Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 115: Food Mascot Games

Episode Date: September 4, 2017

Not long ago, corporations employed colorful cartoon characters to lure hungry and impressionable children into their dens of corn-based products. And, since this time period happened to overlap with the rise of video games, several food mascots ended up starring in their very own interactive experiences. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Henry Gilbert, and Chris Antista as the crew chases the chuck wagon, avoids various Noids, and asks if Chester Cheetah really IS too cool to fool.

This week on Retronauts, we do our best to avoid the noid. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackie. And today's episode is Food Mascot Games. But before we continue, we'll find out who else is here today, right over there. Hi, it's me, Jeremy Parrish, the King of Burgers. Ooh. Your face is frozen in a rictus, and you've got that crown on, so it works. And who else is here today?

Oh, yeah, it's Henry Gilbert. You're going to have to pay for that wall, Henry. We rent this space. What are you doing? Okay. I'm just going so excited. Who else is here? Can't get enough of that, Chris Antisda.

Wow. He's not in this episode, but I can't stop thinking about sugar bear since we started researching this. Excuse me, he's healthy now? He's honey bear? Honeybear? Yeah. No. Is he, is he honey bear for real?

I think he could be honeybear. Is he still Bing Crosby? He's still Bing Crosby. He's still a reference lost to the ages. In the 70s, the word sugar was removed from every serial name. It became golden smacks. Golden smacks. They were no less unhealthy.

They just didn't have sugar in the yet. He had never given no one no diabetes, babe. Oh, swing. I'm Tasmania Day. That's how kids know me. This is a real mess. This episode's about Tasmania. It really is.

I mean, we're changing the focus of Retronauts to cartoons from the 90s as part of my initiative to ruin the show. I'm just kidding. So today's episode is about food. I'm sending my Patreon donation. I'm pulling out. Okay, so today's episode is about food mascot games. This came to as a suggestion to me from Twitter.

Next time I swear to God, I will write the people's names down. I always forget. But if you're out there and you recommended this title to me or this, this subject to me. Let me know. I'll give you a shout out. I'm sorry that I forgot, but this is a great premise for an episode, and I'm running with it because it's like a fascinating just series of train wrecks, and we're going to examine all of them in great detail and find the survivors. Someone told me, I should do it, and then you were like, mine. Well, I think, I think this is something, I don't know, I don't know.

This is in your wheelhouse, Bob. I even said so. Yeah, so. Did we not, this is not serious discussion. This is not academia. No, this is frivolous and it will make you stupider. That's what I'm trying to do. But I just came... The Bob Mackey Promise. Yes. I came to a point where I love cartoon mascots. It's not just nostalgia. I'm pissed that we don't have as many now.

Yeah, I mean, I'm doing this research, I'm like, where are these types of characters? I don't see them anymore. I only see these exact characters when they are repackaged to us in hipper advertisements. Yeah, it's like... Or they're dressed like Batman versus Superman for some reason. Like Chuckie Cheese now skateboard's and crap.

I mean, that's a 20-year-old thing, but I want to lay down some ground rules. So number one, the premise of this episode is about games starring food mascots. And there's lots of games that involve licensed food products in some way, but I'm really focusing on games where you play as the mascot itself. So things like MC Kids is, that's off the table. So I actually like the game MC Kids, but we can't talk about it. What about when licensed food is a core mechanic of the game? No. Unfortunately, we're not going to be talking about Dark and Sky. The Skittles action RPG. What about when beloved mascots advertise food?

That's another episode we could do, actually. But this episode is when you're playing as like Ronald McDonald or Chester Cheetah, things like that. And there are way too many of these games in doing research. I thought there weren't this many. But only food. So no yarruses. We're not talking about yarruses. That's right.

I mean, from an ethical standpoint, these should be illegal. Like, should be allowed to sell a commercial to children. It means kind of evil. And the reality is that it would be completely free. on iOS right now. That's a pay $40-50. I mean, it would just work as a free ad. Like, you know, and maybe give it some kind of like top-tier currency you pay for

to, like, give Ronald new shoes or something. Yaris and those Doritos games were, like, they were cutting edge on the Xbox 360 by being like, look, just have it for free and have 200 achievement points. That'll get you play our Doritos game sooner. We'll give them to you. And I mean, I feel like garbage food and video games are just. just they go together. They're a match made in heaven.

I mean, I ate like... It's the teenage boy connection. Exactly. Like, I eat much healthier now. I'm a vegetarian, but I just ate garbage growing up, just like McDonald's and chips and soda and everything. Chris, I guess, couldn't. Tell your tragic story, Chris.

My dad was just a huge nutrition dude. My mom would sneak herself food and hide food around the house. But there wasn't a lot of, like... Ooh, boy, that's unhealthy. If the cereal wasn't brown, I couldn't eat it. And no chocolate. So cocoa pops. No, no, no.

I do. I tried that. loophole, too. It did not work. Oh, yeah. I ate garbage all the time. No marshmallows. My father, like, if you, if you go to soccer practice without crying, we're going to go to Wendy's. And we're like, yeah, yeah. And then we get there and this will date me. We get to Wendy's like, all right, kids, salad bar. Like, everybody gets a salad bar. I guess it has pudding. You can't put pudding on the salad, Chris. I'm sorry. I was the opposite. My mom spoiled. And one reason I know all about these video games is

because my mom spoiled me. And the same for food. We had Friday night was pizza night. Other nights we'd get McDonald's or whatever. I talked about it on our, this shows Super Mario Brothers three episodes. My mom herself was addicted to collecting McDonald's Happy Meal Toys. Oh, God. That can't happen to adults, can't it? So we, so yeah, I was in touch with all these things.

It's not just our generation. I feel better. Thank God. And, of course, with, of course, with the ads like Chester Cheetah and the Noid, as an animation dweb, I just love seeing well-animated commercials, even if I wasn't going to buy the product. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Henry, because the one, I guess, validating factor of all of this is, like, I got to watch all these commercials again. And it's just like, in this era when ad agencies would go to creative people and just say, make 20 minutes of great animation, make a character for us. And they look great.

Like, things like we'll talk about like CoolSpot and Chester Cheetah. Like, there's a lot of creativity and a lot of great art that go into these very crass characters meant to sell us things. The 2D art is sadly at its highest point in commercials like this. Yeah. Even now, you know, when an ad agency is like, here is some money, make a 30-second spot, there's a loop on the third ad that's running in Japan right now. Oh, really? Okay.

Just amazing renditions of the character. It's like these characters have never been animated so beautiful. Yeah, Japan has some really great ads. It's for like a car or something. Wow. Is he driving the car? Like sideways? Yeah.

And then there's like a tie-in. I was just over in Tokyo and, like, Coco Ichibanya, the curry chain, has some sort of promotion where, like, it's Lupin III and you can win a car. But the commercials that go with this campaign are just stunning. I can't look these up on YouTube. They're just amazing to look at. In the case of cool spots in our neck of the woods, you have to remember that Pixar didn't make a movie until 1995, but I've been a company working for almost 15 years, and that's what they did. You're right. Yeah, that's right.

They did commercials for food mascots. That's true. That's true. So we're going to get started here, and it all starts with a delicious heaping helping of dog food with Chase the Chuck Wagon. I think this is a very infamous game. 1983 for the Atari 2,600. I'm not sure. I don't have a dog.

I never did. I like dogs. But I'm not sure if this dog food still exists. But this was based on a popular dog food campaign in which a tiny chuck wagon, which is like a pioneer wagon full of food, would emerge from like a TV or something. And then it would go into a cabinet. and a dog would chase it. And when it got into the cabinet, like the owner would open the cabinet, there'd be like a dog food bag inside.

So it has all the value of an actual chuck wagon in a bag. It was Purina, right? It was Purina, who was now owned by Ralston, I believe. And I was watching videos of Chuck Wagon, you know, for research and looking at this commercial. And it was one of those, it was that era of pet food commercials? I don't think they do it anymore. It's like they try to make the food look appetizing to you, the human.

Like, I could probably eat that. I'd like the sprig of parsley, a nice touch. Wow, that fish is smoking. Lamb and rice? Wow. I've never do it. I never know. Okay, so, like, this especially is disgusting because it's the kind of dog, dry dog food you add water to.

It's just like a wet slurry of, like, horse parts. It makes its own gravy with all the, like, just the dust that is created because the food is dry and it breaks a part. Disgusting. Poor, put down that trash water. I know. We got some chuck wagon for you. So, yeah, like the dog in this commercial, I think it was like a Scotty dog. But I guess in this.

What we had? What's that? I grew up with Descartie dogs. Okay. They're pretty cute. But in the commercial, like I said, the dog would chase the chuck wagon, but it was really just a figment of its imagination.

It's hallucinating from hunger. It was from eating bad chuck wagon, probably. What's in that dust? Is it an angel dust? You didn't inhale that, did you? I'm hallucinating. So, yes, so chase the chug wagon. You could only get it by sending in UPCs to Purina.

I'm not sure how many, but because of that, it's pretty rare for a 2,600 game, but it's not. Oh, Pirina points. Purina points. Perina points, okay. G.I.I. Joe flag points, but, you know, for dogs. Get your Purina jacket and jet ski. Your free sergeant slaughter, Purina, figure out.

Peerina cigarettes. There are a few games on this list that are just giveaways, I think, to get around the sticky legal situation of selling a commercial to kids. Though not all. Some of them just like, yeah, fuck it. And it makes perfect sense. This came out the year of the game crash, 83. I think it's the agreed upon year. So how this game plays.

It, okay, so reading interviews with the developer, it was programmed in a weekend, which was the case for a lot of these types of games where it's like, yeah, so you guide the dog Chucky through a maze, sort of like Pac-Man, except there are no dots to eat. Your goal is to get to the stationary chuck wagon at the top of the screen, so the chuck wagon does not even move like a dozen the commercials. So you're basically going through like this dog labyrinth. And instead of ghosts like in Pac-Man, there is one dog catcher roaming the maze. If he touches you, you lose a dog life And you have four of those dog lives But there's one Better if you were a cat

Because you'd have nine That's a different cat food That's a different brand of food That'd be a game starting like Morris the cat RIP I'd love that with Morris But there's one other obstacle In this game

And it is sort of A random object that's bouncing back And forth across the stream With pong like physics At times it's a bone At times it's a piece of chuck wagon And at times it's another dog And if you touch that

You just freeze for a few seconds. Okay, I was going to say the dog food, like chuck wagon, like a piece of the dog food will stun and damage you? It's a round thing that looks like a meatball. I assume it's just like a piece of chuck wagon. I'm not sure what else it could be. Well, I would stun you, I guess, because you're enjoying its flavor so much. Yeah, I mean,

I don't know what, I mean, I guess like the bone is distracting you from the truck wagon and the other dog is distracting you, but it just, it's the same dog and you touch each other you make a paradox. It's like a time cop. Yeah, they both melt. It's disgusting. But yeah, like the dog just bounces back and forth across the street with no regard to the walls of the maze.

It's very, very sloppily done. And there is this weird bonus mission that you get after you beat one of these stages where, like, dog food is dropping from the screen. You have to align yourself with it as it falls and hit the action button. That is all there is to chase the Chuck Wagon. As is the case with a lot of Atari 2,600 games, there's not a lot to say about it. And it's hard to say if this is bad for an Atari 2600 game because there are so many bad games. And I've honestly played worse than this. I did play the ROM of Chase the Chuck Wagon for research.

I mean, how can you measure good or bad for games that simple, but in modern context? I mean, you can definitely measure if the controls are responsive. If the enemy placement or, you know, physics are fair, like, there's good, there's bad. This is mediocre. It's just kind of there. The box art is an abomination. That is not good. Oh, yeah.

That is not good at all. It's a photograph. It's really bad. I mean, dog. It's black font on gray box. on a black box that says, you can't even tell it's a $2,600 game, because there's no logo.

I wonder if it even came in a box. It looks, if I had to guess, just looking at this, it's highly unofficial, and that's why they couldn't sell it. Yeah, yeah. Is that the cover art to Ghost Dog Way of the Summer Ride? I assure you that dog is alive.

So, yeah, that was Chase the Chuck Wagon in 1983. Yeah. We have another Atari 26thender game. Also for Intellivision, and that was Kool-Aid Man. Oh, yes, what I know. Kool-Aid Man, I did a lot of research into the titular Kool-Aid man. He started as Mr. Pitcher, who was just a face drawn on a Kool-Aid pitcher. And I feel like watching the original commercials for Kool-Aid, I feel like this is a, this is a, like, a post-war product like, your children will drink powder from a pouch and it will solve all your problems.

It's mostly sugar, by the way. You really want to live in a world with that Kool-Aid? No, it's more a space age kind of thing. We can dehydrate even liquids. Yeah, yeah, I mean, but I mean. Getting orange juice or whatever, that's so old. Like, this is a powder in water. I grew up drinking so much Kool-Aid, and it is like the worst thing to give children.

I had the epiphany that Kool-Aid is like the taco seasoning you get. It's not the shell. It's not the meat. It's not the pan or the oil. You need all of those in order to make this thing. It's taco seasoning. If you want your water to taste sweet and like an apple. Well, it kind of pissed me off to find out some Kool-Aid you needed to add the sugar itself.

Oh, I thought it was all of it. No, you can get the kind. Some was premixed. Yeah. Some was premixed. Though, obviously, the more sugar you add, the better it tastes. The packets you bought. Yes.

You had to add sugar to, like, a cup of sugar per, like, quarter or something. It's a lot of sugar. You could also buy some with the sugar packed in, but I bought so much Kool-Aid. I loved it. Like, to me, the Friday night ritual was, we got Pizza Hut, and I will have my tropical punch Kool-Aid. Oh, I was going to guess. I mean, of course, that's my, that's the least.

Leonardo of Kool-Aid. I was a sharkleberry thin guy myself. I lusted after Purple Source Rex. Do you think the add sugar yourself element was one of those psychological things, like, with the cake mixes where you had to add the egg? So it would make, you know, caring, nurturing parents feel like, oh, yes, we are preparing food. We are adding an ingredient ourselves. It's not just automated. As a kid, it led me to believe, like, I was understanding cooking or that I could make my own thing.

Like, and I couldn't drink a lot of Kool-Aid, but I think my parents liked it for that reason. It was slightly empowering for kids. Alton Brown presents Kool-Aid Masters. Bam! So more about... A little eth-em-th... More about Kool-Aid man. I think he hit his peak of popularity in the 70s.

I mean, this is the version of the character that is parody the most, where he detects thirst in the world. And people say, hey, Kool-Aid, and he bursts through a wall. And he sings a song. Let's listen to a 1978 commercial with Kool-Aid man. It's causing it bad. Amazing bandgrovers makes me hot and thirsty. Let's get a drink. No time.

They're here. Hey, hey, you. Oh, yeah. Hey, Koolet! Oh, yeah. Here comes Kool-Aid. I'm going to save the day. Here comes...

Here comes Kool-Aid. I've gone to chase your thirst away. I grew up at a period of mascots saving the world. Heavy metal bands, like, murdering teachers for me. Yeah. I mean, the Kool-Aid man I know

didn't have like a prepared song when he heard of the law. I'm happy that I'm a little too young to have experienced that song myself. And I've found my faith. I have done way too much research in a Kool-Aid man. And the best one is the apple flavor one from the early 90s

because it's him celebrating his success by walking down a red carpet. As in like I have achieved like all the fame I need. I'm not breaking through any walls. I'm just being celebrated for who I am. And by the time we were little kids, It was this Kool-Aid world. And he didn't break through walls.

Kool-Aid man's marketing in the late 80s and early 90s was more animated and drawing. Sharkleberry Finn. Yeah, it was him hanging out with other things that represented flavors of Kool-Aid. It was not the smashing through the wall was pretty much over. New Shalkaberry Finn has me on a desert island made of clay and computers. So as a kid, it was so exciting to see him smash through walls. Like I also, I remember when I was briefly into baseball, there was a, There was an instructional video series for kids of, like, Pete Rose shows you how to do baseball.

Here's how you gamble, kids. And it was... This is a spread. And it was sponsored by Kool-Aid. Really? It would start with Kool-Aid. Each video would start with Kool-Aid man popping through the wall. Wow.

And there is somebody, I think there's one college that does a funny prank. Anytime something is, like, demolished or bouldos, they just stick a stand-up of the Kool-Aid man in front of any fallen bricks. Always funny. So I think the kids, and by kids, I mean, people in their late 20s, no Kool-Aid man from family guys. He's like, he pops up a lot. He was, like, in the very first episode. I think he's... Oh, no, oh, no.

That joke worked. Let's just keep doing it. Yeah, bring back the chicken and all that great. All those great classic family guy, yucks. But, uh, so Kool-Aid the game could be purchased with 125 Kool-Aid points. So to put that in perspective, a packet of Kool-Aid that makes, like, a quart of Kool-Aid is worth, like, one or two points. So you're going to have to drink a lot of Kool-Aid to get this game. And I would only say that's cool because the last,

time I bought that with my own money, it was $0.25. Yes. So you're getting a game for way cheaper if you somehow can get away with buying that much Kool-Aid. I guess you have to buy like $60 worth of Kool-Aid in 1983. They did come. I think Kool-Aid came in like Cannister. That probably had like three or four points on it. Canisters would even come up

with like $20.00. And juice boxes. Yeah. Oh, those juice boxes. In terms of the amount of money you'd spend to get this game for free, it'd be like $50 to $60. And like, I would save Kool-A points, but I would never have enough for anything. And just like... Just think how much money had to spend on insulin afterwards. Jesus, yeah.

All the hospital care and the new kidneys. I drank so much Kool-Aid. I had lots of Kool-Aid things. Drink more Kool-Aid will kick you up to silver. I had a Kool-Aid frisbee. I had a Kool-Aid headband. And my favorite Kool-Aid thing was I had a Kool-Aid radio in the shape of a Kool-Aid squeeze-it. Wow.

Oh, my God. I didn't know all these products existed. Someday we're going to do a show with Henry on the things he didn't have as a kid. Almost nothing. It would be five minutes long. Well, and I didn't know. did play this game on the television as well. I had it

at the time when I played it, I was four, so I had no clue what it was, why it was good or bad. Well, I'll tell you about the game because Kool-Aid man did not have many enemies in this world. He was a very, very happy... Who hate the Kool-Aid man? A happy-lucky guy, but his enemies were the Thirsties

who were depicted in, like, print ads as these little sunbursts that would make you thirsty. I feel like there's a connection there between the Thirsties and the cavity creeps. Yeah, I think they're from the same, like, lineage. Well, yeah, I think... The soggy.

Actually, I think Kool-Aid man has something to do with the creation of the cavity creeps. Oh, yeah. He's working in tandem with the cavity creeps. Wow, what a weird agenda. Forget what you saw he! False flag in your mouth.

Oh, God. So Kool-Aid Man in this game is fighting the thirsties. So you're sort of floating above a swimming pool, and you have to get rid of all of the thirsties, but in order to get rid of them, you have to touch them while they're extending their straws downward to drink out of the pool. If you touch them when they're not doing, that they sort of knock you around the screen.

And you basically have to get rid of all the thirties before they drain all the water out of the pool. And that is essentially all there is to Kool-Aid man the game. So they're equating Kool-Aid to pool water in this game. I never, whoa. I mean, the Thirsties are drinking the water. I don't think actual Kool-Aid factors into this game at all. Outside of being contained inside Kool-Aid man. You're swimming in my brain.

The 83-In-Telvision game was a very different game. It was a game where you make Kool-Aid. Oh, okay. I was looking at the $2,600 version. Is that involved the keypad? No, no, you, in the television version, you play as two kids at once who just basically are walking in tandem thrott. It's like nuts and milk, but I guess it's like nuts and Kool-Aid. Cookies and cream.

And so you have to go through a gigantic house to find Kool-Aid packet, sugar, water, and the pitcher, and then put them all together to make Kool-Aid. You also need to, like, get a step ladder and other stuff. It's way too complex. It sounds like an adventure game. Very jet-s-like Willie. If you win, Kool-Aid Man will kill your step-dead. So you get all, and you have 10 minutes to do this. And so if you collect all those things in this very tiny, or in this very simple game,

you'll be rewarded with seeing Kool-Aid Man smash through the wall. Oh, yeah. And then you play as Kool-Aid Man. Whoa. And two doesn't, he can just walk all over the screen. He ignores all floors and all the ways. And you just collect fruits that fly across the screen, which is, crazy because fruit and

Kool-Aid have nothing to do with each other. But if you touch... He made lemonade from sharks. He must get rid of all the fruit in the world. But if you touch a thirst... Only artificial flavors. But if you touch a thirsty, you die.

And so, even if you're Kool-Aid man. And then it tells you how many points you got. Okay. Actually, this game contains three power-ups, all of which do the same thing. So if you collect an S for sugar, a W for water, or a K for Kool-Aid, the three ingredients of Kool-Aid,

you make Kool-Lade man really big and invincible. So he can touch the Thirsties without getting hurt, basically. This game seems okay, actually. I mean, it's not ambitious. You're doing very basic things, but it works. I played it. It's fine for what it is. And the opening intro, as an intro, which is goal on the intro screen, where Kool-Aid man burst through the wall and, like, runs off the side of the screen to float around above a pool for some reason.

Also, when I was in my biggest comic book collecting phase as a kid, and I got the, like, the Marvel books for most of 1983, they're back-picked. age ad was this game or burger time, but like it was, it was get these, it's this Kool-Aid man game. It's the kids playing Kool-Aid man on the screen. It's great. I'm pretty sure my first comic book was a Kool-Aid Man comic book. I got it at a grocery store. It was like it was him fighting the Thirsties. It should be Kool-Aid Man, Man.

He's already, you already know who Kool-Aid Man is. Now what's a superhero. The only Kool-Aid Man comic I had was a promotional copy for the dinosaurs. Purple-Ores. Yeah, he was the poochie of the Kool-A-Man universe. But is Kool-Aid still around? Does this Kool-Aid still exist? I don't have children.

I don't drink Kool-Aid. Okay. Because I watch Cartoon Network pretty religiously every Saturday morning, and I keep an eye out for watching. I know I've seen those Kool-Aid Man jammers, which are basically their version of Capriced Sun Pouches. Yeah. So they're still around and still killing you. But I drank him as a kid, and I turned out of him. So it's time to take a trip to the horrible world of McDonald's lands.

I think you mean just Donald lands. Well, in this case, it is. You mean me. The 19... Oh, God, no. Keep them off of the show. I mean, right now, we are living in Donald Land. It's his world.

We're just part of it. You're out of my way, Bob. I've got to pose for a picture. Be on the mic first. Chris, stop shaking my hands so violently. I have the podcast. Anyhow, this game is Donald Land, 1988 for the Famicom.

And in case you didn't know, it's very important that you know this, but in Japan, Ronald McDonald's known as dokey dokey panic. That's a joke. He's actually known as Donald McDonald. I don't know why. maybe it's the RL thing,

maybe Donald is a better name because Japan loves Donald Duck. Well, let's see, LR ambiguity, I think. Ro, it would be Lonald. Yeah. But I think in Japan, like, the sound for L&R is actually like a mix of LR and D for us. So it's like all the same kind,

the same like melange of like consonant sounds. If you listen to Evangelion, you hear a day, instead of Ray, listen, Jeremy, I watch so much fucking anime. I know this. I only watch the dub. I can I believe you lost an argument on one line of evangelian. Yes, listen to Gendo Akari Say Ray and you'll believe me.

Anyhow, we have to move on. He speaks in English. What are you talking about? He speaks with the Texas accent. I know that guy. But listen, so we got to talk about McDonald's Land because it's a freaky world of totally turned down freaks. And it's my bag, baby. I love this world.

It is so creepy and weird. So this stuff, I want to get into the origins of McDonald's land because it started off by in the early 70s by ripping off Sid and Marty Croft. So I'm so glad I was not born. I thought Sid and Marty Croft actually helped design there was a lawsuit. They wanted you to think that. Yes, they wanted you to think

that. So I'm so glad I was born when I was when I was, because in the 90s, when there was a lot of 70s nostalgia, they would air like, you know, HR puff and stuff and Lidsville and stuff on Nick at night. And I was like, these things are in the sea monster. I didn't know what a bad ass at a trip was, but I was like,

these things are living nightmares and they're going to climb out of the TV and murder me. I don't know how any child experienced this. And I was reading interviews with Sid to Marty Croft, and they're like, you know, are these shows influenced by drugs? Like, listen, man, we didn't do drugs during the shows, okay? We did think afterwards. So it's like taking a ride on a citrus mouth.

Yes, exactly. I mean, please see the Mr. Show sketch, the altered states of, fapin, fippin, what? The altered states of drugichus is the Mr. Show sketch that makes fun of this stuff perfectly. It's like, it's like the pitch perfect parody. Sam and Crimony Craft. Yes. Crimony Craft.

Yeah, Crimony Craft. But the backstory of this is, so in the 70s because it was a disease time with disease minds, HR Puff and stuff. And all this Sid and Marty Croft programming really took off. I mean, kids loved it for some reason. Maybe Vietnam was scarring the country. I can't explain how. They were three channels. Yes, exactly.

And Jim Hinson didn't have a show yet. This is colorful. And this is like, at least visually entree. But McDonald's like, okay, we want to make our own characters similar to yours because kids love them. Why don't you help us? And then like an advertising guy for them was like, let's just hire people from their company and say, we don't want to do that anymore, but still hire the people. So they did that.

And there was like a decade-long legal battle. And ultimately it was decided that we can't determine how many sales came from using these characters. So the time they're not selling those characters. Those characters are selling food. So we're like, we'll just give you a million dollars. And that's how it ended. But, I mean, these characters originated from that awful, like, acid nightmare, sit in Marty Croft land. Well, you see what I, I didn't see those original commercials as a kid.

No, as a kid, I did see commercials with Grimmis and Birdie and all the characters. But they had been changed a little bit. They didn't look. Grimmis didn't have four arms anymore. But they didn't look like dudes in a costume, which is how, if you see Mayor McKeiths and the constable Big Mac. They are exactly characters from sitting by the characters were phased out pretty early on. By the time I was a kid and aware of McDonald's land, there was no Mary McCheese.

There was maybe Big Mac existed in some form, but there was no Captain Crook. I think they phased out Big MacCashore before Mayor McChase. I remember commercials with Mayor McChese and Birdie. And Bertie was, God, I know this. It was like the early. Bertie, the early 80s because it was when they introduced their breakfast menu. Every single one of these characters was introduced to promote a sandwich. So I forget that they all have like a...

Grimmis was sad all the time. They were like the McNugget buddies and the fry guy. Fry guys is so cool. Captain Crook was the fish fillet sandwich guy. Grimmis was originally for milkshakes. And there's also Uncle O. Grimmis, who is the Shamrock Shake mascot. I did not know that. So I want to play a bit of the original...

Did Uncle O Grimmis have forearms originally? Maybe, but Grimmis was originally a bad guy who would... Yeah, I mean, you're converted. Yeah. The shake stealer. I do want to play a bit of the original McDonald's commercial. It will totally like, I mean, like, I mean, like, Put the acid under your tongue right now because we're entering a nightmare realm.

Put mine in a bandana. Here we go. Get yourself ready for a trip through McDonald's land. Take a little friend and grab a food of Ronald's hand. Listen to this. Follow Ronald McDonald's through the land of apple pie trees. Don't be surprised if you meet. So I've been singing this throughout my apartment for the past week, just in case you want to know how I'm dragging people crazy.

I can't wait until Louis learns to sing it. I really want him to. It is way too Sid and Marty Croft. No wonder they got sued. Yeah, I mean, they really, I mean, it would eventually become less 70s, but it has always had its feet in that Sid and Martycroft era, which is why it stopped existing around the late 90s. Like these characters were phased out. And now McDonald's is like, we're failing. So actually, we're Starbucks.

It's like, no, you're still McDonald's. It's like you go into a McDonald's and they're playing classical music. I'm like, McDonald's, who are you kidding? They did that in the 90s when they did the Arch Deluxe and tried to be like adult-oriented burgers. Well, now they're like, this is Mick Cafe and you can get your cappuccino here. That tastes like it was straight through newspaper. I love this. This is the one place I did work, and I worked there the week they launched the Arch Deluxe.

And thank Christ it wasn't popular because it was very complicated to change the system of how they make burgers. That's why they sell the same stuff they sold 50 years ago. Flipping burgers, you joke, doesn't happen at McDonald's. They have a lid that comes down and cooks the other side. There's no flipping involved in these burgers. If they don't even flip burgers, they definitely don't deserve $15 now. I mean, Roy Crox's ingenious and insidious plan was kind of taken from Henry Ford, but ramped up a bit where it's like, we need to make sure that we can hire the lowest skill people that we don't need to train for jobs that don't need training so they can be replaced easily. Like that was their labor solution, and that's sort of whatever.

I just don't understand why they don't fully automated. There was so much there that didn't allow me to. There's only so much they can even now. well you see now they have like they've introduced more of those screen menu things which they just scaled back. They need to do the Japanese vending tickets. They just

scale well no they do that now. Well there's one in Union Square that was like trying that out. And then were you going to add anything you wanted on your burger in any combination. I want 16 slices of American cheese. I would like a shamrock shake on my burger. Instead of bun I'd like two

apple pie trees from the stupid commercial You can tell how... Hey, man, don't take the brown french fries. Sorry, man. Didn't mean to harsh your buzz? You can also tell how desperate they've gotten that they finally did breakfast all day. They finally... Which is not like I've done any time.

Well, but it's, again, more complicating. Yeah, McDonald's is kind of dying. Like, the burger and fries is no longer the All-American, like, default food, I think. For me, it's... Five guys in and out. They're doing great. Yeah. People don't want a very...

A cheap version, yeah. going to, if someone's going to eat a burger, they'll pay a little bit more for a better one. What if I paid an extra dollar and got a burger that doesn't taste like cardboard? It's not made of discarded horses. And think about this, what if they went and got it out of place that didn't look like their employees were constantly miserable because they're, that's reinforced with every step, every step they take anywhere in the building. Yeah, I know. And I'll say something for someone who's a big fan of mascots and cartoons and all this stuff, dude, Disney pulled out of McDonald's. They're like, we don't want to be associated with this disgusting product anymore.

And you go in there now and like when you occasionally get a Mario thing, but it's like, it's sub like discovery science characters. Like most people don't want to be affiliated with McDonald's. And I mean, I'm saying the burger and fry is not no longer the default because burritos are on the rise, which is frightening some people, the taco truck on every corner. Oh, God, no. But it's like, burrito, I think, is the perfect food where it's like, we're going to give you like eight pounds of food in a tube. And you can just like hold that tube and just like suck the feeling out of it. It is like, yeah, Bugs Bunny rolled a bunch of ingredients in carpet and shut. It's up in your face.

Exactly. But so... Yeah, what's diabetes, Doc? So the McDonald's Lance characters, they were also tied into the playland as well, which, as I learned from the book, Fast Food Nation, that when McDonald's recognized that the government wasn't paying for playgrounds for kids anymore,

they're like, well, we can make our own playgrounds and get kids in here. We can make kids healthy and unhealthy at the same time. Yeah, and give them places to pee in. I shouldn't elongate this, but I only know about Mary McCheese and Big Mac from, like, if you're traveling across the country and you stop at like an older McDonald's.

Oh, yeah. This play place is amazing. All harsh, teeth breaking metal. And I'm walking around inside Mayor McChee's head. And it's like the biggest structure I've ever seen, really old. That's how I was introduced to the characters.

Like, who the hell are these people? Or they were on like the cookie box, too. In the cookie box. My grandparents had a set of glasses that had like, you know, silk screen Mayor McChese skateboarding around. No, I guess it was Big Macs skateboarding around. Roller skating.

And again, not to prolong this, if you think this is insane, the short-lived Burger King Rip-Off universe, a rip-off of a rip-off of a rip-off is even more hysterical. Hey, kids, we're trippy, too. I mean, we've got stuff growing on trees. There is a short-lived Burger King of this that, like, died in 1982, and it is hilarious and someday I'm going to do the best ever fucking write up with everybody involved. I can find it. I mean, we're giving all this information on the characters because we're offering context,

but also there's not much to these games, but I find the world surrounding them fascinating. I love McDonald's, and I hate McDonald's, and I hate McDonald's, and I don't want to eat there anymore and I wish they they could introduce something healthy and maybe change the world and they just won't and save themselves and they won't I do have a weakness for their fries

so I get fries like once a year as like a special treats. They are my favorite fast food fries. You know Wendy's introduced those like sea salt ones. They're getting there all right. Yeah, but the game we're talking about is Donald Land where you play as Donald McDonald's. Oh.

And basically you were tasked by Mary McCheese to take out this evil clown wizard that is not canon for McDonald's in case you're wondering this was never a character. We do not accept this. And apparently Officer Big Mac was asleep at the switch because why is Ronald McDonald have to lay down the law on McDonald's land?

But it's a basic platformer. Ronald jumps on enemies and he throws a sticky bombs and I was watching a long play of this. Apparently pro players can throw a bomb in the air and then jump off the thrown bomb to get to higher platforms and stuff. I mean, it's an okay game. It's actually

one of the better games on this list. It's developed by Data East. I think I said that, but it's, it's like, it's no, it's no worse than Carnov. What, re-watching, that play-through, I was surprised to see, I was surprised to see you actually go into a McDonald's

and buy food. Whoa, really? That could have been why it never made it here, I'm thinking. That crosses a line of the thing you're selling. Yeah, it's like, so like, you would eventually play as Ronald McDonald in an American release game, which we'll get to soon, but But the NES game MC Kids, which is a fairly good, like, SMB3 ripoff by, I think, a European team.

They, the McDonald-Land characters are in the periphery. You're playing as, like, children. Like, new characters. Yeah, and you're not, like, eating French fries to get health and stuff. Like, they really just are trying to play it as safe as they can with Nintendo, you know. And I'm sure there were a lot of rules there. I would bet in America there are different laws on that type of stuff in the 90s than there were in Japan. Oh, for sure.

Yeah, and, like, I think this could have been a fairly successful NES game if they just brought it over as something else, and that was not an uncommon thing in this era of the NES. So it's kind of a shame. I mean, it's not like we missed that on, like, this gem, but it's a fairly okay game and pretty okay for aided. You should have just remade it with, like, Disney or Snoopy characters. Yeah, yeah, something like that. The old Switcheroo, we saw that a lot. But let's move on to our next character we're going to be talking about up until our break, and that is the Noid.

Wait a minute. You skipped a 1988 game. and I keep emailing you about it. I didn't know that was 88. I was going to get to that after the Noid, but please. Okay, well, we can do that if you want, but I feel like if we're going to go chronologically. Yes, let's get a... We should speak to a game that only came out in Japan, and I brought everyone examples so you can see.

This is a chokobol. I did acknowledge your Pioro Chen. Hey, man, it's a chokobo. By Moranaga. And the character who promotes this product is a little bird with a bandana, and its name is Kioro. Oh, it's Kiroro or is it Kuro? Okay. Pioro Chan is the parody of

Kioro Chan that appears in Warioware. Okay, that's right. Wow. Like, that is, that character in Warioware is actually based on this little bird. This thing's, it's been around for 50 years? Yep, yeah. It's by the company Moranaga, which is not like a powerhouse

of Japanese candy. It's no Glico. They made, they made two anime series with this character in the 90s, I think. And if, I haven't watch the series, but the opening animations for these are amazing. Like, such great animation. Please Google those if you have a chance. Definitely a treat.

Yeah, but with this game, there were actually several games based on Kurochan, but the one that I find interesting is the Famicom game, which was released in the U.S., but it was released here, I think, under the name Castle Quest. It's also known as Castellian. Oh, okay. And it is a game

where basically there's like a tower and you're rotating around it on moving platform, you know, cross-platform And that idea showed up in other NES games like Kirby's Adventure and Battletoats for the final stage. But it's kind of like based on a PC game, I think, or an arcade game from Europe. And I can't remember what the original like Nebula or something. It has kind of a weird name. But anyway, in Japan, they took that game, that Famicom, or the NES port and said,

What if we change the character to Kurochan? And they did. And it has nothing else to do with Choko Balls or Kioro Chan. It's just kind of like the mascots in there. And I read the same trivia that you did that chokobos are possibly a reference to Kurochan. Chokobal, yeah. Chokobal. The candy is called chokobal, and the way it's written in Japanese, if you take off the last character, the aru, or the rue, then it becomes chokobo.

I mean, I totally buy it. These things are around since the 60s, so I'm sure, you know, Sakaguchi was eating these as a kid. Across between this candy and Nausica, and you get chokobo. I'd believe that. Seems plausible. Cool. Let's take a brief musical break and we'll get back to the Noid after this. So we're back to talk about the noid, and I know what you're thinking, Bob, you're supposed to avoid the noid.

Well, retronauts, we're going there. We're going to, we're going to enter the noid zone right now. Steering into the noid. So prepare for this. So the noid was a short-lived Domino's pizza character between 1986 and 1990, and he was basically the physical manifestation of all the bad things that could happen to your pizza. As it was being delivered, like it could get cold or squished or made by Pizza Hut. Made by Pizza Hut, of course. But this character was created by Will Vinton Studios, who created the California Raisins.

And if you're wondering why we didn't talk about the California Raisins or why we're not going to, that's actually on our... It never came out. It never came out. Yeah, but it's actually on our Cancel Games podcast. We talk a lot about that and congratulate your raisins and everything like that. So please check that out. And we'll get to talk about the same developer in the same period. Exactly. Anyway, yeah. So this was really part of the, like, I guess, I mean, food delivery had been around before the 80s, but this was part of the whole 30 minutes or less thing. because it's like, who should we throw under the bus to get your pizza to you on time?

That's right. The lowest paid workers. We want to jeopardize their lives and their cars. How does that even work? Because you're too lazy to pick up a pizza. We're not all from big towns, right? I mean, I'm not, no. Like, some of us are 35 minutes away from a dominoes.

How is this possible? I mean, they have delivery areas. They're like, if you're not in our area, then tough luck. I'm sure there was like a map. I'm pretty sure they could. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. But it's a national campaign. It was.

It can't apply to like 60% of the United States. It can. I definitely have been told that, well, it's also one of those like participating stores. Yes. Can do it. I can't, I know for a fact. I can't get Domino's delivered right here.

Because I live next. I live down the street. And, I mean, you didn't get your pizza for free if it came later, but you got $3 off. And I guarantee you it came out of the workers' salary. It had to, I mean, it's like, why, why punish the company? Why punish anyone but the poor delivery guy? Get a move on Steve McQueen.

And I think they ended this because it's like, oh, too many people are dying and ruining their cars, and this does not look good for us. It inspires dangerous driving and practices to just get a pizza at his house. And, hey, sad drunk pizza recipients holding guns to people's head, like, I was promise them. Yeah, that's awesome. I promise something. That expectation is, I love that Nathan for you. He did one. You can see a guy being a huge dick over like an invalid coupon, essentially, like almost getting into a fight.

I've watched The Nathan for you. It's in the first season about a pizza promotion that is kind of a parody of this. But, yeah, I wondered what happened with the Noid why he went away because he was hot stuff in the late 80s. Well, there's a funny story there. There is. Oh, right. Because you say short-lived Domino's mascot, but I think anybody, Arnege or you, what other Domino's mascot has there been other than the CEO apologizing for this taste of their pizza? I'm barely aware of the Noid, but this has been the only one, Chris, you're right.

We were not a Domino's family. We were a Pizza Hut family. When I would go to a friend's house to sleep over and they got Domino's, I would definitely be a little whiny baby of like Pizza Hut's way better. You come home and your mom would smell your breath. We're a pizza hut family. Get out. So, okay.

Sleep outside tonight, Henry. As I mentioned, this is made by Will Vinton Studios. They pioneered Claymation, which is... Copyrighted the term Claymation. Yeah, so if anyone else is making any stop motion, it's not claymation. Only Will Vinton can make it. I thought of that on the way here. I think our, I think kids, young kids now and our kids growing up,

won't be dumb enough to call every bit of stop-motion claimation, but we were. Yes, we were. We called everything. And then we started calling CGI graphics cremation. Correct. Cremation. It's just not fair. So a funny story happened with the Noid that sounds fake, but I assure you is real.

So in 1989, a man with some sort of mental illness with the last name Noid, his last name really was Noid. he thought the commercials were talking about him and he held two Domino's employees at gunpoint for over five hours. Thankfully, no one was hurt. No one died. But this was sort of the end of the noid, this publicity. But I want to say like the noid was getting stale,

the noid was getting annoying. This was a good chance for them to pull out. As we talked about with Punch Out, Punch Out did not remove Mike Tyson because of his rape trial. It was just a convenient time to get rid of the license. It was too expensive. So I feel like it was a little, a little calm A, a little calm B. It was bad publicity plus. Let's move on from the

noise. It's this annoying character. We don't want to use anymore. Commercial mascot, like, commercial campaigns are usually about that long. Yeah. I want to refresh it with something else. And yeah, that now, well, I guess I don't know what Domino's campaign was like five years ago was we make garbage pizza. We know our pizza sucks and we're trying harder. We're trying, guys, please. Give us a break. Domino's would like to you introduce sandwiches. That's right. We've given up. We're going to fold your pizza. It'll never be better. So, yeah, I mean, the first game that stars the Noid is one I didn't know about until doing research for this episode. And that's- Wait, just the Noid.

I think did Domino's invent those little plastic tables? I don't know where the little plastic pizza tables came from. The Noid is apostrophe, N-O-I-D as in part of you are a noid. Right. This is annoying when your pizza cheese is stuck to the top of the box. And I thought I remember the commercial, like they threw in that dumb little dollhouse table. Yeah, Chris was talking about the little tiny plastic thing in the middle. middle of your pizza delivery box that you pull out and you put it in a dumb man that's great

that's a great it was it was great but i think that was domino's playing up the idea that the other guys don't even have this yeah we invented the they have the noid who rips it who rips that out and like that's what he did in the commercially ripped it out i think pizza box crush the top of the box i think pizza box technology now just the top of the box doesn't fall down as much yeah like they use better cardboard it might be it yeah but it's sog proof i think i mean there's going to be some of you listening uh that don't know who the noid is, and your parents failed you, but I will let you know who the noid is. He's been brought back

numerous times, and he's been in Super Bowl commercials in the last 10 years. Really? Okay. But not for very long. Radio Shack. Yeah, yeah, in Radio Shack. In case you miss this, he's a, he's a man in a, like, a full body red suit with his eyes and bottom of his face exposed. He's got bug teeth and bunny ears. He's a very weird, like,

amalgam of different ideas. It kind of reminds me vaguely, probably shouldn't, of the the whammies from the pressure line. It kind of does. The whamies are a little squished down, But they're similarly mischid triangles. Yeah. The whamies that they bred with Binky from Life and Hell.

Yeah. There you go. That bastard child. He reminds me more of like the gremlin from the Kremlin characters that like Bugs Bunny fought. Holy crap. But again, these commercials are all really cool claymation. A lot of the Noid getting into trouble, smashing pizzas with a pizza smasher. So this game is called Avoid the Noid.

It came out in 1989 for Commodore 64 and DOS. And you basically play as a Domino's Delivery Man. And you have to make your way up to the top of a 30-floor building in under 30 minutes. So this is like a fairly basic PC game of its era that's based around screens. So there's like there's 10 screens with three floors per screen. So you move to one side of the screen. You appear on the middle floor. You move the other side of the screen.

You appear on the top floor. Then you go to the next screen. So, and while you're doing that, there's noise. You have to jump over. They're firing rockets at you. Yeah. They're like really hardcore about stopping this poor pizza boy. Like at all costs.

They're like firing tow missiles at him. It's ridiculous. It's not one noise. It's an army. Yeah, there's a whole fleet of them. And as you're trying to avoid the noid, you have to answer these ringing phones in the hallway to get keys to open doors, to get the passcode for the final door. It is a very, very basic game. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't think anyone remembers or has played this game.

If you've played Avoid the Noid, let me know. I had never seen it in stores. I had never heard about it until now, but it exists. And there's a long play of it on YouTube if you want to see it. I can only confirm you had to buy it because on the bottom left, the box says, as affordable fun. It says, yes, this is for sale. Yes, this is real.

I think that was a, that concept was better than what the other game is in concept because those commercials are not, you don't want to be the noid. You want to avoid the noid, so you shouldn't be playing as him. He shouldn't want to be the noid, but I do. He's not the hero of a Domino's game. He's the villain. I mean, you shouldn't think that Don Draper is cool, but lots of people do. I didn't thought he's abrano.

You want to beat me in. look at me. You want to be me. So you are avoiding the Noid, but the saving grace of this game, I didn't play it. I might be on the Internet archive as part of the DOS games archive. It's probably there, but it has, like, great animation for the pizza guy. He like tucks and rolls.

It's amazing. He's really limber and stylish. It's really interesting. But yeah, that is Avoid the Noid, but I think the Noid game that we know the most about is Yo! Noid. And that's 1990 for the NES. Yo Noid. And so I think this game gets a bad rep because it's

Noid-based entertainment, but it is actually based on another game in Japan. It's like a full-on rom-hack of a game called Common No Ninja Hanamara, which I believe is called just Masked Ninja Hanamara if you want to translate it. And instead of, so the noid has a yo-yo, he like extends and it brings back to him, and the ninja has a bird that extends and flies back to him. So they just translated that gameplay to the noid. And it's a fairly average platformer. It's not bad.

It functions well. You are the noid. You go from the left of the screen to the right of the screen. You attack enemies with your yo-yo. You jump on platforms. It's very, very basic, very unambitious. But it's a Capcom game from 1990, so there's some level of quality on display there. Yeah, I mean, have you guys played this game?

There's really good music. Oh, yeah, the music is great. I rented every weekend out of sincere love for the noise. I did. I read it once and didn't enjoy it at all. I see. You should go back to it. It will never be available on anything.

I always get it mixed up a little bit with totally rad. It is like the fifth best game where you fight with a yo-yo. It's no Goonies too It's no Goonys too It's no Ryegar Tropics Re-watching or watching the long play I forgot there were just no bosses in it

That the bosses is a betting game It's basically card matching It's kind of like Alex kid Yeah I mean it's more like so It's a pizza eating contest And you each have cards with numbers on them And technically they barely eat That's what I'm liking

I mean that's how they're framing it But you have all these pizza slots You have to fill without losing all your cards. And your goal is to do that before your opponent does and not to run out of cards. It's hard to explain in words. You have to kind of watch it in action,

but that's kind of a bummer that there's no boss as you sort of do this kind of card game at the end. It's a little inventive, but you do it so many times that it gets old. I mean, it's an inventive gambling-ish system. And if that was one boss fight, I'd be like, that's cool. But instead they make you do it like four or five times.

And your enemies are just noids in different costumes. Yeah. Just to make you the ultimate noise. Another issue you brought up, Henry, is that there's no, like, noid, greater noid universe with other characters. It's just the noid in the real world ruining pizzas. There's no familiar enemies or familiar locations. It's just the noid against random, you know, NES enemies. The game should be about him attacking pizzas.

He definitely, like in the canon of the noid, does he eat pizzas? He wants to ruin pizzas. He hates pizzas. They killed his parents or something. I don't know. The game has pizza eating contests. the game, like, his windscreen is getting pizzas from an Italian stereotype. Yeah.

But, like, in the commercials, he doesn't eat pizza. No, he hates pizza. But so Hanamaru in the original Japanese game has a pogo stick, but they were able to translate one of the things from the commercial into this game, and that's the pizza smasher. Like, he, like, jumped around on a pizza smasher to smash your pizza. It's a pogo stick with one of those pyramid weights. Yeah, like one of those old-timey weights that, like, guys in Hainlbar moustaches would lift. Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, anything else about Yo Noid?

It's not as bad as people say it is. It's just like an average platform made about Capcom with good music and good graphics. It reminded because I worked at that company briefly and I couldn't get any information about Yen-Moy. Were you thinking through the archives like there's got to be something un annoyed in here? But there was a, as far as the I could see, two-pound bags of Sour Patch Kids from World Gone Sour, the game they pitched about, yeah, yeah. It was the $5 game where you played a Sauerpatch Kids. Yeah, I thought it was it was an idea that came internally from the company. We can get some other company to pay for this game.

I don't know. Why not? Why not give it a shot? And you had all the sour patch kids you could eat for the rest of your life. Yeah, there was a time when everybody went out to one of the more obscure game shows. And, like, I just couldn't. It's too much work to do when I couldn't go to lunch, so I just ate sour patch kids for, like, an entire week. Oh, my God.

That's a fantasy of mine that would go south pretty quick. But we're going to take a break now. Please think about the noid as you listen to this great music. Hey, friends. As you might know from my other podcast, Talking Simpsons, I am an expert in that particular subject. And as the Simpsons taught us all, gambling makes sports even better. So if I started watching sports, I'd definitely start gambling. And since where you're betting at is just as important as who you're betting on,

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Just go to podcast1.com and click on the survey banner, or go to podcast1.com slash my survey. It only takes a few minutes, and it gives you the opportunity to make a direct impact on your favorite shows. Tell us how you really feel, so we can get to know you better. We value your thoughts and participation. So check out the survey at podcast1.com slash my survey, or click on the survey banner on podcast1.com. Checks are fun. Checks are hot. Looking forward to peace to other serious.

Cereals got, Checks marks a spot. The one-of-a-kind part of this complete breakfast. Now you can get a free CB-ROM game inside boxes of Czech cereals. Help Checks-Mam, battle the Ploids, and save the planet Pozoid. One free and specially marked boxes of Czech cereals. Hi, it's Jamie, Progressive's Employee of the Month two months in a row. Leave a message at the... Hi, Jamie. It's me, Jamie. I just had a new idea for our song about the Name Your Price Tool.

So when it's like, tell us what you want to pay, hey, hey, hey, hey, and the trombone goes, blah, blah, blah, and you say, we'll help you find garbage options to fit your budget. Then we just all do finger snaps. We'll acquire goes, statements coming at you, savings coming at you. Yes? No, maybe? Anyway, see your practice tonight. I got new lyrics for the rap break. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, Price and Coverage Match Limited by State Law. So we're back, and I know where you're thinking, I have heard of avoiding the noid, but avoiding commercial. No.

Well, it's possible if you don't like commercials in our show, if you go to patreon.com slash Retronauts and join us at the $3 month tier. You will get every podcast a week ahead of time, add a higher bit rate, and add free. And that comes to you in a special RSS feed that you can subscribe to with any podcast program or just through the Patreon app. So if you don't want to hear ads, go to patreon.com slash Retronauts and give us $3 a month, and you will get a improved version of the podcast without ads at a higher bit rate. This is just me letting you know because some people are confused

about how to get a podcast without ads and that's how you do it. So we're going to be moving on to our next brand of games and that is going to be about the character CoolSpot. Yes! And who can talk about Cool Spot?

I think Chris is excited. I know this would be a great episode for Chris to be on. Chris, talk about the virtues of Cool Spot, please. He paved the way toward a game I would grow too. By the way, this is the 7-Up soda mascot in the late 80s

early 90s. 7-Up had been around I think 7-Up. No, 7-Up doesn't pre-date. Coke or anything like that but it has been around for a very, very long time. No, I think Coke is like 1886 and it's full of cocaine.

Yeah, yeah, it's been around since the turn of the last century. But Seven Up had been around forever. It invented the great taste of Lyman. It remembered, no, that's Sprite. What? Seven Up had no claim to fame. Seven Up is the Uncola. Oh, it never had it, never will.

Yes, it never had. So important Seven Up facts where you continue, Chris. Seven Up introduced 1929 as Biblabel litheated lemon lime soda, sorry. All the kids were in the lithuated beverages. A tongue twist. Let me say that again. Biblabel litheated lemon lime

soda. I'm surprised not soda carbonated beverage water. It sounds like something Mr. Burns would yell. Yes, exactly. And then in 1936 they're like, just call it seven up. Just call it seven up. So that's what happened. But Chris, talk about it. This came out around the same time. I don't know where the red dot

came from. But I remember when I think it's a sniper. I think when Sherry Seven Up came out. Like that dot got more pronounced. Okay. And then somehow got a personality, which it was the style at the time, just sunglasses and gloves. Like, exactly. We're going to see this with Chester Cheetah.

Put sunglasses, gloves, and sneakers on a thing. It's cool. It's cool. It's automatically cool. And I only remember playing at first the Genesis game. I know there was a game before that. So, I mean, the first game is Yo Noid, but can you talk about, like, the roots of the character? I mean, he would jump off of...

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was part of the one of the things I'm realizing I like about an underrated subgenre of games, because going through Rescue Rangers, was a big adventure in a little world. And part of what made the cool spot cool is that he would just pop out of like advertisements in the real world and interact with real elements. Well, he was like an inch high and most of them of like the best, the early commercials were about them goofing around near bottles or glasses of 07 up and talk. about how he wasn't a cool guy and he wasn't after anybody and he wasn't protecting the drink from anybody he was just a little character in a gigantic universe and whenever there was there could be a seven up poster or a bottle he could live yeah it's sort of like toy stories like the humans are asleep the spots come out to play and like get in trouble and have mission but they were fun

they were they were fun and they only wanted to enhance your seven up experience or yeah to take the cola out of some soda and say like mix things up have the uncola i did forget about that to look at your that was that was their brilliant marketing campaign, the on cola, because only at that point, like, cola is not good for you, and seven up's like, well, you're not good for you? No artificial colors.

That's a big deal. Do you remember those Coca-Cola glasses that were like narrow and then they kind of belled out? Yeah. Were they in back to the future? Sure. But that was like a very classic kind of trademarked Coca-Cola glass.

Seven-up had those, but they were upside down. My grandparents had a set. They were like potions. Wide at the bottom and then they were like the the Coca-Cola glasses upside down. The whole time they've been marking themselves of not being... Yeah, they were like the inverse, literally. They define themselves as not the other guy.

And listen, yes, listen up Republicans. Being not the other guy is not an identity. You actually have to have one. And so this is to me... So they put on sunglasses and be in sneakers. Put on sunglasses and be cool guys. Yeah. And gloves.

Well, the sneakers were important too, yeah. Yeah. But they were cool. Like, the noid wasn't cool. Ronald isn't cool. Cool aid man is... He's kind of cool. But, yeah.

But also getting ahead of ourselves, but Chester Cheetah, he acted cool, but he always got his come-up and seen the end of a commercial. Not anymore. Not anymore. Now he's like an admiral. I thought he was like some Urbane guy in a smoking jacket. No, now he's like,

Ahoy, Métis, it's time to go forward and have an adventure of Cheetos. That's a weird rebranding. It really is. But yeah, so the first game involving Cool Spot or Spot or whatever you want to call him is, funnily enough, Spot the Video Game. 1990 for NES. And this is a puzzle game that's based on the often-clone game called Attacks with two Xs. That's in 1988.

I think it's like a PC game. You promise it's not Othello. It's very Othello-esque. It's very Othello-esque. And so this has appeared in other forms as a game called Infection, but you have pieces on a board and you want to spread your colors more than your opponent. And you can actually convert your opponent's colors to yours if you land next to them. It'll basically convert whatever mass of colors, the opponent's, you know, the opponent's has into your colors.

So, I mean, it's hard to explain in words. If you look at a video, you will see this in motion. But, I mean, it was a very basic puzzle game, but the main appeal was when you moved your pieces, they would turn into spot. And he would, like, dance around and pole vault and moonwalk. I mean, the animations were really good. And this is a Virgin Interactive game. And they will go on to be known for their really good animations and kind of bad gameplay, in my opinion.

Yeah. Well, I didn't find out it was bad gameplay until 10 years ago. To me, Virgin Interactive was responsible to making the. games, making things that I thought I always wanted to see. I wanted to see games that looked and played like this. Yeah, I didn't play this puzzle game back then. Watching it now, I was, at first I was like, boy, this is so cheap. It's just colors on a static board, but then. Use the four-player adapter.

But when I see the dancing on the screen of just like the extra work they put into every new version of spot jumping from one thing to the other. And it also was disconnected enough from so to like, you don't. don't change. Those could have been soda caps. Bottle caps easily if they wanted to. Yeah. And the box art, Jesus, if you're as big a fan of Who Framed Roger Rabbit as me. It is the, it is a green Who Framed Roger Rabbit poster posing it as an NES box. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And it's like the film. The film show on the cover is basically showing you the clips from the commercials that were very popular at the time. I mean, when I was a kid, I love these commercials because they were cartoons. And as with the things we talked about so far, go back, watch these. I'll put some clips on the page when this goes live. They're really good cartoons.

They're really well animated. I'm not sure if it's CGI or just really well done hand-drawn animation, but it's a mix of the real world and Spot interacting with each other. It's really neat. It's not unlike a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and Spot is also silent. He doesn't have any cliches to rely on or anything to be embarrassed about 30 years later. He kind of squeaks a little, but there's no words coming out of him. And he screams. Oh, boy, does he scream?

I can still hear it. I watched a lot of their. first ones, which are a lot cheaper looking, but they are in a very controlled environment of just like this is in a gray box and there's things here, but they did a lot with them and what I thought was interesting, though, when watching it

was they had a couple years of they were trying to be the soda of Christmas. They're like, it's seven up under the tree. It's the same colors, man. Green and red. Yeah, why would you shop anywhere else? And one of their ones was like it was a promotion with, it was a promotion with a Game Boy.

Oh, really? Okay. Seven Upset to get spot on the Game Boy and your own Game Boy. That's interesting. Yeah. So, I mean, this game, like, not even Nintendo Power could sell to me. It's like, I like Spot, but I don't want to play this weird puzzle game. It looks kind of boring. I'm sure it's fine. You'll never see this game anywhere. You'll never play it again. You can probably buy the cart somewhere, but it's mostly forgotten. But I think the one people actually remember is the next game. It's not 1990. I think it's 93 or 92. It's a cool spot. This came out for,

so Cool Spot came out for basically everything. And this game would kind of, set the groundwork for a lot of similar platformers by the same developer and later another developer. So if you know the name Doug Perry, he was a major game designer at the time. He's not from home movies. Dave Perry. Dave Perry. Doug Perry was IGN. Dave Perry was Virgin America.

Are you sure? Yeah. Shiny entertainment. So basically like, so yes, I was wrong. I don't know why I thought of Doug. I just got journalism on the brain. You worked with both and you know it? I don't think I ever worked with Doug.

Oh, I did. I think you, like, repelled down the building before I showed up. But, yeah, so CoolSpot is basically of the Virgin Interactive platform or pattern in which... But it's like the first, though. It is the first, yeah. It set the groundwork for things like Aladdin, the Lion King, later the Jungle Book, and things like Earthworm Jim. Do you remember how it started? Yes, you surf in on a seven cup bottle.

So, like with any David Perry game, it's all about, like, this visual splendor, but sort of aimless level design. Like, the levels are huge. There's not a lot of landmarks, but they're very pretty. The animations are really good. They kind of interfere with gameplay in a way. And the games are very basic. There's an arbitrary amount of collectibles. There's 268 in this level, and there's 490 in this level.

And everything is just really hard to find. And in this game, you have to free all of the kidnap spots. The actual story of the game only exists in the manual, I guess, like an evil clown wizard, maybe kidnapped all the spots. You're not right I did, Bob, but I'd do it again, too. I hate that guy. I hate them so much. So Spot had no enemies in the commercials because he was a pure-hearted being. But in the game, I guess, somebody wanted to lock him in his kind up, so I can't explain it at all.

Did anyone play this game? I love it. I have a question. You said earlier that Spot was the cool mascot, but here he is in a game where it says, Look, it's cool, spot. Is that the point at which he ceased to be cool? I think if you announce yourself as cool, then you kind of lose it a bit. But, I mean, he arrives surfing, man, on a piece of garbage.

We thought he was still pretty cool. I thought I didn't buy this game, but I was interested in my friend's little brother, like, went out of his way. This was the game he wanted for his birthday. that we all went over to his house, and that was the game we played all night was cool spot. I mean, for me, it was the perfect rental. It was because that aimless level design as a kid, I didn't know to call it aimless, but you're just like, I haven't finished this level yet.

What the hell am I doing? What a Dave called him, airplane hanger levels? There's no ceiling here. Just go higher. It's a very, like, I want to say like a European style of platformers, and maybe we just grew up with a different kind of platformer, so this is just something we're not as accustomed to. No, I played the Flash game, and by that I mean DC's The Flash for the 1990 TV show.

You meant all the games of this would end up inspiring. It was on the Mega Drive, and it's the same deal of just like, now keep going around until you find all your Flash. No, it wasn't a Mega Drive of the Master System, but it was just like keep going around until you find all the Flash album. I'm like, can't there be an end to this? Why do I have to just run in circles? I want to move on.

Let me stop. Spot can run, jump, throw seven up bubbles, and that's it. And as Chris said... Like up to three idle animations. Up to three, yes. I'm sure he likes... He looks at his watch. He taps his foot maybe.

But as Chris said, this takes place in a big world. You're a small character. That's kind of the draw there. Yeah, it is pretty cool. I love games like micromachines, Chippendale's Rescue Rangers. Oh, my God, there's got to be more. Minish cap. Minish cap.

Harley's humongous adventure. Yeah. The rats level and Counterstrike. Like, eight years ago, you wrote that top seven at Games Range. are of, or was that Brett? It was Brett, but I think, like, I wrote a couple of entries, but... Good times. Little, yeah, little characters, big world.

Yeah, this is definitely one of those games, but... I've always liked that. I've always liked the idea of a secret society that occurs underneath where people... Just like us are having adventures in our world. And Cool Spot was... I don't know. I still think it's neat. I knew it was on the Super NES, but I always think of it as the Genesis just because it's like

Sonic's like Sonic's brother, basically. It should be on the same system as Sonic. I don't know why. That's where I played it, too. I mean, I feel like that developer, their games were better on the Genesis for some reason, like the shiny and the Virgin Inactive games. That was done after David Perry left. But like I said, these games, he kind of created the framework that many of these games would be based on that I personally don't like.

They're really hard to go back to. It was painful to admit that the Super N.E.S. Aladdin is better than the Genesis Aladdin. I'm glad we've all come around on that because I thought I was crazy. he felt the opposite. Well, because as a kid, I was like, well, one Aladdin has a sword and the other throws apples, so who is cooler? And you can't see his pupils. Exactly.

And, but yeah, I don't like those games as much anymore as I did as a kid. Yeah. I think Tommy Tolarika did the music. He did. He did for almost all of these Virgin Interactive games and eventually for Shiny as well. We'd go on to be a television game reviewer. Yeah. And he had like a show on G-Force.

It's the end of the road for everybody reviewing games. He does video games live now. Oh, that's right. So like any good game, there was a contest for this game in which if, so to get the true ending of Cool Spot, you have to collect all the letters to spell out on Cola. And then you will get a true ending screen that will say, take a picture of this and send it to the address in the manual. I did a lot of research. I was doing research for like 45 minutes. I could not find out what you won or who won anything.

The manual does not tell you you could win this. It just like, just send us the picture. I'm pretty sure it's a postcard that says, drink. Markmore Ovalty. Yeah, really. It's a crummy commercial. But, yeah, I mean, that is cool spot, essentially. If you like Earthworm Gym, that's a comparison I can make.

Not as inventive, but the same sort of level design. The same sort of attention to graphics and things like that. A fun kinetic character at a time where I think, like, platform mascots were pretty stiff. And Spot wasn't. And there's another game from 1995, Genesis Only, it was for other platform where Subdubda was canceled. It was called Spot Goes to Hollywood. it. It was an isometric platformer, and that's all I'll say, because I'm not going to give it any more of my time. By that point, the spot ads were a little...

Yeah. It was almost time for Make 7 Up Yours. Oh, yeah, that guy. Wow. Oh, boy. So I think you skipped over the video game appearance of the first cool food mascot. Oh, who's that? It was Mac Tonight.

Who shows up as the three-up moon in World One-One of Super Mario World. Unfortunately, he is now, he is now a white supremacist figure, Jeremy. Oh, really? Oh, is he? Yes, he is. Yes, he's now being misused just like Pepe, who is pure. McDonald's will kill him like Pepe. So he got taken over by Kekistan.

Yes, he really did. They conquered him. So we're going to move on to McDonald's Treasure Island Adventure, 1993 for the Genesis. Believe it or not, the word treasure in that title is not there for arbitrary reasons. It's developed by treasure. This is the game they made after Gunstar Heroes. They went right to a McDonald's game.

I have played this one. I mean, you've got to pay the bills, right? They really did. I assume Gunstar Heroes probably sold a lot, right? It's very similar to the trajectory of platinum right now. One for us, one for them. How many copies of Gunstar Heroes do you think that free fruit roll-ups sold? Oh, no.

I don't want to buy a mint copy that game. There's got to be some stuff going on in there. Yeah. I don't know. That fruit roll-ups probably are good for 30 years. I call it Fruit Leather for a reason. Oh, yeah, that's right. So this is a treasure game, and the treasure hallmarks are there.

It's not based around a gameplay gimmick, but it is sort of inventive, very good graphics, very imaginative, and it's all about Ronald McDonald's finding a piece of a treasure map, and he's like, I'll get the rest of the pieces. And I'm asking myself, like, is McDonald's not paying this guy well? Like, why is Ronald McDonald's like the ambassador of McDonald's, and now he needs money? Well, look, even if you were making, if I was making even $100,000 a year at a job like Ronald, if I've got a treasure. Just say it, reviewing games. Yeah, the standard pay for reviewing it. Six figures. But if I was making what Ronald, if I was making that much, and I found a treasure chest, I think I'd still go after it.

I'd follow that treasure man. You'd rub your clown gloves together. Well, especially if I lived in a magical world like Ronald's and be like, who knows what all five? I'm not marrying this bird. Let's go get that treasure. But if you live in Ronald's world, burgers grow in trees. You can just eat for free. That's true.

I don't buy the logic of this game. Or you could eat nugget children all day long. While they're singing to you, eat them alive. Oh, they're wrapping it up. They love to rap. And I'm not too. So this is a fairly basic platformer. Ronald can jump, shoot magic sparks, and latch onto things with a chain of scarves.

So he's like sort of a buy-on-commando figure in a way. Slash, like, elementary school magician. Yeah. The stuff like that, really, that's what feels like I've played this one. And it's what really felt like a treasure game, just the verticality with the scarves. And also, like, those shooting sparks and sparkles. Like, the sparks especially reminded me of, like, Gunstar a little bit. Yeah, I mean, this is, I mean, you can tell their heart wasn't in it, but there are some nice, weird touches.

Like, one level, you are, like, walking across a moving train to get to the end. And then when the train enters a cave, you have to jump across the heads of these pirouetting ballerinas who are, for some reason, on a train track, like pirouetting down the train track. So there's cool treasure stuff in that, and they're like that. But I never played this game. It will never be available again. Just download the ROM and try it. I'm sure it's fun. And it's like, it's like an average treasure game.

And this is probably, given the Treasures output, it's. towards the end of their career or the end of their life. This is one of the, I would say it's one of the games you should play that Treasure made. It's not perfect, but if you don't mind playing as a clown, then, you know, have fun. Treasure doesn't exist anymore, right? Or does it? It's hard to tell, really. I think they exist, but they may not be doing anything at this point.

It may be like one dude just holding down the company. I see. I mean, it's very sad. Yeah, it is sad, especially into the 2000s. they were doing good stuff. Like, their Astro Boy game was awesome. Yeah, I think that was like there's, kind of like when they crested, I earned.

I had no clue they did a Tiny Tunes game around the same time until I watched Chris's video on it. Listen to our retronauts on Tiny Tunes games. Yeah, that game was not good. It's really bad. Not the episode, but the Tiny Tunes Games. It says great. So, we're going to move on to our new good friend,

Chester Cheetah, who inexplicably had two games. And I think for the kids, we should explain to Chester Cheat is. Can't give enough of those Cheetos. He was not Bing Crosby. Okay. He replaced the Cheetos mouse, who I never heard of in 1986. He was a burglar. He was a pro, yeah.

Sorry. Community. So he replaced a lesser-known mascot. He became, I mean, he still is a Cheetos mascot, but he had sunglasses, gloves, and sneakers. And like most food mascots, he was trying to steal the food in the commercials. But he would always be undone by some matter of happenstance. We get smashed in the face, usually. Yeah, it would be like always an accident, but these are, these, the early ones were very, very well animated.

Like, look at the animation of these, like, what, yeah, I rewatched some of them, and what struck me, one, is how giant his head is, which did translate into the games. And then, two, is that they gave, it really let the animators get to have fun with, like, Tex Avery style overreaction. Yeah, yeah. The spots popping off of his body, like 80 eyes flying off his asses flying off his asses. But then when he'd see usually a woman eating Cheetos, like she was drawn very human. Yes. She was eating it out of their formerly very boring bag of just like, it's clear, it's got a red bowtides, Cheetos. Yeah, I kind of missed the early Cheetos packaging.

I don't know why. I forgot about that. Well, then Chester Cheetah became so popular. He just took over the bags. They became Cheetah bags as well. But you've got to buy this bag to know what's in it. But he was also a 1960-style bebop hip cat. Yeah.

I try to describe it to Bob as what a middle-aged marketing executive thinks kids think is cool. Hey, man, I'm a real swinging cat. You're not seeing me smoke, but I might, man. I mean, Warner Brothers. What he's a decent ride, too. Yeah, and Warner Brothers couldn't make Cool Cat work. I don't know. I mean, Chester Chester Chita works way better.

And of course, his slogan is it's not easy being cheesy when he gets defeated by the elements or by fate itself. He is destined to never eat Cheetos. But there were two games for Chester Chita being that popular. They're 1992's Too Cool to Fool in 1993's Wild Wild Quest. And they are both very similar. Too Cool to Fool, as I said, several million times throughout this episode. It's a fairly basic platformer developed by Kaneko, makers of Gals Panic, aka sexy kicks. So if you play kicks and you want it to be sexier, play Gals Panic or don't, because I don't care.

Yeah, I watched to play through this game. It's an interesting situation where he begins to be stuck. in a zoo. And so the game is about beating, getting your way out of the zoo and then making it back to Hipsville, USA, baby. Yeah, I think you're building his motorcycle, parts of his motorcycle. I mean, there are a lot of stages only towards the end of the game that someone think, oh, we should, we should have bosses in this game.

But from a character design, it's where the character design that works great in a commercial that's all about his face acting and his face getting smashed really sucks when you have to make a sprite out of that because his head takes up way more space and like Mario or Sonic's head is a circle that's as big as their gut. It is the most phallic spokesman face since Joe Camel. It's an awkward hipbox, too, which is what really matters. So, I mean... I couldn't not see genitals as his face.

Fame for the balls on his neck. That's the weak spot. They're glowing. So this game, it only has like six levels, but at least it tries to mix up gameplay. They tried to make this interesting. There's like a motorcycle level, a skateboard level, a boat level, a flying level, mind cart levels. Don't mind if I do. Like, they wanted to make him extreme as he was portrayed in the commercials.

Well, did you notice that his health meter were the Cheetos pause? That's right. A new snack at the time? Are they still around? No. I don't think they are. I don't think so either. I trust me, I know.

I scoured my stores for food innovations. But they do have salted caramel chitos, which is... That's wrong somehow. I reviewed it as a sin against God. Why? You're called Cheetos. I want the cheese flavor. Show some pride in yourself.

The onion had a great article this week, though, that... that explained that thing is it's like most fact most Americans buy junk food on a dare these days. The only stuff you buy is like the new version like oh they put out Oreos that are peeps. This is so stupid. Let's go. Yeah, let's post on social media.

Triangular chicken nuggets, Taco Bell, baby. I mean, those peep Oreos, man. Don't have them. They might affect your stool. Unless you, yeah. Not to get too gross. My stool is peeping. That should be happening. But, yeah, so too cool to fool.

Chester can only jump on enemies' heads and or grab an electric guitar power up in which I don't think you can control him, but he sort of like just duck walks around the screen and kills enemies. He should be throwing Cheetos at them. I really should, but it's like maybe that was like a request like, do not throw the food item. It's too valuable for Chester to throw. Although now that's like the premise of his commercials is like he's using slingshots to throw cheos at people. I'm going to be a yew-eatheedos now, baby. Wherever bite is a regular. I have not seen any of these new commercials.

I'm only hearing it from the... He's a British accent and he's doing weird stuff. That's weird. Like making a mattress fort. So the other Chester Cheetahe to Cheetaheer game is Wild Wild Quest. And yes, they made another one of these. Technically, it looks better. Everything is, like, shaded very well.

But it kind of betrays the look of the 80s pop art aesthetic of the Cheetos characters. That, you know, bold colors, very, very, like, you know, simple designs. I don't feel like he was designed to be, like, shaded. very delicately. He's more of a genesis character than a super NES character. Yes, exactly. And Chester is a little more interesting

to control in that he can jump, and then you can do two double jumps on top of that. He kind of like swims in the air. And that's basically it. I mean, the only thing I noticed that was different is like the music in the first game is not like rocking like you think Chester Cheetah would be. In this game it is, but it's like the worst

like S&ES electric guitar sample and you hear it all throughout this game and it is bad. I only played this. In a zizi top and Paul Oakenfold, baby. His guitar doesn't spin around, though. It really needs to. I mean, this really also has the bubsy problem.

Like, you can dash, but it's like, you're going to dash into something you can't predict that's going to pop up on the screen. So you're in trouble. And don't use this move we gave you because it actually hurts you. And there are our bosses this time, but, like, there's this character called Mean Eugene that I think they invented for the game that I tried looking up to see if he was a Cheetos commercial character. But it never happened in the commercial as far as I know. Meen Searchery Mean Eugene would bring up Wild Wild Quest. So if you're a mean Eugene enthusiast, let me know if his character is real. Because I think he's sort of like a robotic figure in this game that he pops up in different devices.

I mean, they were a little more ambitious of this game, but it still sucks. He didn't host anything on WWE? He's not Okerlitz. It's actually Eugene Levy. Oh, but he's so nice. He had a mini golf game in everything. I'll be in every American Pie movie. All seven.

All eight. So we're moving on to Checks Quest. Man, this is a lot of fans There's a lot going on with Chex Quest This is not a mascot game You are checks You play as a humanoid checks creature You play as a literal piece of Checks

Who actually became the Czechs mascot? He did as a rogue checks Listen, I did some hardcore checks research I'm wasting my life for this show This is why I ate Krispix Oh God I'm a Krispix guy too You don't have to make the corner wheat decision

They just in both You get rice Turn everything over one way and they eat it I know you're thinking, like, you know, Chex does not have a mascot. Well, that was the thought of the Chex Corporation, Ralston or whatever, in the mid-90s. It was Prerna at that point. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of Purina, you know, Chuck Wagon.

So they were like, Czech people think Chex is boring. Chex is only the ingredient in a better food item. So let's spice Chex up. So they hired people to make a game based around the Chex characters. And they wanted there to be created Chex characters. And Chex Quest is basically a total conversion mod for the ultimate Doom. That version of doom. So it's like it's five levels and everything is altered to make it more, sorry, less violence.

So you are instead of killing, so you're fighting these things called the phlemoids, which are literally like green balls of snot. Of course, because that's what I want to associate with my breakfast. Yes, exactly. I mean, they didn't get it all right. I guess they get the, I could see the thinking of kids today like gross things. It really was like a hallmark of the 90s. When I eat checks, what happens? That's right.

Flams. Yes. I mean, you're eating checks in front of Ren and Stimpy. Things are going to happen. But you play as the Czechs warrior and you have to destroy the phlemoids, but you shoot things at them and they get transported back to their home planet. You don't kill them. And none of the guns are gun-shaped. They're all like Star Trek tricorders and things like that.

Is it tricorder? It is a tricorder. Well, a phaser is what you shoot with, but a tricor, are you thinking what they use to shoot? Yeah, Bob. I'm thinking of the actual tricorder, not the phaser because, like, nothing could be gun-shaped. Are you thinking the salt shaker tricorder or the square? I don't know Star Trek. specific Bob.

Which tricorder? Listen, I did as much research as I could. I didn't want to watch Star Trek. The funniest thing, I see this brought up on a lot of nostalgic articles, and I was talking to my girlfriend about it, and this is the one she had experience with because Chex was not a rich kid or poor kid food. It was inexpensive. It was healthy, so families who didn't mind sugar, and you didn't need any, unlike all the

things we just talked about, you need no console. You flick this in your PC, and so, like, everybody heard about this in school. and everybody was talking about it. So I'd say more people played this. Or did it just come in a check box? It came in the box. It was the best prize in any cereal box. It was the best prize in any serial box.

It was a full video game. It was the AOL disc of video games. Except it was valuable. And it was only available for like eight weeks, but this spread to a lot of people. I mean, there's a lot of love for this game on the internet. And like, like, it's just like Doom except everything has a nonviolent corollary. And the thing is, this was released post-quake. So Doom was like an older game, which is why they'd,

license came pretty cheap for the developers. Well, it was pretty close to just dumping things as freeware at that time. I think eventually Checks, like, after the second one, you could download the game from Chex's website anytime you wanted for free. Yeah, the second one was released for free on the website, although there were production problems, and it was considered an unfinished game. Was it not great? Was it like the Cotor 2 of Masked on games? Listen, Chris. You're being a smart ass, but people eventually, the original developers actually went back and finished the game.

So here's how it went, okay, Checks Quest 1 available in a box of Checks. Checks Quest 2, you download it from the website. Chex Quest 3 was released in 2008 by the original creators as a Z Doom mod. It includes both Chex Quest games, including a fixed version of Chex Quest 2. And I'm saying these are total conversion mods for Doom, but Chex Quest 1 is just five levels. These are not like every Doom level is modded to be a Chex thing. So, I mean, like, when you did a Doom episode for like one of the very first retronauts, Jeremy, I remember one of your guests was talking about how there's so much love for Chex Quest, and this is before it was remade.

And a lot of people were really turned on to this game, and they have super fun memories. I never encountered it. I might have thought it was a little immature. I was a mature 14-year-old. I was like, I will shoot my real guns. Thank you. I don't want to shoot Flemmelwe. I'm not a baby.

But, I mean, did you, you played this game, Chris? Yeah, of course. I mean, but it wasn't at that point I was capable of modding Doom levels. So it wasn't that. But it was still like my parents wouldn't get me. sugary cereals. They would get me this. And it was cheap as balls. And there's like 800 different versions of checks, depending

in which one you want. Rice, wheat, corn. And I think maybe others than you. Brand. Brand. Yes. Expedited pooping. That's a kind of flavor. And Chris makes taste crunchier longer. And even you would mention in your notes that like

checks are more known about the things you use checks to make. They're the base. They're the vehicle. They are. For puppy chow, one of the greatest things in the universe. Puppy chow. Help you try out like a little cluster, like chocolate and powdered sugar. And it only works with Chex. It doesn't work with Crispix.

I tried. I just think it's Madness. It's Madness. You put Crispix in that. It'll kill you. I've heard. You get arrested instant. What's the better idri-skinned, Chex Quest or the Noah's Ark game?

Super Noazard. Super 3D Noah's Ark. I'm going to say Chex Quest. I mean, I bet it is. I play Super 3D Noah's Ark for a U.S. Gamer stream, and it is hard. It's a hard game for some reason. I don't know why.

I played the PC version. It's not easy to save all the animals from the flood. It's why it's accurate. And two of one of them at that. That's why it's accurate. And it's also the greatest story ever written. It's true. It doesn't help that everything is measured in cubits.

Yes. God. God damn that flood. So did Chex Quest have like episodes? Like episode one, knee deep in the breakfast cereal. No, actually, Jeremy. It's funny you mentioned that because I think they plan for Chex Quest 2 to be episodic content before anyone even knew about that. Like, we'll release levels.

But at that time, I think Chex just ended the promotion. They're like, that's enough of Chex Quest. It did its job. Okay, guys, call down. It's like, we're now edgy enough. We're the edgy bland cereal for you. And we're going to take down Krispix. That's when they started coating them with sugar.

Yes. Now you get, like, honey brand checks and vanilla checks. Oh, wow. Salted caramel checks. Oh, probably. The next game is Pepsiman. So in case you didn't know, Pepsi Man was a short-lived Japanese ad campaign for Pepsi Pepsi, featuring Pepsi Man, a kind of frightening-looking liquid metal style CGI creation that would

appear when people were in trouble or thirsty, and he would, like, stick his palm out, and like a mouth-style hole would emerge from his face, and he would, like, you'd hear the fizzing of soda, and they'd suddenly have Pepsi. So it was meant to be funny and creepy at the same time in the way that a lot of Japanese commercials are. Well, and there was, like, only a handful of them. They weren't a time. There's a YouTube compilation in every commercial is four minutes long. I mean, the entire run of commercials is four minutes long.

So you can watch all of them in like four minutes. They're astonishing because it is making fun of America. They all take place in America. Like, they're straight up clear about that. It's sort of like a parody of American life. And I think Pepsi is an American brand. So maybe they're like, this is the American drink. One of many products from the young brand for all your yummy needs.

Yeah, my theory would be Pepsi was coming into Japan where Coca-Cola was. the most famous American brand soda and they needed some, as they do in America, they need some hook to be not Coca-Cola. Yeah. And Pepsi Man, I mean, in the late 90s, for me, a few things

were more eye-catching in a commercial than CGI. Oh, yeah. I have to, these are only in movies and for like eight seconds in a movie. Reboot. And now it's on TV. And it also helped the relationship with Sega because

Pepsi Man looked like Dural's brother, pretty much. You're right. And actually, Pepsi Man is a playable character in the Japanese version of Fighting Vipers for the Saturn. So you can play as Pepsi Man. And I think that's when it entered American consciousness when we heard about this game. And who was Pepsi Man? And we all found out about it. We played it very recently almost all the way through.

On laser time? It is roughly 20 minutes long. And it's just bizarre because I've also, I'm just like you. I get sucked into the occasional free-to-play iOS game. And it's that. It's an endless water. It's that 15 years beforehand. At, like, at full price.

At full price. At full price. A full Japanese price. 80, like, $8,600 or something. To be advertised about Pepsi off while playing your Saturn. And it's all framed around this, I'll say, a large and in charge American guy, who the first cutscene is him just like opening his fridge and there's like nine million Pepsi's in and he grabs the Pepsi, he grabs some chips, he sits down. And then like, between every level, he says an odd thing into the camera. are like Pepsi for TV game and Pepsi for pizza.

Like, these are just, I guess it makes sense for the ad campaign. I don't know. But I think they found this guy later and they like interviewed him about these ads because I guess he was just like one of the many American actors in Japan. He's very clearly on Twitter as, you can find him on Twitter. If you just search Pepsi Man guy, he is findable. So one of the better, one of the cooler things about this very short game is that all of the acting and cut scenes and everything is in English because Pepsi Man is a very American

thing. For Japan, it's not actually American. So here's a clip of Pepsi Man being told about a new missioniest undertake. Pepsi Man! Oh, Pepsi Man, you got here just at the perfect time. I got to call the Divining Machine ahead, ran out of Pepsi. And I was just on my way there when I got a flat tire. There are a bunch of people gathered in front of the Vindian Machine.

machine, they want Pepsi. And the word is that they're just about the riot. I plan to head over there as soon as I can fix this plan. But it looks like it's going to take some time. Can't you do something?

Pessie Manx. So there you go. Got to think of Count Duke. There's something happening. Yeah. So you have to give people Pepsi. You basically, like Chris said it's a runner and you just run in one direction by while avoiding things and collecting Pepsi cans. I think there are 100 and every level. Do you know the second worst thing about modern

songatic games? It's all of that. Running forward? To run forward and move left and right. It's the worst part of modern Sonic games and the worst part of Crash Bandicoot games, which is running towards the camera as something chases you. So I think the second part of every level is a giant Pepsi can falls from the sky and then starts

rolling towards you and you run towards the screen away from it. There were a few like that, but I also the game is cute in how sometimes you're like crash into a garbage can and then be running on top of the garbage can as you go. There is there was a sense of fun

to it and I liked that you were on the other side of a Pepsi Man commercial Pepsi Man commercials end with the arrival of Pepsi Man to give you Pepsi this is the setup of how Pepsi Man runs to Yeah how we got there

That's interesting yeah I feel dirty saying Pepsi It's all made up of prequels I mean these commercials are great But you will get tired of Pepsi Man By the end of like the third one As an RC Cola man I can't recommend this I'm sad we never got Pepsi Man the character because I think at this point in Pepsi's American ad campaign, they were doing their joy of coal ad campaign, which was, it was all about a little, exactly, it was about a little girl with dimples.

Yeah, she sucks. Doing like being dubbed with outlandish voices. Oh, she's talking like a mob character and Isaac Hayes and things like that. I prefer Pepsi Man. I think it's more creative. I don't remember those at all. You don't remember those? Well, I lucked out.

No, don't do it. Don't do it. Yes, it's going to happen. Oh, God. The lovely it be, sweetheart. Let me guess. Nice. Oh, it'd be like Joe Pesci.

I wouldn't want to hear one of those crazy voices of yours. Honey, you ain't heard nothing yet. Hit it, fellas. That's right. Yes, it's a girl. What are you done? It's a girl. I want to turn it off right now.

It's a little girl showing up. And then as the guy said, after something, it's like, you're going to do one of those crazy voices, aren't you? Yes, she is. And she did Aretha Franklin. I think the first one was Joe Pesci. That's if I. Yeah. Yeah, and I think Isaac Hayes was in there, too, because he's got a great voice, too.

So, yeah, that's what we got. I prefer Pepsi, man. The game's okay. I don't know how you could play it today's. I don't know if it's rare, but it's a fun little, like, weird experiments that is just interesting in a train wreck kind of way. And it's fun to, there is a fun aspect to it to watch what Japan parroting America that Americans weren't exactly meant to see. No, no, no. I mean.

Let you know what they thought of you then. That aforementioned large and in charge guy, it's not a very flattering look at Americans. It's like, I'm just going to sit on a disgusting easy chair and just shove chips in my face and chug pepsies. I'm not a breath from talking. And I think he was even wearing a shirt that says like Life's a Beach or something like that. Like, it's not a flattering look at Americans. So thanks Japan for that. But I think we had it coming.

So our last installment of this look back at Food Mascot Games is something I was not familiar with. because I bought an Xbox 360 in early 2008, but if you were an early adopter, you were treated to the Burger King Xbox 360 trilogy. And you were treated, and the thing I would like to point out about these games, which ones? Big bumpin.

Big bumpin, sneak king, and pocket bike racer. And pocket bike racers, because I just bought my Xbox 360 and had no money. Pocket bike race. PBR? PBR! And listen, pocket bike racing is real. It's people riding on these tiny motorized bikes.

I can't believe it. It's real. But if you bought an Xbox 360, I remember I bought it, like, I can't remember when exactly I bought it, but let's put it this way. Crackdown Use was the cheapest game I could get for $39.99 in a $60 game world, which was just forming around the Xbox 360. These games came out for $3.99. So if you wanted to get a game for under $45, this is your only option, and Burger King had them. So I have to assume this is a successful promotion because there's millions of people around the country with Burger King objects in their house and or bringing them back to GameStop.

and being told, you have to pay us to put these. These are worth nothing. Well, though... They're not bad. Well, Bob says he couldn't play them, but that's not true, Bob. Some of them were playable on the Xbox as well. They were dual Xbox original Xbox 360. I didn't have an original Xbox either, so, yeah.

I'm not going to buy that American garbage. How did you play Halo? I didn't play Halo. But, yeah, these games were $3.99. I didn't play it until, like, 2012. So these games were available. These three games were available for $3.99 with the purchase of any value meal. They were originally going to be released on Xbox Live,

but Burger King was like, no, we want people to come into the store, and then we can give them a game if they order food. So it was a smart idea on Bird King's part. It's brilliant. Yeah, and no one has done this since. What's your favorite system? Now imagine McDonald's had come in and get a $3 Nintendo game. $3 Super Nintendo game.

Remember, don't lick the switch cartridge. Eat the food, not the cartridge. It's not a dessert. Or put, yes, you've got to use a lot of honey mustard to swallow it. And it's important to note that this was centered around. So there was a real Burger King in the 70s. And they brought him back in the early 2000s ironically as sort of a slightly menacing but also friendly figure. He had like a mask on with like a frozen smile and he would just appear and give you food.

He'd like wake up in bed with you. No, he would not talk. He was a creeper and that was part of his appeal. Yeah. And I still just think it's crazy that Microsoft, they never allowed anybody else to do it. but they let people press a disc that worked on the Xbox and Xbox 360. I didn't know that. I'm glad you brought that to my attention.

And by the way, with official achievements. Yes. So you would buy this game to help your gamer score. Was it like one of those like 200 achievement games or was there were like a full 1,000 in Sneak King? I believe they were too much. Sneak King has the most value and, yeah, it'll take you like a couple hours to get your achievements at. Yeah, I mean, Sneak King, we'll talk about the game. Sneaking is the most true true to the brand because you play as the Burger King.

It's Metal Gear Solid inspired. There are four levels in which you have to find the hundred. hungry people, ideally wait for them when they're at their most hungry by looking at this little thought bubble above their head and then surprise them. And once you surprise them, a little golf swing style meter pops up and you give them a flourish before presenting them with a burger. So it's all about surprising people with Burger King. It's basically a splinter cell or Batman game. Except instead of like snapping their limbs, you hand them a burger in the animation. Yeah, that's true.

And I mean, who played any of the – I didn't play any of these. I played Sneak King. I think that's the one people remember that one the most, though, because it's the most unique. It'll always be remembered more. And, yeah, like, I remember a stalking simulator. Yeah, I remember him slinking around a lumber yard and then catching different lumberjacks, like, getting him from behind. I'm like, boy, this is crazy. What's going on with a sneak king guy?

Yeah. So we also have a big bump in. It is basically just like a bumper car, a collection of bumper car mini games. There's like, you know, regular bumper cars, you're bumping. people off to the out of bounds in order to win. There's like a kind of an air hockey style bumper car game. It looks fine, but I mean, it's very simple. And pocket bike racer, based on the actual sport, which I just was made aware of.

It's basically a cart racing game. It's beneath sidehacking, Bob. It's, uh, it doesn't hurt to have a low IQ if you're sidehacking, I've heard. But, um, yeah, I mean, and this, this game had like a bunch of Burger King characters that were of this, of this era of ads. So there's like the subservient chicken. Oh, his name was like Cockrock. They were to a band called Cock Rock Rock the band For when they were selling chicken fries

What's going on with Burger King? It was a weird era And also, the model slash actress Brooke Burke plays into these a lot She's actually E's Wild on? Is that where she's from? Yeah.

Okay, she's actually on the cover of Pocket Bike Racer So I guess she was like eating a burger sexily In a commercial or something. I don't remember a commercial with her in it. She was a famous mid-2000s bikini model, let's say. I mean, but again, like these games are very simple. They're all based on a knowledge. value, but no one had done anything like this

before since. But in a time of no games, like not a lot of games and no cheap games, everybody needed these. It was a great time for the Xbox 360 to have a bunch of cheap games, especially associated with Burger King. Man, before, like, Xbox Live hadn't really

taken off yet. I mean, that's maybe also why they didn't want it to put it on live, and then just within a year or two, Doritos would be like, no, just have a free game. And you all rights as well. And now those games are just gone. but I have them forever. Yeah, 2006 was an odd time.

I mean, Xbox Live, I assume the store was up, but it was like maybe you can play DigDug or Miss Pac-Man. I mean, Castlevania. That, to be the most fascinating times and online gaming and Xbox Live, because it's right before iPhone, and it seems to think it can justify $6 for Centipede. Like, pay $6 for Centipede. Man, that's like virtual causal or something. Yeah. That exists in its own world where nothing ever happened. Can I pay a quarter and play it once?

That's my question. They tried that too. Nobody did it. Remember, what was that called? Their arcade where you can play Atari. It's real exciting. Game room. That poorly made thing.

It meant well, but I don't want to play Venetian Blinds. I'm sorry. So thank you for joining us on this wild and slightly giddy ride. If you couldn't tell, this is our last recording out of seven this weekend. So we're a little loopy and punched drunk. But I had a lot of fun. My final question, though, this is to make you guys think about what food mascot-based game would you like to see?

I want to know, we've talked about the ones that exist. I want to know what is your, what would your ideal food mascot game? Anyone who has an idea jump in, I want to know. I have two, but only because like,

the Kool-Aid man. And Captain Grunch the game with the Sogis, fighting the Sogis. He was one of the most famous and popular old men in history. What is that voice based on? I don't know.

I mean, well, he was a Jay Ward creation. So he's based on someone who was dead before 1950s. Yes, he was a famous 30s movie. Are fighting the shoggies who were big clump, gist like clumps of oatmeal. They're disgusting. They're gross.

Yeah, they're disgusting. Are they supposed to be oatmeal? I don't know. Well, that's weird. Well, no. He was crunchy. He was just lumps of milk. He was crunchy.

They were soggy. So they're clearly a different universe. They'll never get along. Well, also, Captain Crunch is owned by Quaker Oats, so they would not make fun of oatmeal in their ass. That quaker would come down on that. But Captain Crunch has the best cereal, in arguably. Well, the Quaker would just, like, judge him. Yes.

They're very peaceful. That's true. But if I can just use this as a base to do terrible. impressions. I love the series of Flintstone's Barney's after my pebbles. They're only one dollar, Fred, but I've got an elaborate

costume and built a rip. They both have, he has a job, in a child. They both work at the same place. I'm stealing a serial, Fred. It's canonical with my character. No, it really isn't, Bond. This has nothing to do with anything established. Yeah, Barney is not known as like a trickster thief in the Flintstones. But you do

that, and then it all leads up to, it's the one serial I can remember that, like, Merry Christmas Bonn Oh, Fred. He like, Barney never got the cereal And he were No, I think

He'd sometimes he stole the cereal But he would steal it but it was never given to him. But Fred gave it to him in the Christmas one And I always like, they had like Will here, won't he tricks rabbit things. All right. So what is your, what is your final choice, Chris? I don't have to make a final choice.

I want to know. I want to cap and crunch in. With like real sea fair and combat like Assassin's Creed and everything. I want to see that. Just like that. Jim Bacchus, maybe A little Jim Bacchus, yeah, it's Jim Bacchus meets Walter Brennan, they had a baby

Somehow. Mine I've thought about before that I would love to see a Smash Brothers type game starring all the serial mascots. Called a serial killer, we're done. Yeah, exactly. The cuckoo for Cocoa Puff's bird versus the Sunny versus the Tricks Rabbit

versus the Lucky Charms Lucky. Lucky. It's like Battle of the Hungry mascots. Like, we just want to eat. This is Tony the Tiger. You only have to hire one guy, Billy West. He does them all anyway. I'm sure he does now.

All the originals are dead. Jeremy, how about you? What is your food mascot game of choice? Kind of similar to Henry's, except instead of Smash Brothers, I want it to be like a take on Animal Crossing with all the serial mascots. And you play as King Vitaman. I'm not familiar with the King of Man. The enemy of mouth roofs everywhere. Yeah, it's like the off-brand cap and crunch.

Oh, that's what it was? Okay. Is it a cereal my parents would let me get? It came in a bag, and there was originally a cartoon, I think a J. Ward cartoon King Vitamin, but then in the 70s, he was replaced by a real man wearing a tablecloth and a crown with spoons on it. I'm not Captain Crunch. And then in the 90s, I think, they phased out that King Vitaman because apparently there were some unpleasant allegations about inappropriate touching or something. Oh, no.

With that actor. With the actor? Okay. Which, by the way, whose mask was on the back of every box forever because they had no license affiliations. It was bags. I'm seeing boxes here. I had boxes.

I'm from a fan. I'm from Florida. Your parents where I lived, it was bags. Like, really? Maybe I secretly lived in Canada. It was bags of capping. It was king vitamin and bags of milk.

Just put them together. For my parents, at the right price and the right amount of health, like nutrients in the cereal. So this is the tastiest cereal. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was sugar cereal. It was cap and crunch.

Sugar and corn together. I mean, Jeremy, I think I recall one of your old websites. What was that? I don't remember. It was King Vitamins' Majestic Realm of Breakfast cereal. For some reason, not vitamin, vitamin, Vita Man. And it was basically a celebration of all the generic cereal mascots, not Cuckoo, you know, Sunny the Cuckoo Bird, not the Rice Krispies, you know, Mishak Shamrack and Benegro or whatever. I'm the Christmix Jimmy Durante.

Yeah, it was like the off-brand generic cereals. you know, like random hippopotamuses. Yeah. Just like the maltomeil serials? Yeah, the rabbit, the multo meal, uh, kangaroos aren't. Yeah, yeah. Just like the bottom shelf. Those are the bag serials, I remember.

But then they started putting like race car drivers on cereal boxes. And then that's when I said, all right, I'm out. My first, in only dig account, my profile picture was King Vitamin, his happiest picture with Dreamcast logos for eyes. I just remember that. Didn't they get a chance to bring that up anywhere. So I want to take the role of King Vitaman in a village where cereal mascots move in and out, and you have to, like, cultivate friendships and have them send gifts of cereal to each other.

My loyalty to me. It'll be called, like, processed corn crossing or something like that. Mine is not funny, but I think it could be a topic for an activist game jam. I want a game in which you beat up Papa John until he gives his workers health insurance and fairway. That's my idea. I like that. I should have gone first in retrospect. Or it should be the, well, if you did another Papa Jones game, it could be him, you playing

as Tom Brady fighting your way across a football field to hug Papa Jones. That's, I mean, we all want to. He's a little orange demon, I love him. So we're going to wrap up here. Thanks so much for listening and joining us in this wild ride. And thanks to whoever gave me the idea for this. I will give you credit if you shout me out when this goes live. So, yeah, to wrap up, you can find me on Twitter.

as Bob Servo, and I also do the podcast Talking Simpsons every Wednesday. Go to Talking Simpsons.com or Lasertime Podcast.com or search for Talking Simpsons in your podcast device. It is a chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Every week is a new episode of The Simpsons in order. We are so thorough. We find out what every reference means. We find out who every guest star is and what they've done. I mean, if you love The Simpsons, you'll love our show. So check it out, Talking Simpsons, every Wednesday. Chris. Yes. Also on that website, Laser Time. I remember talking to you about an episode a long time ago.

It was something I really wanted to do, and that was find actual cartoon characters who acted as food mascots for the longest period of time. That was a good time. I was on that one. Yeah, like the Flintstones have somehow been serial mascots for about three years longer

than they've existed. Wow. And Pink Panther and the insulation, like, how long has that gone on? Long time, and it's still happening. Sort of like how Millhouse was selling Butterfingers before The Simpsons ever was a show. Why does Donald Duck represent orange juice?

We'll find out that answer. You'll find out that. And what was the other one? Is it because he's from Florida? It has a little to do with the location. It absolutely does. And that Disney wanted some land on the cheap. And that's why it stayed around for so long.

Goes back to World War II, though. It's almost interesting. I found it interesting. But the weirdest one, because I was just at the Charles Schultz Museum, is that, yeah, MetLife cut its peanuts affiliation, which I don't think about MetLife ever. But when I do, I think about Snoopy. I have no reason to think about you met life.

Doesn't MetLife have, like, a gigantic skyscraper in New York? Up until, like, two years ago, yeah. They don't have that anymore? They cut them in. Because they cut peanuts, and now they're like, oh, we don't have any money. They cut them. They'd have to be desperate, even though I think peanuts just sold to some weird company, and I'm devastated and I don't know what they're going to do with them.

Keep it alive, Japan. It sold to Disney, didn't it? Oh, no, that's the Muppets, never mind. Did they sell the Muppets? A long time ago. No, you're getting it. No, he's talking about the, The Muppets got bought by Disney.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Henry, we're we heard doing plugs, by the way. Hi. I'm H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. You can follow me there. And, yes, Talking Simpsons every week with Bob Mackey, and we're doing tons more cool stuff that you can hear about on our Patreon, patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

Oh, yes, a new video game crap every week, blazer time, Vigy Game Apocalypse. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, it's a great podcast. I'm on it sometimes, and Henry and Chris are usually on it. Jeremy just won't live here, so he can't be on. How dare you, Jeremy? But what do you do, Jeremy? I was going to say you can find me on Twitter as King Vitaman, but then I looked it up.

And some dude named Jeremiah, with a last name that starts with P, owns an account called King Vitaman. I'm like, wait a minute, is this some sort of imposter imitating me, imitating King Vitaman? I don't know, he's got a mask over his face. It's really kind of, it's kind of alarming. That is weird. I feel like I'm being stalked. But no, I'm actually GameSpite on Twitter.

And you can find me at Retronauts.com doing this. Awesome. So in case you guys don't know, we are supported by Patreon. All you kind patrons make our show happen. You give us money and we turn that into podcasts. And Jeremy is this is his full-time job now. I'm trying to transition from a real boring job into podcasting, making cool podcasts for you, Talking Simpsons, Retronauts, all kinds of other things. So if you want to support us, go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts. For just $3 a month, as I said, you get the podcast ahead of time with no ads at a higher bitrate. You get your own RSS feed to get them downloaded automatically. There are tiers above that for things like zines and t-shirts and other things. And if you just want to get a podcast, It was like a dollar a month. That'd be awesome, too. Just throw a buck a month to us just to say, hey, guys, thanks for doing your thing. But whatever you can afford would be great. But thanks a lot for listening. We'll be back next week with a brand new podcast.

See you then. Hi, it's Jamie, Progressive number one, number two employee. Leave a message at the... Hey, Jamie, it's me, Jamie. This is your daily pep talk? I know it's been rough going ever since people found out about your a cappella group, Matt Harmony, but you will bounce back. I mean, you're the guy always helping people find coverage options with the name your price tool.

It should be you giving me the pep talk. Now get out there, hit that high note, and take Mad Harmony all the way to nationals this year. Sorry, it's pitchy. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House, his special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town.

I guess, from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine, Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution, approving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away

from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.