show, as well, as it featured a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor that undoubtedly went over the heads of juvenile viewers. While the later reworked version of the show relied more on toilet humor and other similarly juvenile gags, the original used cultural references and irony to poke fun at phenomena in the adult world. We laughed at the adults, adults laughed at themselves, and everyone was happy.

As in many children's shows the young characters were largely two dimensional, owing to the fact that children's black and white view of the world left little room for subtelty and character development. While the stereotypes may have gotten a little out of control in later seasons, they were believable enough during the show's golden years. Sure, all of the characters had a "type", but they were good foils for
one another and gave us a spectrum of infant temperaments at which to laugh:



Tommy Pickles, our fearless leader. Tommy was the unofficial chief of the tribe of playpen-dwelling infants, leading his baby pals on all sorts of Muppet Baby-style imaginary adventures. Resplendent in a blue t shirt and diaper ensemble, Tommy looked the picture of baby naivete.




Chuckie Finster, our resident coward. Chuckie has it rough enough with the red hair and square glasses, you'd think they could have gone easy on him personality wise but apparently his loserishness is a package deal. For God's sake, his dad dresses him in a shirt picturing the planet Saturn. You don't get less hip than that. Chuckie's afraid of everything from the potty to The Guy on the Oatmeal Box. To his credit, though, that Quaker guy is a little off.




Phil and Lil Deville, our cutesily rhyming named set of boy/girl twins. Their parents dress them in matching clothes and their personalities verge on deja vu. Lil's got a bow for differentiation purposes, but other than that, they're pretty much the same person.




Angelica Pickles, Tommy's spoiled brat of a first cousin. It's probably wrong to admit that Angelica was my favorite as a child, as she was completely insufferable with a personality akin to nails on a chalkboard. I'm not going to put all of the blame on her, though. Her wealthy parents were less than attentive and even lighter on the discipline front. I'm not going to say I didn't learn a thing or two the remarkably consistent results she got from putting on the waterworks, though.




Susie Carmichael, adorable neighbor. She mainly served to show how awful Angelica was by contrast. She made me want to have a cat named Chowder, too. I mean, seriously. Chowder! How cute is that?


The parents, on the other hand, were a bit better developed as characters. Looking back, they were far more neglectful than I'd initially perceived them to be. Back then it was like, sure, they abandon their children unsupervised for hours at a time, whatever. Now that I'm older and actually know people who have children, it's a tad less believable that any right-minded parent would accidentally leave their children in a cavernous toy store overnight or not notice their 1-year old toting a screwdriver in his diaper. Well, I guess that's why it's just a cartoon.




Stu and Didi Pickles, Tommy's parents, were a well-meaning pair of absentminded grownups. Stu was an idealistic toy inventor, Didi a teacher. Let me just say that Didi should win some sort of best cartoon hair award for that trisected red nest erupting from all sides of her head. That thing is truly awesome.





Betty and Howie Deville, Phil and Lil's parents. Betty was a strong feminist and Howie was well, nothing.




Chas Finster, Chuckie's dad, equally nebbishy to Chuckie. Let's move on.





Drew and Charlotte Pickles, Angelica's yuppie parents. Charlotte had a cell phone permanently glued to her ear before it was the norm, and Drew was basically the anti-Stu. Charlotte is just like Lindsey Nagle from The Simpsons which is convenient because they're both voiced by Tress MacNeille.




Randy and Lucy Carmichael, Susie's parents. She makes jello molds of the Eiffel Tower, he writes for the Dummi Bears. Not too shabby.




Grandpa Lou, Stu and Dru's dad and resident of Didi and Stu's house for the first few seasons. See how all the Pickles' men have rhyming names, too? Is there no end to their cleverness?




And of course, my favorites, Boris and Minka, Didi's parents. For those of us members of the tribe, we didn't find ourselves especially well represented on TV. Okay, behind the scenes, sure, but I'm talking kid's holiday specials. That's what mattered to me as a kid; I didn't care who produced it.

My love affair with these Old Country standbys began when Boris and Minka came to tell the story of Passover and ran well through their Chanukah special. Let's just say it blew Lambchop's Chanukah out of the water.


Like most long-running shows, Rugrats ran out of steam after awhile, running on empty as it shamelessly introduced new characters, released feature films, and then essentially abandoned the premise altogether by aging the kids ten years. As we all know the main draw of Rugrats was that we were dealing with naive babies, so turning them into surly teenagers was probably not a wise move.

We wanted to see these kids eating dog food, participating in beauty contests, staging mini-Westerns at the teeter-totter, or fearing the bathtub drain. We didn't care if they failed algebra or thought that guy from the malt shop was cute. Thus, we can remember them as they were, before the cheap ratings ploys and desperate last-ditch salvage attempts. Back when Reptar reigned the land and Angelica belted out "My Country Tis of Thee" and babies could freely roam about the dangerous adult-free terrain as they pleased.

Clarissa Explains It All

Nowadays, marketing to the tween demographic is a no-brainer. Networks like the Disney Channel make a large chunk of their profits off a tween audience, and it's become generally good entertainment market practice to appeal to the eight-to-twelve set. Back in the early 90s, however, there had yet to be a major leap in marketing to preadolescents. There was a wealth of children's programming and teen-programming, but very little in the way of in beTween.

Nickelodeon was pretty pioneering in Tween entertainment, particularly with its popular sitcom Clarissa Explains It All. Clarissa Explains It All featured a star who was conveniently on the younger age of her teenage years, allowing the network to promote the program to teens and tweens alike.

Though the show confronted teen issues, it didn't do it in the Very Special Episode style so popular with contemporary family sitcoms. The stories were told through the lens of Clarissa's quirky and ironic personality, with a whole bunch of ridiculously awesome 90s fashion risks* thrown into the mix.

The show also featured an outstandingly catchy theme by Rachel Sweet, whose incessant na-na-na-nana-ing punctuated with well-timed "alright, alrights" and "hey cools" made it difficult not to want to at least hum along.



At the time I remember the incredible fervor with which I coveted her outfit in the opening sequence, though in retrospect it's a tad bit trampy. I had innumerable arguments with my mother about midriff shirts, as no doubt many young 90s girls across the country were having with their respective parents.

Here our parents were, thinking Nickelodeon was wholesome programming, all while its subliminally encouraging us to go seeking Clarissa-grade streetwalker boots, tights, and miniskirt combos. In all fairness, I still think she totally rocks it, so I suppose its moderate sluttiness is excusable.

Clarissa was famous for breaking the fourth wall with a frequency that would make Zack Morris blush. This wasn't an occasional wink or nod to the audience, she went all the way with Ferris Bueller-grade audience-directed monologues. It was almost as if she were just some friend of ours who happened to live in our television set. She was funny, she was honest, and most of all, she was an individual in every sense of the word.

From the very beginning, Melissa Joan Heart gave Clarissa that X factor of immediate likability. Watch her introduce herself in this segment of the first episode and just try not to think she's just a little bit cool. It's nearly impossible.



The first episode was a bit risque in terms of thematic content as it centered around Clarissa's plot to eliminate her irritating little brother. It doesn't exactly sound like the stuff great kids' programming is made of, but it managed to pull it off in a lighthearted and comic enough way to make it work and sufficiently endear her to us as a character.

We see many of the recurring gimmicks in the first episode, showing just how well-developed the series was upon its inception. The show made use of all sorts of visual aids that would handily appear in the right-hand corner of our screen, later the basis of CNN--the Clarissa News Network. She has a miniature alligator named elvis that lives in a sandbox in her room, and her best friend Sam stops by via a ladder hooked to her second-floor window. There were flashbacks and musical cues. It all flowed together nicely, creating an original work of kid-driven entertainment.

What I wouldn't give for a little headline image to come up alongside me as I address the audience directly.

The show was smart and fast-paced, and it talked to kids rather than at them. Sure, there were some hints of what is considered right or wrong, but it wasn't shoved down our throats After-School Special Style. This wasn't Full House or even Saved By the Bell. It wasn't about learning lessons, it was about commiserating with a preteen-to-teen-age character who was going through all the same things we were.

We'd all suffered her humiliations and dealt with similar growing-up traumas. Clarissa was a role model without being a Pollyanna. She wasn't necessarily who our parents would pick to guide us, and that's a lot of what we liked about her. She's who we would have chosen, after all.

It's also notable that Clarissa was among the first Nickelodeon female leads. It's nearly unthinkable in the days of Hannah Montana and its ilk that children's networks didn't see young girls as a legitimately targetable demographic, but in the early 90s it was still all shiny and new. Clarissa wasn't much of a girly girl, allowing her to appeal fairly well to both genders.

Clarissa totally had the best 90s style. Keith Haring t-shirt, open graphic neon button down, and coordinating scrunchie perched right at the top of her head. Pure 90s perfection.

Clarissa fakes sick to avoid a school play, laments being forced to wear an uncool outfit on picture day, yearns for her driver's license: in short, we didn't have to love her because she was extraordinary, but more because she was ordinary. For once, the networks had gotten it right and put one of our own kind out there saying the things that we say, doing the things we do, and being annoyed by the things that annoy us too. She was like a cooler version of our preteen selves. After all, she had her own theme song and news network; we couldn't exactly compete with that.




*Am I the only one who automatically associates the phrase "fashion risk" with the movie Girls Just Wanna Have Fun? It just makes me want to say, "You're taking a fashion risk, I like that. Just don't do it on TV." Anyone? Anyone? Just me? Okay then.

Wild and Crazy Kids

Sometimes you're watching a show and you can almost imagine what the network producers were thinking when they conceived of the inane idea. In the case of Wild and Crazy kids, I'm willing to venture that they were thinking, "What would be the easiest program to produce with universal appeal to children that costs us next to nothing?" The idea was marginally brilliant. A game show-esque format with a messiness factor guaranteed to lure in young viewers while concurrently forgoing any sort of prize or reward for the victors. It was more or less a case of take-everything-in-the-Nickelodeon-back-room-and-office-fridge-leftovers, arrange them haphazardly in a field, release a slew of cheaply t-shirted children, and let the games begin.

Wild and Crazy Kids seems like one of those one-in-the-morning ideas, the sort of which were particularly common to Nickelodeon during the 1990s. They simply planned some inconsequential events that were simultaneously sloppy and required little to no innate skill, handed out some t-shirts, and then completely snub the winners by offering no tangible goods in the means of congratulations. In days of consolatory Carmen Sandiego Gumshoe prize packs and all-expenses paid trips to Universal Studios, this was in somewhat bad form.They could have at least sent the winners packing with a Gak pack.

I always had a thing for Donny. Didn't you? Seriously. Look at him.

Luckily, the show was not particularly self-referential or self-examing. It never once alluded to the fact that hordes of children were covered in chocolate pudding and shaving cream with no foreseeable purpose or aim. It was, simply put, a chance for kids to be both Wild and Crazy. Oh, and they also got a free t-shirt, though inevitably they left the show with their trademark shirts covered in slime or pie.

Nickelodeon in the 90s was huge on slime and pie. There's no real discernible evidence as to why these were the prevailing super sloppy weapons of choice, but we just accepted that any misstep would lead to someone being doused in green slime or cream pied in the face. It was just sort of a given. Miss the baton pass in a relay? Slime and pie. Strike out at Dizzy Bat Home Run Derby? Slime and pie. Wipe out slip n' sliding? Well, you get the idea.

Each half-hour show featured three games of relatively equal insanity and inanity. The games usually went a little something like this:




As you can see, the production values on these shows were somewhat less than cinematic. The show looked more like a home movie of kids doing relay races at a school picnic than an actual show airing on a reputable children's network. As I said, it obviously wasn't costing them the big bucks, unless we're seriously underestimating the cost of spaghetti and tarps here.

Wild and Crazy Kids had three young hosts, with Omar Gooding and Donnie Jeffcoat emceeing both seasons and Annette Chavez and Jessica Gaynes each putting in one season. The hosts usually put on some sort of skit or teaser at the beginning of each show, which I once found hilarious but now believe to be potentially a bit grating. They also provided the commentary, taking very seriously elements like instant replays and play-by-plays. This sounds much more serious until you realize they were instantly replaying ketchup and mustard jousting.

The show was not without its gimmicks. They indulged in the occasional cheap cross-over inter-show challenge, such as in this episode with Marc Summers of Double Dare fame. Since the shows had a lot of shared underlying themes (read: slime and pie), it was not quite a stretch to envision the union of their Physical Challenge courses.



They also had a prime opportunity to hawk their very own Nickelodeon products, such as the oft-coveted Moon Shoes. After all, what's a cheaply produced aimless game show without a product placement thrown in now and again?



These guys were also sort of partial to making people spin around on a bat for dizzying impact. For some reason, all of these wild and/or crazy stunts seemed at least somewhat more humorous when the element of nausea and vertigo were in the picture. I doubt I'd make it through this segment without a Dramamine or one of those sea-band bracelets*.

Wild and Crazy Kids played it to the point. There was no moral of the story nor was there any remote educational value. The kids did not come away better people** by popping shaving cream-filled balloons while wearing moon-shoes. It was pure, guilty fun that never made any subtle attempt to market itself as anything other than just that. It may not have been the most affective shows of its time, but it's certainly a contender for one of the messiest***.




*I do not official endorse these products, but they do keep me from vomiting while deep-sea fishing or on glass bottom boats. I imagine a similar effect would have been had as a Wild and Crazy kid **To my knowledge. If you participated as a contestant, feel free to contradict this allegation ***Did I mention the slime and pie?

Weinerville

Sure, to children of the 70s and 80s, the Talking Heads may be a new wave rock band responsible for Burning Down the House, but to children of the 90s the phrase conjures up a far puppetier image. Namely that of Marc Weiner's Weinerville, a 90s Nickelodeon show featuring the children's entertainment stylings of Herr puppetmeister himself, Marc Weiner. Weinerville's trademark human head/tiny puppet body combo was both moderately frightening to small children and infinitely entertaining to those old enough to get a kick out of it. I still have an unrealized ambition to be Weinerized (e.g. for my full-size head to appear on a tiny puppet body), but I may just have to write that one off. Damn.

Marc Weiner was nothing if not imaginative. Weinerville and its innumerable puppet citizens were the sum of the no doubt many fragments of creativity floating around in Marc Weiner's head. The whole thing has a feel of every time you ever said, "You know, I have this crazy idea...", only in this case it translated into following through with that zany impulse rather than burying it deep into your repressive creative subconscious.

I don't know what it takes to become a pupeteer, but I do certainly find it admirable as a career goal. To think, while the rest of us are morphing more and more daily into The Man with our corporate suits and attache cases, there are actual adults who earn a sizable living off of controlling the marionetted limbs of fanciful puppets. Indeed, it's a pretty enviable career path. I'm not talking about those struggling pupeteers a la John Cusack in Being John Malkovich. I'm talking being paid to create a full-scale imaginary universe of puppets for which you get to add the suffix "ville" to your own last name. Just imagine, you, a ville. We can only dream.



Like many Nickelodeon shows of its time, Weinerville featured a live-action audience participation element, leaving those of us at home immeasurably covetous of the lucky so-and-sos who got to interact with the puppets themselves. Despite the incessant begging, my parents never caved to let me be a veritable member of the live studio audience at Nickelodeon Studios in Universal Studios, Florida. I even learned to recite that phrase via constant exposure to the informative ending of every live-action Nickelodeon show, but to no avail. I was going to have to settle for being part of a live at-home television audience, and that was that.

Weinerville was home to many, many puppet pals, most of whom were played by Marc Weiner himself. Played by his head, that is. In the above intro, you can see Marc as Baby Jeffery, an infant famous for creating outrageous messes. Two of the other more familiar characters were Dottie and Zip, the trusty mayor of Weinerville and her injury-prone assistant Zip. Marc played Dottie, donning makeup, a curly blonde wig, and falsetto with conviction. Zip was pure puppet through and through, allowing him to be more easily placed in dangerous and potentially painful situations. Observe, a montage of Zip and Dottie introducing the show:



Another favorite puppet was Boney, a dinosaur skeleton and a sort of anti-Barney. He's pretty much awesome because he hates everything and everyone, as evidenced in his trademark song, "I'm Boney, I'm Boney, leave me alone-y!" I don't know what it says about me as a child that I found this Boney fellow so hilarious, but I'm guessing it's in some way correlated to my angsty 90s cynicism.



The show also featured a slew of animated shorts, generally unrelated to the puppet action onstage. The cartoons featured the likes of such animated personalities as Batfink, Mighty Mouse, and Mr. Magoo. Cartoon stars from decades past were once again entertaining children, albeit only in short inter-sketch segments. Regardless of value, the cartoon shorts kept the show moving and maintained its quick pace during scene changes.

The interactive element of the show allowed for Weinerizing, the puppetization of real live audience members. Weinerized children often got to participate in all sorts of fun on-camera shenanigans, vying for gold and silver hot dog statuettes. In some cases, they were even lucky enough to experience the tour de fource of Nickelodeon audience participatory experiences: the sliming:



Admittedly, the show wasn't for everyone. To say the acting and execution was over-the-top would be a pretty forgiving understatement. Regardless, the show certainly had its charms in a whimsical-puppet-world type of way. As Daria's trusty sidekick Jane once said, everything is funnier with puppets*. I suppose I'll let you be the judge:




*The many, many Daria references recently peppering these posts are largely contingent on my finishing all 5 seasons while going stir-crazy in my current state of apartment-bound ankle breakage. Consider it a gift.

Nickelodeon GUTS

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I've said it before and I'll say it again: the 90s were a simpler time. An age before text messaging, tweeting, and facebooking. A time when nations put aside their difference to battle in vaguely athletic harness-dependent events. A time when the greatest feat a kid could aspire to was to climb a giant heap of neon-lit scrap metal. A time when Mike O'Malley was still young and good-looking and not forever irritating me with his incessant plugs for Time Warner digital cable.

Yes, those were simpler times. Oh, how my friends and I yearned to be contestants on Nickelodeon GUTS. We were even willing to overlook that gross foamy yellow mouthguard we'd be required to wear. How's that for compromise? All we wanted was for British referee Mo to describe us by our chosen nicknames (I was partial to The Raging Tornado myself) and to describe our position on the coveted leaderboard.

Was that really so much to ask?

Unsurprisingly, this ambition never became a reality. Unless you count my boyfriend and I dressing up as a GUTS contestant and Mo respectively for Halloween. But I suppose you probably wouldn't, would you now.

There was nothing more I wanted in the world than to become one of these famed child athletes, immortalized for posterity in VHS form:



Unfortunately for me, the correct answer to "Do-do-do-do you have it?" was a resounding no. For three lucky kids per episode, though, this was their chance to shine. Literally. That snow that pelted them from the Aggro Crag was super sparkly.

Nickelodeon's GUTS ran from 1992-1995, with endless rerunning throughout the decade. The show was a sort of kid-based takeoff of the then immensely popular American Gladiators. Three kids competed against one another, clad respectively in their representative color of blue, red, or purple. Before each event got under way, individual contestants were interviewed (later, they aired pre-taped segments) in a little feature they liked to call "Spill Your Guts!"

The athletic events themselves took place in the Extreme(!) Arena, and were sometimes loosely related to actual sports. More often, they were elaborate tests of athleticism made possible through the use of harnesses, mouthguards, and well-placed safety nets. There were obstacle courses, wave pool events, and all sorts of extreme(!)-named events for the players to compete in. Mike O' Malley narrated, saying ridiculous things like, "He took to the water like a porpoise!" Then, for the official stuff, we cut to Mo.

Mo was a British referee/officiant who explained the leaderboards, points, and made official rulings on if a kid's toe was over the line. She also got to say official-sounding phrases like "Players will start at the sound of my whistle". First placers earned 300 points, second earned 200, and third earned a measly 100. Luckily for those kids, there were only 3 competitors, meaning everyone gets a medal.

Our good pals Mo and the then immensely handsome Mike O'Malley. Am I alone in this childhood crush or what?

Of course, these events were fun on their own but nothing in comparison to the awesomeness of the ultimate culminating event. The Aggro Crag (succeeded by the Mega Crag and later the Super Aggro Crag) was a mountain-type structure constructed of what we can only assume were dangerous sharp-edged deconstructed Nickelodeon sets.



Contestants were to activate the "actuators", which really just meant they were supposed to turn on some crappy touch light as they bounded up the almighty Crag. You have to admit, "actuators" sounds way cooler. Each third of the Crag was swathed in colored light corresponding to each player's representative color. This sounds like a pretty easy if completely unnecessary task, but the show threw in some special effects-type obstacles to sweeten things up. Avalanches, glittery snowstorms, flashes of lightning, and even nuclear flying crystals. Yep, that's right: nuclear flying crystals. Just like climbing a real mountain.

The first kid to the top of the Aggro Crag received 725 point, most often nullifying all of those other pointless preceding events. There was an eviable awards ceremony in which the competitors received their inevitable medals and the gold medal-winner was given a piece of the Aggro Crag. Admittedly, this plutonium-esque hunk of plastic looked pretty dissimilar to the Crag itself, but it was still arguably the most coveted piece of neon green plastic around.

To illustrate the desirability of taking home a piece of the crag, do a little Google search for something along the lines of "buy a piece of the aggro crag". On eBay, the site even comes up with alternative search suggestions for you, implying that numerous people search for "piece of the crag" and then follow that up with "GUTS aggro crag." These now-grown ups are still dying to get their hands on a piece of the crag. You know what they say: if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.


In 1994, Nickelodeon produced an Olympic-style spinoff of the show entitled Global Guts, pitting kids from different countries against one another in a battle to prove superiority at Extreme Dodgeball and Wave Pool Kayaking. It's a competitive field, I know, so these segments were pretty tense. Kids came from places like Israel and Kazakhstan to prove their worth and earn a piece of the almighty Crag (by now, in Super form). Not only did this did the international competition add a new element to the show (particularly when we battled the forces of former communism on the rock climbing wall), the winner got to do a sweet flag-flying victory lap as well. Talk about doing your country proud.

Sure, Nickelodeon brought back a version of it as My Family's Got GUTS in 2008, but the era had passed. For the children of the 90s, that is. Those of us with as-of-yet-unrealized dreams of bringing home a piece of the Crag will suffer forever from unrequited semi-athletic accomplishments. Unless one of you happens to find a piece of it on eBay, that is.

All That (Part 1)

What ,you think I could fit a childhood's worth of All That sketch memories in a single post? Well, think again. SNICK was a cornerstone of Saturday night juvenile television programming, and for many years (that is, until I outgrew it) All That was its anchor.

You know a network sees potential in a show when they commission a big name music act to create a custom-made theme song. Nickelodeon asked TLC to perform the All That theme song, which in most of our recollections consisted of a vaguely unmemorable rap and the words "all that" repeated numerous times throughout. The song was catchy though, or at least enough so to keep preview audiences watching the first episode in its entirety in 1994.

All That took the successful format of grown up sketch comedy shows such as Saturday Night Live and MAD TV and translated it (read: dumbed it down) for pre-adolescent audiences . They maintained the general outline of a cold open, some sketches, and a live musical guest. For a kid's show, All That actually managed to pull some big names. Legitimate (well, in terms of popularity, that is) musical names such as Usher and Boyz II Men performed on the show. It had all the ingredients of a veritable children's television enterprise.

But was it funny? At the time, most of us thought it was hysterical. I suppose humor is in the ear of the behearer, because thumbing through some of the jokes now makes me seriously question my sanity as a child. This probably indicates that the All That producers got what separates adult humor from children's humor; there's a reason reviewers remark with disdain that gross-out or overly simplistic comedies are "juvenile". To actual juveniles, the show was a real laugh riot.





Like I said, the show had countless memorable sketches, so let's take a look at a few notables and I promise to get back to the rest later:

Good Burger
Arguably one of the most recognizable All That sketches, most prominently because it was later adapted into a movie. How or why movie executives saw fit to morph this three minute non-sequitor into a two-hour full length feature is beyond our grasp as viewers. In the sketch, Kel Mitchell played a dim-witted and literal-minded fast food counter worker, beginning every customer interaction with the phrase, "Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, can I take your order?"

It usually went a little something like this:



Kel certainly had some skill in the way of deadpan, and it's easy to see what drew kids to this mode of humor. Children by nature are not abstract, and hence respond best to literal jokes. That's why kids like things that other people think are stupid. Like Good Burger.

The subsequent film received incredibly negative feedback from adult reviewers. I would say, to its credit as a franchise, that you'd be hard pressed to find someone between the ages of 18 and 30 who didn't recognize Kel's opening Good Burger spiel.


Ishboo
Ah, the 90s trope of vaguely foreign exchange students. Like Nadia from American Pie Ishboo had no discernable connection to any actual country, nor did his accent particularly reflect a specific heritage. Ishboo's schtick was mainly that he did stupid things (claiming they were native customs) and everyone felt compelled to copy him to make him feel comfortable and at home:



In typical TV stereotyping fashion, apparently being overweight makes you ageless. If I were Lori Beth Denberg, I probably wouldn't be too pleased to be paired up with ol' male patterned baldy over here. Either way, Ishboo was funny to kids because he wears a skirt and makes people bang their heads on the wall. It's a bit shocking to think its star, Kenan Thompson, was the only one who went on to have a future in sketch comedy. Then again, based on the current ratings of Saturday Night Live, perhaps it's not such a stretch.


Ask Ashley
I'll say this for Amanda Bynes: she was certainly cute as a child. Amanda's spinoff show and subsequent longevity in show business points to her actually being a skilled entertainer. As a child, I always loved her Ask Ashley sketch on All That. The basic premise was that young viewers wrote Ashley with questions seeking advice in the manner of Dear Abby. Ashley appeared the picture of sweetness and innocence, and would begin reading every letter, "Dear Ashley....thaaaaaaat's meee!" It was certainly endearing, but from there things seemed to take a turn:

I apologize for the absolutely atrocious quality of this video, less-than-ingeniusly videotaped from a TV screen. It was the best I could do.

Watching now as an adult, I'm mainly just impressed that she manages to go so crazy on these people without using a single curse word. Bravo, Ask Ashley. Bravo.


Ear Boy
"He's Ear Boy, Ear Boy, his ears are really big!" If that title sequence music doesn't reaffirm the fact that children adore simple humor, I don't know what does. That was essentially the whole gag; Josh Server was Ear Boy, whose ears were indeed really big. For some reason I never quite understood (and perhaps this was due to my limited political knowledge as a child), his nemesis was Ross Perot.

The sketch poked fun at common playground nicknames used to mock people with acne, braces, or glasses by building Ear Boy a gang of cronies named Pizza Face (literally, pizza for a face), Tinsel Teeth (Christmas ornaments in mouth), and Four Eyes (she had four).



I'm tempted to judge this further and increasingly without mercy, until I stumbled upon this more recent photo of Ear Boy Josh Server.


I might just leave it at that.



Vital Information
This was one of the more frequent bits on All That, featuring Lori Beth Denberg as the initial supplier of this Vital Information for your Everyday Life (to be later replaced by a washed up Little Pete and some other kid after the show's Golden Age). Vital Information for your Everyday Life was filled with, well, Vital Information for your Everyday Life. Sort of.



These were sort of one-liners, except they usually made no sense at all. They were completely pointless, which I suppose was the point, the humor being that these items were not Vital Information at all. Her bits of wisdom included gems like

If you flush your friend down the toilet, you either got a huuuge toilet or a teenie little friend.

Well said, Lori Beth. I've got to get me some smaller friends. Or a bigger toilet.


While it may not stand the test of time, it's nostalgia factor is pretty high on the fond memory scale. If it's not making you giggle, set a couple of 9 year olds in front of the reruns for a few episodes and watch them delight in it. Sure, it will make you feel old, but it's better than having to watch the whole Good Burger movie to reaffirm your faith in old-school juvenile comedy.

Hey Dude

There was once a time when children's networks didn't feel they needed to dumb down their shows for a preteen audience. Unlike the Disney and Nickelodeon networks of today, classic Nickelodeon created teen-centric sitcoms that were funny and well-realized. Hey Dude was a classic example of this vein of solid comedic children's programming: it didn't rely on wacky gags or outlandish premises to drive its action. Rather, it took a simple believable premise and extrapolated from it a show worthy of our attention and admiration.

This admiration was fairly easily bought. After all, here was a group of teenagers doing what every kid dreamed of: spending a summer away from home, having a peer group of other attractive teens, and spending endless hours riding horses. It was sort of like an extended version of the Saved by the Bell summer beach specials, only it was set at a dude ranch. Essentially, the show took familiar character molds, placed them in an unfamiliar situation, and watched the humor unfold.

The show's underlying plot was fairly uncomplicated. Mr. Ernst, a nerdy but lovable New York ex-accountant and newly ex-husbanded, bought an Arizona dude ranch on a whim in the midst of a midlife crisis. Much to his son's chagrin, Mr. Ernst packed up and headed west with a humorously limited knowledge of dude ranching, whatever that is. His ranch, the Bar None, was staffed by a motley crew of teenagers assembled from across the country. Apparently, the ranch had once been owned by a reputable cowboy, and the staff was in for a hefty surprise upon the arrival of bumbling newcomer Mr. Ernst.

If that was not quite enough to draw you in, well, Nickelodeon had plans for all of you naysayers. This plan came in the form of one of the catchiest television theme songs to date. I dare you to listen to it and not spend the rest of the day replaying it in your head. Go ahead, give it a try:



What can I say, I warned you. If you're reading this incognito at work and would likely blow your cover with an impromptu outburst of loud western kid's TV show theme music, here are the convenient read-along lyrics for your perusing pleasure:

"It's a little wild and a little strange...
when you make your home out on the range.
So, start your horse and come along.
'Cause you can't get a ride if you can't hold on.
Singin' yippee kai aie ay. (Yippee kai aie what?)
Like the cowboys say. (Sing it again now.)
Yippee kai aie ay.
'Till the break of day.
(You'd better watch out for those man-eating jackrabbits... And that killer cacti!)
Hey Dude!"

Under closer inspection, this song tells us absolutely nothing of value. Sure, it's vaguely Western-themed (largely evidenced by that "yippee kai aie ay") but the lyrics themselves tell us no story whatsoever. What man-eating jackrabbits? What killer cacti? Perhaps it would take a bit more investment in the show to rope you in (yes, that is a lasso joke, please take it as such).

Luckily, we had a wide range (I'm going to keep pointing out these puns, don't even try to stop me) of characters with whom to relate:


Ted: Our protagonist for no real reason other than his general egotistical frat-boy amiability coupled with a lack of other defining qualities. Well, outside of his rather remarkable good looks, that is. He was the real glue of the show, and his premature departure from the cast was an inevitable shark-jump. Luckily, he later returned to the ranch under shaky (read: ratings related) pretenses, but it was never quite the same.

In case that was somewhat lacking on the descriptive side, you can always refer to the following Ted testimonials:




Bradley: Hold on, back up here. Brad's a girl? But that's a boy's name! Just when you think you've heard it all. Don't worry, though, she's totally rich and we can therefore assume she can buy her way out of an ill-begotten fate of name mockery. See, you can tell she's rich because she wears designer clothes...at a ranch! Boy, this Brad sure is something. Luckily for Brad, she was a pretty stellar horse trainer, or else we would really have no clue what she was doing here. Additionally, her love-hate relationship with Ted just screamed playground flirtation:

A "Hey Dude" Romance @ Yahoo! Video

Melody: Requisite goody-goody with all-American good looks (read: blonde). Sure, we may now know Christine Taylor as a relatively well-known actress and wife of Ben Stiller, but back then she was just our favorite 90s lifeguard this side of Baywatch. Melody also had a good deal of sexual tension with Ted, though none of us as children would have defined it as such.


Danny: Our small dose of diversity in this snowy white cast. I'm not sure if any of you have ever been to Tucson, but I can give you a hint that the show's ethnic balance is more than a little off. Danny is a Hopi Indian, which we know not only by his looks but also because his last name is Lightfoot. That's subtlety for you. Danny was always full of little tidbits of Hopi wisdom, because the 90s couldn't have a token non-white cast member without tying the major thrust of his character traits to his race.

In addition, there was Buddy (Mr. Ernst's young teenage son) who was mainly preoccupied with the undesirable skateboarding conditions of the desert. He was largely one-dimensional, but served as a sort of little brother character to the senior staff.

Later, a mysterious Jake, and later an even vaguer Kyle (quasi-related to ranch hand Lucy) were basically stand-ins for the Ted character after his exit from the show. They may very well have come from central casting for Teds, and served as the cousin Olivers in this unfortunate jumping of the shark. Ted's return was welcomed, but the show was already somewhat on the wane.

Regardless of any cracks in its sturdy foundation, Hey Dude ran a fairly solid few seasons from the late 80s to early 90s. Though it wasn't necessarily the sharpest or the most original, it was a little wild and a little strange, which in this case was enough to rope in a slew of little buckaroo viewers.


Check it out:
Hey Dude Episode Guide
Hey Dude Book on Amazon
Hey Dude on iTunes?