A Special Presentation 293: Mad Balls

Did you know that cartooning is a waste of time and paper? Janet from Three' Company sure thinks so as a reporter assigned to interview veteran cartoonist Ted Knight in this attempt to get kids to watch Saturday morning cartoons!

Remember the good old days when they had to sell kids on the exciting cartoons that were going to be on Saturday morning by making a prime time special about Scott Baio opening a disco in Hazzard County, Alabama, and getting extorted by Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe Coltrane? Also the Sid and Marty Kroft puppet was there? We sure do.

We're breaking our own rule to ostensibly talk about the Q*Bert cartoon from Saturday Morning Supercade, but actually we got distracted to talk about Hazbin Hotel and other stuff instead. Cuz Q*Bert suckkkks! The coloring book is way better.

Paul McCartney is, as you might know, one of the Beatles. Then he did that frog song.

Oy Vey, Toy May! continues as Mike Westfall of ⁠Advent Calendar House⁠ joins us to talk about the Huggabunch movie, a bunch of babies who have one solution for every problem: HUGGING! It can cure death too.

Oy Vey, Toy May! continues as Mike Westfall of Advent Calendar House joins us to talk about Dear Poochie, an anime about a dog who writes an advice column but also goes o globe-trotting adventures with her robot sidekick!

We continue Oy Vey, Toy May! with a look at TWO attempts to adapt Mad Balls, the classic 80s toy that combined the two great tastes that go great together (balls and grossness), to the small screen: A show about a punk rock group of Mad Balls who just wants to rock in defiance of the fascist government of the Mad Ball planet... and a show about Mad Balls telling gross jokes.

It's Toy May, oy vey! And we're looking at the VHS live-action special made to promote the very heavily promoted late 80s toy My Pet Monster, whose unique selling proposition was that he came with orange breakaway handcuffs.

LIVE from BABScon 2025! We attended the final Bay Area Brony Spectacular, where we ran a panel comparing Hasbro's 1986 box office bombs -- My Little Pony the movie, GI Joe the movie, and Transformers the movie. Were they as bad as 1986 critics thought? The answer is maybe.

This is the first time that we've looked at an AWARD WINNING comic adaptation... it's Ghost World, starring a young Scarlet Jo Hansen, a young Thora Birch, and a young Stephen Buschemi. Come for the Ghost World, stay for the UN-PC ranting about rude tourists!