Beethoven

Kid's movies have a unique way of defining villains. They eliminate that pesky gray area between right and wrong and give us a starkly black and white portrait of morality. They also wrap up everything into a neatly PG-rated package and tie it with an age-appropriate bow. While real life bad guys are out there engaging in acts of sociopathic lunacy, our ever-reliable children's movie villains are trying to kidnap suburban housepets for scientific experimentation purposes. You've got to hand it to these writers; they have an uncanny way of shifting the bad guy from a reprehensible scum of the earth to one deserving of a time-out and dessert withholding.

Such in the phenomenon in Beethoven, where the worst offense a character could commit is to be a naughty veterinarian hell-bent on neighborhood puppy domination. The movie conveniently scales everything down a bit, putting the plot at child eye-level. It's a scary enough world out there without filmmakers planting night terror-inducing concepts in the minds of impressionable children. Instead, it's best to keep things simple. An adult might not buy it, but a child will be able to sleep better at night if their worst imaginable nemesis is a puppy kicker rather than a mass murdering psychopath.

Beethoven captures the simplicity of an ideal children's movie. Sure, it's got it's fair share of adult characters and parental story lines, but it mainly focuses on the exploits of a mischievous but ultimately heroic dog. Rather than trying to woo us with flashy graphics and special effects, it gives our heatstrings a deliberate tug through the cunning use of adorable oversized animals. All in all, some pretty effective methodology.



The film opens on a St. Bernard's daring escape from the clutches of the aforementioned unrelentingly evil veterinarian. The puppy finds shelter in a quiet suburban neighborhood, much to delight of the household's children. The Newton parents aren't quite on board with it, but it's tough to resist those little puppy dog eyes. He responds positively to one of the kids playing Beethoven's Fifth on the piano and earns the moniker Beethoven. Let the games begin.

Beethoven quickly launches in a montage of memorable and iconic St. Bernard moments. So memorable, in fact, that recently when I mentioned a St. Bernard to my mother she said, "Oh, I don't like that kind of dog. They always get all wet and shake the water off all over the bed." To which I responded, "Are you sure you're not just thinking of that scene in Beethoven? I'm pretty sure that's what you're talking about." She conceded, though she didn't eliminate the possibility that this was simply par for the course with St. Bernard behavior. If you happen to own one, let me know if this in-bed dry off is a standard St. Bernardism. Either way, the movie obviously had quite the impact on our impression of large dogs.



While Beethoven can be destructive, he's got his charms as well. He assists the oldest daughter in conversation with the guy she likes and comes to rescue of the other siblings in respective dangerous situations. It looks like he's a keeper, despite his ever-expanding proportions.

Unfortunately, his unsuspecting owners aren't privy to the evil veterinarian's plan to dognap their newest and largest family member. Because in the world of movies, there's apparently only one veterinarian in the whole town, our trusting family just happens to take Beethoven to the evil guy for a check up. That's right, the same evil guy Beethoven escaped from at the beginning of the movie. The vet tells the Newtons that St. Bernards are prone to attack, thus planting the seed for further animal cruelty-related trickery later in the movie.

There's a whole story going on with some business people who are trying to rip off the Newtons through a shady deal, but Beethoven yet again proves he's worth the Costco-proportioned amounts of food they feed him daily. He drags the couple around on the ground, they're all pretty angry, the deal is off. Nice work, pup.


Our evil vet Varnick returns to the Newton's house, because apparently this guy lives and breathes the capture of a single St. Bernard in a town populated with thousands of other dogs. I guess these experiments require a uniquely Beethoven quality, because Varnick is relentless in his pursuit. He pretends he's just checking in, only to stage a bogus dog attack. The kids are suspicious, but the adults acquiesce to Varnick's demand that Beethoven be euthanized.

Mr. Newton has a heart after all, and decides the family should go after Beethoven and put a stop to his imminent death. Varnick tries to play them, saying that the dog has been put to sleep, but our heroic family doesn't fall for it. The Newtons surreptitiously follow Varnick to the sketchy facility where he performs his illicit pet experiments. They save Beethoven, the cops arrest Varnick, and the family takes in a pack of other dogs freed from Varnick's clutches. Cheesy, yes, but heartwarming too.

If you've somehow managed to repress this movie or just never got around to seeing it, here's your chance. Behold, Beethoven in 5 seconds via The Guy with the Glasses


The ORIGINAL Beethoven In 5 Seconds - Funny videos are here

Of course, the story doesn't end here. If you head to video store (I'm not sure they still even exist, but just come with me on this one) you'll see rows and rows of Beethoven movies, including innumerable sequels and an animated series. Here's the direct follow up that still features most of the original cast, before they start with the subpar direct-to-video crap.



The movie's simplicity and kid appeal was more than enough to both win us over and make us yearn for a similarly valiant pet. I can't imagine the sheer number of children who left this movie begging their parents to please, please, please let them have a dog. Most of us were probably banking on the off chance that our future fluffy friend would aid in uncovering a ring of experiment-based animal abuse, so we may have been setting our expectations a bit too high. Still, though, there's something innately reassuring about a world where the worst crime a person could commit is to steal a dog or two. It may not have been the most realistic worldview, but it allowed us a slightly extended age of cinematic innocence. Thanks, Ivan Reitman. This almost makes me want to forgive you for scaring the bejeezus out of my childhood self with Ghostbusters.

Children of the 90s Ode to Discontinued 90s Foods, Part Deux

Well, children of the 90s, it's that time again. I've had some email requests from readers about some of their favorites 90s snacks, so I thought we were due for another discontinued 90s food roundup. If these commercials bring back some cravings, you're probably out of luck. Most of these foods, despite their hearty nostalgic value, have been discontinued somewhere along the way. On a good day, you might be able to find a couple of these on grocery store shelves outside of the US, but for the most part any cravings for these goodies will go unfulfilled.

For one reason or another, the producing companies of these delicious (though often un-nutritious) treats decided it just wasn't profitable enough to keep churning them out on their assembly lines. In our day some of these might have had impressive cafeteria trade value, but they've since dropped in kid coolness capital. All we have left is our memories...and for some of us, imbalanced blood sugar and an increased risk for early onset diabetes. We weren't the most health-conscious generation of kids, but we knew what we liked. Food manufacturers must have known, too, as they supplied us with copious amounts of nutritionally devoid options like these:

Pop Qwiz




At the time, this seemed like a true technological innovation in kid's snack food. Pop Secret released this kid-pleasing product in the early 90s, proving that children are the only group of consumers willing to eat incredibly unnatural-hued foodstuffs. Pop Qwiz was mostly gimmick and little substance, but the gimmick was more than enough to hold our attention and prompt countless tantrums in the popcorn aisle of the supermarket. Hey, I'd still be willing to throw myself on the ground and wail inconsolably for a bag of Pop Qwiz.

The name sounds far more educational than the value of the product warrants. I guess that's why they misspelled "Qwiz", to let us all know this popcorn snack was not academically relevant, nor would it offer us extra credit opportunities. Instead, the concept was rather simple: each bag of Pop Qwiz featured a different food-colored mass of kernels. The packaging was unassuming, leaving us kids to impatiently speculate on the bag's contents while still in the microwave. Would it be blue? Green? Purple? This eagerness for answers undoubtedly led to many oil-based burns.



Doritos 3-D



Our good friends at Doritos had no shortage of creative nacho-flavored chip incarnation ideas in the 90s. Every few weeks or so, it seemed they were debuting a new member of the ever-growing Dorito family. The short-lived Doritos 3-D were especially popular, literally adding a new dimension to our Dorito consumption. They fit in well with the "X-Treme!" trends in 90s advertising and product promotion, but they clearly couldn't stand the test of time. Air-filled pockets of salty goodness can only hold our attention for so long.



Planter's Cheez Balls


I know this ad is older than the 90s, but it was the best I could find. I think at a certain point, these defied advertising. They were pretty ubiquitous as a nutrition-free party snack food

Remember when Planter's used to make a whole bunch of other snack foods? I always thought it a bit weird that Mr. Peanut veered from his legume comfort zone to promote all classes of salty snacks. Cheez Balls (and Cheez Curls, and the briefly available PB Crisps) were once a universal party food. People were forever setting these unnaturally orange puffed balls out in bowls at social gatherings. There was something uniquely satisfying to popping off the tub's cap and hearing the release of suctioned air when you pulled the foil top and released the Cheez Balls into the wild. Unfortunately, you'll have to settle for the generics if you're craving Cheez Balls these days; Planter's has since discontinued the snack. You can, however, get a no-brand version at Sam's Club or Costco if you really need to satisfy your urge. Unfortunately, they're only available in giant tub sizes.



French Toast Crunch

French Toast Crunch Ad- Bazooka Gum
Uploaded by a90sfan. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.

90s children's cereal trends show an unprecedented obsession of taking ordinary foods, miniaturizing them, and then convincing us they're a perfectly natural part of a balanced breakfast. French Toast Crunch was a perfect example, giving us bowlfuls of tiny French toastlets that we were expected to drown in milk and eat with a spoon. They didn't taste all that much like French toast, but they were a novelty and were thus deserving of our attention.

If you're lucky enough to live in Canada, you've still got access to this delicious breakfast treat. Publicly-funded health care comes second to the allure of starting every day with a big bowl of miniature processed imitation egg-soaked cinnamon bread? Actually, scratch that, make health care first. Daily intake of this sugar-laden cereal probably warrants regular doctor's visits.



Sprinkle Spangles



Here we go again with the miniatures. Sprinkle Spangles were a sort of Cookie Crisp knockoff, featuring sprinkle-spangled miniature sugar cookies and passing them off as cereal. How any of us ever got this one into the grocery cart and past our parent's wary watchful eye is beyond me, but the concept has yet to lose its appeal for me. I still think a bowl of these would really hit the spot when I'm craving something sweet.



Cheetos Paws



Like Doritos 3-D, Cheetos came out with an alternately shaped version of its original product and tried to pass it off as something new. Naive as we were as kids, we were ecstatic to find out our favorite orange finger-dying munchies now came in an easily grabbable pawprint shape. It was sort of like a crystal ball, really. It showed us exactly what our hands would look like if we engaged in gloveless Cheeto consumption. Well, the color part, at least. They usually didn't morph into paws.



Sodalicious Fruit Snacks



Sodalicious wins for best made-up food flavor descriptor. It's not soda per se, but it is delicious in a way similar to soda. How can we hybridize these words? Genius, I tell you.



Magic Middles



I'm getting a little drooly just watching that commercial. The name is right on: those middles were pure, sweet magic. Those Keebler elves sure are crafty. They realized they could hide even more delicious chocolate inside of an already chocolate-laden cookie, obscuring the extra sugar content from our parents. Oh hey, I'm just eating this chocolate chip cookie. With a candy bar's worth of chocolate inside. Ha ha! Gotcha.



Dannon's Sprinklins




We weren't allowed much junk food at my house, so we had to settle for the best imitation. That is, foods that incorporated sugary goodness without actually being all that sugary or good themselves. In this case, we had to suffer through some does-a-body-good yogurt in order to get to the good stuff: sprinkles. I challenge you to find a kid who doesn't like sprinkles. They're pure sugar and they're colorful. It's basically a kid's confectionery dream. I always utilized good sprinkle strategy. I'd try to conserve as many as I could for the end, but to a healthy food-disparaging kid, I'd usually have to give in and spread them throughout the cup. I just couldn't stomach it without the "Sprinkl'" part.


Like many of you, I didn't notice the gradual disappearance of these goodies from my grocery store shelves. Over time I'd eventually notice that some of my old childhood favorites had gone the way of the Dunkaroos. Unless they decide to ignore low profit margins and get swept up in the 90s nostalgia, it's unlikely we'll be seeing most of these gracing our supermarket aisles any time soon. We'll just have to settle for our delicious memories. Either that, or trying to track down some packages on Amazon or eBay. It just comes down to how seriously you consider expiration dates.

Laser Pointers

It's strange to think a tiny red beam of light could bring so much childhood joy and so much adult annoyance all in its compact key chain-attachable form. Especially when you consider that this device was originally intended to aid lecturers in their presentations, it seems like a bit of a leap to imagine children having much of a use for the thing. I doubt the inventors of the laser pointers sat around their brainstorming table musing about alternative uses for their product. "Well, how about pointing it at people's crotches on movie screens? Do you think that could be a selling point?"

No, it was up to us kids to decide on the most irritating and teacher-grating uses for the laser pointer. Anyone who believes children aren't naturally creative simply have not examined the case of the laser pointer. It takes a savvy mind to take a tool meant for one of the most boring possible purposes and changing the function to delight their insatiable appetite for mischief.

Kids are far craftier and more inventive than adults usually give them credit for. The only problem is, they generally tend to direct this mind power toward the deviant. As kids we're not about finding solutions to the world's problems; we don't have that kind of mental breadth or empathy. We're in it solely for the entertainment.


Of course, kids have been partaking in this sort of tomfoolery for generations. It doesn't take much to entertain a child, and it doesn't take much to irritate an adult. The power of these two forces combined leads to a dangerous and potent cocktail of annoying proportions. The day a kid realized he could temporary blind a teacher by using the reflection of the sun off his watch, you better bet that's exactly what he did. It's not that he didn't care about her well-being. It's just that he cares more about delighting his impressionable classmates.

Such was also the case with laser pointers, a sort of updated version of this blinded-by-the-light childhood fancy. It's one thing to use "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" as an empty threat, but quite another to have to really mean it. That's not to say these things were actually capable of loosening an eye from its physical socket. I'd imagine they'd have been long banned from business conferences and conventions if that was the case. They could cause some temporary visual discomfort, though, and this was enough to have angry parent watchdog-type groups up in arms over the issue.

Fun for pets, too! From petside.com

Many of these uptight groups were enraged that parents were buying these little lights for their children. They wrote angry letters to school principals and district superintendents about the harm in these kids playing Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader with their makeshift light sabers. These devices, they stressed, were not toys. They didn't care how hilarious it was to illuminate their teacher's private parts with a pesky red dot. They just wanted them banned.

To be fair, there might eb some legitimately harmful implications of shining a little red dot on someone. I suppose if someone was intensely overly suspicious, they could assume that the telltale red dot was indicative of a sniper alignment. In fact, in a brief internet search on kids and laser pointers, I came across a very angry letter from a proud gun owner claiming it's not her fault if she panics over that little red light and pulls her gun on a kid. Now, I'm all for consequences for our actions, but that seems a tad harsh. That's like saying we should approve the death penalty for stealing lunch money. The sense of proportion seems just a smidge out of whack.

Incensed critics of laser-pointers-as-toys even cried foul on an episode of Seinfeld that chronicled George's misadventures with a laser pointer-wielding miscreant. The part I like best about this episode (entitled "The Puerto Rican", by the way) is that the perpetrator is actually a grown man. It just goes to show that immaturity is something we can all share. It's not exclusive to preadolescent boys. If anything, the drive to stir up trouble only grows with age. Well, to a point, that is. At a certain age, we all morph into the crotchety critics who cried foul on these glorious sources of entertainment in the first place. Until then, though, we have a free pass to behave like this:



The craze of young people utilizing laser pointers for pure entertainment was a short-lived one. At a point, the novelty wore off and we were once again able to attend a movie matinee without having to worry about the endless distraction of a roaming point of light. In a way, though, you have to miss the innocence and easy distractability of your youth. Sure, the things were annoying, but they represented a certain juvenile sense of humor that's tough to recapture in an age of ever-increasing technological output.

Now that kids today have a wealth of information and gadgetry at their immediate disposal, it's tough to imagine them getting as much of a kick out of a red bedotted movie. On the other hand, maybe there's a common bond that transcends generations that brings us together. I'm willing to venture that deep down, no matter in which generation you grew up, you will find certain things intrinsically amusing. So to today's kids, I say enjoy your easily amused youth. We'll catch you on the other side when you're getting all crotchety and George Costanza about it.