Giant Robot Invasion! – Home of Comedy Writer Matt Willard

When we last saw Ronald and his friends, they had just escaped the rain by taking refuge inside a spooky house. However, some mysterious force locks the front door, and now the group has no choice but to look around. With all that camping filler out of the way, maybe now this video will finally get interesting. (Plus, with this empty haunted house, maybe now we can film my documentary – “The Munsters: Missed ‘Em By 45 Years.”)

And hey, what better way to start this off than with ANOTHER song? Can’t let things get too interesting, after all. While this song isn’t as awful as the first one, it’s still got a bunch of awkward pauses and drawn out words. It’s like the song writers were grasping for something, anything to pad it out. I was waiting for them to use bits from other songs so they didn’t have to think as hard. It’s practically seamless. Just like that one song from Pinocchio – “When you wish upon a star…nothing can stop the smooze.”

After the song, the group moves into another hallway with three steel doors. Hamburglar notices the doors have no knobs. A dead end? Maybe not – just then, the lights dim, and a ghostly image of an old man’s head is revealed.

Big Giant Head tells them a riddle:

“Never push and never pull,
you’re finished when your plate is full.
Exercise your force of will,
you proceed by standing still.”

Instead of answering the riddle, the Fry Kids say “screw this” and try to kick down one of the doors. They are rewarded with a tumble into a dark pit.

Ronald realizes that solving the riddle must be the key to opening one of the doors. Tika finds a massive picture of a plate on the floor, and when everyone stands still on it, the middle door swings open. Huh. You know, that riddle was actually a bit clever. I’m impressed. I just wish my riddles were that good. See, here’s one I wrote:

“What’s black, white, and red all over?
If a cop tells you the answer, pretend I’m not here.”

After going through the door, the group eventually makes their way into a big library. Hamburglar finds a random lever next to the fireplace, and since he hasn’t learned anything from the Fry Kids episode, he pulls on it. This spins a bookcase that the Chicken McNuggets were standing next to, shifting them to a secret room.

By the way, if you just asked, “who the hell are the Chicken McNuggets?”, you’re nailed another problem this cartoon has. The only reason that so many people came on this camping trip was because the plot needed victims for traps. You know why I didn’t mention the McNuggets up until this point? Because they don’t DO anything worth mentioning. Neither do the Fry Kids, who practically vanish into the background. (Gives ‘em time to drive to McDonalds and pick up a Snack Wrap.)

So, seeing as how this place is kinda dangerous, Ronald tells everyone to not touch anything.

Hamburglar I am going to TAKE YOUR FACE.

The Big Giant Head pops up again with another riddle: “It’s not hard to understand, find the door with your left hand.” This reminds Ronald of a trick you can use in a maze – just keep a hand to the wall on your left, and you’ll eventually find your way out. And if that’s not a great lead-in to another song, I don’t know what is! Well, I do, but while I’m throwing chainsaws, you can’t move, okay?

The group finally escapes the maze into another room where the walls shift as soon as they approach the door. To stop the walls from moving, everyone stands in the center of the room and spreads out. To…confuse the walls, I guess? Well, whatever the reason, it doesn’t really matter, because as soon as Grimace touches the doorknob, the entire room disappears!

The Big Giant Head swoops down and congratulates the group on their progress. We learn that the head’s name is Franklin and that this whole adventure was just one big computer game. (Wow, I totally wasn’t expecting such a cop-out.) Now, the group has to pit their brains against Franklin in a riddle-tastic final showdown! If they win, they get their friends back. If they lose, they get their friends back…who can now be combined with other Legos.

Things quickly go downhill. Tika misses the first riddle, so she falls down a hole. And even with the help of Birdie, Hamburglar bombs his riddle, and a swirling whirlwind blows the two away. Now it’s down to Ronald, Grimace, and Sundae, and with that all-star lineup, Ronald is practically their last hope. (By the way, the answers to the riddles are also the traps. Keep this in mind for later.)

Franklin gives Ronald a big riddle. “What costs nothing, but is worth everything? Weighs nothing, but last lifetimes? That one person can’t own, but two people can share?” Apparently this riddle is so awesome that Ronald repeats it out loud, while the wind from earlier generates a massive storm. Franklin also starts shouting at Ronald while bouncing around. It really makes me uncomfortable. I mean, there are only a few parts on a human being that I want to jiggle, and Franklin has none of them.

Grimace gets so frightened that he begs Ronald not to leave him alone. But wait, that gives Ronald the answer!

…wait, hold on. If the answers are also the traps, what would happen if Ronald got that wrong? Would he, like, lose his friendship with Griamce? How would that work? And how do you make a trap out of “friendship”, anyway? It’s not as easy as if the answer was, say, “bitchin’ fire cobras”.

Franklin throws a fit that Ronald got the correct answer, and he pisses off somewhere to think of another riddle. While Franklin’s distracted, Sundae discovers a clue – a wire connected to a TV camera!

…wait, how did no one see that?

They follow the wire to a metal door. Opening the door reveals a secret laboratory, and the real truth behind the game – it’s actually run by a kid named Franklin, not an old guy. Apparently Tika’s played the game before, but since she couldn’t beat it by herself, she worked with the McNuggets to lure Ronald to the house. It was a good plan. After all, Ronald solved most of the riddles while everyone else was practically useless. I’m just glad Franklin didn’t ask Grimace to think up an answer to a riddle. After all, my mom has a lot of plants, and she’d freak if they all died at once.

Ronald and the others confront Franklin and force him to admit defeat. Just then, Franklin’s dad, Dr. Quizzical, enters the room and scolds Franklin for causing mischief. He gathers everyone in the lobby to explain how he came by as soon as he saw lightning spark near the house. (Apparently Franklin keeps reprogramming the virtual reality projectors for his game, and the lightning told Quizzical what was up.)

Meanwhile, Tika apologizes for tricking Ronald. She just wanted him to play the game with her, and she couldn’t think of any other way to do it. Other than, you know, ASKING him. Sure, Franklin wasn’t SUPPOSED to be using the projectors, but all Tika would have to do is feign ignorance. And hey, it would’ve been a lot more direct than going through all that camping nonsense. That’s two songs we could’ve cut out and given to needy children. (Just as long as you don’t sing about food and a warm bed to sleep in.)

But in the end, everything works out. Quizzical takes the group back to their campsite, and after Franklin apologizes for scaring everyone, Ronald lets him come too. And so, the cartoon ends with everyone roasting marshmallows around the fire and laughing while the camera pans upward to the moon.

At this point we have no idea what happens. Did everyone have a good time? Or did the phantom of Far-Flung Woods come out and kill everyone? Just remember – even if the phantom kills campers, it doesn’t mean that he’s evil. See, look – he’s giving the bodies to those hungry cannibals.

Okay, okay, they’re not dead. But the video’s not over yet – we shift back to live-action as Ronald and Sundae slide down a tube back into their home. Later that night, they watch another scary movie. Ronald asks Sundae if he really wants to watch it before bedtime, but Sundae’s cool with it – with a friend like Ronald by his side, he isn’t afraid of anything.

So that’s “Scared Silly”. It’s not good, but I’ve seen worse. I have to say, Franklin’s riddles were actually pretty unique. Plus, the whole concept of Franklin’s game reminds me of Knightmare, a British game show where children explored a puzzle-filled dungeon. That’s kinda cool. Then again, I doubt the writers were that clever. I also doubt their plotting and songwriting abilities – all the filler and bad music really weighed this cartoon down, and as a cartoon for Halloween, it fails to live up to expectations. Watch something else with your kids. Like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Anyway, that’s all for me. Thanks for reading, and I hope your Halloween is a good one. You go ahead – I already had my Halloween a few months back. I didn’t have any candy, but it was cool. All the kids wanted were my TV and XBox.

Remember McDonaldLand, that wonderful world of whimsy from those classic McDonalds’ commercials? I sure do. The idea of a magical place filled with people who love cheap burgers made eating at McDonalds feel really special. These days McDonaldLand has been phased out, which is a shame. Now McDonalds needs to get creative to push those Happy Meals. “When you buy a Happy Meal, you get great food and a cool toy. Even better, now your Happy Meal won’t be ground up and fed to horses.”

Now, McDonaldLand commercials usually played out a basic scenario with characters like Birdie, Grimace, or the Hamburglar. They’re the kind of episodic stories you’d see in a children’s show. That might be why McDonalds teamed up with animation company Klasky-Csupo to produce The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald, a series of tapes sold at McDonalds’ restaurants. The first tape, called “Scared Silly”, was promoted as a spooky-type story. Made sense, since Halloween was around the corner at the time. I knew this because my uncle gets paid to hunt down superheroes and carve them out for children to wear.

I didn’t watch these tapes when they first came out, but thanks to the power of the Internet, I can finally see what “Scared Silly” is all about. And since Halloween is coming up in a few weeks, why not jaunt through some appropriate nostalgia? The only question – does “Scared Silly” live up to the hype? For $3.49, it’d better. With that money, I could’ve had a butler for, like, five seconds.

So each video actually starts off with a live-action segment. If you’re here to see all the other McDonaldLand characters in glorious realism, prepare to be disappointed. Only Ronald is featured in these segments, along with his faithful companion…

…Whatever The Hell This Thing Is.

Actually, this amazingly ugly creature is Ronald’s dog Sundae. He only shows up in these tapes, and that’s a good thing considering how hideous and creepy he looks. It’s obvious this freak was based off the animation design (which we’ll get to in a minute) because no sane designer at McDonalds would make a costume this horrifying. Still, I’m surprised Sundae is hanging around Ronald. You’d think he’d look better with a different clown. Like that guy from It. Or Johnny Knoxville.

So while Sundae and Ronald are watching an old horror movie together, some alarm goes off and spooks them both. It’s the alarm for Ronald’s picture phone, so he slides downstairs via a pole and answers it, bringing up some random girl named Tika who invites him to go camping in Far-Flung Woods. You know, that’s always been my problem with McDonaldLand. How do these random kids become Ronald’s friend? Do you have to get introduced by Captain Crunch or something? Maybe you just need to save Ronald from an assassin armed with BK Chicken Fries.

Ronald agrees to go camping, and after calling his friends, he leaps into a ball pit that leads to a tube spiralling towards ground floor. And that’s the thing – while Ronald slides down this tube, he somehow transforms into a cartoon version of himself. Of course, since Klasky-Csupo was involed, we have to see their ugly art style at work, giving Animated Ronald an incomplete hairdo and MASSIVE M.C. HAMMER PANTS that make him look bottom heavy. Maybe it’s a subtle poke at the long-term health effects of eating at McDonalds. (EDITOR’S NOTE – We later found out that Ronald’s pants are the first portable Ronald McDonald House.)

So Ronald lands in a ball pit in the garage. Sundae, who leaped in the tube after Ronald, lands in it too. You know, he was pretty creepy in live-action. I wonder what he looks like when he’s animated?

Ah, good. He’s still incredibly horrifying. Just checking.

Ronald opens the garage door to reveal Tika and all of the other friends he invited, including the standard group of Birdie, Grimace, and the Hamburglar. Hope you weren’t expecting them to look presentable! Klasky-Csupo has made sure cartoon Birdie looks ridiculously thin and short, while the Hamburglar has abandoned his usual stripes for a black jacket, red shorts, and stupid goggles. I don’t understand why these characters had to be redesigned. What was wrong with how they looked before? I guess somebody looked at the live-action Hamburglar and went, “Okay, we gotta slim him down. He looks too fat-it’s like there’s another guy in there!”

Everyone gets in the car and heads towards Far-Flung Woods. Tika almost immediately brings up something called the Far-Flung Phantom, which is apparently a spirit that haunts the woods and frightens innocent campers. This scares Grimace. (ProTip: Everything scares Grimace.) Ronald tells Grimace it’s just a story, and instead of passing around scary stuff like that, what they need is a good driving song.

So one begins. Yep. Surprising no one, there are a couple of songs throughout the video. So what better way to start this off than to sing one of the WORST songs on the entire tape? You know you’re off to a bad start when your song refrains four times with this compelling list of things you’ll find in the forest:

“There’s flowers!”
“And squirrels!”
“And fish!”
“And frogs!”
“Caves and rocks!”
“And lots of logs!”

HOLY CRAP! Man, forget video games and explosions, we’ve got ROCKS AND LOGS! HELL YEAH! Then maybe at the campfire we can have some BREAD and WATER! GONZO!

After the song mercifully ends, they park and hike out to their camping spot which, according to Ronald, takes more than THREE HOURS to get there. Why the hell would you park your car so damn far from the campsite? To fill time, of course! And fill it they do-from Sundae getting chased by a squirrel in camo pants to the group escaping from an angry bear, there’s no shortage of wacky filler to go around. I guess this is where Seltzer and Friedburg got their ideas for padding out Disaster Movie.

Along the way, a walkie talkie falls out of Tika’s backpack. When Birdie returns it, Tika quickly makes up an excuse about needing them in case they get seperated. While this is a perfectly good reason to bring walkie-talkies to a camping trip, this still draws Birdie’s suspicion. It’s compounded when she also notices a camera emerge out of a branch and study her before retracting. Does Birdie warn Ronald about this? No. That’s assuming she was smart. At most she probably thought, “Now how can I poop on that?”

Eventually the group arrives at the campsite and sets up. Later they roast marshmallows by the fire, and when Hamburglar brings up the Far-Flung Phantom again, Ronald decides to take a walk. It’s during this walk that Ronald spots a strange house in the distance.

Now let’s backtrack for a minute here. Remember how I told you this video was advertised during Halloween, implying a spooky atmosphere? Let’s take a look at the cover real fast.

Judging by this cover, would you expect that the first SIXTEEN MINUTES of the video would be taken up by songs and camping, and only JUST NOW would we see the haunted house? And the characters aren’t even at the damn house yet – they’re still at the campsite! For something promoted as a cartoon for Halloween, it sure feels like a bait and switch, doesn’t it? I can just imagine kids squirming in their seats, wondering when the good part’s going to come on. Just like church.

Back at the campsite, Hamburlgar hoiss a fake ghost on a rope, making it fly around and scare everyone. Ronald comes back to the site and figures it’s Hamburglar causing trouble, so he gets Grimace to help him pull down on the ghost as it swoops by. The rope was slung over a branch, so this pulls Hamburglar up, over the branch, and back down to earth with a painful impact. (Little known fact: this is how Hamburglar developed his vocal tic of “robble robble”. It’s also why he can’t tell you what 2+5 is.)

Suddenly, stormclouds gather, and it starts to rain. Since the group didn’t expect rain, they didn’t bother to pack any raingear. Ronald notices a bunch of large flowers on a bush, and when he picks one and blows into the end, the petals unfurl into a makeshift umbrella.

Well, that was entirely pointless. Thanks a bunch.

So the group grabs what they need for the night and head to the obviously haunted house. They all rush inside, only to have the door lock behind them and trap them all inside. All they can do now is explore the house and see what lurks down its halls. See, you wouldn’t have this problem if you had planned for bad weather. Being in the woods is no excuse. Just use your cellphone to check online for weather updates. For a more personal weather report, you should check out my grandma’s weather blog at “mykneeisactingup.com”.

Now we are officially nineteen minutes into the video. Not counting the theme song, we have just burned almost HALF of this video with pointless filler. And what’s worse is that there’s no reason for it. Would it have been so hard to get the group to a haunted house earlier in the movie? Like, for example, a plot where they hear about a haunted house and decide to investigate because they think they can prove it’s not haunted. Sure, it’s cliche, but at least it would’ve gotten to the point a bit faster!

Well, since this is about forty or so minutes long, I’m gonna have to break this review up into two parts. Time for some dramatic narrative text. Ahem:

WILL RONALD AND HIS FRIENDS DISCOVER THE SECRET OF THE HAUNTED HOUSE? WILL IT EVER STOP RAINING? WILL THIS VIDEO DRASTICALLY IMPROVE DURING ITS SECOND HALF AND MAKE “SCARED SILLY” ONE OF THE BEST CARTOONS OF 1998? THE ANSWER: IT’S NOT FOR SALE. TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE EXCITING CONCLUSION!

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a big fan of DiC Entertainment. (These days they operate under Cookie Jar Productions, but a nostalgic retrospective should use nostalgic names.) While they were involved with a few decent cartoons, most of them were forgettable and mediocre. A lot of them are also plagued by weak writing and bad animation. Sometimes the animation is so awful I think, “Man, I could be watching The Blue Screen Adventure Hour instead of this.”

And yet, I watched DiC’s shows all the time growing up. Why? Well, back then I really didn’t know how to spend my free time besides watching TV and playing with friends. Besides, how else was I supposed to kill time until Saturday morning? I can’t be proactive like that other guy. Once he killed time on a Monday, and the next thing we knew, it was Halloween. I missed five months of classes because of that jerk.

Now, some of DiC’s more infamous cartoons have already been picked on, such as The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. But those are too easy. Instead, today I want to talk about a DiC production that doesn’t get as much hate as it deserves. When you talk about DiC, it’s definitely a show you should mention along with the dozens of other awful shows they’ve made. I just hope the government will agree with me and reopen Alcatraz to keep bad cartoons away from the public. I also hope Cobra knows where to put the bombs.

But enough talk. Welcome to Mummies Alive.

Here’s the concept of the show in a nutshell. There’s this kid named Presley Carnavon who just happens to be the reincarnation of an Egyptian prince named Rapses. It turns out that an evil sorceror named Scarab wants the life force of Rapses to gain immortality, so it’s up to Rapses’s old guardians to come back to life as mummies and use their magic Power Rangers armor to kick Scarab’s ass on a weekly basis.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Wow, that sounds pretty stupid.” It is. But that by itself doesn’t make Mummies Alive awful. The devil’s in the details this time. Once you look in real close, with the mind of a sophisticated adult, you find a bunch of reasons why Mummies Alive is a poor cartoon. We’ll start as soon as I change my underwear. I don’t like how wide Spider-Man’s gotten.

For example, let’s take the mummies themselves. There are four of them. It’s pretty easy to tell them apart-not only are they color-coordinated, but they each have a recognizable and cliched personality!

Ja-kal: The serious, prudish leader-type character. His hobbies include spouting awful words of wisdom and SLICING DUDES IN HALF. Seriously! The only reason I tolerate this guy is because his magic armor makes him badass. Designed to resemble an eagle, it lets him fly, shoot fire arrows, and chop people up with claws. I’m not sure which kind of eagle can shoot fire arrows, though. I guess we just made it ourselves, because the eagles Mother Nature came up with weren’t American enough.

Rath: The stuck-up smart guy. He knows a lot about magic, but the challenge is tolerating him until he gets to the good stuff. His armor is patterned after the snake, which means he has a gigantic golden tail hanging off his helmet. This serves practically no purpose, and yet somehow he never trips over it because it’s always moving out of the way. Who knows. Maybe the snake just can’t control its own butt. I know people like that. For them, using the toilet is like giving a toddler a bag of candy and thinking, “Now I’ll get some peace and quiet.”

Armon: Big, stupid guy. His annoying gimmick is that he eats everything in sight. The only problem? He is a MUMMY, which aren’t particularly known for having appetites. OR STOMACHS. He also only has one arm. When he puts on his ram-styled armor, he gets an extra one that lets him break people like Ivan Drago. Personally, I’d like to see Armon fight Drago and Bane at the same time. The winner? Everyone who bought a ticket.

Nefertina: Token wild, fun girl of the group. Still has a full head of hair after all these years, and more importantly, her chest is still really perky. Basically, her armor turns her into Catwoman, with a whip and everything. Really, couldn’t we have been a bit more creative here? Just because she’s a girl doesn’t mean she has to use Catwoman armor. Why not give her an armor with the powers of Triple H? She’ll gain the useful ability to spit water at people while standing on a turnbuckle.

But here’s the thing about Nefertina. In her past life, she had to disguise herself as a man in order to guard the prince and drive chariots. She keeps this up until her death, and when the guardians come back to life, she finally confesses her secret to them. And, you know, I really think this would be an interesting angle…other than the fact that she doesn’t try to hide her breasts AT ALL.

I’ll be fair for a change. When they come back to life, they immediately summon their armor to fight Scarab, which covers her up. Fair enough. But then after the fight, they escape the museum, dismiss the armor, and WALK BACK to Presley’s house. At no point does any of the male mummies catch this until they get inside the house, and even then, Presley’s the one that points it out!

What’s the problem, guys? When you’re not using your armor, you’re wearing nothing but bandages and skirts. It should’ve been really easy to tell that Nefertina was a girl by the way the bandages hug her figure. Were you just not paying attention or something? Or did the false prophet called World of Warcraft claim some new victims?

Anyway, as I’ve said before, the mummies are trying to stop Scarab from stealing Rapses’s life force. They actually have a long history together-Scarab was the Pharaoh’s most trusted advisor when Rapses was still alive. Of course, since an advisor named Scarab is obviously evil, he killed Rapses and the guardians to ensure that he would get the throne. However, that didn’t really work. He gets entombed alive for fifty lifetimes as punishment, but before that time’s up, a couple of explorers opened the tomb he was in and freed him. Now Scarab wants Rapses’s life force so he can live forever.

Buuuut, considering his track record, maybe he should just go vegan instead.

By cartoon villian standards, Scarab is par for the course. Evil lair, evil clothing…he even has his army of statue warriors to throw at the mummies when he’s ready to lose that week. Sometimes he mixes it up by summoning Egyptian gods or demons, or using his own magic armor, but it never really works out. So, if that doesn’t work, why doesn’t Scarab just find out where the mummies are hiding and shoot them while they’re vulnerable?

Simple. He can’t find the mummies’ hideout. And just where are the mummies hiding?

Only a giant replica of the Sphinx in the middle of San Francsico.

I’m sorry, but this has to be discussed. This Sphinx replica is easily the most nonsensical plot device I’ve ever seen in a cartoon. First off, it’s a REPLICA of the Sphinx. Do you know how much money that would cost to build? I wouldn’t mind this so fact if it wasn’t for the fact that it was built for exactly ONE museum exhibit about Rapses. Was a billboard not complicated enough for you or something?

And do you know what they want to do with the massive Sphinx replica after the exhibit is over? How about TEARING IT DOWN?

WHY? If you spend a buttload of money building a replica of the Sphinx, WHY WOULD YOU TEAR IT DOWN? That’s a huge money sink! The guys who built this thing should be milking this to get back their investment! But no-they basically just abandon it, because they can get their money back from the rare California money trees they have in their backyard. This means that the mummies can hole up inside the Sphinx, with access to electricity and cable TV, in a place that no one ever checks or uses again.

And I’m JUST getting started. If you think that was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

“But gee!” you claim. “What can possibly be worse than-

THEY HAVE A MOTORCYCLE

THEY HAVE A CAR

THEY HAVE A BOAT

That’s right. All of a sudden, there’s a toyline for this show, so somehow the mummies randomly acquire these incredibly ridiculous vehicles. Do they explain it? No. Why should they? This is a children’s show, after all. Why bother with logical storyline development when we can give you a speedboat with LASER GUNS on it?

Of course, since this was a crappy DiC cartoon, it only lasted for forty-two episodes. We never reach any conclusion to the battle between the mummies and Scarab. Instead, they figure the best way to end the series is with a clip show featuring all the great past moments of Mummies Alive. You remember that fight they had with the giant dough monster? Or how about the time where Armon wrestled a guy made of iron for the heavyweight title? Personally, I can’t forget the moment some nerdy guy actually got to kiss Nefertina. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend this. I’d probably say something like, “You don’t know where she’s been!” But I do know where she’s been-in a dirty sarcophagus for thousands of years with our good friend decomposition!

This show stunk, and I’m not talking about the mummies here. It had some cool ideas…but it also had really stupid ones. Why do writers for animated series think they can half-ass it just because it’s a cartoon? That’s no excuse. You don’t have to shoot for art, but at least you should cover up plotholes and explain things. Otherwise, the only thing you’ll end up doing is pissing off nerds on the Internet.

In fact, to avoid this in the future, I’m gonna look up some of the writers and make sure to avoid any shows they’ve written. Let’s see…

Eric and Julia Lewald, eh? What else did they write?

A lot of children’s shows use gimmicks to try and grab a child’s attention. The guys in charge figure that they have to do that if they want the child to pay attention for any lessons they might want to pass on. So they use the typical stuff. Bright colors, flashy effects, silly humor…things like that. Personally, I don’t see what the problem is. Kids are always coming up to me and paying attention to what I do, just as long as I have something else besides Diet Pepsi.

But several shows in my childhood proved that you didn’t need to be loud to entertain and inform children. Sure, I didn’t learn a damn thing from Bill Nye, but even though most of his show involved talking directly to the audience, it was still a great show to watch. Same goes with Reading Rainbow and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood-both low key programs that many people remember to this day. If only these memories were loud enough to cover other bad memories. Like Clueless.

But in any case, Science Court was a lot like those shows. It aired on Disney’s One Saturday Morning, but it didn’t feel like any of the other shows on that block. It used a very reserved style of humor to talk about science…which makes sense, since the creators were also involved in shows like Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist and Home Movies. Science Court also used the “Squigglevision” animation style these shows had in order to make everyone jiggle like Jell-O. Sure, it gave people headaches, but hey, anything to create more jobs for animators with palsy.

Of course, that’s probably why it bombed. It’s too bad. To this day, Science Court is an interesting piece of educational nostalgia, and I think it deserves a bit more praise. In fact, to show you a bit more about Science Court, I’ll do something different and walk you through an entire episode. AKA, the ONLY complete episode I managed to find. I’m currently trying to recreate the other episodes frame-by-frame with a new team of animators, but it’ll take a while. Since they don’t have palsy, the only way I can duplicate Squigglevision is by hiring people to kick the animators’ tables.

“Particles in Motion” starts with the entire town gathered at the house of movie star J.C. Cramwood. Tonight, he will unveil a brass plaque of…himself, which he is dedicating to, um…himself. Revealing the plaque on a stage, Cramwood asks that ALL of the spotlights are turned on so everyone can see the plaque. This manages to blind everyone. However, the frame surrounding the plaque suddenly pops off, and the whole thing falls down on Cramwood. (The crowd thought it was a promo for Cramwood’s next movie-Maximum Overdrive 2: Night of the Heavy Trophies.)

It’s okay, everyone! I am a professionally trained celebrity-flattener.

So Cramwood is sitting on stage moping after the ceremony when a lawyer named Doug Savage comes in. Savage figures that Sonya Sondheim, the person who carved the plaque, should’ve used a bigger frame that would’ve kept it in place. This is why he decides to help Cramwood sue her. Meanwhile, defense attorney Alison Krempel meets with Sondheim and agrees to defend her. There are some high stakes involved-if Savage wins the case, then Sondheim has to make a 200-foot tall statue of Cramwood. Now he can finally have the confidence he needs to seduce Jolly Green Giant’s wife! Don’t worry, Statue of Liberty-you’ll get your turn.

But that’s the basic premise. Something bad happens to a person and the person sues someone else over it, so Savage acts as the prosecution in Science Court. That’s the keyword here-this is Science Court, where the culprit-big spoiler here-is always some scientific principle that Savage NEVER knows about. His case gets ripped to SHREDS in every episode by the defense using SCIENCE, and not once does Savage realize, “Hey, maybe the guy I’m suing DIDN’T do it. Maybe it’s the water cycle. Yeah, he’d do something like that. I bet that jerk Photosynthesis put him up to it.”

So they finally get to Science Court, and Savage makes the first opening play by calling Cramwood to the stand. Here is every word of his astounding examination:

Savage: Cramwood, did a brass plaque made by Sonya Sondheim fall on top of you?
Cramwood: Yes!
Savage: Was it supposed to?
Cramwood: No!
Savage: Your witness, Miss Krempel.

Wow. That is talent at work, ladies and gentlemen. Savage would be great on CSI.
“Did you kill this woman?”
“Nope.”
“Fantastic. Gentlemen, you’re looking at your next Officer of the Year.”

Krempel opens the defense by calling Dr. Julie Bean to the stand, who is a five-year-old. (And she even sounds like one.) She says that the heat from the spotlights caused the atoms that made up the brass plaque to expand. That’s why it fell out of the frame. To demonstrate, she takes everyone into the judge’s chambers for an experiment. By turning the heat up all the way, a piece of brass she has expands enough to move a pointer, which is what happened to the plaque after Cramwood hit the lights.

Well, that case was easy! The brass expanded under the heat and fell out of the frame. Simple. Guess the jury can just declare Sonya not guilty and we can-

…no, Doug. No, you don’t. You lose.

Oh what the hell. You’re really gonna try and screw this up some more, aren’t you? Look, it’s okay to admit defeat when you’re beaten. You never saw Alex Murphy from Robocop sit up and go, “Nah, I think I can take a few more clips.”

So Savage calls up another child expert named Dr. Henry Fullerghast, who confirms what Savage is thinking-wood also expands under heat. That’s enough for Savage to rest his case, which is, uh…not working very well for him so far. The defense counters with the awesome Professor Parsons who explains that, while wood does expand under heat, it doesn’t expand as much as brass. (Or Icarus, for that matter.)

Savage’s case has, once again, been completely and utterly shot. What does he do in response? He calls Sondheim up to the stand and accuses her of rigging the plaque to fall on Cramwood because…she’s secretly in love with him and he rejected her advances!

Okay. Stop. Stop this right now. Um…is this really how you’re gonna go out, Doug? Not with any dignity, but with some wild and random accusation? Hell, if you’re gonna do that, you might as well tell a really huge lie. I dunno…judging by her looks, maybe Sondheim’s really the lost member of Milli Vanilli you don’t hear about because she has talent. Be creative!

I gotta say, though, Savage’s failure of a closing argument is pretty awesome:

I’M NOT LISTENING, I’M NOT LISTENING! NAH NAH NAH NAH!

Well, if you’re gonna go out, you might as well go out in style. I wouldn’t know about style. I’m the kind of guy who’d be right at home if Earth adopted a planetwide uniform of jeans and a black shirt. That’s called “setting the trend”, boys and girls.

With that, the judge asks for Krempel’s closing number-er, argument. And that’s no slip up. For some reason, Krempel’s closing argument always turns into a song number, with everyone in the courtroom dressing up and participating. It’s really unneccessary. I mean, you saw how Savage got destroyed. This is probably just to rub it in his face. My only question is why the prosecution doesn’t get a song number. I guess they’re saving up for when Doug actually wins a trial. It’ll have a really awesome band and everything. Of course, by the time Doug wins a case, everyone in Motley Crue will be dead, but hey-a guy can dream, can’t he?

And so, Sonya Sondheim is (unsurprisingly) found not guilty of sabotaging the picture frame. The episode ends with everyone posing for a picture painted by the stenographer, who tells everyone to “not move for a long time”. This may be hard, because the evening shift just began, and that means we’ll see a pickup in kicking speed for a while.

So that’s Science Court. Above all, it’s interesting and worth a watch if you can find it. The problem is that the only way to own the Science Court episodes is to purchase educational packages offered by Scholastic, which teachers can use to instruct their class. I’d say how unfair it is, but let’s face it-Science Court wouldn’t sell very well as a normal DVD. Looks like we’ve got no choice but to shake down the educational packages for the goods. Fortunately, I know a guy named Vinnie Rattolle, he’d be perfect for it.

If you get the opportunity to watch Science Court, do it. It might be up your alley. Sure, you may not learn anything in the end, but hey, at least you won’t have to defend your ignorance in a court of law.

If you’d like to see the Science Court educational packages, click here.

I never watched this show growing up.

Seriously. I never caught it when it debuted on ABC, and I definitely never watched it when it appeared on UPN’s morning weekday filler slot. And why would I? It was just a spinoff of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, a popular sitcom that I never watched either. Even worse, it was produced by DiC Entertainment, who were involved in a lot of crappy shows that I only watched because I had nothing else better to do. Besides, the commercials told me what toys to look for during one of our family vacations to Wal-Mart.

But even though I’ve never seen this show, it’s my duty here at Giant Robot Invasion to review it, since it was (only barely) a part of the era in which I grew up. With that said, let’s take a look at Sabrina: the Animated Series, using information I heard entirely from other people.

This show is about a younger Sabrina who attends middle school and gets into a variety of magical midsadventures. (Or so I’ve been told.) In every episode, she dips into her “Spooky Jar” for a spell that will fix the day’s problem, even though she’s forbidden to abuse magic. However, the spell always manages to backfire, leaving Sabrina with a bigger mess to clean up. I guess that what happens when you keep spells in a jar-eventually they get stale.

After I heard about this concept from a friend (who is a girl and would like this stuff better than guys like me), I have to wonder. Sabrina’s family keeps telling her not to abuse magic, and yet they leave the damn Spooky Jar on top of the fridge or on a shelf. Look, if you want the teenager to stop abusing magic, why can’t you lock the spell-giving jar inside a cabinet with a special padlock or something?
“I bought one of those name-brand locks to make sure no one gets into this jar.”
“Name brand, huh? What’s it called?”
“Smith and Wesson.”

I’ve also been informed that Sabrina is surrounded by younger versions of characters from the original sitcom, like Harvey Kinkle and her aunts, Hilda and Zelda. Now, if you’ve seen Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (which I haven’t), you’d know that Hilda and Zelda were at least 600 years old, and look to be at least 30. It’d make sense that they’d look about 25 or so while Sabrina was in middle school, right? Well, it turns out that Hilda and Zelda were turned into teenagers during these years because they abused magic. How can you tell? I’m not sure, especially when these characters look NOTHING like their adult versions.

And not only have Hilda and Zelda been turned into teenagers, they apparently have to go to high school and learn how to drive while obeying the rules of Sabrina’s guardian, Uncle Quigley. Why? What purpose does this serve? They’re over 600 years old-it’s not like they wouldn’t know how to do this stuff already. I may not be a warlock, but I don’t see how this is an effective punishment for abusing magic. Personally, I think it’d be better if they were turned into trees. The plot twist is that they don’t do anything and we don’t feel insulted when we go home.

My other friend claims that at least they got Nick Bakay to voice Salem in the cartoon like he did in the sitcom. I can’t personally tell you what that’s like, but I hear cartoon Salem saunters around in a smoking jacket a la Hugh Hefner and prods Sabrina into using magic because he’s an asshole. I have to say, if I ever sat down to watch every single episode of this series multiple times in syndication, I’d think Salem was easily the best character out of the whole lot. That’s why when Salem gets on a bus, everyone else has to get up and go to the back.

But even if I wanted to watch this show (which I don’t) I’d be cautious. This is a DiC series we’re talking about here. DiC cartoons are infamous for cheesy plotlines, flat characters, and inconsistent animation. This show is no different. Pouring over the notes that my other friend obsessively took while watching a couple of episodes, I’ve learned that while the animation is passable, this show has several other problems that only enhance how lame it is. (His words, not mine.)

For example, this show has a load of EXCELLENT episode title puns, which every cartoon is required to have by law. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love a good reference, and the show apparently drops in some pop culture references from time to time. However, it’s mostly limited to those awful title puns-they don’t really do anything else with them. One episode is called “Field of Screams”, and involves a group of baseball-playing monsters called the “Impalers” taking over the local joints in Sabrina’s town. Look, if you’ve got a gang of baseball players dominating town, why didn’t you model the episode after The Warriors and have the local kids face down the monsters with a team called “The Baseball Furies”?

And it says here that some of these references don’t make sense. In the episode “Boy Meets Bike”, Sabrina offers to take Harvey to a double feature showing the two Armour of God movies. But wait a minute-Armour of God 2 was released first in the US as Operation Condor, and after that Armour of God 1 was released direct-to-video as Operation Condor 2: Armour of the Gods. Are they going to see the original Hong Kong flicks, or are they going to see the American versions, which they probably wouldn’t know are really titled Armour of God unless they Googled it like I did?

Eh. Maybe they know a film buff who spends his weekend watching movies like Bruce Lee VS. Bad Guys From Stephen King Novels. (Apparently what “It” fears the most is a roundhouse.)

Then there are times where the references are just plain wrong. In another episode where Sabrina, Harvey, and Salem are sucked into Harvey’s indie comic book, they find that a green blob called the Dreaded Dysphylia is erasing the entire comic book world. Harvey gets pretty bummed about it-he’s come to believe that his comic book skills suck, and so he doesn’t want to come up with a plan. I’d call the Ghostbusters for help, but since we’re stuck in a comic book, the only thing we can do now is try to stall with the Filibusters.

But another character called “Perfecto, Pooch of Power” is amused, and says that you don’t really hear the world “Dysphylia” in a comic book that often.

…hold on.

No it’s not! Dysphylia is a GENUS, which has nothing to do with liking yourself! The closest word that relates to liking yourself is “dysphoria”, which basically means ‘feeling bad’! Did these guys even do any research? If this blob is supposed to represent Harvey’s self-loathing, why didn’t they make sure its name was actually related to depression? Who knows. Maybe one of the senior interns was supposed to look it up, if his ventriloquist hadn’t called in sick that day.

But these notes explain that the biggest problem of this show is the total lack of character development. Now, it’s true that a lot of episodic cartoons don’t really have character development. It’s not exactly a bad thing. But consider this for a moment-the entire premise of Sabrina: The Animated Series involves Sabrina abusing magic to solve a problem, only to learn a valuable life lesson after the spell backfires and she’s forced to settle things herself. Sounds reasonable enough.

So, with this new experience under her belt, what does Sabrina do in the next episode? SHE ABUSES MAGIC.

Really, why do you show that Sabrina “learns a lesson” when it’s clear she doesn’t learn a damn thing at all? People change because of events in their life. You’d think that after lots of wacky hijinks, Sabrina would realize that using a spell isn’t going to work, especially when those spells come in a box that says “As Seen On TV”.

And, according to my notes, there’s one incident that’s probably the worst case of “retaining the status quo” I have ever seen. See, Sabrina has a rival named Gem Stone who often abuses her wealth to show up Sabrina and try to win Harvey’s favor. Okay, no problem. But in one episode, Gem’s family actually loses all of their money, and Gem is forced to live with Sabrina for a while. Gem eventually develops a healthy and profound respect for Sabrina, and though she gets her money back at the end of the episode, you know that she’ll never be the same again.

Does this affect any future episode? NO. Come on, guys. If you’re not going to take advantage of character development, then don’t develop your characters in the first place. I’d rather have cardboard people that characters who develop right into a brick wall. Actually, forget cardboard people-I’d rather have some action figures. Like Optimus Prime. Then Skeletor can steal Barbie so Optimus has to team up with Snake Eyes to stop him. Oh yeah, that would be awesome.

Overall, I can only guess that Sabrina: The Animated Series was pretty forgettable, though it sounds harmless. And hey-the show was apparently produced by Savage Steve Holland, who created the awesome Eek! the Cat. That’s pretty cool. Still, if you’re gonna watch something by DiC, you might as well watch Inspector Gadget. At least his theme song is way more awesome.

Oh! My other Sabrina-liking friend has just shown up and told me that this show got a follow-up called Sabrina’s Secret Life, involving practically no one from the original voice cast. Judging by how much Sabrina: The Animated Series isn’t worth it, I’m glad I also never paid attention to Sabrina’s Secret Life.

(I’m being serious. I don’t remember that damn show at all.)