Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 346: Holiday Special 2020 - Earthworm Jim's "For Whom the Jingle Bell Tolls"
Episode Date: December 24, 2020Happy holidays! As a special Christmas treat, we're giving you one of this month's Patreon-exclusive extra episodes! To hear two full-length bonus episodes like this every month, please visit the offi...cial Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts. It's the yuletide season, which means it's time to head to the Retronauts Holiday Cabin in Parts Unknown yet again for another look at a Christmas-related video game thing. And even thought this is our tenth (!) holiday special, we haven't hit the bottom of the barrel just yet! This time around, we'll be looking at the Christmas (and final) episode of Earthworm Jim, the short-lived Kids' WB cartoon that, 25 years later, stands as one of the better games-to-animation adaptations out there. So smear on some wolf repellant and get ready for the only holiday travel not prohibited by law as host Bob Mackey and guest Henry Gilbert discuss this cartoon relic of the mid-90s. Groovy!
Transcript
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Dancing the Christmas
Oh, hello there.
Welcome back to the Retronauts Cabin and parts unknown for yet another holiday podcast special.
Once again, I didn't hear you come in, which is odd because I've spent most of 2020
being locked in a state of hypervigilance about potential danger.
Anyhow, would you believe this is the 10th Retronauts holiday special to date?
Yes, over the past decade, we've shared so many memories about Christmas-related video game
things as society has gradually fallen apart around us.
And we were quarantining before it was cool and mandatory.
Thanks to the pandemic, we've had to make a few alterations around here,
but I'm sure you'll find the Christmas spirit infecting every corner of the holiday cabin.
There's a nice thick sheet of plexiglass for our guest to sit behind, of course,
and unfortunately I've had to board up the fireplace because old St. Nick is a deadly biohazard this year.
And that sound you're hearing?
It's HBO Max's virtual Ulog.
Now that's one prestige chunk of wood that's burning in there.
And what about me, Steve?
the favorite character of
Retronauts. Oh, and of course my robot
companion, Steve is with me as well.
And this year, he's been modified to emit a harmless
antimicrobial gas to cleanse
the air of toxins, and fill it
with any number of trendy aromatherapy
scents. What scent will it be,
master? I have candy cane,
gingerbread,
Santa Clausbeard, shampoo, elf,
and freshly opened pack of
Magic the Gathering cards.
Well, nothing says Christmas like a freshly open
pack of Magic the Gathering cards,
so let's make it that.
I got my entire family Magic the Gathering Guards this year.
Oh, it looks like our guest has arrived.
Steve, go somewhere and conspicuous and continue filling the room with gas.
Master, I will hide myself somewhere and continue emitting over.
Oh, come on in, Henry. How's it going?
Ooh, brer. Hey.
Stay behind the plexiglass.
Stay behind the plexiglass.
We have to do this safely.
government says you shouldn't travel.
It's a stern warning at best, but I want to respect that at least.
I've been wanting to hug you all 2020, and I just haven't been able to.
After the vaccines, after the vaccines.
But yes, Henry is back for another holiday special.
And last time, I'm going to dare say that was our best holiday special to date.
I want to try to top the Pokemon Christmas Bash album retrospective.
I still have all those songs in my head from last year, and I recommend you go back and visit that one because I just did.
I'm singing the miao, the little stinker song to this day.
I again reject the coupling of Ash and Misty.
It's wrong.
Not canonical, but we can just forgive them.
They're getting wrapped up in the Christmas spirit.
I mean, there's only five types of Christmas songs you can make.
So they have to do the romantic one.
It really is true.
And unfortunately, I couldn't find any other video game Christmas albums.
It's a real shame.
So maybe in the future we'll do another one of these.
But in case you're not familiar with these holiday specials that we put on for retronauts.
This is the 10th one so far.
10th one in a row that I've done
And what we do every year
We come to the Christmas cabin in parts unknown
And we examine one video game-related Christmas thing
And we've done that nine times so far
This is the 10th
And today we'll be talking about the Earthworm Jim cartoon episode
For whom the jingle bell tools
And a bit about the games
But in case you don't know
I do another podcast called What a Cartoon
Where we go super super in-depth
In-depth into different cartoons
And we might do an even more in-depth
episode of Earthworm Jim
on that feed on that podcast.
This is going to be a lighter, more whimsical treatment,
but we'll still talk about the history of the character and the game.
So let's start off there, Henry.
What is your history with Earthworm Jim in game form?
Oh, in Gameform, I really enjoyed the first one as a kid,
but I also only rented it.
I didn't buy it.
And it, uh, I, but the first level I really, really enjoyed.
But like most kids, I think I probably didn't get past.
the third level without a game genie
or any of those cheat codes and even then
I had to just read about what happens
after the water level because there's only so
much you can do. Oh, you got stuck on the water
level too? Yeah, that is such a giant
difficulty spike in that game. It's, I mean
yeah, I think as I look back
on it now, I see
that I loved it for the same reasons
as a child that I loved the
Aladdin on Genesis more
than the other versions because
it was pretty
and I thought it was like challenging and not bullshit.
And so once I realized what game design actually was,
I was like, oh, yeah, this is poorly made.
Well, this has a lot in common with the Aladdin Genesis game.
We'll talk more about that later.
Any familiarity with the sequel, Henry?
I did play the sequel.
I was excited for that.
I think the sequel was, I do remember reading about how the sequel,
like, I think it was one of the first times I read in something like,
well, it's not made by all the same people.
It's the secondary staff or whatever.
And I realized that sequels can be given to other people, that it's not the same people making it again.
But when I play the sequel, I think that's when I realized, like, oh, this is just a mini game collection.
This is not a platformer.
It's a game where they make like three platformer stages and then build mini games around it.
And I think I actually, I reflect more positively on Earth from Jim 2 because I think they had more fun with their mini games of like, you know, the Peter puppy on a marshmallow mini game is basically just a game in one.
watch a game but it is it's like the fireman game right yeah it's just like fireman yeah my history
with the games very similar because henry and i are identical in many ways and that's uh yeah i did
enjoy these games when they came out it was cool they were really cool of course they're famous for
their like very fluid animation and their reverent sense of humor and which do you believe a worm
stars in a video game i can't and i had the same issue as you henry where the game design
was uh pretty interesting on a surface level but executing these clever ideas
for a video game didn't always turn into a fun gaming experience.
So, yeah, like, I got stuck on the third level of Earthworm Gym 1.
It wasn't until I actually got access to a level select code that I saw the rest of the game.
And I think, too, is a much better game, but it still suffers from some of those same problems
where the levels just seem to be arranged in a random order.
There's no flow to them.
It's just, like, like, a pinata full of random ideas.
They just bust open in front of you.
And in some ways, that was neat because no other game was really doing that.
But it doesn't add up to a game that has aged particularly.
well yeah the randomness is cute and all and i think that's part of the fun that they were able to go
like well and now it's just a new place who cares like that uh i mean on a certain level i think
they were trying to be like meta or postmodern about a video game in a fun way that like they
you have the sarcastic nature of just sonic looking at the screen and tapping his foot and then this
is like such a huge expansion on that of just like a
as a concept it's like
it's princess what's her name who cares
slug for a bud it's it's
intentionally the grossest thing it could be
you're going to heck it's not hell
because we can't say hell in a video game
and nothing matters and there's no real story
to anything yeah if you cared at the end
well they they do
the save the princess at the very end
and then you get smashed to death
by a cow that you launched
at the very beginning oh yeah she gets
she gets killed yeah
I guess he just gets injured by the cow
Because she's in the sequel
Yeah
Yeah so
And three I just did
Well three is just
An abomination
It's a horrible 3D game made by
No one associated with the original games
We might do like a full in-depth retronauts
On Earthworm Jim
This is just a surface level exploration
Of where the character came from
And just general thoughts about the games
But the brief history of Jim
And Henry I want to know if you have any thoughts on this
So in the early 90s
The toy company known as Playmates
They're having a great success
With the Ninja Turtles line
Like they are the main Ninja Turtle toy manufacturer making money hand over fist.
But they're like, we're paying a licensing fee to make toys based on a product.
What if we have our own characters?
We'll make all the money.
Eastman and Larry don't get a chunk of that at all.
Those guys don't.
Yeah, I mean, Eastman and Laird, they signed a really positive for them deal on TMNT that a lot of companies wouldn't give.
But that's because it seemed like such a long shot.
But after that fact, like it was a deal.
that no other creator was going to get after them, I would think.
And it was an interesting marketing blitz on their part
because Earthworm Jim started as an idea for a toy line.
Given how irreverent in sneering the actual games are,
it feels weird that they're just designed to sell toys,
but that's what they are.
But Playmates' business plan was we make the video game first,
and then we sell the toys,
and then there's a cartoon to promote the toys.
So both the video game and the cartoon are working in tandem to promote the toy line.
It's all about the toy.
But man, I didn't realize toy was where it came first.
That's funny.
I mean, yeah, we talked about it with the show The Tick, too.
And there were just many shows like this that were like, well, if we just have like a weird title that just makes you go like, huh?
They made toys of that.
Like, I think that was always their starting point.
They're just like, oh, like for the Tick, they wanted to find every weird villain they could to put in it.
And Ninja Turtles definitely was an inspiration.
because it was taking an unlikely thing
and making into a hero,
like a worm or a turtle
or a bug like the tick
or actual cows
from the Cowboys of Moomesa.
Yeah, you know, in the 80s,
it was He-Man,
and he is the strongest man,
and he fights,
and it's just like a very straightforward
barbarian thing
with maybe a little bit of sci-fi
sprinkled on top,
and Transformers were,
what if your cars
were also robots that fought?
And G.I. Joa is,
is in Reagan's military,
the strongest. It was so straightforward. When you get to the 90s, you got to be like,
isn't it crazy to have a teenage mutant ninja turtle who has the swords? I'm surprised there
weren't more modifiers on Earthworm Jim on his name. But yeah, so ultimately there'd be
only one series of 10 figures and five of those figures were different variants of Earthworm Jim.
I know growing up, Henry, you were the toy boy. Did you own any of these figures at all? Maybe
it was a bit too late. Actually, no, I did all these figures. All of them?
A majority of them.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
So, well, I will say it was, I was a spoiled middle class toy boy.
My mom would buy us pretty much any toy we asked for looking back on it.
I'm like, I guess I did own every toy that came out from 90 to 95 maybe.
But you just made it into the gym collection.
So, well, what helped was I was 13 when the TV series and I guess toys debuted in 95.
And my brother, three years younger than me.
So he was 12.
the perfect earthworm gym age.
So he, I'd say, was the bigger fan of it.
We both enjoyed it.
And so, yeah, we had Jim regular.
We had Jim in his scuba suit.
We had the goldfish head guy.
We had the crow.
Cycro.
We had Peter Puppy.
And I recall Princess What's her name?
I think that was, but if there were vehicles and stuff that came with him,
we did not have them.
I don't think there were.
There was a second toy line planned and their images of these online.
And I think you can look up like plans for them, like literal blueprints of the toys,
but they were never released.
So just amounts it to 10 figures, all of this planning.
That, yeah, well, if the first wave doesn't go, they got to cancel it real fast.
They're like, don't, because it is a huge amount of money to make all those toys if you can't sell them.
Like, my favorite thing about the gym toys was the gym himself, at least the very
vanilla white suit
Jim his head could be shot
out of his neck
Those are the worst levels
of the video game
when you're out of your suits
Oh sure sure
But for a storytelling
possibilities
On the cartoon show
He left his suit
Like every fourth episode
Or something
That's most of the plot
So if you're playing with your toys
Like oh no Jim lost his suit again
What are we gonna do
So Playmates is going to get into
The video game industry
They've never done it before
In a hot and rising talent
in the video game world is David Perry,
a Northern Irish game developer,
who was a hot name because of slick, attractive platformers
like CoolSpot and Disney's Aladdin for the Genesis.
Go back to our controversial Disney's Aladdin episode on Retronauts
where we came down and said,
the S&S version is superior.
The Genesis version is not bad.
It is just of a certain style of European platformer
that I don't cotton to.
You know, I think we have, I feel the Overton window shifting on this debate.
It's the good Overton window.
Yes, yeah.
I think we have convinced people.
I think more or more are you hearing it?
Everybody's talking about it.
The Super NES version is the better version of Aladdin.
And I mean, cool spots like that is one of the slickest commercials I've ever played.
Oh, yeah.
Cool spots are fun game, but they all feel the same way.
They're all like these slippery platform games with not a lot of intentional design behind them.
You can feel like the level layouts just feel like haphazard.
You don't feel guided anyway.
everything feels just like weightless there's no impact of things i mean a lot of people enjoy these
games clearly because aladdin was like the number three selling game on the platform it was it was up
there maybe not number three but like in the top five very close to the top yeah i uh for me my brain
was programmed by nintendo platformers like those are the first platformers i played so i definitely
was i loved the coolness of cool spot what a cool guy but at by the second level i was like wait what
what am I doing? I'm just walking around until I find every
twinkle that's on this stage. These levels are
huge. And that's when when they do in Earthworm Gym,
the stages that are supposed to be a linear type Mario
stage, those get so like complicated or just like
painfully challenging. It's just,
it's really not Shiny's skill set. I don't think.
People, people loved it though. So Shiny,
so Playmates recruits David Perry
and Shiny was founded via Playmates money.
Wow.
So they're the seed money for Shiny.
Yeah, they just, David Perry was like,
if you want me to make this game,
you need to fund a studio for me to make it with.
And they're like, okay, we're Playmates.
We have Ninja Turtles money.
Let's build you a studio.
So yeah, Shiny.
That guy is a slick businessman that day of Perry, man.
He is to this day, yeah.
And so, yeah, Shiny is funded via Playmates money.
So the game was developed under Shiny and published via Playmates Interactive.
So that is their publishing line.
I had no idea that Shiny, the developer, no longer exists anymore, was funded by Playmates.
That's crazy.
Yeah, that is, that's nuts.
That somehow that takes us to Matrix video games, more than one Matrix video game.
And this awful game called Messiah, which has a lot of cool ideas, but it just is unplayable.
So quick history of Shiny, after Earthworm Jim 1 and 2, they were required by Interplay.
And currently, they and another dev were merging to double Helix games.
and then double Helix games was absorbed by Amazon Game Studios.
Oh, God, to make nothing, or I guess, well, to make nothing, no one can play.
I can't, I've known, I've known some folks who go to Amazon games and then leave pretty quickly.
I've known a couple friends who've done that.
I went to, like, the ribbon cutting ceremony for Amazon Game Studios.
They spent a lot of money, and they were, they were funding this e-sports game that was never released called Breakaway,
which was actually kind of fun.
I went to, like, three demos for it, but it's right.
It seems like, it's like an EA thing.
your company just goes there to die
or to just be like plucked clean.
Yeah, it's an easy way to just like,
hey, let's just cash out guys.
I just read a really great piece in Kotaku
about the structure of Super Giant
and how they're different from everybody else.
It's like, oh yeah, all these, well, not everybody else,
but like a lot of their indie brethren
they list like they just got bought by Microsoft.
Everybody eventually goes like, well, let's cash out.
And Super Giant hasn't yet.
But I get the attractiveness of it for,
double helix like do you have to you we've you hear so many stories of like well because that one
project got canceled the company's gone and you just have to constantly be like searching for your
next project if you're at that kind of scale so i get why double helix was like let's just go to
amazon but but amazon scares me because uh the same level of riot i've been hearing like riot
games uh people have been rumored forever like they're making a fighting game they hired all
these folks who worked on street fighter they're going to do it but they like riot games is at the
scale that if they spent $50 million on a fighting game, they don't have to release it.
They really can just go, eh, nah.
It's funny, like, all these companies with the most money, like Google and Facebook and
Amazon can't actually make a very good video game that people want.
We just had the game awards.
None of those were published by, like, Amazon or Google their Facebook.
Yeah, whatever's in their machinery, they can't get it out.
I don't know what it is.
Like, you get, you know, the mega conglomerate 10 cents, you can say a lot of things about
them.
But they publish video games.
They did them out.
And, yeah, so we talked about the games, a brief overview of them.
Well, I'm sure we'll have a Retronaut's formal one about these games in the future.
But, yeah, they haven't aged well.
They're actually kind of hard to play today because they're not, as far as I could tell,
not available for current platforms.
You can buy the PC versions, go to old games in Steam,
but they are the, like, old DOS versions of the games,
and apparently the ports aren't very good.
I remember when Earthform Jim H.D. came out on the 360.
Yeah.
I think we were both in the press then.
and it was just this realization
like serious you don't remember this game
do you players like this is fucking hard
that game looks pretty bad
the HD version and maybe on Xbox
series S is that I get it right this time
X series X maybe
because everything is backwards compatible now
you could play it on that platform but that
might be the only one you know I don't
delisted games you can have them on the 360
like I have the Simpsons game on my 360 file
but I can't play
that file on my series X
even though I technically own it forever
but yeah strangely these are
hard to play today that could change
in the future who knows but yeah they're not
really available and to wrap up
the game chat there's been so many
ports of all of the first two games which are the
core earthworm gym games that the cartoon is based on
the toys are based on so many ports
of those and then there are two
other like I guess official sequels
there's like a Gameboy color game that nobody
cares about or is heard of right yeah
and then there's Earthworm Gym 3D which
which was the obvious move, but it was, you know, at a time when all 3D games were ugly,
barely any of them were playable or at least, you know, more playable than 2D game.
And it's awful outside of the fact that Dan Castleneta is voicing Jim in that game as well.
That was the one version we rented it.
We're like, well, we could get to hear more of Dan as Jim.
That's fun.
Yeah, my brother and I, it's funny how fast four years can feel like in childhood,
because, you know, four years is nothing to me now.
but four years
once Jim came out
and we were playing on the N64
like we have grown out of this
like this is not very good
maybe it was also that we played Conquer
or other like at least
better a reverent
3D platformers as well
yeah the gym the gym bubble was so small
it was just 94 and 95
after that like everyone had moved on
which is why the cartoon ended in
right before 97 started just like all right
we got to get out by 96
and one of my favorite bits of
Jim trivia is that I believe
it's the Sega CD version
there's a cheat code you can
put in to give him a
it's not big head mode but it is
basically a parody head of
Donkey Kong because they are pissed off the
Donkey Kong country outsold them
that holiday season
and I think Earthworm
Jim appears yes and one of the Clayfighter
games he's a character I think the
33 and a third or
three and a half whatever the third one is
63 and a third
33 and a third. Yeah. Him and Bougarman, fighting it out.
Paray. All the interplay grates. And I believe Dan is voicing him in that game as well.
So he's above that. He really, I mean, this is before he got his big Simpsons payday in season 10.
So maybe that's why he was like, I'll do it.
Maybe that was in his Earthworm Jim TV show contract. Like you voiced Jim in every commercial and video game and blah, blah, blah.
I hope he at least got some good pay for that thing. He's, he already was Jeannie at that time.
Like, dude, if you're genie, get big money to be Earthworm Jim.
I bet he did.
Yeah.
And Earthworm Jim 4 is apparently coming in April of next year being 2021.
It's a launch game for the Intellivision Amico.
Double.
Yeah, a platform I don't understand.
That's a different podcast, you know, entirely.
But yeah, good luck with all that.
It looks like a Wiiware game.
It doesn't look good.
It doesn't have the same style the other games had.
It just looks cheap and bad.
So I don't get it.
Frankly, I don't get the Amico, but I have no Intellivision nostalgia.
I mean, you have to be in your 50s to have that now.
is that the but yeah
I don't get the where the Venn diagram
overlaps because if you give
his shit about Earthworm Jimmy
or Genesis or Supranes. Yeah.
You don't know an Intellivision. The Intellivision
was like literally what your dad bought
from his friend. There's a weird
connection in that Tommy Tala Rico
who did the music for these games
he is the president of
like in television now. Yeah
that's right. I figured
there's a lot of like friends
goofing about with the Earth
from gym thing i i guess that's different than like i don't know if it just got bought by
microsoft and they just said they just did whatever they did with battle toads and they do it
with earth from jim probably would end up with at least a little better game i think so
battle toads game seems good i heard it was not bad if you can get over like the the flash
style animation look to it yeah i mean i did i did with streets rage four that's a fine game so
oh yeah so Tommy tellerrico he made the music for the first two games and he was like one of the
first uh known game musicians like that would be like one of the names you'd see
a magazine in like 1997.
Yeah, G4
built their whole thing around,
well, electric playground
and then that went on G4
with Tommy Tolariko, yeah.
And his songs in the games
are good, but like the games
themselves, they just seem arbitrary.
A lot of the choices where it's just like,
well, why is this song on this level?
It feels like he just went off
and made a bunch of songs
and brought him to Shiny,
and they just like,
all right, I guess this is the garbage level
song, I guess.
I will say the heck level does sound like,
it's a funny, intentional
for the level song.
Yeah, where it goes from the,
the famous, like, Night on Bald Mountain music to elevator music because elevator music plays in hell guys.
There's lawyers in hell.
This is, well, I mean, that is the Gen X or comedy that is very prevalent in the TV show, too.
Yeah.
Which I'm not saying is bad, but it's very specific.
We hated lawyers in the 90s.
You fight lawyers in hell in the first game, and then you fight them in, like, this paperwork world in the second game.
I mean, McDonald's really succeeded in making people hate lawsuits.
It's true.
all of our humor was based on it.
so let's talk about earthworm gym the tv show so brief history uh personal history
henry did you watch this show very much so yeah i mean this was part of the uh i was very
successfully advertised to by kids wb all all my favorites were back on that channel and so i followed
it to it uh but mainly for the warner things and then i get to be surprised by whoa an earthworm gym
show and uh and yeah i think honestly i like i have more
fond memories about the show
than I do the
actual video games.
Like I, me and my brother watched
them a ton. Not only did we watch them a ton
every Saturday, but
also, I think
we had three VHS
official release VHS as a two episodes each other.
There were four total. Oh, okay. Well,
maybe we had all four, but we definitely
we had more than two and we
ran them out.
Wow. Yeah, I remember just looking, I looked it up
on YouTube before we recorded and I was like there's a thing about like who are the voices like a fake
behind the scenes thing they did oh for the tapes yeah for the tapes they were a lot of fun they
even the tapes had very fun a reverence to them yeah I definitely watched it because this is why
I host the cartoon podcast by the way our co-host two of them is that the day kids WB premiered was
one of the better days of my life where I'm like all of these new episodes all of these new series
it's all the cartoons I love so that morning
along with Earthworm Jim.
We also had new episodes of Animaniacs,
so that after like a year of waiting,
new Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain,
their series premiered.
Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries.
I'm sure it's fine.
I never watched it.
Sure.
Freakazoid.
Oh, God, yes, Freakazoid, man.
And then the promise that in a year
you're getting a Superman show.
Like, I knew the Superman show was coming too.
That was, yeah, that Kids WB was quite a launch
for the aging kids, but that, you know,
behind the scenes,
problem that they were getting the aging kids
not the toy buying younger kids
yeah and that's why Freakazoid was paired with Jim
for the last hour so it was like an 11-1130
combo which I guess
their theory was like older kids sleep in
more so the later shows are
for them so yeah or for Jim was
the last show of the block and then it just turns
into golf or wrestling
maybe right well some in some
places cable it was a migration
to cable pretty much by then
I mean if you were a hardcore wrestling fan
in 95 you were watching the cake you were
watching the cable version, not the kid's presentation on TV.
But, yeah, the, I mean, Freakazoid is the perfect combo for this.
They're, like, two sides of the same coin.
Just thinking about Freakazoid, I'm just, it's a miracle it was made, and how did it get two seasons?
I don't know.
I mean, through the force of Steven Spielberg, that's the only way.
I was just watching a lot of mystery science theater over Thanksgiving break, which I normally do.
And I'm just hearing all the references that were also in Freakzoid, like, all of these, like, 70s cop shows, all this old Hollywood stuff.
I'm like, how did this get on the air?
Because all the same stuff as in Freakazoid,
all of the boomer humor for people who grew up in the 60s.
That's all Freakazoid is.
I think it was that like literally executives didn't watch that closely.
Yeah, like I guess Stephen said it was okay.
Yeah.
All right.
I think too on this show,
uh,
they're having on this show they have fun with like,
we're being as violent as we can be.
But the,
the executives,
the censors and stuff are watching for violence or potty humor.
But if you wanted to just like say a.
random old celebrity like
Lawrence Welk or something
you could just say it they're like whatever
Or even do an impression of Lawrence Welk which I think
Freakazoid did do a few times
Oh yes that's right
But yeah so Earthworm Jim was the odd man out
Because these were all like prestige
Steven Spielberg series just built on the brands
Of existing characters or classic characters
In Earthworm Jim is an old school
We're going to sell you toys cartoon
With no Spielberg attachment
It was like the odd duck of the lineup
And the only one not produced internally
at Warner and that Warner doesn't own it it feels I wonder if they had like we don't have enough
money to make the last show for to fill out our lineup like what what can we fill in and they
found Jim and I think he was a really good fit for the channel yeah the sense of humor really fit
in with you know your animaniacs and you're picking the brain just the irreverent pop culture
reliant and slightly naughty humor yeah I think I think it gets maybe they even got to be sillier
and more irreverent and also adult focused because they were on the same channel as animaniacs and pinky in the brain.
They're like, well, animaniacs and pinky in the brain get to have these kind of specific references for the adults.
Why can't we do it?
That's why we also get like a peeing in the snow joke where it's like.
I couldn't believe that.
Yeah.
I forgot that joke.
They linger on it for a while.
So who developed this series?
So this series was developed for television by Doug Langdale, who basically is the creator of the TV show because he,
he was just given concepts because all Earthworm Jim and the bosses are are just concepts for toys.
There's no cohesive world they exist in.
I mean, the story is like the suit falls to Earth and Jim becomes a hero, but that's basically all there is to it.
There's no other lore connecting any of these people.
When the game is a joke, then there's no lore for it.
Like, yeah, there's just one-off gags for each level.
And that's why I think, yeah, Landell, who was story editor, like, that is the head writer who has to pull together all of these things.
Like when you watch the intro to the show, which I got to commend them for like original animation.
Yeah.
And that song is still in my head to this day.
Never left.
Yeah.
But when you watch the intro, he's like jumping between levels from the game and it's just such a hodgepodge.
It's like or when you see all the villains running together in the opening or when they do the team up episodes, they all look like they're from different series.
There's no cohesiveness even to their design.
And the designs are always, I think they're all a little too busy to work in limiting.
in animation like this or planned animation like this.
I feel like they could have been simplified,
but then they wouldn't look like the toys they're selling.
Well, they simplified him as much as pot.
Like, if you look at, you know, Professor Monkey for a head in the game,
he is much more detailed than he is in the show.
And Queen Slug for her butt too.
Oh, I mean, yeah, Queen Slug for a butt.
She loses quite a lot of that butt to be able to even fit on this TV show.
And so Doug Langdale, this is a very old school cartoon setup.
So there's 23 episodes.
He wrote 16 of them.
he probably would have written 23 of them if all sorry he probably would have written all of them if he could
man it's just like muppet babies you just hire a guy and he write jeffrey scott in a room get him some
cocaine get him a typewriter 18 hours later you got 18 muppet babies they all teach a lesson and
you'll just you know send it you gotta send him to japan right now and get him to work on it but yeah
just i mean this is also why it's an odd duck for the kids the bbb lineup every other show had like
a head writer a writer's room this is just like doug working by
himself and a few of the scripts presumably are freelancers writing that he's tuning up yeah yeah i would
think langdale uh he's i mean he comes from the disney afternoon and he has the youthful energy like
he's he's he's in his mid 20s when he's doing this show so uh you can just spit that stuff out
and i think too that's why there's uh i think there's a cohesiveness of like running gags in
this too because langdale just remembers like oh yeah that's funny if i why not bring up haggis
again that was a funny bit when i did it three episodes ago
And, of course, the cow comes down at the end of every episode.
Ah, it's always great.
Yeah.
And, yeah, I think Langdale got a pretty good gig.
I probably didn't pay too well that horrible hours.
But, I mean, the amount of freedom he seems to have had in building this world to his very specific, I would say, Monty Python and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, heavily informed style comedy.
Like, he gets to just live it in this show.
Yeah, I gave him a chance to be a showrunner.
which he'd do in the future.
Before this show, though, he was on, like you said, Henry and Disney Afternoon stuff.
He was a story editor and writer on the Darkwing Duck series and the Aladdin series.
And I will say, yeah, it is like a sort of Darkwing duck level of a reverend humor with a superhero.
I didn't even think that maybe that's why Cummings is on this show too, that Jim Cummings, that he's, he works so well with him on Darkwing.
And I definitely think, I'd wonder if Tad Stones made him like a special like mentorship project because it was, it was on his shows like on Aladdin as well.
that he really gave Langdale a lot of opportunity for such a young guy.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find an interview with Langdale about this series,
but I can tell you what he did after.
So he co-created the short-lived series Project Geeker,
and then he would go on to create by himself the Weekenders and Dave the Barbarian.
And we have a, what a cartoon episode about the Weekenders,
which was one of the many kids doing stuff cartoons of the late 80s early odds.
Sorry, late 90s early odds.
Yeah, for a time right after September.
September 11th, 2001, for a time, it was the Shining Star, the Weekenders of one Saturday morning, like, with variety in a press release.
They called it the Pokemon killer, which really meant it beat Pokemon in the ratings one Saturday once.
And so, I mean, but Disney was smart.
You know, if you beat Pokemon once, get that in the trades and tell everybody like, Pokemon's over.
It's the weekenders now.
Variety will write a classy headline about it or a snappy headline.
And as we all remember, like, the Weekenders was just as popular as Pokemon.
Kids remember it just as strongly.
I just downloaded the new Weekenders game for my Switch.
Yeah.
The Weekender Snap is coming very soon.
Actual millennials love that cartoon.
We are fake millennials and that we are just, we are just a hair's breadth away from Gen X.
Yeah, yeah.
Though, I mean, I can see the appeal of that weekenders.
We had a good time watching.
And it also has a similar Earthworm Jim sense of humor of, like, randomness.
Definitely randomness.
And also just a kind of, I wouldn't call it like counterculture exactly, but definitely
like a looking down or at American society or just like, man, we're kind of shallow, aren't we?
Like those kind of thoughts, which I really loved in this episode, rewatching it.
Oh, on Langdale, I did want to say, too, if you guys want to watch on YouTube, he also has
uploaded like recent stand-up of his.
Oh, he does stand-up too.
Yeah, in the last year or something, I think he went to like, obviously not in 2020.
he went to some open mic nights and it seems like he was like hey i'm i'm trying to work out
my comedy yet and he had some funny like you know if you're worried about his politics or anything
he did a lot of fun like anti-trump and and pro-gay stuff so i'm like okay he's he seems at
least like cool hollywood liberal type in his i mdb picture he's got like a cool red mohawk yeah
though sometimes you know the you see guys with cool red mohawks and they they start telling you
about like, yeah, and conservatism is the new punk man.
Have you ever read Atlas Shrug?
You got to look at what their t-shirt says first.
After you see the Mohawk look down a little bit.
But, yeah, no, I couldn't find an interview.
He seems like a cool guy.
Still fairly young.
He got an early start and he's still writing to this day.
But I did want to talk about the voice cast before we go on to the cartoon because...
Oh, man, what a cast.
They brought out the big guns.
So number one, Earthworm Jim, Dan Castaneta, Homer Simpson himself, and also the false genie.
But to me, I like that genie.
There's far more hours of him as genie than there is Robin Williams.
Oh, so many more.
And he's the video game genie too.
Like, well, Robin Williams was him in one point click adventure before you correct you.
In Math Quest.
Yeah, it's fine.
But in Kingdom Hearts, Dan Castellaneta is the genie in it.
So, yeah.
And he is not, I don't feel like I've ever heard something where like Dan is phoning it in.
Even when he's having to do like Homer Simpson talks to investors at this meeting.
I feel like he's trying.
Like he just doesn't have it in him to.
take it easy. He is giving
it his all. I don't know if this is a role he could do
25 years later because Earthworm Jim is
always screaming. He is always
screaming. His maniacal
laughter he has to do, it's like, no, this is
every line that he does. Like,
it's not, it's not like the one time
every Simpsons episode where Homer has
to like go crazy or
whatever. This is every time he's like,
eat dirt you, brother!
Like, uh, that was hard for three seconds.
I think he was probably like around our age
when he was doing this role too. Yes, yeah.
But, yeah, so Dan Castellaneta as Earthworm Jim also mega, huge voice actors like Jeff Bennett.
He plays like the very John Cleese, Lord Bravery-style announcer.
It is just his Lord Bravery voice.
You're right.
I mean, yes, you're right.
It's just the enough of something completely different.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not even necessary.
I feel like that narration just removes animation from the equation.
Like, what if he talked over this establishing shot?
We could save 20 seconds of animation in every episode.
Yeah, it did lead to good jokes, too, of Jim just going.
like, excuse me, Mr.
narrator, what?
Like, he'd get mad at him sometime where they'd talk to each other.
That I always love the,
meanwhile, like, Peter Puppie is just like,
just average dude voice.
I'm pretty sure, like, that's also Jeff Bennett,
but I didn't look that up.
I believe so.
And he's Johnny Bravo, man.
Yeah.
It's funny that he's both,
he's the Pipsqueak Peter Puppie and the ultimate stud Johnny Bravo.
And he is Dexter's dad on Earthworm Gym on Dexter's lab.
He's great.
Oh, God.
Dexter's dad, one of the best.
I love that.
I love that voice.
Hey, he's also a very boomer comedy, like, magnet, Dexter's dad.
I mean, they live in, like, the 60s family, Dexter and Dede.
But, yeah, we have so many people on this cast.
Charlie Adler, of course, the first Buster Bunny.
The greatest.
Jim Cummings, who was Darkwing Duck, also Pete and, like, Winnie the Pooh,
like, the biggest cartoon characters Jim Cummings has voiced.
Yeah, he's psychro, but also he's two other, he's one of their most, like,
utility voices in this series
like I I was so glad in
watching this one to see
to see one character come back
in this and Jim Cummings I was like
I wonder how many times he played Santa
wouldn't it be fun to just point that out
but then I went to his IMDB and frankly he played
Santa too much so I can't count all the Santa's
he played but he played a lot of Santa's
I'm glad you investigated that because I
definitely watching this I was like
man he has to have played Santa
more than five times at least across
across multiple companies
According to like word find and replace or whatever on on Firefox, he played him at least 14 other times.
Wow.
And I, this is a really fun way of playing Santa.
I really, not to get ahead of ourselves, but I really like what they do with Santa.
I wish they played up as a sociopathie more.
Yeah.
Just what a jerk he is.
I think they put it right to the line of what would be allowed on a kids TV show.
I mean, honestly, I can't believe they let Santa be even this evil in a kids TV show.
But yeah, we also have.
have Kath Sousy, of course, and just so many other mega huge, you know, stars.
So, like, even like Ben Stein, Kevin Michael Richardson, Brad Garrett, Billy West, April
Rinchel, and Andrea Martin is a queen slug for a butt.
So, like, the famous comedian from SETV is in this as well.
She is the greatest.
I, when I hear her in this, I'm like, man, she should be voice acting and more stuff.
She's just so good.
I also loved her as Julie Klausner's mom on difficult people from a few years back.
She's great in that.
I mean, she's always awesome.
And I think she has cool choices in the stuff she makes, too.
Like, she's, when Hedwig and the Angry Inch came out, like, that would just be, you know, this weird gay musical thing.
But she was the most famous person in it and I think lended a lot more credit, early credibility to, you know, an underground queer film that really needed it.
I appreciate that, too.
She's really great in this.
In fact, I think they're more interested in her than in Jim in this episode because I feel like she's in it almost as much as he is.
Oh, yeah, yeah, they go, I mean, this is so late in the production.
They know that she's, she's not just there to be the evil cackling, like, queen.
She can just say tons of hilarious lines and sell them perfectly.
Like, yeah, that she's the opening sketch villain and the full episode villain.
It's quite a lot of slug for a butt for your dollar in this one.
And this was a cartoon meant to sell things.
And once it did its job, it went away, and it just served its purpose.
And it was fairly pleasant.
It was weird to see this kind of a cartoon this late.
I'm sure there are other ones,
but especially as part of this block,
this Toyetic cartoon, which Freakazoid made fun of,
it taught the kids of the world what Toyetic meant.
It was the next cartoon in the block.
Yeah, yeah, I think it is like the last of its kind,
along with, we had that with the Space Monkeys.
Yeah, that's right.
That was like one of the last, or street sharks.
It came, these ones that, once they come post-94,
they're trying to keep
the toy train going
but it had shifted
it had and what it shifted to
it wasn't the kids bought less toys
it's that they bought 17 of the same Batman
except a different color like that
as superheroes pretty much
just had fully taken it over
I think by the mid-90s
I mean they knew what they were doing
with the toys because like I said
there were five gym variants
and like a lot of the villains
were bundled together in the same sets
which as a young toy buyer
it bugged me because I was like I don't
I don't need a third version of Jim
because if I'm going to be playing out
stories Jim's not going to talk
to Jim all that much
Which battle damage version do you want?
I can't believe they got away with like
Yeah we own the evil Jim too
Which was just like it's just the same sculpt
But Green and they gave him a different head
I'm glad you brought him up
Because actually I do remember a few jokes
From this cartoon just from my youth
And one of them is
You know regular Jim is fighting evil Jim
And then regular Jim says
Wait a minute
if you're the Bizarro version of me, wouldn't you not want to win?
And he says, don't take things so literally or something like that.
But I was like, no one ever thought of pulling that on Bizarro Superman.
That's right.
Wouldn't you want to lose if you're the Bizarro version of me?
Oh, man, that's such a good joke.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's so many good jokes in the show.
I think they, like another of my favorites in an opening sketch, I forget the episode,
but the opening sketch is that they are going to save the president in the White House.
They go up to the guy, and he's just like a white guy with orange hair.
And Jim goes like, you don't look like the president.
And he says, I'm one of those generic presidents.
They put in TV shows so it doesn't date it and reruns.
I did.
That's another one I remember.
Yeah, there are some inspired moments.
I will say, like, the worst quality of the show is the animation, which it's a fairly
high-budget show for what it is.
But, again, the designs don't lend that well in animation, especially with the budget that's
being given to the show.
So, like, it's not visually that interesting.
And I think a lot of the visual jokes are messed with because of just the pipeline and the lack of money and how fast they had to make these.
I wouldn't call it like terrible or super cheap looking because we have watched Street Sharks or even like the Saban shows that had good writing like X-Men or Spider-Man.
You could tell they were stretching every dollar possible on screen.
This one, I mean, next to Freakazoid in the same hour long.
block this looks cheap very cheap definitely but in the realm of toys to be sold into syndication
uh like it it looks better i think it looks better than bucky o'hare oh i think so too yeah or like
to compare to a previous uh show we we mean you talked about our retronauts the uh sonic extreme
christmas blast like that that looks like dog shit compared to this yeah it's at least better
than that but i guess yeah being next to freaksoid like going from a tms freakazoid one
of the few.
Slamming into Earthworm Jim,
it was a jarring experience.
For sure.
So this is not streaming anywhere,
but there's still a DVD that's still in print,
and it's fairly cheap.
It's under 20 bucks.
So if you want all 23,
it's there.
But yeah,
like this series existed for 15 months to sell two games
and one toy line,
and that's what it did.
They don't want you to have any nostalgia for it
or anything like that.
And I think, too, it's,
I was really surprised it wasn't on Peacock.
Yeah.
Because it's a universal production
And Peacock is where
No one cares to watch
The Savage Dragon cartoon show
That was on USA Network
No one signs up for Peacock to see it
But it, along with say
The film Roman Felix Acad and other shows
They're just on Peacock to have another
Just chunk of content
Like hey, if you sign them, you can watch it
So I'm really surprised that
They don't have Earth from Jim in there
I wonder if it is like a partial rights thing
with Shiny that they didn't sign streaming
deals for that or something? It's a licensed character
they may have to reapply
for the license or whatever. Yeah, who knows
but I mean it's still, if you want to buy the DVDs
still available and of course if you type Earthworm Jim
and an episode title you might be able to find it online
because nobody really cares about this.
Yeah, yeah. There's not, though
you know, YouTube is more stringent than I thought
it would be. But they're
out there and the DVD set
it's a fine DVD set. At the very least
there's a lot of shows
like Mighty Max and others
that are just lost.
Like nobody even cared to dump television masters onto a disc.
God, yeah.
And it's like you can watch bad VHS reps of that show.
But that's another one that needs to be preserved.
But yeah, if you want to find it, it's out there.
So now we're on.
the episode itself for whom the jingle bell tolls.
I don't know if I mentioned this up front,
but this is the last episode of Earthworm Jam
because it was just like there were 10
for fall of 96. The 10th one
happened and it was the last one and it was
in December. So there you have it.
Man, that's a real like cheap out
like you don't even renew for 13.
You're like, we'll take 10 more.
Sure, fine. Yeah, what a slap
in the face. And one, it just
has to be the Christmas episode just
in case they are like, well,
we can rerun this forever. It's the Christmas
episode like it every cartoon show has to have a Christmas episode like that's how we're able to
talk about so many cartoon ones uh because that was just the demand of it it's pay dirt for us
i and i it's funny to chart the um level of sincerity going down like every year like the the
one the earliest ones is like the pacman one which is very sincere it's like oh the spirit of
christmas and even the super mario one is like it's still
The Spirit of Christmas thing.
But by Sonic, it's kind of joky.
And then this one is just, it dumps it all.
And the Sonic one, he becomes Santa Claus.
Yeah, Santa is very happy.
Like, you're Santa now.
All right.
Yeah.
I like how they point out in this one and just like everyone does this where we have to save Santa.
That is the plot of every one of these.
I love it.
I love that Peter Puppie knows that they are in a very stock idea of a Christmas episode.
Like, that's not the one where Santa is.
adapt. And the writer of this episode is John Loy. So on our other podcast, What a Cartoon. And yes, most of this episode is an ad for What a Cartoon, by the way. We do the same thing over there. But on that episode of Back to the Future of the animated series, we did the premiere of that one called Brothers. And the writer of that one, John Loy wrote this one. He was in the universal cartoon studios world.
Yeah, maybe he had some overall deal of like, yeah, you owe us six scripts. We'll tell you which series you're going to do it on. And yeah, he worked on other universal productions like Back to the Future.
the problem child cartoon
and a lot of land before time sequels
he wrote them himself
that was really what universal
I think is probably the only
real success they had because
those it turned into a joke
as a kid or as a
team getting older was like oh wow
land before time too I'm so excited
and then eventually land before time
14 come on they eventually
stop and I'm surprised like there's always
a market for those movies it was interesting
that they kept choosing to number them as
a new film instead of like making it
I mean the money sync had to be
the same as making it a regular TV
show but they they always
sold them as a direct to video movie they
were the OVAs of their time it's true
but the animation sucked yes
oh yeah but yeah so
John Loy he's been writing animation for
35 years still doing it today so
that's the guy behind this one
but this episode opens with a classic
decorating the house scene and of course
a joke that I always like even though it dates back to the
40s is your secret hideout
with a giant billboard and arrow pointing to it saying this is my secret hideout you're right
that joke is it's right there in the duck twicey cartoon and there it is there I and well there is
something uh that feels funny of just seeing a dan castlenetic character having an accident as
he puts the christmas lights on there's there's something to that too and his voice for jim we'll
hear it a lot I don't know how to describe it it's like it feels it feels uh completely unique
Dan voice to me. Yeah, I can't. I mean, it's like the manicness, if you, if you hear Homer say like,
go crazy, don't mind if I do. Like, that's kind of the voice. But it's also not exactly like for the
evil gym, it's his megavolt voice. Right. Yeah, that's just completely what it is. It feels like just
Dan's voice, but with more superhero bravado. Yeah. But then you can hear like crusty in his voice when he
goes crazy. When he goes crazy as Jim and screams. Okay. The crusty comes through.
in there. But yeah, I think it's a they, he found an original voice to give to this lead, which
is the biggest demand of being the lead in a show like this. Like, you really, I mean, I guess
you could get away with it. If it, if it just sounded exactly like, Krusty, what's Disney going
to do? Sue him, like, it's just a man's voice. But, uh, you're expected to have, to bring something
unique to it. And he definitely is a star of the show and more ways than one. So much. Yeah.
And they hit the eat dirt catchphrase so early. Right. Yeah. Well, I'm sure.
groovy was said on this
at some point. It's in
it's in the opening every time
and I feel like he says it a bit
but eat dirt turned into his thing
like eat dirt you blah blah blah blah blah blah
I watched a
on YouTube there was a
seven minute compilation I think of
every time he said eat dirt or
eat yogurt or some play on
it and my favorite
part of every eat dirt was he go like
eat dirt and then he would just
cackle maniacally while blasting
his gun in every direction.
They're so lucky they gave him a laser gun to shoot because he fires that thing a lot.
Though bug me, the rules of car, he got to shoot it more than most characters get to shoot guns
and cartoons in the 90s, but he never gets to hit any or very rarely gets to hit stuff.
I think they got away with more violence than most shows did, like definitely more than
the turtles got away with in their like, you know, most cartoonish days.
Yeah, because Jim can fire his gun at someone, but they turn into like, you know, in a loony
tunes when you get blown up by dynamites, basically, just like a pile of.
of ashes. Yeah, maybe that was their
loophole. They're like, hey, this is no more
violent than what happens in those Bugs Bunny
cartoons airing on ABC at the same time.
And Jim's voice in the games
is way different than this before Dan
showed up. Really? Yeah, it's like, ow!
Like, it's like a weird Texas twang.
Yes, yeah. And I was
thinking about it a lot this morning. It's just like, why was it
funny that he said groovy? Is it because we
weren't saying groovy in the 90s? Was that the joke?
I mean, it could also be that
they enjoyed the film
Army of Darkness and Evil Dead, too.
I think Duke Newcomb said it first.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
I'm sorry.
Duke Hucum, the inventor of Umpstay and gruey.
Chewing bubble gum, kicking ass.
He said all those things.
Yeah, and tearing off someone's head and crapping down it.
Like, he did it all that Duke Nukum, a real innovator.
Should have been a lawsuit.
But so, yeah, this is when during this house decorating scene,
Queen's slug for a butt shows up.
We hear her entire, entire name in this next clip.
Queen pulsating, bloated, festering, sweaty, pus-filled,
malformed slug for a butt.
Earthworm.
Jim?
I shall destroy you!
And you too, you mutt!
Hey, you made me toss my cookies.
Eat, festive dirt!
Get this spoiler of holidays!
Wait!
I almost forgot.
For me? You shouldn't have.
Oh, twernt nothing.
is so sweet
you gave me that last year
so it's some nice
luny tunes humor and I was
I was thinking Dan's screaming voice
for Earthworm Jim reminds me of the
when do we get the freaking guns guy
yeah yeah actually I think his
his militarism and once
it's like gun shooting is probably
very similar to him
I mean on the tort nothing I hear
a little of rich Texan in there
but yeah it's just him
screaming and laughing
is he like there's the secret to him playing earthworm jim is that he is a mentally unhinged
violent man who just happens to be uh the good guy of this cartoon show there are definitely some jokes
they wouldn't make today on this show oh yes yeah you totally right jim is very troubled but uh they got
away with a you made me tossed by cookies joke too yeah that's cute in the same cold opening with
the p joke we'll get too later but yeah there's a there's an action set piece basically like jim
throws a snowman display over her wraps her with christmas lights pulls the christmas lights flops her
into a sled and then straps his rocket that we see in the games to that whole mess and
blast her off and threw his secret headquarters sign into space.
And then it turns into a salsa hut stand instead, which, you know, the green and red,
it works for a Mexican restaurant sign or for a Christmas lights.
It's Tom's Mexican salsa hut, which is a nice antigram, I guess.
Oh, that is good, yeah.
And also, I mean, the comedy of a man named Tom running a salsa hut.
That's funny, too.
And I guess that's when we get to the scene where they're talking about the meaning of
Christmas. And there's like a little aside where Jim spots Peter's name written in the snow.
I mean, it's not like yellow, but you understand the joke. Yeah. And I mean, especially the reaction
shot of Peter going like, ooh, like that. I was, I was honestly shocked. Like I think as a kid,
I didn't get that, you know. And yeah, so Jim talks about we still have the true meaning of Christmas
and Peter says, pretending to like all the lousy presents you get. And he says, you got it, Fuzz, buddy.
So we're taking down Christmas in 1996.
I love you.
This is an incredibly cynical cartoon by 96 kids' cartoon standards.
And I like that Peter will put that into practice at the end of the episode by pretending to like a gift he is given.
And then we get the Earthworm Jim song, and I'll just drop that in right here.
Earthworm Jim.
The soil he did crawl.
Earthworm Jim.
A super super fall.
Jim was just a dirt eating chewy, chewy length of worm flash.
but all that came to a crash again.
Earthwork Jim!
He's such a grovey guy.
Earthwork Jim!
He rockets through the sky.
Cruising to the universe, having lots of fun.
Here comes Earth and Jimmy know that he's a mighty one.
The Earth!
Despite his great big muscles and his really big way gun.
Jim is still an earthworm, but then he's the only one.
With a super suit to make him really super strong
Jim can be a winner if we only sing a lot
All right!
Hurtworm Jim!
We think he's mighty fine.
A hero for all time!
Earthworm!
Earthworm!
Hurtworm!
Hurtworm Jim!
Three, four,
Geroovey!
It's a nice way to kill a minute, I'll say that.
And it does capture the general tone
of the W.B. show surrounding it,
except it doesn't name a thousand characters.
characters. Yeah, you know, I didn't even consider it being of the type of the freakazoid or animaniac
opening, but it is like, say, it, it also does follow the rules of TMNT of repeat the name over and over again,
so kids remember it, but I, boom, Jim. You think he might, he fine. Yeah, that it, it, it shows you
every villain, but doesn't name them, but it, and just seeing them go around the other stages from
the game, I like, I mean, this is, compare it to.
Super Mario Bros. Super Show where you go to like freaking, you know, Sumo Land or whatever,
I think it is, this is much more true to whatever lore is in the video games as far as that goes.
And I always love the cutaway of he activates Peter Puppies' Evil Side and then it cuts to him sleeping as a joke about censorship.
They're like, well, we can't show him tearing Jim apart.
That little interlude with him sleeping in a hammock and inhaling a butterfly is.
very funny and very well animated.
I will say that. They saved the best animation for up front
like they normally do. Yeah. And a little
bit in the credits at the end of him
like smashing his head against the wall.
Occasionally you can get a little
good animation of a floppy wormhead
squishing around. And
if they had a little more money, I think they could have done
more with hats. Oh, and also
the drawings of him is like
with the big
50s hair or also him
in the snail body. Like that's
very fun. Those are cute drawings. And I remember
I had a weird memory of this
and that my friend in like 95
had a computer with a CD-ROM drive
and back in that day
some magazines would come on a CD-ROM
like this magazine called Blender
and I remember they had like a thing about cartoons
like a feature about cartoons
on the CD-ROM magazine
and the Tick was on the cover of the magazine
but they also talked about Earthworm Jim
and they had the entire opening
you could watch so we watch it over and over
in a little put-time window
you could watch being able
able to watch an opening whenever you felt like it was magical at a certain time.
It was probably the worst quality ever. It was like lesser than an animated gift, but we had
fun with it in 1995. I wish me and my brother taped this off TV. We didn't. So even though we really
enjoyed Earthroom Jim and rewatch those VHS episodes of that handful, there are many we don't. I have
like some that I have super memorized because they run those VHS tapes and ones that are more, uh, that
are a lot more spotty just because
I watched him in reruns and never taped
him off TV. Like this one. So now we're
more than three minutes in. The episode can fully
starts. And the cold opening is
such a fun sheet eat up time, isn't it? Oh, yeah.
They're always fine. Usually
they aren't even connected to the second
segment. And I mean, this basically
isn't because queen slug for a butt
doesn't treat. The first
one is having just happened.
But other times it's like, oh, he'll
fight Cycro in the
opening two minute thing. And
then the rest of the episode he's fighting the fishbowl guy whatever his name was yeah i mean the characters are so thin
that it's it's honestly i'm surprised they went with full length episodes for them and not like shorts you know
yeah just uh the uh the 11 minute thing would work better but you know maybe then you got a the pay scale gets different and it's like what are you paying you know landel to do uh 20 or sorry 44 11 minute things that might cost you more money than 23 uh 20 i got i got to see that contract but we're at the beginning of the
episode, and we're on Insectica, which I don't remember from the games, but that's where
Queen Slug for a Bud lives.
And earlier we heard Jim say her entire name, which is actually the factual name of the
character, but we don't say it all the time.
And in 96, it felt to have a regular character with the word butt in their name seemed,
that was a little rival.
That's 1130 territory, buddy.
We're not airing that at 9.
Maybe that's really why it's on at 1130.
You need, you can say putty tat all you want, but you can't say Slug
for a bud. Can you say potty emergency?
A potty emergency?
So yes, she's engaging in unspeakably
vile activity exercise. And we see
her engaging in some light
aerobics and she feels good about herself
and that's the important thing, which is like a
body positive message for 96, I will
say. Yeah, it feels like a joke
about the self-actualizing
fitness tapes of the Jane Fonda era
for sure. And especially
the idea of like, well, you shouldn't
feel good about yourself because you have a giant
slug butt. But I
I also, whenever I see your scepter, I'm reminded of another just great gag in the show
was that I forget why it was a road trip episode where they go to a stuckees and they buy a nut log
and they find out that you can't eat it.
It can't even be like cut or change in any way.
So at the end of the episode, Erthirm Jim realized how he can beat her.
He throws the nut log at her super powerful scepter and it is tougher than her scepter even and shatters it.
That's another joke I remember.
Yeah, we were never subjected to.
these nut logs or the fruit cakes we'll see
at the beginning or so at the end of the episode
of like our generation missed these things
when I think of that nut log yeah I never bought one
but I knew it as a Sam and Max hit the road
joke too like you can very
all of these same Steve Purcell Langdell
all these guys came from the same
you know road trip with your
with your parents through the 70s
lifestyle they
we we live different lives
of going nowhere and buying toys
and watching cartoons like this yeah
so yeah the queen has this
this little assistant called the archbug, her palace loony,
and this is how she finds out all about Christmas.
It's quite simple, actually.
Santa Claus travels to every home on earth in one night,
leaving gifts for every good little girl and boy.
And...
Hang on!
The toads of fate are one thing.
But that's just plain ridiculous.
But your festerence, he has a magical flying sleigh.
A magical flying sleigh.
Well, why didn't you say so?
in the first place.
My mistake, your
blooditude?
I mean, it sounded so absurd,
but once you mention the magical sleigh,
it all made perfect sense.
Yes, I have it on the highest authority
in the universe.
Earth television.
Your ending,
Borgen, Sinterklaas?
Ufftah!
Now, tell Paul the truth,
or Santa Claus will leave a lump of coal in.
and you're stalking.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Right, pop.
Today's topic, kids who caught their moms kissing Santa Claus and moms who are proud of it.
So.
That's dirty.
Yeah.
Though I guess she's proud that she kissed her husband, you know.
But to tell, to have it be the parents, the mom telling their kid, I'm proud I kiss Santa Claus.
I'm glad you saw it.
But that's weird.
It took me a while to realize.
that song was about
the kids saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus
because that was actually the dad
dressed up as Santa.
That's growing up is learning that
that's what that song is always about.
Santa's dead but your dad gets kisses.
Your kid, yeah, at least be
happy your dad got
sexually rewarded for dressing up his
Santa Claus. I mean that is a good
that a father would even
be that involved in helping with gifts
and then to not only help lay out
the gifts but dress up his Santa Claus
in case his kids catch him doing
that we've lost these values of society
but yeah I always
parents should dress as Santa Claus before they lay
out those toys never happened to me
but yeah I like I always like to see
the irreverence about Santa Claus and kids stuff
where when you are I don't know
seven or eight you start to question these things like wait a minute
how could he do this this and this
but apparently the magic sleigh is what makes
it make sense to Queen Slug Furibut
yeah I like that for her
that as they get the edge
up to questioning the reality of it
many times and then the joke
has to be like well no an even sillier thing explains why it's true like that kid though who
is being warned about the colonist stocking he knows it all he's like yeah sure dad like but i mean
on that's as close as you can get to on a kid show back then you obviously couldn't say
santa claus isn't real like you could never you wouldn't get away with that and i'd see that
as like i don't know it's weird for me that i would i'd be more upset if a kid show said that
if they said Jesus is a lie or whatever,
anything about a religion.
That's, I guess,
I guess consumerism is much more my religion than,
than Christ.
In this episode,
Santa Claus is real.
He's a real bastard.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Oh, and I also,
I do just love the light of like,
I have it on the highest authority
of the universe,
Earth television.
This actually reminds me a lot of Santa Claus
conquers the Martians.
Whoa.
When, like,
another planet wants Santa Claus
and they find out about him through TV.
Well, you're right.
You know,
I wouldn't be surprised.
if this is an intentional reference to that
because that was, you know,
the kitsy garbage TV that they,
that those kids grew up.
I'm like,
when MST3K mocked it,
I would think a lot of,
of boomers watching it then knew it as like,
oh, yeah,
that terrible film.
That had to be a staple of like Saturday afternoon programming for decades.
So yeah,
Queen Slug for a Butt wants to capture Santa Claus,
uses power to conquer the earth,
and then we go to the North Pole.
And there's Santa Claus,
he's there, of course,
and he's examining this,
fashion doll beach house, but there's a little
problem, and that problem is it all fits
together perfectly. So he orders an elf
to remove a single part
from each box after smashing the beach house.
So we see some nice commentary
on this, the shoddy
merchandise the show is trying to sell, I guess.
Oh, yeah. I love that joke.
Why is it hard for parents to put
together a dollhouse or build any
toy for their kid ahead of time?
Well, it's because Santa intentionally
does it to drive them insane.
He's like, this is a
cruel taskmaster a couple times they play him as just regular Santa but I much prefer him as
a guy who has elves that are basically his serfs who he tortures and and also he wants to drive
parents insane I was never a part of that sort of situation where you see the TV commercials
your parents help you put it together it's like my parents were not helping me I had to learn
these things on my own well now it is the responsible parent doesn't put them together they
take the video game console out of the box beforehand and update it the night before.
That's an important Christmas lesson for all of you parents out there.
Download those firmware updates.
Otherwise, you're going to be waiting until noon on Christmas Day or whatever day you open gifts during the holiday season.
And you're going to be waiting a long time to update everything.
And then also download all the games you purchased.
Well, Billy, cyberpunk needs to update.
Look, I know you really wanted Miles Morales.
It hasn't copied off the disc yet.
I'm sorry.
So we also see some more scenes of Santa Claus abusing his help.
So he calls the elf to help him take out or just basically take the parts out of the boxes.
All the sea parts.
He also is like, take off my boots.
And then when the elf is reluctant, he goes, don't cross me, boy.
Oh, God, yeah.
Later we find out the, they leave it to your imagination what he does with figgy pudding.
But I like to assume it's waterboarding.
Let's say that.
Yeah, yeah.
That's the, I guess, least offensive option.
Look, I want it to be that that hole that gets messed with when I'm talking about here.
So while this is happening, Queen's like for a butt knocks down his wall, comments on his foot odor.
And she tells them she's going to be transforming him from the symbol of good to the symbol of ultimate evil.
I should be using more dogs are barking to mean feet smell bad.
They usually mean your feet just hurt.
Yeah, I've never heard dogs are barking for like feet stench.
I like the idea that barking, which is sound, translates to a strong odor somehow.
What smells like boot feed in here?
And then we are at the Turlock Mall.
And I was like, Turlock, what does that mean?
I googled it.
Turlock is the town they live in.
So I don't think it means anything outside of that.
I would have figured it be some sort of joke, like Frostbite Falls or whatever.
It's not like, again, not in the games.
Jim does not live in a house in the games.
But yes, here is Jim at the mall.
Coming through one side.
Lady with a baby.
Jim, you have to wait in line for Santa like everybody else.
Oh, but the longer I wait, the weather Santa's lap gets.
You know, this Santa guy's very suspicious,
especially the naughty and nice thing.
You know, who is he to judge us anyway?
I'm not to kick his butt.
But my inedible fruitcake of seasonal delight,
that's not the real Santa.
Not the real?
Santa? No. Mall Santas are merely the actual Santa's duly deputized representatives
ordained in a mysterious arcane ceremony held under cover of darkness at the North Pole.
I'm told the whole thing is very spiritual and touching.
So, how does the real Santa know what you want for Christmas?
I'm glad you asked, Princess. The mall Santas are connected to him via a psychic link,
which operates through their magical, phony beards.
Where did you hear all this anyway?
The voices in my head called me.
So our hero is clinically insane.
Yes, yeah.
But, yeah, Dan makes any line reading 38% funnier.
I've heard it's very spiritual.
I love it.
It's very spiritual.
Yeah, that he shifts.
Jim can just shift into another voice as needed.
He's mostly his voice.
But, yeah, and I forgot the Princess What's Her Name is kind of like this.
she's written to be like this hippie outsider
or just somebody who questioned society at most turns
she's like is this what your human society does
I don't understand
They had to make something of her
Because the joke in the games was
She's just a nothing
She's just like the McGuffin
Yeah yeah I mean with rock and bod
But just yeah she's
The point that she's a what's her name is
Is all
That's how useless she is as a character
I'll tell you what I googled her to be like
You know what did she look like in the games
I got a lot of images
I wasn't expecting
They search on for that one.
Just the warning for all of you out there.
Man, I mean the another episode I watched had them all get like inflated.
It was like inflation porn as well.
It was that monkey for a head blasts people with his fat rain.
So it turned everybody fat.
I am quote unquote glad you brought that up.
I think I've talked about this before.
But when I'm doing research about cartoons,
often there will not be any images of the cartoon except on one place,
the inflation wiki
if Max from Goof Troop got inflated
he'll be there every frame of it
every one of that yeah I've
I have found it
I've been taken to other
specific fetish websites
not just for that like also the
the one I always remember was
I could not find any footage
of this one
time only aired
basically it was a
the Justice League but the Sunny and Share
show kind of thing but the only
plays I could find it was a specific
YouTube that's only about
women in tall boots
it had every clip of the
characters who are women in tall
boots and that it was just every frame that they
were on. No I mean no shame that's a wholesome
fetish. Yeah I don't want to judge that at all.
You know I was looking at Dan Castlenet as IMDB
and after the 90s he did
not really do as much voice acting I wonder why he
got so into it because he is on so many things
as regular characters often the lead of the show
but yeah maybe he was just
trying to show the Simpsons, you know, producers, like, I can do other stuff, pay me more.
Yeah, I think he, you know, was, he was a work-a-day voice actor who I think got a certain
more level of prestige, but I mean, I do think it was that they got a big, they got a big raise
at the end of the decade, and that was why he could be more choosy.
I don't need to go anywhere else.
No more worm work for me.
Though it was special, like in Duck Tales, uh, 2017, when Megavolt said like two lines, they
did they did get him back for it oh really he came back i still need to watch those just for
one of them i think in the more recent one were megavolt's in it uh he is not megavolt but though
they still got back mike bell to be a quacker jack so jim jumps on santa's lap and it turns out
to be his old cellmate walter which i guess jim has a history of being in prison yes so i believe
he gets wrongly accused of something they take away his super suit and put him in jail and so
Wallace, I remember very well because
the way that Jim Cummings said,
Dental Flath.
But I look back on it now
and that was the
children's TV show version
of a don't drop the soap kind of
joke that he turns Jim
into dental floss is what he does
as his prison cellmate.
I figured it was one of those styles of jokes.
I'm surprised kids cartoons in the 90s could do.
Yes, yeah.
It was kind of shocking, honestly,
to think back on it now.
but I just remember how cute it was to hear Jim Cummings as this snagletooth monster man.
And I love, too, in the shot of him or the ordaining of other Santas,
it's a payment of money to Santa at a cash register that just lets people be them.
I also think that shot of Peter Puppie, that's supposed to be the kids at home who are just like,
that's not the real Santa?
I guess it draws into the lore of like, when you start figuring things out as a kid,
I even heard this, like the helper thing.
Yeah, yeah.
But the helper thing is now just like a very strange, just kind of cultish thing where there are psychic powers involved.
Well, I mean, I hate that elf on the shelf thing.
That's what my least favorite.
I'm glad I never lived through that era.
As I look at that from the outside and be like, what are you doing to your children?
It's getting them used to the surveillance stage.
Like, you were always watched.
I guess if you can comfort them and obviously you can't get rid of the surveillance state.
So I guess it helps them deal with it better.
But yeah, no, I was just thinking of that whole thing of that you have to say,
Oh, no, they're Santa's helpers.
It all just stumps from like a mall decided decades ago.
We're going to have Santa added and that brings kids there and then their parents spend money.
And then once, you know, it spread out so much, you were able to know that like, well, wait, my friend saw a different Santa at a different mall.
And you have to then make up a cover for this consumerist bullshit that is all just about bringing people into a mall.
Is Santa being visited this year?
Is he, like, in a hazmat suit?
What's the situation there?
Are you Zoom chatting with Santa?
I bet there has to be like, pay five bucks you zoom chat with Santa.
For sure, there has to be.
Though, I mean, I feel, I do feel bad for those mall Santa guys, like, who they grow their beard all year.
And now, but then again, like, they are at the most at risk.
Like, they can't, an actual old man should not be being touched by all those people.
They already were disease sponges.
Yes, yeah.
All those kids coughing and sneezing.
They make jokes about the kids just getting liquids on Santa.
Yeah, that's the second piss joke in this episode, actually.
But, yeah, at this point in the episode, Walter, the Jim's former Selma gets an alert on his psychical beard.
So what was true?
Yeah.
Jim heard in his head was true.
Jim is crazy, but that part was true.
And Jim wants a pony.
So it's weird to hear a Dan Castellan of a character want a pony.
Oh, yeah.
He's a steal that from Lisa.
It's a great run through the whole episode, his wish for a pony.
And, oh, sorry, and Walter calls him floppy dischead?
Oh, yeah, that was what he called him in prison, too.
And he calls him former dental floss as well.
Okay, I couldn't make it out, but I think it's pretty risky to call someone a disc head.
They were getting away with that.
I mean, there's another bit in here that, like, fully sounded like they said a dirty word.
But it's, I just love Jim's childlike excitement at Santa Claus, that it makes Peter the much more mature of the two
of them, as it usually was.
Sort of like, let's say,
no, Peter Griffin and Brian.
He actually is the exact same
combo. Investigate. Investigates
McFarlane. He ripped this off.
So Jim assembles his stalwart
lumberjacks to save Santa and his pony
and they arrive at the North Pole.
And gasp of horror,
Santa is gone.
Santa is gone. And no Santa
means, no
Christmas. How well, at least
we still have Hanukkah and Kwanza.
You don't understand, puppy boy.
Without Christmas, the U.S. economy will collapse.
Anarchy will rain.
And I won't get my pony.
Your point?
We are doomed.
Doomed, I tell you, doomed for those keeping score at home.
Yeah!
Wow, so amazing screaming.
That's why I cut that clip out.
But I love the moral, which is like, Christmas needs to exist so the U.S. economy won't collapse.
Yeah, we're...
We need it to live.
We're really tested it this year in 2020, I think.
But yeah, it's...
We've broken every other holiday so far.
That this...
It's funny we just did that South Park very crappy Christmas that has the same, same moral to the story there.
But yeah, to see in a 1996 kids cartoon, Earth, Jim just screaming like, no, it's that it's to prevent the fall of the American economy and prevent anarchy.
And Peter is right to point out, it's like, well, there are other holidays in December.
It's like, that doesn't matter.
matter. Yes, yeah. I mean, too, that that felt very progressive or countercultural to be like, well, there are other. I mean, this is a Christmas episode, but there's more than just Christmas, you know. So after the act break, Jim questions these elves that are left behind. They're playing cards. And Jim accuses them of just letting Santa disappear. But they all say, you know, like, we keep our eyes on our work. Because if we slack off, you know, what happens? And it's, uh, Ficky pudding goes somewhere. Yeah. At the end of this episode, the, they make Santa too nice like this. There's not a.
consistency to Santa
they can make him crueller throughout
but I like how bad he treats
the elves I'd like to see the elves
unhappy with Santa's return
I also like their line that they're like
we just say we're elves to pick up chicks
and then the way the way Dan says
does it work like that's funny
even a little is what the elf says
it's such a clever clever little bit
there and that yeah the elves are just like
A-holes I wonder if that was a
sensor note to like have the elves say
they're not really elves in case kids
at home are heartbroken that the
L's are like these poker playing jerks
who get treated horribly all the time.
They've all been tortured.
Yeah.
And so from this scene, we go to the personifications
of abstract concepts club.
And you and I just watched Citizen Kane.
So zooming into the top of a skylight of a building
and then fading into the scene below.
That was a Citizen Kane thing.
Oh my God.
That's a Susan Alexander introduction.
They do that twice in that movie.
So it's been in my brain.
I'm like, did you just steal a shot from Citizen Kane?
And I think they did, which is fine.
I think so.
Yeah.
And the name personification of abstract concept club,
that is a very hitchhiker's guide joke too, yeah.
And I like that.
I mean, to me, I had only started watching Monty Python at the time.
So I think I knew the flavor of comedy,
but I didn't know it was like a full-on just, you know,
Americanization of that very dry British wit about things.
For sure.
And in this next clip, it's important to point out that at the table next to Jim and the Gang,
there's the Easter Bunny, Death, Cupid.
and the Tooth Fairy.
Santa, sure, I've seen Santa.
In every stinking shopping mall,
and every stinking street corner,
at the end of every stinking Christmas parade.
To go, boy.
I even saw a stinking cartoon about him.
Oh, man, I hope they didn't do that same old worn-out story
where Santa gets kidnapped and...
Do I detect a note of jealousy?
Hey, I worked just as hard as that overgrown pixel.
But do I get all the media attention?
No!
But didn't I see you in some Swedish movie?
Oh, Swedish! Big Wow!
And was I played by Buryolives?
I don't think so.
Begging your pardon there, Jim.
I don't mind the vicious mauling, but you spilled my milk.
Have you asked me, Santa Gottma was coming to him.
We have like two drunk characters in the scene.
Yeah, there's not, I don't think there's even the usual trick they have of like a cart
next to them that says eggnog or whatever.
To make it clear, this is not alcohol.
Or like signs for root beer in the background.
Like, uh, Rudolph is drinking a yellowish liquid out of a pint class.
He is drunk.
Like, yeah.
I think death was a little lit too.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
His complaining is so great.
I love that, like, there have been other sketches about, you know, the Easter Bunny or whatever, jealous of Santa Claus.
But the idea that death itself is like, I'm not as popular as Santa Claus.
Like, that's so funny.
And to get in a seventh seal joke, too, is something else.
That's pretty classy.
I think maybe as a youngster, I could get it of just that I knew it was a reference to Bill and Ted's bogus journey at the very least.
And Animaniacs did an episode with that guy.
Oh, yeah.
That's right.
But the noise you heard in the background is like after Jim elbows Peter to shut up about the premise of the plot, Peter flies off screen and then he transforms into the monster.
We don't see it.
And that's why he jumps back on as the monster.
Worst level in that entire series is the Peter Puppy level.
I defy you to finish that level.
It sucks.
I mean, that underwater part of the little glass bowl, like that, the tension of that one is horrible too.
But yes, Peter Puppie, it's one of the most aggressive, like, escort things you'll ever do in a game of that era.
And it's just no fun.
It makes me mad.
It's so horrible annoying.
And it really feels like both of those levels are just, we can't let you beat this on a rental.
Like, we got to make this too hard for you.
So they talk to Rudolph.
He's incredibly drunk, a nice Charlie Adler drunk voice.
And basically, he points out the true lesson of the famous stop motion Rudolph and the famous stop motion.
Rudolph and the famous song and everything in that.
Santa thinks you're a freak until he needs your disability to help him.
And then you're his pal for one night.
I love that.
Yeah, it was so new a thought at the time to be like, actually, like now it's so boring.
I mean, yeah, Data Gold has the best bit about that, about that entire special.
I don't call that a penis.
I call it a freak maker.
No, yeah.
But now seeing, I think I saw like somebody did an article like this year of,
they ever watch the Rudolph special is actually kind of bad or it teaches the wrong lesson it just
feels so old to me now i feel like i've been talking about for three decades but i also love the term
a hard reindeer is going to fall that's funny and also any joke that gets to mock rush limbaugh on a
kid's cartoon you teach the right lesson uh yeah rudolph tells jim santa was kidnapped by an insect
with a butt the size of a macy's balloon and uh jim goes rush limbaugh uh good joke good joke uh so yes
They head off to Insectica, and the queen is trying to brainwash all the good out of Santa.
So it's like basically a brainwashing montage where he's strapped down sort of like clockwork orange style.
Surrounded by swirling lights.
His cacophony of sound is around him with all of these voices speaking of horrible Christmas moments.
Like a kid talking about getting socks and underwear, a wife saying, honey, the tree's on fire.
And a dad complaining about not being able to find Tab C, which was the thing that Santa wanted out of the fashion model beach house.
They're making Santa see the pain he causes on Christmas.
The tingles of Christmas tension, one would say.
Oh, I love that short.
And they do, like, CIA tactics of driving someone crazy, too.
The, that they reveal that he is having a hard metal rock music blasted at him in a room is insane.
It's a great, like, ACDC sound alike by Jim Cummings, too.
Yes, yeah, that's great.
And then they were able to get away.
first they are able to get away with a horrible Santa who wants to drive parents crazy and
teaches and treats elves like property and now they are also letting them do a like three minutes
of torture of Santa Claus on screen.
We don't do as many torture jokes anymore on kids cartoons ever since we found out we do
it ourselves.
Yeah, you could make torture jokes when it's like, well, we're talking about how people
in other countries do torture or like, hey, you were at 1984.
this is a parody of like that British thing about torture.
But now after, you know, 9-11 and we just have to accept like, well, yeah, we just do it.
We torture more people than anybody.
The kids don't need to know.
Yeah.
But, yes, in this next scene.
So there's like three jokes about this.
The third one is basically old-fashioned hypnosis.
She's trying to get Santa to say, I am an evil death-dealing doom machine.
But, again, Santa resists, but she accidentally hypnotizes the archbug who zaps her and she zaps him back.
Yeah.
Now, he says, you could just snap your fingers.
Where's the fun in that?
And now it's time for drastic measures.
So the final torture has the queen implanting a microchip into Santa Claus to make him her elderly overweight slave.
And is this- Who couldn't use one of those?
Exactly.
I love that.
And is a wrath of con thing?
The thing in the air?
It is.
You're right.
By putting it in specifically in the ear, it is totally a rat the con thing.
Which, again, definitely fits the generation of comedy here.
Though, yeah, you know what?
There is a joke about Batman's that is strange.
to me. It shows, I guess, what public opinion
was in 96.
Because, oh, let's hear it. I have the clip.
Okay. Now I must test him to see if he's
truly evil.
Repeat after me.
Good is bad.
Bad is good.
Good is
bad. Bad is good.
Val Kilmer was okay, but
for my money, nobody fills a pair of tights like Adam West.
Val Kilmer was okay, but for my money,
nobody fills a pair of tights
like Adam West.
Yes, he is truly evil.
Now we'll visit every home on Earth,
just as Santa does every year.
But instead of gifts,
he'll bring mind control microchips.
All the good little girls and boys of Earth
will be my mindless slaves.
Okay, Pilgrim, saddle up!
Yeah, what's your Batman opinion, Henry?
So I think this reflects an interesting time for Batman movies, which was, so they treated
as evil.
The evil choice is saying that Adam West would be better than Val Kilmer.
So I think this reflects a weird time in Batman fandom where if you were a hardcore Batman
fan, you wanted him dark and cool and not for little kids.
You didn't, even though the Adam West Batman show is like the perfect comment.
and one of the funniest, like, camp things that has ever existed,
the idea that Adam West Batman made Batman less cool.
So if you welcomed him as like, if you say, oh,
Adam West is actually the best Batman,
you are demeaning the coolness of Batman by saying Adam West is the best one.
And public opinion has shifted so much on that now.
It's crazy to think they would be a joke about how the evil choice would be preferring
Adam West of Al Kilmer, like it would be.
completely be inverted like a year later. I think so. I think now the evil Batman
choice is Ben Affleck. Did anyone actually like him as Batman? Uh, you know, I think I've,
I've heard some contrarians who like him, but I mean, he is, as a Batman goes, uh, he is the most
like, um, like Elon Musk a Batman is, I suppose, which is some people like that. I don't. But
yeah, he's, he's basically like, this is a bad, uh, Ben Affleck is a Batman who drinks and has
casual sex, and then he punishes himself by doing CrossFit.
So after she says saddle up, that's when Jim, Peter, and the princess blast the hole through
the wall.
Her sin and napping days are over, or are they?
Because she takes a hostage, the archbug.
And I like how Peter says, that's a bad guy.
So Jim just shoots the hostage.
So classic speed protocol, shoot the hostage.
That's so hilarious, hell.
I was thinking, like, what other shows would get away with a shoot the good guy shoots
the hostage, Joe?
But luckily, like, we've seen him get blasted before in this episode.
So we know, like, he just turns into, like, a Looney Tune Blub, Black Blob.
But, man, yeah, I, like, even thinking about it now, the rules that are on all these shows,
Jim got to pull the trigger on his laser gun and hit someone and blast them.
Like, you never get to do that, even in the comedy ones.
This is 1130 territory.
Things get weird before noon.
So, yes, after shooting the hostage, the Queen crushes them with her giant butts, thanks to her aerobics.
That has to be on a fetish website, too.
Oh, yeah.
Look for the giant slug butt wiki.
I'm sure it's on there.
Why in the crushing part, too?
Oh, for sure, for sure.
So the queen escorts Sando away, and Jim says he can kiss his pony goodbye.
And there's a very strange joke where Peter is still crushing.
He goes, never kiss a pony.
Yeah, that's a good.
I like that.
Does he have a history?
Like, it went bad for him when he kissed the pony?
You know, I don't think he's kissed.
I don't recall other jokes where he kissed a pony.
Or he's just like, Jim, that's gross.
Don't kiss a pony.
Also, this was the bit where it really sounded to me,
thanks to the voice effect they were doing on Santa.
It sounds like he says fuckers instead of suckers to me.
The sound mix on this show is very noisy to the point where I started watching it with headphones halfway through
because there's just so much noise happening.
Yeah, I did this all with headphones.
Also, in general, the acting, I think, is really good because it does feel like everybody's together.
I think it was the full cast.
And after this, the queen leaves with Santa and leaves Jim and the gang behind.
She pulls this lever and all these doors slide up and these arm bugs come out.
Also, I don't think those are in the games either, these guys.
No, they're not even toys either.
In fact, they're just very generic looking, just like Stormtrooper guys.
It looks like you just buy a bucket of those or something.
Their target practice for Jim pretty much.
So Act 3 begins, and this is when they take out all of these bugs.
It's the night before Christmas, and all through insectica, not a creature is stirring.
Unless you count the zerps who are about to blast our heroes into a cloud of free-floating subatomic particles.
Not if I have anything to say about it.
Nicely done, my detached retina of whoopey.
My sister used to pull that on me every year right after saying happy birthday.
So there's a handy lever next to the princess where she pulls in a giant booby-trap birthday cake rises out of the ground.
We're going to pull out of the ass moment there to get them out of this thing.
I guess in a slapstick show anything goes.
Yeah.
But it's funny they have their cake and eat it too of just like, oh man, your heroes are in danger.
Don't change the channel.
And then when it comes back like, come on, nothing's wrong.
And I left in a bit of the narrator so people could hear the nice, the nice, cleast style stylings of Jeff Bennett.
But it's really just pulling it out of their butt there, that exploding cake bin.
And also that at least, at least Earthworm Jim gets to say another one of his always original compliments that sounds horrible to her.
That's a real mad libs.
I mean, I guess my edible fruitcake of something was funny, but that's my detached retina of whoopee.
Yes, yeah, it doesn't even fit with the thing that just happened.
But same with like the level of creativeness of him always saying like your your festeringness, your wretchedness, like always, always new gross ways to describe someone.
I do like the very tropey conceit of the villain who their assistant is always like, yes, your awfulness.
Oh yes.
Yes, your vileness.
I don't think that guy's in the game either.
No, he's not.
They need to make him out.
I mean, again, it's a weird design too for that guy.
Queen's luck for a bud is just, she's not really a character in the first game anyway.
She's a stage you run on and then you see her head at the end of it.
Isn't the entire stage her butt?
Yes, the entire stage is her butt.
Yeah, yeah.
And then, and I mean, really, it's just, it's the queen alien is what it is.
So now Santa and the queen are breaking into their first house and it'll be their only house because there's not a lot of time left.
Yes.
And the queen is obviously having problems getting down the chimney with her giant butt.
She eventually does and crushes Santa.
There's an odd line where she says, now I know how a heavy Hungarian dinner feels, which all right, that's a, that's a, that's a
Interesting. I don't know what that means.
I guess it's like how you feel really full after eating it.
I've never had a Hungarian dinner.
Yeah.
That, you talk about Madlibs, that feels like, how would you, what's a funny descriptor for a heavy dinner?
Hungarian?
Sure, sure.
Hungarian's a funny adjective.
Yeah.
So, Santa pulls out his list.
Emmett and Susie have been good, although Susie did have that armed robbery conviction, which
Holy hell.
Pretty cool.
Susie seems pretty rad.
Yeah.
The queen reminds Santa, they're not there to deliver toys.
they're there to distribute their microchips because it's part of their world domination
plan to turn everybody evil or something, I don't know, just to serve the queen.
Yeah, and then she eats the entire plate and glass of cookies, and what's disgusting to her is raisins.
You know what?
They work in oatmeal cookies.
I am pro.
They're the star of the show.
I like raisins in cookies.
Like, okay, raisins in a chocolate cookie, maybe I like that less.
And of course, especially at X-Miss time, I prefer a chocolate chip cookie and then a class.
classic frosted sugar cookie.
Yes.
Before I would have anything with raisins in it, sure.
But when I grew up, I just ate so many, like, warm boxes of raisins where they're all just
like clumped together where I only eat raisins now in cookie form.
When I see the raisin girl on those red boxes, I think of a sweaty ball of raisins.
Disgusting.
You have to, like, dump out at lunchtime.
And yet that was the healthiest thing in my lunches probably.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, certainly not my juice box from Kool-Aid.
That was on the low end.
Not my bag of chips, my juice box, or my, like, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which is just cake.
Yeah, it's like that your white bread is essentially a twinkie.
So what happens next is, yeah, she's disgusted by the raisins.
She zaps the tree and they go off into the house and find the kids.
And they first break into the wrong room, the mom's room.
And there's a funny joke where the mom freaks out.
And the very Jewish-sounding father says, if you're going to be this upset, you shouldn't watch the news.
Which I agree.
Just a joke about the state of the world in 1996.
Who can imagine?
I still feel the rare, I'm feeling a little, a little bummed.
I can't visit my mom in this Xmas time.
But when I would, the one thing I would think is like, you really shouldn't watch the news before bed.
The local news is only meant to terrorize people your age.
That's how it keeps you watching.
Yeah, it's bad.
Don't watch local news people.
So they eventually find the children's room, but Peter, the princess, and Jim are waiting in there for them.
Well, that's just perfect.
Jim, now?
Now, Queenie, your Yuletide reign of terror is at an end.
Nah-oh.
Sarnet!
Come in to assist!
Tear me off a piece of that action, Princess!
You and me were boy, no holds barred.
Oh, it's no use.
I can't fight Santa, the symbol of all that's good, the spirit of Christmas.
Prepare for the kissing ball of utter destruction!
Oh, Santa, Santa.
Remember Christmas?
It's a time of fruitcakes, an undercooked turkey,
of hazardous electric lights and TV specials featuring celebrities who should never sing in public.
A time when children's head should be filled with visions of sugar plums.
Not microchips!
Poor Dan.
He's having to scream so much there.
His big speeches are great, though.
I love it.
And, you know, we talked
when we did the Animaniacs 2020 thing,
we mentioned how, like,
Pinky doesn't reference as many esoteric TV shows.
And that is, I feel that in this moment, too,
of like, he's saying,
aren't we annoyed by this thing that's always on TV?
And specifically the idea of, like,
the celebrity Christmas special,
where they're singing and it's like but you can't
sing you're not I think specifically
this is about Kathy Lee Gifford
oh really oh yeah she did have those
right at this time well like a year
no 96 is the same year
South Park came out they did a whole episode
about trying to kill her and that she's a bad
singer I forgot that that is what that
is based on yeah and then
and also yeah it was
one of the SNL TV
Funhouse Christmas is
watching her singing on TV
and it makes Jesus sad
Like it's I she's a she's a five singer she doesn't sing anymore everybody we stared her away
There's worse people to be mad at the Kathy Lee Gifford or I think she still goes by that name
I believe her and the and the other guy aren't together anymore and he's also dead so
Oh well that that divorces them for sure boy divorce for good
I thought I knew everything about Christmas I have never heard of a kissing ball before
No me neither and it's a real thing
What the hell it's like this thing you hang up and I think it's like a bundle of like fur tree branches or whatever
wreath is made out of and like apparently the mistletoe could hang from that oh okay yeah we must have
all the times i've seen mistletoe it must be attached to a kissing ball but i never think i just
i have this conversation about like what is a traffic light is it also the thing that hold the
pole that holds it up or is that a different thing i guess i always figured mistletoe is the entire
package not the ball that is attached to that missal just the kissing ball and believe me i was afraid
to Google kissing ball, but all clean.
It came out clean.
That's good.
Very good.
So, yeah, the narrator points out at this point that Santa is so touched by Jim
speech that the microchip in his brain burns out.
I think it's a little bit of a grinch thing, but they don't do like the magnification
of inside the body where they show you.
I think they should have done that at least.
Yeah, I guess, I guess budget wise, that's another thing.
They're like, we can save a lot of money if we don't have to draw the inside of his brain.
Oh, by the way, the kissing ball is like the orb from phantasm.
Yes, yeah.
It totally is a phantasm, right?
reference yeah it's even controlled by an old man though uh not as skinny so uh jim tells santa
is going to pull his chestnuts out of the fire good dirty joke uh he steps on the evil kissing ball
and uh santa says if christmas is in danger i shall save it and jim rightfully points out he's a little
old and fat that's good yes kind of reminds me that eke the cat joke like really aren't you kind of
fat so in our last clip of this episode santa transforms and saves the day you may know me as
But in my younger days, I was...
Whoa!
Oh, my goodness!
North God of judgment!
Let the naughty tremble before my awesome fight!
Yo-hoo!
Jesus!
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he kicked butt!
Oh, Jim, they're beautiful!
Antenna warmers.
I knit them myself.
How about you, Fuzz, buddy? Like your gift?
Great. An automatic haggis maker.
Yeah, yeah. Just add the heart, lungs, liver, and stomach of a sheep, and rest, though.
Ah, don't forget your present, Jim!
Oh, yeah!
Gosh, I wonder what it could be!
Thanks for saving Christmas.
Don't feed the pony rocks like you did with a kitten.
Ask pause.
This is the bestest Christmas ever.
So he's not crushed by a cow.
The fruit cake falls on him and a cow pops out of it.
Yeah.
It completes the cycle of cow crushing.
I like the one-ton marker on it too.
Boy, there's a lot in there.
Like one, they get away with.
Clearly, from the sound of it, Santa chops her to pieces.
I was kind of shocked by that.
We don't see it, but he's got an axe.
And then the sounds that everyone heard on this podcast were of something being chopped apart, a big, wet thing being chopped.
Was it her torso?
It was.
It was her torso.
She's all torso.
Yeah, no.
So she got hacked to pieces by Santa who turns out that he's like a Taitonic God.
And then on top of that, the joke that seemingly Earthworm Jim killed.
a cat through starving it by feeding it
rocks. That's
an extra dark joke there. And the pony
is wrapped so like the head of the pony
sticking out of the paper. That's clearly a pony.
At least it can breathe but the gym is still
surprised when he opens it. I like
he much like Homer Simpson he gets stupider
every episode I think
and until this last joke
I forgot that Haggis was a
running gag on the show. Yes boy
did the Haggis industry recover from the
brutal beating it got in the 90s on all
these shows? You know I watched a
recent duck tails and haggis came up on it too but they treat it as like well scrooge likes it
everyone else is still pretty disgusted by it if the rennist snippy spin-off character haggis macagas
were to i've had his own show it would have been over for haggis oh god yeah the haggis
the haggis council could have gotten back it tastes better than it sounds i i'm sure it is
no more disgusting than what is in a hot dog exactly but uh the it is i definitely every time i
here hagg as I think of the exact description
Earthworm Jim always said for it which is
what he says here
and yeah that is the final moment of the final
episode of Earthworm Jim again that was like
it's a cow bursting out of a giant
fruit cake saying moo and again
our generation was not cursed by these
fruit cakes I don't even know what they taste like maybe they're good
maybe they just were prepared badly I don't know
my mom likes making fruit cake and she jokes that
it's the people don't like it but
I definitely know from her
she makes a very good fruit
cake, and I think a part of it is, you know, soaking in rum.
It needs to be, or some liqueur.
As a vehicle for rum, I can see that working.
That's good.
And also, it's just like, I think we put butter on it and stuff, too.
Just to soften it a little bit more.
But I'm a pro-fruitcake guy.
I mean, I don't make it.
Maybe I'll make it myself this year.
I asked my mom for her fruitcake recipe.
I really think the 21st century was the death of the fruitcake joke.
Yeah, yeah.
Nobody, I mean, people just don't eat them.
Like, there's, I guess it's also like, that's the death of monocal.
again like nobody it's not that everyone makes fruitcakes anymore occasionally i'll see one like in a grocery
store and think like oh yeah all those jokes all those jokes i guess the cliche joke has been replaced by
pumpkin spice jokes oh you're totally right about that every if you replace every joke about a pumpkin
spiced something during this season of the year it's it's just the fruitcake joke of today it was just
updated but uh any final thoughts on the series henry this was the final episode and uh i liked it yeah i
liked it too. There's much smarter
jokery in it than I thought
funny and a great voice
cast. I mean, as a
cartoon that is as a
vehicle for animation, there's not
a lot of like good animation in it
but it doesn't falter
as much. Maybe it even would
be more entertaining to watch if it looked as
crappy as some episodes of like Sonic
or Street Sharks did.
But I think it
upholds, the animation is good enough
to uphold funny writing
that gets, they got away with a lot and I also appreciate that.
And plus they didn't hire a bunch of cheapo Vancouver voice actors.
They went with the best in Los Angeles, baby.
Yeah, I don't think it's, I would just like put it on to watch sincerely.
It's not that good.
But I was honestly surprised because I thought I was going to be like, oh, you know what?
It was just kind of, it was kind of cheeky.
It was kind of satirical, but it wasn't that good.
But I was finding myself generally surprised by this episode and what I saw on it.
And it couldn't have lasted any longer.
There was no more products to sell.
it got everything it needed to get out of those characters
but you know it was an interesting
way to sell toys and like the smartest
way to do it and it wasn't the you know
keeping with the style and tone of the game as well
yeah yeah and I mean is
if you're going to emulate anything
Monty Python and also Rocky and Bullwinkle
yeah if you're going to emulate anything
steal from the best yeah so I
think Langdale
especially he really pulled this off well
makes me want to check out his other
stuff he's done you know I never watch that Dave
the Barbarian show I've heard good things
I guess actually Santa Claus is like Dave the Barbarian's dad there in that sequence if you really think about it.
Santa Claus origins are happening.
But yes, thank you for listening to another Retronauts.
And thank you for listening to our 10th holiday special.
I love doing these so much fun every year.
Since this is a Patreon episode, I'm not going to do any plugs for Retronauts.
It means if you're listening to this, it means you're giving to the show.
We appreciate that.
So thank you very much, especially throughout this difficult year.
I know it's been hard for everybody.
So we definitely appreciate your support right now.
We hope that we're entertaining you in this rough, rough time.
But Henry, I'm also involved in this.
but what is going on with you in your life
and the many podcasts we do together?
Man, so many podcasts.
I think it's at peak it's four weeks sometimes
on the Talking Simpsons Network.
You should follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-Y-G.
And that's how you'll stay informed
when I do my weekly podcast with Bob.
Talking Simpsons and what a cartoon.
Talking Simpsons is our chronological
and cromulent exploration of that series
where we go in order right now.
We're just finishing up season 11
and we're about to start
our combo year of doing season two again and season 12 for the first time if you're in the holiday spirit
I definitely suggest listening to the great one we did last year about the 30th anniversary of the first simpsons christmas special that was a ton of fun
and of course if you're a gamer who loves the simpsons one go back in our catalog and listen to our one for march be not proud i think you really enjoy that
and our one cartoon show if you like me and bob going through the history and a single episode of one tv series
why that's what we do every week on the What a Cartoon podcast, where you've covered so many great ones, including if you like this toy talk, I think you'll also like the one we did on G.I. Joe with Retronaut's co-host, Jeremy Parrish, as our guest on that too. You can find it on every place you find free podcasts. But if you want all of our exclusives and to hear stuff early, you got to sign up at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, which supports me and Bob doing that full time, baby.
Well, honey, it's all the time we have today.
Please leave and take all of your particles with you.
There's too many in this room right now.
All right.
I'll blow you a kiss.
A virtual hug.
Behind the plexiglass, please.
Well, there you have it, our 10th holiday special.
Steve, come out here, would you?
This room has been filling up with foreign particles for an hour now,
so let's just turn that cleansing gas up to its highest setting.
And maybe a little move.
music to wrap things up.
Right away, master.
You know, folks, it's been a rough year, and hopefully the least we could do for you is
provide some small bit of relief, or at least a distraction from all of the things.
You know, making these podcasts has definitely been a nice distraction for us, so thanks
again to all of you for giving us the chance to do retronauts for another calendar year.
And you know, holidays are nothing without tradition, so this year, I've decided to start a new
one.
I've decided that at the end of every gathering in the holiday cabin, I'm going to light a
candle to commemorate another year of remembering things about stuff.
And in memory of all the unreleased retro games that can't be with us today,
games like BioForce Ape, Starcraft Ghost, and of course, Gallagher's Gallery.
Now, all we have to do is light it, and I have a fresh box of matches right here.
Not that time, once more, must have gotten a little damp.
Not that time, once more, these things never light on the first truck.
To be continued.
To be continued.
Have a funky, funky Christmas.
Denny, are you ready?
Ready to get the last steady.
You know, and Joey Jones.
Betty Jordan and John.
Yeah.
Come on.
Got a fucking funky person on.
Thank you.