Your Top Ten Favorite Shows From Sid and Marty Krofft

Speaker 1 0:00

Meanwhile, the other male actor, John Anthony Bailey, who played CC, he was an American actor and pornographic film actor.

Speaker 2 0:10

No, oh no! Want to see my Wonder

Speaker 1 0:14

Buck? Yeah, shockingly, that was his porn name, Wonder Buck. Welcome to the Pop Culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation, whose ideas of military service were formed by Gomer Pyle, surprise,

Speaker 3 0:48

surprise, we believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters, and images. And if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear like Marshall, Will, and Holly on a routine expedition, and today we're counting down the 10 most popular giant puppet shows in the land in a countdown of your favorite shows created by the genius minds of Sid and Marty Croft. I'm Carolyn. I'm Kristen,

Speaker 1 1:15

and I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists.

Speaker 4 1:20

Don't get left behind. Take a trip with us today. We will lead you to a land of dreams. Rock out some super shows. They will blow your mind away. When you join us, you'll know why we say.

Speaker 5 1:56

Welcome to part two of our tribute to Sid and Marty Croft and their Croft Super Show universe. Last episode was a bonanza of information. So much information. The Croft universe is weird and wild, and it is oh so 70s with these big foam human-sized puppet things that were neither human nor animal. They were like drug-induced figments of the Croft imagination, and we were the lucky beneficiaries of all that psychedelic creativity. We learned about the Croft brothers and their humble beginnings as marionette enthusiasts, which grew into rated X adult puppet shows that toured all over the world, and then how they circled back to children when they created H.R. Puff and stuff, launching their careers as mainstays of 1970s and 80s Saturday morning children's programming. They just kept pumping out more shows with these outrageous characters that enthralled us and frightened us all at the same time, and we could not look away. Carolyn took us through a timeline of all of those shows, but we didn't have time to take you deep inside those shows and tell you what they were about. That's what we will do today. And to make it even more fun, we decided to rank them worst to best. And so we asked you what was your favorite show created by Sid and Marty Croft, and then we counted your comments. We put them into a countdown machine, and we came up with the top 10 shows from the Croft Super Show universe, according to us, the members of the Pop Culture Preservation Society. Always, because this feels epic. Your opinions about this once in a lifetime phenomenon-it is a phenomenon seems important. Seem important. Don't check my grammar. There's so much to discuss because this was not like anything any of us had ever seen before or since or since.

Speaker 1 3:52

I feel like they're so responsible just for that kind of stereotypical version of the '70s being this giant psychedelic fever dream. I think the Crofts had a big hand in that.

Speaker 3 4:04

Yeah,

Speaker 1 4:05

yeah, they

Speaker 5 4:05

absolutely did. For children, they took they took something that was in the adult world and they fed it to children.

Speaker 3 4:11

Yeah, I read something that said they kind of almost piggybacked on the yellow submarine kind of idea from the Beatles, and just kind of that was kind of our children's kind of intro into that kind of a world. Yep.

Speaker 5 4:26

Yeah. I never knew if Yellow Submarine was for adults or for children. I thought it was for me, but I don't know. Yeah. Well, why you thought it would be something for children?

Speaker 1 4:36

But it's because of I think all the cartoon like graphics and the cartoonishness of it, you know. Yeah. Hey, before we get to our countdown, can I circle back to just something we talked about last week that we were all that blew all of our minds? Oh yes, please. Okay. And also, I want to tell you that I got all this information from the Remind Magazine website. Now, Remind Magazine, as you know, the three of us love the print version, and you would too. I promise you, all listening, you would too. In fact, they sponsor our podcast because we're such a great fit. And speaking of Remind Magazine and how much you would love the print version, did you know that if you go to Remind magazine.com/pop you can get a full year of your Mind Magazine for just $12 That's like two cups of coffee, and you get an entire year of the most fun nostalgia and games and puzzles and posters and cool graphics and fun facts and trivia. Anyway, it's 86% off the cover price, you guys. So anyway, wow! They also have a great website, and they have so many articles about different craft shows and the crofts and everything. And do you guys remember last week? We were all very surprised to learn that Sid and Marty Croft produced a show called Pryor's Place, which yes, yes, Richard

Speaker 3 6:02

Pryor's children's. Yeah, I mean, when you think

Speaker 1 6:04

Richard Pryor, you probably don't immediately think children's television, correct? Famously foul-mouthed and drug-using comedian, but he got a call from Marty Croft, and Marty thought Richard Pryor was the funniest man on in the world. Basically, is what this article in Remind Magazine said, and so he had pitched his name during a meeting with some CBS executives, and they said, "Okay, fine, we'll greenlight it if you can get Pryor to say yes. Well, Barty's like this was a time in Richard Pryor's life where he was trying to make a lot of changes, and he was trying to clean up his act, and I thought he might just like the idea of doing something for kids. Marty said, and he said he was interested. And he's like, I was kind of shocked by that. But then they developed Pryor's Place, which was sort of a Sesame Street like live action show, and it did have occasional puppets. And the soundstage was designed to look like Pryor's Richard Pryor's hometown of Peoria. You guys, some of the guest stars on Pryor's place were Lily Tomlin, Henry Winkler, Robin Williams, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, because of course Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Of course, yes, yeah. And they had it was only 13 episodes, but it basically was like actors and Richard Pryor acting out stories about children's issues, like bullying and shoplifting. I was kind of wondering, though, was there like drug use because there would be kind of an unreliable narrator situation, right? Yes, I guess they do.

Speaker 1 7:35

I'm glad you guys are sitting down because it was pretty successful. It even won a few daytime Emmys. What?

Speaker 5 7:43

And I've never heard of what year was this?

Speaker 1 7:46

This was in 1984. So we're teenagers. We're teenagers.

Speaker 5 7:52

We're not watching children's television. I'm not watching any television really. Yeah. Well, I just missed. This is after he burned his his head, or what did he do? Yeah, went on fire. That was

Speaker 1 8:03

Michael Jackson. No,

Speaker 5 8:04

no, he didn't. It was a cocaine creep or a cochrane. Oh, that's something. Yeah, crack food on his face. That's why he was trying to. We're not laughing. We're not. I know. No,

Speaker 1 8:15

that's very serious. Well, but you might make a joke about that. By the way, he would make slamming. So we're just we're just honoring his humor. You might be wondering, well, it was pretty successful ratings wise. It won some daytime Emmys. What? Why? Why didn't it keep going? Well, Richard Pryor pulled the plug on the show, and it says in Remind Magazine for reasons that will remain as mysterious as why he said yes in the first place, you know, I will have to say I was reading a lot of articles on, you know, in Remind, and the writing is pretty dang funny, too. Okay, and then the last one. Remember, Kristen, last week you were talking almost comparing just a little bit the Croft, like HR Puffin stuff type puppets to Grimace and the McDonald puppets. Yes, did you know that in 1970 the McDonald's ad execs did approach the Crofts with an intriguing proposition? What if the characters of HR Puff and Stuff appeared in a series of commercials for the restaurant? The Crofts were like, "Yeah, tell us more, and they sent over designs and ideas. But when it came time to pay and actually do it, the McDonald execs said, "No, we're canceling the ads. We're not doing it. However, the next year, ads began to air about a place called McDonaldland. Shut up! And it was tough. Remind Magazine says it was tough not to notice the similarities. It was a fantastical island where human children cavorted with large, bizarre puppets and talking trees. Right. It turned out that former employees of the Crofts were involved in that creation of McDonald Land, and then in 1971. The Crofts sued McDonald's, and the case was found in their favor. And Sid and Marty were awarded more than a million dollars. Listen to what Marty told Forbes magazine in 2016. So we went to Europe for two years and spent it all. I love the author of this Remind magazine article. He says there's no word on whether Freddie the Flute joined

Speaker 5 10:23

them. They're so funny. Okay, that answer. That's amazing because when when it came out of my mouth when I said like the grimace or Mayor McCheese, it's almost like I wasn't even. It occurred to me after I said it, like, hey, yeah, that's the only other thing. Like there was, we said there's no copying except for that. There's no copying. There are no other shows. There are no other commercials that incorporated those giant phone puppets except McDonald's.

Speaker 1 10:50

Look at yeah, Mayor McCheese's head. It's

Speaker 5 10:53

HR puppet.

Speaker 1 10:54

Basically, HR. He's the mayor. Oh my god. Oh my god. He's the mayor. And the talking trees, come on! How were you ever thinking you could pull that off, McDonald's? Come on!

Speaker 3 11:05

And now I'm kind of bummed for Sid and Marty because it seems like they should have gotten more than a million dollars, or that they should have gotten something in perpetuity.

Speaker 1 11:12

Yes, recurring. And I'm-I totally agree with you. But let's not forget too. Back in 1974, that was a lot more than it was now, but they still

Speaker 3 11:22

milked it. It's not like it was an ad campaign that that was like for two years. You know how some ad campaigns. I mean, it's still going,

Speaker 1 11:29

and all the merch, like all the McDonald's glassware and the pup, the little hand plastic

Speaker 3 11:34

meals and the neutrals, and they they parties and

Speaker 5 11:38

the and they basically ripped them off. Get inside the grimace. Remember the grimace cage?

Speaker 1 11:43

Well, the it was the remember the mayor. Mayor McGee is the one you're thinking of. Yeah,

Speaker 5 11:48

that's what I'm thinking. His head

Speaker 1 11:49

is what you climb, what you're all in. It's like the Statue

Speaker 5 11:52

of Liberty. You get in his head.

Speaker 1 11:54

Anyway, I just thought you guys would find those two facts that I found since we recorded last week

Speaker 3 12:00

pretty

Speaker 1 12:00

interesting. And where did I find those fun facts?

Speaker 5 12:03

Remind Magazine. Remind

Speaker 1 12:05

Magazine. Thank you to

Speaker 5 12:06

Remind Magazine, by the way, for sponsoring them. It's such a good partnership. I just love this. It really is

Speaker 3 12:12

media heaven.

Speaker 5 12:13

It really is. It really is. Love

Speaker 5 12:15

it. Okay, so let's get let's get moving into our into our countdown. We actually asked you two questions. The first question was, who did you prefer as your croft super show hosts? Did you like Captain Cool and the Kongs, or did you like the Bay City Rollers, and this was so interesting to me because, well, we'll talk about why in a second. But the winner of little minor drum roll, because it's just a tiny question, the winner by by double two to one was Bay City Rollers. Every almost everybody said Bay City Rollers, and this this does make sense to me because we went from you know outrageous characters to heartthrobs from Scotland, right? And I think you pointed out last time too, Carolyn. Like maybe we were growing up from the playful things to the more heart throbby things, and so we were going. The show was changing along with us. We all liked this era better, but it was also when the Croft era was kind of ending. The Croft Super Show had several iterations. It had only three seasons, and it sounds like in this third season, when they remade it and then renamed it the Bay City Rollers show, they were doing that because they were losing they were losing viewers, and yet we still voted them the Bay City Rollers, our favorite host over Captain Cool and the Kongs. Well, I mean, they they were they were poster boys too by then. You know, everyone had their posters up. So of course, if you and we were rollers fans to their songs, like a roller

Speaker 3 13:53

rink. I mean, they were. It was more than just TV where we were, you know, hanging out with them. Yeah. Well, yeah,

Speaker 1 14:00

and if you were a huge, do you think they called them roll? What do you think they call Bay City Rollers fans? Like, oh, there there

Speaker 5 14:05

is a there is a word. Oh, oh, there is. Yeah, there is. I can't remember what it is. Well, let's just say you were someone like

Speaker 1 14:11

that, and then you knew that they were going to be on TV every sat every Saturday morning. 100% you were tuning into that. Yeah.

Speaker 5 14:18

Yep. And even though the songs by Captain Cool and the Kong were good, those were good songs. Those were written by the Osmonds. I really did like those songs. They were a little bit more outrageous than the Scottish heartthrobs. They were. They might have been a little too outrageous. They were human, right? Like the giant puppet things are not human. They're not animals. They're not humans. We don't know what they are. But shut your mouth, Captain. I don't know. There, Captain Cool and the Kongs were human, but such outrageous humans that it might have been a little, a little off. But it was

Speaker 3 14:52

stardusty. It

Speaker 5 14:53

was. It was glammy. It was the platform shoes and the

Speaker 1 14:57

sequin or the rhinestone stuck to their face. Yes, and the. Lots of glitter

Speaker 5 15:00

in the hair, so much glitter in the hair. But notably, in the second season, Captain Cool and the Kongs dialed it down. There was no more glitter on the face. There was no more paint on the face. Instead, they're just wearing like cool '70s threads, and so that had to be in response to children going, "I'm scared. It's too much.

Speaker 2 15:21

Saturday morning, september 9, the Crop Superstar Hour premieres, starring the Bay City Rollers in their first American series. Saturday morning is a great place to be, starting september 9 on NBC.

Speaker 5 15:36

Okay, so let's start our countdown, our official countdown. Which show did you, the Pop Culture Preservation Society, rank as the most beloved of all in the craft universe? Let's start with the least favorite in the number 10 spot. In last place is the show that got negative one. Negative votes. It got negative one. What this means is that this show got zero votes, but there was one commenter who said anything but this show. As in, do not even talk to me about horror hotel. Horror hotel. She's like, I don't want to talk about it. Horror Hotel starred Witchy Pooh from HR Puff and Stuff as a hotelier, and she's at the front desk. She's jumping in. I know it's weird. It's so weird. She's checking in really weird guests in big phone costumes, and hilarity ensues. But here's the thing: Witchy Pooh was scary, right? She was not the reason we loved HR Puff and stuff. She was the reason we feared it. But they give her her own show, so I think that was kind of, I think that was a miss. So Horror Hotel is one of the 15-minute mini episodes on the third season, just the third season of the Croft Super Show, when it was rebranded as the Croft Superstar Hour. And after just two months, the show was struggling. The whole show, not just Horror Hotel, but the whole show was struggling in its time slot on Saturday morning. And I think Michelle, last time you said that you may not have watched the Croft Super Show because it was up against Looney Tunes. Yeah, right. Totally. So apparently, it was struggling against Looney Tunes, and so they quickly revamped the show and they renamed it the Bay City Rollers Show, and they dropped Horror Hotel. So another reason it may not have gotten any votes is because no one saw it. It was only on for two months. That's eight Saturdays. It was on for eight Saturdays. And like a lot of these shows, you may think you've never seen it, but when you see a clip or even a still image of a witchy poo behind the front desk checking in guests, you're like, "Oh, I totally saw that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 17:39

As soon as you said that, an image popped into my head. Exactly. Of

Speaker 5 17:42

course, I've saw that. Yes, yes, and that is horror hotel negative one votes. Okay, so in the number nine spot is a mega tie. We have a mega tie with all the shows that got zero votes. There were a handful that got not one single person said this was my favorite, and those shows were, and a lot of these you're going to be like I don't know that show, but just please hold. So those shows were The Lost Island, The Lost Saucer, Far Out Space Nets, Magic Mongo, and Bigfoot and Wild Boy. Almost all of these are from either the third season or some of the second season, but it sounds like when fewer people were watching. So the Lost Island was basically a bunch of characters from across the Croft universe stranded on an island in the Bermuda Triangle. Oh, so 70s. The Bermuda Triangle, like it's a this is like a drinking game. Whenever you hear something from the 70s, you have to drink when you hear Bermuda Triangle. You have to drink, so you might think again. You might think you've never seen this show, but maybe it's just because you were confused about what you were watching because it starred HR Puff and Stuff, Sigmon the Sea Monster, Weenie the Genie from Lidsville, Doctor Shrinker, who's now called Doctor Death Ray, and a Slea Stack, all running around the Bermuda Triangle, zero votes. But so now you can be like, well, maybe I saw it. I mean, I know how those people. You just didn't know you were watching The Lost Island. The next show that got zero votes is called Magic Mongo. That is basically I dream of genie with a boy genie, zero votes. Then there's Bigfoot and Wild Boy is something again. I would have told you. I have never seen this, but then I saw a clip of Bigfoot, another emblem of the 70s. Yes, nobody talks about Bigfoot anymore, but we talked about him a lot. Oh, we do in

Speaker 1 19:32

Colorado. Oh, oh,

Speaker 5 19:33

do you?

Speaker 6 19:34

Oh, lots of Bigfoot. Or do you call them

Speaker 3 19:36

Sasquatch? Oh, yeah,

Speaker 1 19:37

it's Sasquatch. Yeah, I guess it is Sasquatch. In my mind, I thought they were

Speaker 3 19:41

interchangeable. I thought they made it for the same. Oh,

Speaker 1 19:43

Brian even has like a sticker. There's like on his Ford Bronco. It's not a sticker he put on. There's actually a metal Sasquatch that comes on the car. But yeah, lots of lots of because he's out there. He's out squash in Colorado.

Speaker 5 19:58

So I see he lives here. Bigfoot is basically-it looks like a Wookie. It's a big Wookie costume, but I saw a clip of this Bigfoot picking up a big rock and throwing it because he's bionic, and I got so hoosker dude. Just this one image of the Wookie slash Bigfoot throwing the rock. Who's growing me

Speaker 1 20:20

a little bit right now. I think there was also an

Speaker 3 20:23

episode of the Bionic Woman or the $6 million Man where there was a Bigfoot that they had to fight. So there could there was a little overlap there. So maybe it was the same Bigfoot. He ran away. He left Wild Boy and he came over to hang out. He came over to $6

Speaker 5 20:38

million Land Man. Yeah, and then you can see him going like because I'm going.

Speaker 3 20:42

Yeah, yes, he's going in

Speaker 5 20:44

slow motion. I definitely this was a later. This

Speaker 1 20:48

was a later craft show too, right? Yes, it is. Like we would have been maybe a season. Yeah, we would have maybe been. Well,

Speaker 5 20:53

no, we're still 10. We're still. I mean, when I say oh, it's still yeah, it's like late

Speaker 3 20:56

70s. Yeah, 1978

Speaker 1 20:59

My sister remembers watching it.

Speaker 5 21:00

Oh, she remember wasn't her favorite,

Speaker 1 21:02

but she remembers watching it for sure. She said, "Yeah,

Speaker 5 21:04

it's that rock. I don't know what it is. I might be zero votes. Nobody wanted. And then there are two shows that I think we got mixed up as children. I never knew which was which, and that is Far Out Space Nuts and Lost in Space. No, no, not Lost Saucer. See again. Okay, we got to work on the titles because I continually call this Lost in Space. And then when I found out there was, and I'm talking about as a child, that there was like a black and white '60s show called Lost in Space. I'm like, no, that's not it. So, Lost Saucer, zero votes. Neither one of them got a single vote. Far Out Space Nuts starred Bob Denver, aka Gilligan, and some other guy as maintenance guys who accidentally press the launch button on a spaceship instead of the launch button, and then whoops, they go out, they blast off into space. The Lost Saucer, however, this one hurts my feelings because this was one of my favorites. This again, I'm saying Lost in Space. The Lost Saucer starred Ruth Fuzzy and Jim Neighbors as Phi and Fum, who are two time-traveling space aliens from the planet ZR3 in the year 2369, and they accidentally land in 1975 with their dorce, a half dog, half horse that I'm sure drives Carolyn crazy because again, it looks like a Wookiee suit. It looks like a person in a Wookiee suit down on all fours, but they have a horse head. Any barks?

Speaker 3 22:28

Gosh,

Speaker 5 22:28

zero votes. Zero votes. Maybe let's

Speaker 1 22:34

let's make this clear too. It doesn't mean people didn't watch them. It just means it wasn't their favorite. It wasn't their favorite question we asked was, "What was your favorite? So yeah, I actually would have if anybody would have said that one of those was their favorite, I would have been like really pretty astounded and really and really admire that person too. Like really proud of that person.

Speaker 5 22:55

Like if your favorite was cross saucer of every craft show, you're you've got you know you've got some march to your own head. I mean those are two those are comedy geniuses right there, Gomer Pyle and Ruth Buzzie. But it could be that then people didn't know what it was called, and so we asked, "Do you like the Lost Saucer? And they're like, "No. But if you'd said, "Did you like that thing where Gomer Pyle and Ruth Buzzy were aliens and they had a dorce? They'd be like, "I love that show. Yeah, we just didn't know what it was called.

Speaker 1 23:34

Well, coming in both at number eight and seven are two shows that I did not watch, but. I don't know why because I would have loved them. Oh yeah, coming in at number eight is Doctor Shrinker. Doctor

Speaker 5 23:49

Shrinker, Doctor Shrinker is a madman with an evil mind. I love that. Very

Speaker 1 23:54

good, very good. We don't even need to put a clip in there. No, no. So Doctor Shrinker was a segment only during only the first season of the Craft Super Show in 1976, and here's just a quick synopsis for those of you who, like me, did not ever watch this, but now know how much I missed out on. So I know there's those of you listening that are like, "What is this one? It is about Brad, BJ, and her brother Gordy, and they crash land their airplane on an island, and as they make their way to the only house on the island, they meet Doctor Shrinker, who was played by veteran actor Jay Robinson, and his assistant Hugo, who was played by Croft favorite Billy Birdie. Why? Well, in an effort to prove that his shrinking ray works, Doctor Shrinker shrinks the three teenagers down to six inches, just six inches tall, and then they spend the remainder of the series trying to return to normal size and escape the island. You guys, I actually Googled: is there a connection between the craft? Brothers show Doctor Shrinker and the movie Honey I Shrunk the Kids, which was one of my favorites. I love that movie. There isn't like I thought maybe they got the you know I mean other than the fact that that it's sort of the same thing yeah. So but meanwhile Doctor Shrinker and Hugo want to catch the trio so that they will have physical proof that the ray works for whatever world power wants to buy it. You guys, why didn't they just shrink something else, like the monkey, like maybe the monkey who's in episode one? Yeah, you could have shrunk anything else and said, "Look, proof. Yeah. Anyway, to me, when I watched that first episode of Doctor Shrinker last week, it screamed "Land of the Lost" to me. Like sets everything, so they're like trapped in this cave. The three teenagers and they're tiny, and then like through a hole, instead of Grumpy the T Rex putting his head through, it's like a blue jay or something, you know, trying to peck peck peck at

Speaker 5 25:57

the same cave. It's probably the same cave, all the

Speaker 1 25:59

same stuff. But anyway, and it said that Doctor Shrinker was perhaps the most notorious of all the Croft Brothers Saturday morning villains. I would disagree and give that award to Witchy Pooh, but no one asked me. Yeah, I think scariest. Maybe he's the most evil. Let's just say maybe he's the most yeah evil. Well, I guess notorious is the sort of the same thing. Anyway, listen to this, you guys. I have to tell you really quickly though about Jay Robinson, who played Doctor Shrinker, because he has a pretty interesting backstory. So, decades before Doctor Shrinker, he was a massive Hollywood star. If you go back and look at like photos of him, he was pretty good looking too. Like all the very black and white, you know, they all look very airbrushed. He his most famous role was in the 1953 biblical blockbuster, The Robe, with Richard Burton. Oh yeah, that really made him super famous. However, from everything I was able to read, he couldn't take like that amount of fame very well, and he spiraled into just booze and drugs, and basically it cost him the better part of a decade, and even landed him in prison for a little short time.

Speaker 5 27:11

Oh my god!

Speaker 1 27:12

Yeah, but finally in the late 60s, he turned things around for himself, and he was. Do you guys remember in the Bewitched episode he played Caesar Augustus? Oh my gosh! Members of the witch episode. That was Doctor Shrinker. Little thing around, like the the little leaves

Speaker 4 27:25

around his head. Yeah, like an olive wreath or yeah

Speaker 3 27:28

something. And then

Speaker 1 27:29

he played Lord Petrie on Star Trek. And then after after the 16 episode run of Doctor Shrinker ended, he continued to find work. He was on shows like Cheers and The Nanny. He was in Big Top Pee Wee and Bram Stoker's Dracula. So yeah, so he turned his life around, and Doctor Stranger kind of was the gateway then to some other really great roles for him. And we can't quickly, and I know we did last week just a little, but we can't talk about the world of Sid and Marty Croft without celebrating Billy Bartie. Oh

Speaker 5 28:04

my God, Billy Bardi and all of his

Speaker 1 28:06

roles. I mean, he was just in everything and a genius. And Carolyn, you're going to love this fun fact.

Speaker 7 28:12

Oh God, love

Speaker 1 28:13

it! I'm so excited to share this with you. One of the three trap teenagers, Brad Fulton, was played by an actor named Ted Eccles, E C C L E S, and if you watch it and his voice sounds incredibly familiar to you, it's for good reason. He was a child actor, and he provided the iconic voice of Aaron, the title character in the timeless 1968 Rankin Bass stop motion holiday classic, The Little Drummer Boy. What? What is the voice? And he. I never liked the

Speaker 3 28:47

little drummer voice. I know. I didn't like it. I didn't like it. Okay, but it's still a fun fact. It is a incredibly fun fact. Thank

Speaker 1 28:53

you. Thank you. I love

Speaker 3 28:54

that.

Speaker 5 28:55

I love those shrinkies. That's what the three teenagers are called, shrinkies. And of all the teenagers on all of the shows, I think I liked the Shrinkies the best. Like they were the most aspirational for me. They looked like teenagers in my neighborhood, and and the girl Shrinky, I can't remember what her name is. She was really sassy and funny, and yeah, and I wanted to BJ

Speaker 1 29:14

BJ Masterson, but she was played by an actress named Susan Lawrence, who I don't think did a lot of other stuff because I really couldn't find anything on her, and she doesn't even have a hot link in Wikipedia.

Speaker 5 29:24

Come on, so there you go.

Speaker 1 29:27

Oh, sorry, Susan.

Speaker 3 29:28

Yeah,

Speaker 1 29:28

do better. Okay, so then coming in at number seven is another craft show with three teenagers, and another one I think I would have really liked, and that's Wonderbug. Okay, so. Wonderbug wasn't both the first and second season of the Croft Super Show, and you guys, how lucky were we that the mid 70s were obsessed with magical talking thinking vehicles? Oh my God, the Dune buggy!

Speaker 5 30:14

I know, I know.

Speaker 1 30:15

You've got the Love Bug, though. You've got Speed Buggy. Yes, we had all these magical vehicles, and it was so fun. And actually, the Kraft brothers explicitly designed Wonderbug to capture that exact Hanna-Barbera energy. So again, for those of you like me, do not watch. Wonderbug follows three teenagers, Susan, Barry, and Cece, and they find a beat up, rusted out doom buggy named Schleppar in a junkyard. You guys want to know why they name it? Why it's called schlepp car?

Speaker 5 30:43

Sure, tell us, please tell us. Because

Speaker 1 30:45

it has a California personalized license plate that says schlepp, so that's why they just-I don't even know why they called it schlepp. Maybe because it's like that version of it is broken down and rusty, and you know, whatever schlepping

Speaker 5 30:55

from place to place. Yeah.

Speaker 1 30:57

So the big twist in Wonderbug is that whenever the teens, whenever they honk the special magical horn, that just kind of rusty, dilapidated schlepp car instantly transforms into Wonderbug, shiny. It's orange, high flying, self thinking superhero car, and then just sort of this just reminds me of they're like Scooby Doo, like because every episode the trio and Wonderbug they they're stumbling upon like crime rings and bank robbers and eccentric villains right but of course Wonderbug always saves the day he can fly he's got all these gadgets that come out and he has his own distinct personality which is communicated entirely through cartoonish horn honking and wheel spinning. Wonderbug doesn't talk. Spinning

Speaker 5 31:43

of the wheels. Yes, it said

Speaker 1 31:46

that. So it's all just audio effects. But I think this is such a funny thing I stumbled upon. It says the audio effects were so distinct that kids on the playground in 1976 could instantly mimic the exact rhythm of Wonderbug's porn. Isn't that cute? Yeah, it's sort of like it's sort of like Herbie the Love Bugs meet Scooby Doo, right? But with um, you know the Sid and Marty Croft stuff. The best to me are the like I'm using air quotes here, listeners. If you can't see the special effects of when Wonderbug was flying, it's basically like the three. It's like I think even last week I might have said they were the first to use what was called blue screen technology. So you lose any of like the three Dness of it. So it's like them in a car, and someone is probably standing in front of them with like a fan, like a V floor thing, because and they're all supposed to be like looking down, look

Speaker 5 32:40

down at the floor. What

Speaker 1 32:42

it looks like behind them is like someone like on I don't even know like like rolled out like brown paper butcher paper painted a sky and clouds. But one of them they're like two of the teenagers are looking down like he's down there, and the third one is just like looking off into the distance, going, "Yeah, I see him, but he's not even looking down. It's so it's so primitive. Okay, I have to tell you this. You guys are both gonna love this. These two fun facts about two of those three teenagers, the two guys. So the the man who played Barry's name was David Levy. You guys, he is now an American psychologist, professor, author, stage director, and actor. He's a professor of psychology at the Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University.

Speaker 5 33:31

At Pepperdine, where they did Betello the network

Speaker 3 33:34

stores. That's right. Oh wow!

Speaker 1 33:35

I mean, yeah, he's yeah, he's the one who is the like sort of blondish hair, like sandy brown hair guy. Okay, um, yeah, he's even co-authored a textbook on cross-cultural psychology and critical thinking. So that was just sort of a flash in the pan for him. Meanwhile, the other male actor, John Anthony Bailey, who played Cece, he was an American actor and pornographic film actor.

Speaker 3 34:01

No, oh no! Want to see my Wonderbug?

Speaker 1 34:08

Yeah, shockingly, that was his porn name, Wonderbug. No, he basically after Wonderbug, he transitioned into an adult film career. No, his stage name was Jack Baker. I wish it was funnier than that. I wish it was like Wonderbug, or yeah. But um, and he died in 1994. But he, yeah. I just thought that was so interesting. He's like this children's TV. There should be

Speaker 3 34:30

some kind of like rule that there has to be an amount of time that goes by before when you're a children's actor and then into the porn industry. Like maybe there's a little you know moratorium on your acting.

Speaker 5 34:43

It's like in your non-compete. Yeah, you can't do porn for 10 years for 10 years. Yeah, yeah. At

Speaker 1 34:49

least I just thought those two facts I were so interesting. That is funny. Okay, what's in the number? What's in the number six spot, Carolyn?

Speaker 3 34:58

Yes. So our next show, which airs. From 1971 through 72, with again just one season, 17 episodes. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it just might be the absolute strangest of all the Croft creations, and we know that that's saying a lot. It's Lidsville, which is an appropriate title for a show about a town filled with talking hats, I do not understand. That's what I said.

Speaker 5 35:23

Don't understand. Talking

Speaker 8 35:25

hats. Oh, how's that for a chopper?

Speaker 1 35:43

I just want to know who, when someone was like, "I got an idea for a show, and they present that, and I just want to see the room go, "Yes, yes. Well, you know what? I think I have a little,

Speaker 3 35:53

I have a little interpretation of what I think may have happened in that little room that I am going to share with you guys. But I do want to say that I thought, okay, I've got Lidsville. I remembered Charles Nelson Riley, but otherwise, I didn't think I remembered it until I watched the you know opening scene. Oh God! Oh my gosh! I totally I was humming along and singing some of the

Speaker 5 36:16

song with you're kidding. Oh, I need to watch this story. This is a funny story. We know all these shows. We do,

Speaker 3 36:22

and yes. So anyway, I thought you know I can only imagine what that pitch meeting was like, and so I thought I'd kind of tell you what my kind of idea of what it might have been like would would be you know. So I see that Sid and Marty might waddle into some NBC exec's office, and they say, "Gentlemen, puffing stuff was just the appetizer. Today we are bringing you a world of hats, and we're calling it Lidsville. Okay, the premise is a teenage boy, which, by the way, was played by Butch Patrick, aka Eddie Munster, Eddie Munster, who you would not even recognize. I it took me a little while to put two and two together because I had said last week that indeed that's who this was in this show, Butch Patrick. But there are no similarities to Eddie Munster in this in Mark, the character. He's he's really cute, and well, it's a

Speaker 1 37:19

lot a lot of years later, right? From the well, yes, it is. It is,

Speaker 3 37:22

but I don't. There's nothing, yeah, remotely Eddie Munster-ish about him. He looks like he could have been on a cover of Tiger Beat. Perhaps he was, and we are immediately introduced to him out of all places Six Flags Over Texas, where he is watching a magic show. Okay, just so you know, that's the thing. Now we're. I'm going to move on. Here's the premise that Sid and Marty are pitching to the NBC execs. A teenage boy falls into a giant top hat and gets trapped in an alternate dimension populated entirely by walking, talking headwear. But the absolute, the best part, you guys, of this whole pitch is going to be when they reveal the villain. They're going to say, you know, or the execs are going to be expecting a witch. We're going from witchy poo, and Marty, I think he's just going to drop this ultimate bomb. Which witches are so 1969. The villain is Charles Nelson Reilly, that match game icon himself, and he will play the evil hoodoo, and he's going to be flying around in a motorized top hat called the Hatamarant. You guys, let me just tell you, this show is full filled with more puns than you could even imagine. I think if it comes to what is the punniest show ever created, Lidsville is going to win that award, and I'll share some of those with you in just a little while. But you get the idea. It's a Hadamarant, isn't that fun? So cute. I do want to tell you a little bit about some of the characters, some of the headwear that resides in Leedsville, because it's so funny, their names are funny, and then their roles in the show are kind of funny. I've introduced you to Mark, that's Butch Patrick, and Horatio J. Hoodoo, that's Charles Nelson Riley, our evil villain, and we have kind of a fun genie that wants to help Mark get out of this crazy Lidsville town, and this is Weenie the Genie, who I think Kristen mentioned before. That might be my favorite name of

Speaker 5 39:25

Weenie

Speaker 3 39:26

the Genie. And if you saw Weenie the Genie, you would immediately know that you've seen this show. Billy Hayes actually is the actress that plays. Oh, what else?

Speaker 9 39:35

She's done a lot of stuff. Yes.

Speaker 3 39:36

Well, she was. Oh, she's with Jean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now she's a good guy because she's trying to help Mark get out of this awful town. Because you know, Mark not only is he being like pursued by Horatio J. Hoodoo, Charles Nelson Riley, he's also being pursued by Captain Hook Nose. This is a pirate hat that literally has a hook in the place of a nose.

Speaker 5 39:58

Oh my god!

Speaker 3 39:59

Here's one of my. Favorite characters: Rah rah. Now, Rah Rah is a football helmet and kind of has that dumb jock role. That's what Rah Rah plays. Then there's Madame Ringading. She is a party hat with a party favor nose, and she serves as Lidsville's social director. We've got yes, exactly. We've got Scorchy, a talking, walking fire hydrant with a long hose for a nose, who wears, as you can guess it, a firefighter's hat, and he serves as Lidville's warning system. So if anything bad's going to happen, Scorchie's going to let you know about it. We've got Tex. We've got Tex, who is, as you can imagine, a cowboy hat, and his voice is one that's impersonating John Wayne. So indeed, we've got a walking, talking cowboy hat that sounds like John Wayne. We have got Tonsellini, who is an an opera singing hat and sings every line of his dialog. And lastly, we have Bruce Hoodoo, and Bruce Hoodoo is not a hat, but is the twin brother of Horatio J. Hoodoo. Can we just take a moment for the the 70s to just say there were a lot of twins? Oh, you know, in our shows, like cousins, yeah, that looked exactly like the other person. It's the same person, and then

Speaker 5 41:16

they're saying that it's a long lost cousin or or a twin that we never knew about. So many

Speaker 3 41:22

rights, and it's you know it's the same actor playing both roles. So Charles and Riley was

Speaker 5 41:26

was also what was his name? Bruce Hoodoo.

Speaker 3 41:30

Bruce Hoodoo was the twin brother. Yes, of Horatio. What I love the most is, as you can guess it, the puns. If it had hat, bonnet, topper, lid, brim, crown, headpiece-any of those. Let's make it a joke. That's what they did. So you can imagine all the keep it under your hat. I'll eat my hat. Mad as a hatter. Hats off to you. Top that. That's a joke often aimed at the top hats. You're talking through your hat. That's old hat at the drop of a hat. I put a lid on it. What's under your lid? Can you imagine? I would just be so happy just sitting in a writer's room with people, just batting those back and forth. I

Speaker 5 42:06

love that. I would have literally told you that not only did I not see this show, I would have told you I've never heard of this show until you just. I don't

Speaker 3 42:15

think I knew the name of it. Like I, I didn't know the

Speaker 5 42:18

name of it. But as soon

Speaker 3 42:19

as I saw the scene, he's like sitting in you know those like theater areas of those amusement parks. You're sitting on like a cement bench, and so and Charles Nelson Riley is this magician at Six Flags, and then somehow Mark slash Eddie Munster wanders into his to Charles's dressing room, and this hat, the magician's hat, all of a sudden becomes giant, and he goes to look in, and as you can imagine, he topples in and heads to Lidsville, and the rest is history.

Speaker 5 42:51

I still don't see how that survives in a pitch meeting. It's too crazy, and yet here we are.

Speaker 9 42:56

Yeah,

Speaker 5 42:57

talking about it, and it's history. It's TV history.

Speaker 1 42:59

Although I also wonder if by then Sid and Marty Kraft could just they would just kind of buy anything that they were pitching, yeah, because they had been so successful, and you know.

Speaker 5 43:07

But were they? Because as we every time we talk about a show, it's one season, yeah, and then 17 episodes. Yes, always

Speaker 3 43:15

same time. They're also they're casting not. I mean, people that are recognizable or that go on that show, yes. So there's something going on there, and it was the '70s. Can we just say it was the '70s? So I think that answers a lot of what what you know we can't imagine would get greenlit, greenlit. Well,

Speaker 1 43:36

and we can use that. I mean, and how many episodes do we have now? 270 something. We use it was the 70s for right many many many of the things we talk about

Speaker 5 43:46

and maybe they weren't canceled maybe they were just like onto the next thing I'm making an assumption that you keep going until you're canceled and so I'm like why is every single show one season but they had one season of shows throughout the whole 70s look at all these different shows. So people were continuing to greenlight them. They wouldn't continue to greenlight them if they continually got canceled. So maybe their creative energy was just so manic that they couldn't stick with one thing for longer than a season.

Speaker 3 44:13

I can totally envision that. Yeah, and they obviously made a mark on us. So you know they're classics to us.

Speaker 5 44:22

They are classics, even if you think you've never heard of it. That's right. That here's what the title is. Okay, in our number five spot is everyone's favorite bug band.

Speaker 9 44:35

The

Speaker 5 44:48

Bugaloos aired on NBC from 1970 to 1972, and it was in syndication from 1978 to 1985. So the Bugaloos, the Bugaloos are well. Well known to both Gen Xers and Millennials, there is today at this moment in time a long-standing website devoted to the Bugaloos called Bugaloos.net. It is active today. That's how beloved the show is. There is fan art, collectibles. There is Bugalo's trivia. You can download PDFs of the three Bugalo's novels from this website. Yeah.

Speaker 1 45:27

Oh, this is really cool. Well, maybe some of those things we'll put in this month's weekly reading. That would be so that you have links to go straight there. Yeah.

Speaker 5 45:35

And there's a whole page devoted to tracking the Bugalo's buggy. The Bugaloo's had a dune buggy with wings because it was also a bug. Yes, yeah. And should we also have an Amazon car that is devoted to dune buggies and flying cars of the 70s?

Speaker 1 45:50

I mean, that would be really fun. I

Speaker 5 45:52

think so. We could. I think we could populate an entire episode with all the dune buggies. So there's on this website. There's a whole chronology of where this car is? Where is the the buggy? The do the what is it called? The buggaloo's buggy. Where is the buggaloo's buggy? I can't even say it. Anyway, tongue twister. At one point, it was found in a storage unit in France, and then someone from London bought it. Then it was in the London Motor Museum, and then it went missing. And they're like, where is where is the buggaloo's buggy? And then they found it. And then there's a new owner. They report every time there's a new owner of the buggaloo's buggy. It's hilarious. Okay, so the show takes place in Tranquility Forest, and the basic premise is that there are these people bugs. They're people, but they have wings and antennae. Otherwise, they're people, and they are in a band. Their names are Joy, IQ, Harmony, and Courage. I didn't know they had names. I had no idea. And what I never picked up on was that they were actual bugs, not just generic bugs. Like the girl bug Joy, she's a butterfly, and the three boys are a grasshopper, a bumblebee, and a ladybug, which I think is funny. Why did they make it be the CoCrofts? And the thing about the bugaloos is that they can fly, and they're really good at playing music. And this drives Martha Ray crazy. Martha Ray is who plays Bazaar Bonita. Bizarre Bonita cannot fly, and she is talentless. And so every show is about bizarre Benita trying to either sabotage or steal the talent from the bugaloos. Benita lives in a giant jukebox. She has a horrible voice, and she's jealous. Martha Ray is made up in true croft fashion, meaning outrageous. She has crazy hair, crazy prosthetics, lots of glitter and paint on her face. She's like a pink witchy poo with a pink afro made out of feathers. And if we could have seen through all this makeup and prosthetics, we would have seen a serial love boat guest. She was the one who looked slightly familiar, but we didn't know why. It's because she's on the Bugaloo's, Martha Ray, so the Buggaloo's was actually pitched as the British version of the monkeys. That's what they wanted this show to be. You recall? Sorry, let's just make them bugs. They're like, yes, they're bugs. They're the monkeys, but let's make them bugs. Right. Remember, all of these kids had British accents again. I never noticed, and 1000s of teenagers showed up to audition for the show in England in the spring of 1970, including Phil Collins. What? Yes, two of the three finalists for the role of the Grasshopper were Phil Collins pre Genesis and the guy who would go on to manage this emerging artist named Elton John. So the third guy got the part, and he has said that if he had not gotten the part, it would have changed the trajectory of the history of rock and roll. Oh my God! No king! You are not kidding.

Speaker 1 49:00

And you got the butterfly effect, the grasshopper effect. Maybe the grasshopper had the grasshopper effect. There's

Speaker 3 49:06

another little interesting fact about a member of the Collins family. It is Phil Collins' mother who discovered Jack Wilde of H.R. Puffinstuff fame. Yes, she saw him in a park playing with his brother, and she helped him get his artful Dodger job, and then that's where Marty Croft saw him and wanted him on HR Puff and stuff. But Phil Collins' mother was a talent agent, so perhaps I'm so glad I missed that

Speaker 5 49:31

part because I was like, "What she's oh yeah, sorry, sorry, was in the park. Yeah, so

Speaker 3 49:37

she was a talent agent. She, but so maybe that's how Phil got his little foot in the work to try out for the buggaloo.

Speaker 5 49:44

Philip, I see there's an audition today. Yes, and I'm

Speaker 3 49:46

I know the Croft Brothers

Speaker 1 49:49

guys. Seriously, listen, I can do an answer. You are welcome. You are welcome for all of this these fun facts that we we you know give you. Phil

Speaker 5 49:58

Collins could have been a bugaloo. So just like all these other shows, the Bugaloos only ran for 17 episodes. Here we are. There's a whole there's a whole fandom. There's a whole website devoted to the Bugaloos. Only 17 episodes. How do you get years of of reruns out of 17 episodes? But they had the intention of making another season. They really did. But there was a miscommunication with the actors, and they accidentally went home to the UK, and that's what killed the second season. I'm like, how how can't you just bring him back? Just come back.

Speaker 3 50:33

Yeah,

Speaker 5 50:33

there was air travel then. Yeah, there, and there was also supposed to be a Buglooz movie. There was a Buglooz movie in the works, but they accidentally went home. So, like, ah, oh well, never mind. Well, guess we're cans. Guess we can't record anymore.

Speaker 3 50:50

Oh gosh. Okay, coming in at number four is perhaps my the Croft show that is closest to my heart. Part Batman, part Charlie's Angels, and all croft. I'm talking about Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. Another theme that, when you listen to it or hear it, you're going to be singing and humming right along. It will come right back

Speaker 4 51:11

to you. Oh

Speaker 3 51:27

my gosh, I loved this so much. So if you remember, we have Electra Woman Deidre Hall. By day, she's Lori, working as a level-headed reporter for Newsmaker magazine. But by superhero time, she is the undisputed leader of the duo Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. Dyna Girl by day is Judy, the teenage sidekick who helps along as a reporter at the Newsmaker magazine. But by superhero time, she is Dyna Girl and think Batman and Robin. We got Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. That will help you. All right, here's where my memory comes in. Okay, if you guys recall, they Electroman and Dina Girl, they had to become Electroman and Dina Girl. They had to go through the Electra change, which was when they went into this like space and then menopause. Yes, I was just about to say. I think I went through that about

Speaker 1 52:19

three years ago,

Speaker 3 52:20

and go from their, you know, reporter clothes to that bright spandex that made them who we loved, Electra Woman and Dinah Girl. And they had the electrocomms. If you remember those, they were the bulky wrist devices that could do just about everything. Yes, yes, and you could talk into it, and and they were

Speaker 5 52:42

giant. It was like it was like um like a basket, like strawberries on your wrist. Yes, it was the world's biggest Apple Watch.

Speaker 3 52:49

Well, let me tell you, right around this exact time, McDonald's had its McWist watches that came out. Fucking

Speaker 1 52:58

Donald's, I said McFucking Donalds. I didn't mean to, but that's how I came out. I didn't. I think of it as a negative,

Speaker 3 53:05

but I guess if they're stealing, I don't know. But of course, Ronnie and I had our Nick wristwatches, so of course, and so, duh, we're gonna play Electra Woman and Dinah Girl, and we're gonna talk into our watches, and we're gonna fight crime in Katy, Texas, because there was a lot of it. So I have such distinct memory called a sec. Ended up talking into my wrist on my wristwatch. It

Speaker 5 53:30

was like a little TV on their wrist, and you could do the electro beam. You could get you could do everything. It was like a computer. It's an

Speaker 7 53:38

Apple

Speaker 5 53:38

Watch. It's an Apple Watch. Yeah, basically. Yeah,

Speaker 3 53:40

it was the prototype because all the things you could do.

Speaker 1 53:44

The off day, my daughter called and I didn't have my phone with me, and it rang my wrist rang. And I know this has been you could you could do this for years. I just it's always it's just I feel like I'm on get smart when I'm like on a walk and I'm talking to my daughter in my wrist. Do you want to pick up the shoe? I feel like I'm a Jetson. Yeah, you need to be

Speaker 3 54:02

like Electra woman here. How can I help you? I will. Yeah, but yes, it could do all the things. It could do. It could create the Electra beam, the Electra Force, the Electro Force Shield. If you had any special power, if you put Electra in front of it, they could do it. Everything was their electric car, which of course could also become a flying vehicle. All of the Croft vehicles could go on land, and then they could fly. I

Speaker 5 54:30

think I'm electro bitch. I'm electro bitchy.

Speaker 3 54:32

There, I can believe it. Not no offense, but what's so interesting? I'm sure not taken. and this is for I think almost all the shows we've talked about. One, this was only eight episodes. The impression it left on me for only being eight episodes, and you guys, these are only like 12 minute episodes because if you remember on these super shows, they're like two. You. Might get Electra Woman and Lidsville, or you know Doctor Shrinker, so they're not even like 30 minute full episodes that we're watching. It is this like 10 to 12 minute

Speaker 5 55:11

show eight episodes. There were only eight episodes

Speaker 3 55:14

in 1976 of Electra Woman and Dinah Girl. It's insane.

Speaker 5 55:19

We must have seen them 10 times each.

Speaker 3 55:21

I guess so, and I think too for us, you know, this is the same era of Wonder Woman. We're going to get the Bionic Woman. We're going to get Charlie's Angels. Like for girls, these are our, you know, really somebody our superheroes.

Speaker 5 55:35

It was groundbreaking for for the ladies on the on the shag carpet watching TV, Electro and Dina Girl. Like, there's no. I I know that I know that boys understand this, but I just have to reiterate what it was like to what, and it's better than Catwoman. It was better than Catwoman. It's better than Batwoman and or Batgirl. This well, it was they were the

Speaker 3 55:54

stars. It wasn't like they were these supporting players or something.

Speaker 5 55:58

It was huge. It was so so huge. It deserves its spot. Yeah, it sure does. Okay, we're getting down to it, you guys. We're in our we're we're coming up for our top three, the three most popular croft shows. In the number three spot is the show that I chose as my favorite quote unquote cartoon in our Saturday morning cartoons episode called Saturday Morning Fever. I do cartoon in quotes because this is live action. It's not a cartoon, but I didn't know what to call it. If I had a vote, I would have put this show at number one. That's how much I love Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.

Speaker 8 56:33

Sigmund, you are rotten sea monster. Get out of here.

Speaker 5 56:39

I love, I love that little sea monster. I love him. I love how they hold his tentacle when they cross the street. I love how Johnny and Scott take care of him so lovingly, like hiding him in their in their clubhouse so he's safe. Because everyone has a clubhouse in the 70s. We all had a clubhouse on TV. Everyone had a clubhouse, and they would keep him away from his awful, terrible sea monster family, who have rejected him. They kicked him out of the cave because he won't scare a human. They kicked him out. Johnny, of course, was played by Johnny Whittaker, who played Jody on Family Affair, and Scott is his little brother and looks more like cousin Oliver than Johnny Whittaker. But no matter, no matter. These are the boys who find Sigmund on the beach and hide him in the clubhouse, and they live with Zelda, their hyper vigilant housekeeper, because this is the 70s and everyone is an orphan. And after Johnny and Scott, and after Johnny and Scott find Sigmund on the beach at Dead Man's Point and bring him back to live in their clubhouse, this show becomes a series of capers about keeping Sigmund hidden, because if Zelda sees him, she will call the dog catcher or something. I don't. We don't know, but it won't be good. And so when Zelda goes to the grocery store, then Sigmund can come out of the clubhouse for fun and secret shenanigans and whatnot. He might even come into the house, and then and there's so many there's so many near misses like Sigmund, get out of here, someone's coming, and then little Sigmund has to run away, but can't run because he has tentacles instead of legs, and so that's why there's so much falling down. Sigmund falls down all the time, and then Johnny and Scott will run there. They're they're right there, and they pick him up, and they're holding him by the tentacles, and they're hustling him into the hiding, to a hiding place, into a closet, or back into the clubhouse. Basically, Sigmund is another iteration of Snuffleupagus. There's lots. Yeah, he was right here. I saw him with my own eyes. But Johnny and Scott, they each grab a tentacle and they whisk him away, and they're like, "I didn't see anything. There was no lady. No, I don't know what you're talking about. I think this this watching over Sigmund and picking him up and helping him be safe and have a nice life, along with the music that we talked about in last episode, in our last episode, aka Johnny Whittaker strumming a guitar with no strings and lip syncing to songs about friendship. I think these are the reasons. This is the reason that I love the show because Johnny and Scott were so attentive to little Sigmund. There's so much caretaking. They're like little daddies, and in that Saturday morning TV episode that I just referenced, I point out how Sigmund is essentially parentless because his parents are the sea monster version of Archie Bunker. They kicked him out of the cave. Yes, but Sigmund has also emancipated himself from Johnny, from his parents, and Johnny and Scott support him in this decision, and they protect him from his nasty family, especially his brothers Slurp and Glurp, who are like malevolent Gomer piles. They fall down a lot too. Everybody's falling down. So Sigmund is an orphan, and coincidentally, Johnny and Scott are also orphans. They live with their housekeeper, and I just I always wonder like why the 70s made everyone an orphan. Why did Johnny and Scott have to live with their housekeeper? Why couldn't it

Speaker 1 59:55

have been like a grandma or an aunt, somebody,

Speaker 5 59:59

a neighbor? I'm literal, but actually, why couldn't they just live with their parents? Like, wrong with that? I don't understand. Why did the '70s? Why did the '70s do this to us? I don't know why, but I think we should devote another episode to the orphans of the '70s, like Buffy and Jody. Yeah, no, Jody was an orphan twice. Johnny Woodfin was an orphan twice on Family Affair and on Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. That's Sigmund and the Sea Monsters in the number three spot. I love you, Sigmund. Well, I have one other fun fact for Sigmund. If you remember last week, we talked

Speaker 3 1:00:30

a little bit about an actress who has a kind of a recurring role in Sigmund. She's the one who has the dog named Fluffy or Muffy. One, I think Fluffy, who kind of Sigmund falls in love with her dog Fluffy. I can almost hear the voice in my head as I'm thinking of it. She was the voice of Fern in Charlotte's Web. What I can hear that voice too? Yes, yes. So, and I get that's also Lucy Van Pelt in some of the PS. So she was Fern

Speaker 5 1:00:59

and Lucy.

Speaker 3 1:01:13

Okay, coming in at number two. This is big. This is very big. This is my introduction to the world of Croft, not only mine but the world's introduction to the Crofts. This would be H.R. Puffin Stuff premiering in 1969, and with the tagline, "What if a giant talking dragon mayor helped a little boy trapped on a magical island while a cackling witch tried to steal his talking flute? That sums it up. And also, as I mentioned last week, my yeah, it's where my fear or whatever just heebie-jeebiness of talking inanimate objects began. Like, and I right now want to say I really am thinking about filing a workman's comp thing for this issue and the research I've had to do because it's really been a little bit triggering for me. This week has been a

Speaker 5 1:02:09

lot for you, Carolyn. Yes,

Speaker 3 1:02:11

there are a lot of things that, particularly about HR Puff and stuff, because as we know, the main character Mark, not Mark Jack Wilde, and he plays Jimmy. He's marooned on this island, but it's not just any island. It's the living island where everything, okay, everything talks, sings, dances, and you know is basically alive. So we're talking trees, we're talking you know vultures, everything that shouldn't be its. And so there you go. That's where I think, as I said before, my fear of all of this stuff was maybe planted.

Speaker 5 1:02:50

And if you think about it, they were children in 1939 when the Wizard of Oz came out, where we get the Wicked Wish of the West and those monkeys, those fine monkeys, and the trees that talk. Is that their original inspiration.

Speaker 3 1:03:06

I think you might be onto something.

Speaker 5 1:03:09

So, boom!

Speaker 3 1:03:10

Gosh, and we can't ask them, which is so sad. They've

Speaker 5 1:03:12

died,

Speaker 3 1:03:14

but yeah, I think because there are a lot of similarities, and then you think about Witchy Pooh. She, it's kind of almost like a bikey kind of contraption. Like her vehicle is also one that flies. Oh

Speaker 5 1:03:26

my god! Yes, she's on a bike in the sky.

Speaker 3 1:03:29

Yeah, I think there's a lot, and we probably are just now putting two and two together.

Speaker 5 1:03:34

Literally in this moment, we're figuring this out.

Speaker 3 1:03:37

And one of the interesting things that I didn't realize, but again, was maybe a nod to adults. We talked a little bit about this, or we talked a little bit about this last week. How the Crofts could kind of slip in some of that stuff that would have been maybe over our head, but our parents might have said, "Oh, that's kind of funny, because a lot of these characters on Living Island were actually voiced in parodies of like famous film stars such as Mae West, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson. So our parents maybe walking through the room would have been like, but we wouldn't have known. But you know, yeah, they were they were like mimicking

Speaker 5 1:04:12

icons that our parents knew and recognized. We had no idea, and we didn't care. But that was their that was their nod to our parents,

Speaker 3 1:04:22

right? And again, this was a show that was only lasted one season. It wasn't canceled actually, and it was offered a second season. But the Crofts had to put in so much of their own money to for the production of it that they were losing money on it, and they just couldn't afford to have a second season because whatever they were being offered monetarily was not going to cover their costs, so that's kind of how they did the film version. And Kellogg's Kellogg serial kind of went in on that adventure or whatever that collaboration, and they were part of that making that film. But indeed, it could have gone on. But it was the Croft Brothers who chose to have it just end at that one season, which again is amazing to us that it only lasted one season because of the impact and the memories we have about it. Not only that, in 2007 TV Guide ranked it as number 27 on their all time list of cult TV shows. Yes, totally. Yes, it lives on and on. It has a Funko Pop line, so you can get HR Puff and stuff, witchy poo, and cling and clang. Those like Keystone copy kind of characters that were in the show. They have yes, they have little Funko Pop characters, which I

Speaker 5 1:05:37

think I thought was from McDonald's.

Speaker 3 1:05:40

Yeah, it's all that is really that is super obvious. Like, did they think they were going to win that case?

Speaker 5 1:05:49

I can't believe it. How on earth did they think they were going to win? Did those

Speaker 3 1:05:52

those employees that jumped shift or whatever from Croft and went to McDonald's? How did they sleep at night? Yeah. Well, and how did they not specifically get sued, right? Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, a couple fun facts. One is one that Michelle already shared with us about that whole lawsuit that changed everything, really, because in advertising, it was really the first major case that had a landmark ruling about character infringement and intellectual property. So they're probably studied in law schools. They're probably like the case of Croft versus McDonald's, HR Comfy versus Mayor

Speaker 5 1:06:30

McCheese.

Speaker 1 1:06:31

That's right. That's

Speaker 5 1:06:32

real. That is so significant. Well, can you

Speaker 1 1:06:35

imagine that the courtroom while the plaintiff rise?

Speaker 5 1:06:41

They just nod your major up and

Speaker 3 1:06:43

stuff stands up, and then you just see Mayor McSheese with his giant head bowed as they read the verdict. And the other interesting fact, which could have changed a career, was that there were only two people that auditioned for the role of Witchy Pooh. One was Billy Hayes, who got the role, and the other person was Penny Marshall. Oh boy! Yes, and they they liked her, but they said at the end that she really was not right for the role. And Sid jokingly would say, "We just couldn't have a Brooklyn witch, and that was at the end of the day why they decided Penny Marshall wasn't the right. That would be also talk about the grasshopper

Speaker 1 1:07:21

effect, or that now we can call it maybe the HR effect. You think had she been cast, one thing, just that one little difference in her life might not have then led to things like Laverne and Shirley, all these other things. You just don't know, right?

Speaker 3 1:07:35

Exactly. Because think about Billy Hayes. I mean, she was always witchy poo or kind of just a creepy-ish character. So if we, you know, I don't think I would have bought her as Laverne because I would always have had this icky feeling. Same with Margaret Hamilton when she did like those Folgers commercials. I'm sorry, she was still the Wicked Witch of the. Yes, buying

Speaker 5 1:07:54

Folgers. I'm not doing it. No, I'm sorry. Everyone wants Carrie Coffee.

Speaker 3 1:07:57

Not on my watch, people. Well, and you can

Speaker 5 1:08:00

see how Penny Marshall would have made that. She would have made that witch. I would have liked her better. Truthfully, it would have been a different witch. She would have a

Speaker 3 1:08:08

character. Yeah,

Speaker 5 1:08:09

more of a more of a like harumph.

Speaker 1 1:08:12

Right, exactly. She's like a Brooklyn. She's she's just complaining all the time. Yeah, whatever. Whatever.

Speaker 3 1:08:19

Lastly, I want to ask you guys, Kristen. You talked last week about the music from some of these shows, and there is one particular song that I just wanted to ask you if you guys remember from from HR Puff and stuff. So I'm going to play it for you quickly. If you remember the three oranges. The performance.

Speaker 2 1:08:46

Here they are, the three oranges. You can bust her and watch them. You

Speaker 10 1:08:59

are. Oranges, oranges. Who said? Oranges, who said? Do you guys remember that?

Speaker 5 1:09:08

I don't. I don't know

Speaker 3 1:09:11

rhyme for oranges. It's when she and her two little vulture friends come out, and they-they're not Witchy Pooh and the vultures. They're the three oranges in this talent show, and she's wearing like those big kind of clown sunglasses, and they're orange, and she's got like an orange cape on. And then she falls at the end, and it's revealed that she's picturescue.

Speaker 1 1:09:30

I can picture which you probably would recognize that, yes.

Speaker 3 1:09:33

But it's the whole thing with you know who says there's nothing that rhymes with orange, and then she does a whole verse on like smorges, smoranges. Who says nothing rhymes with oranges, and they do their little ditty. So, very

Speaker 5 1:09:44

clever. Yes, very

Speaker 3 1:09:46

clever. As we know, the Croft brothers are. Yes.

Speaker 10 1:09:51

Who said? Oranges, oranges. Who said? Oranges, oranges. Who said? There ain't no rhyme for oranges.

Speaker 1 1:10:00

All right. Well, then that leads us to number one, and I think that's a no-brainer, right? Should we have a drum roll? That's coming right now. Is

Speaker 5 1:10:06

doing it's like being at a concert when the encores are like, "What if they not played yet? What if they know? Right, right.

Speaker 1 1:10:11

All right. Well, here we go. Drum roll, please. Coming in at number one with the most votes by far is Land of the Lost, and you guys, let's just add that to our list of generation titles. We're the Land of the Lost generation proudly, and Land of the Lost, as we all know, it originally aired on Saturday mornings. Like for for me and my sister, this was a Saturday morning staple from 1974 to 1976 on Carolyn, the NBC television network. Interestingly, though CBS used it as a summer replacement in 1980-five from 1980-five to 1980-seven and I mean, just the very definition of cult classic with all these other shows, you know, that we're talking about. Land of the Lost stars our pal, the great, funny, charming, engaging Wesley Ur, Kathy Coleman, Spencer Milligan, and Philip Paley. And instead of me giving you a little synopsis, let's let Wesley do it. And you guys, this is coming straight from our episode with him.

Speaker 2 1:11:17

Marshall, Will, and Holly on a routine expedition met the greatest earthquake ever known. High on the rapids, it struck their tiny raft, plunging down 1000 feet below to the land of the lost, to the land of the lost, and then Grumpy goes roar.

Speaker 1 1:11:35

Yes, that's right. They are trapped in the land of the lost with only the minimal camping equipment they had on their raft, but what that catchy theme song doesn't tell you is how they then must avoid becoming a snack for a T. Rex they name Grumpy because that's something my daughters would have named a T Rex. Oh yeah, Grumpy. Why they while they live in their very high tech cave, and that is a joke because it literally looks like the cave on Doctor Shrinker, and that it was made with some paper mache. Yeah, and if dodging dinosaurs wasn't enough, they also have to contend with the Pakuni, the hairy primitive cave dwellers. Chaka is the famous one who they actually befriend, played by young Philip Haley, and most famously terrifying, the sleaze acts, who basically look like giant his happy green iguanas in turtleneck spiders. It is the ultimate 1970s fever dream, where basically high concept sci fi meets very low budget rubber monster suits, and I want to give you some just fun facts. And I got these mostly from our great episode with Wesley Ure. Go back to 2023. I will also have this will be in our monthly, weekly reader. Those of you who are already subscribers, you know that we have links to related episodes to all of our episodes, and that episode with Wesley Year is linked in our weekly reader. But you can also go back and find that I got my information from that from Wesley himself and also from Remind Magazine. Don't forget Remind magazine.com/pop for a year subscription, only $12 Anyway, you guys might remember this from that conversation. The even though the Croft Brothers conceived Land of the Lost, they didn't write it. They didn't write the story Bible. They didn't write the specifics of the plot. That fell to former Star Trek writer David Gerald. He guided that show through all three seasons, and he also recruited other science fiction authors like Larry Niven and Norman Spinrad to help him out, which was pretty big stuff. Then he says that Sid Croft had put together a book of pictures that he cut out from the covers of various science fiction magazines, like this is my idea, and he handed it to them. And some of the pictures they were just things like a waterfall, a jungle, a giant bee, dinosaurs, monkey people-you know this type of stuff-and they said, "Here, look, this is our vision. Can you make this into a TV series? They had the title, but that was pretty much it. And David Gerald went on to write a script that included all of it, which was pretty cool.

Speaker 5 1:14:20

The other thing that is interesting is that you said this ran for three seasons, and now that we've talked about every single one of these shows, is that the longest running show? I bet. Yeah, I think it is.

Speaker 1 1:14:33

Yeah, yeah, I bet it is. Well, another thing, another interesting fact that I know we also learned from Wesley is that Land of the Lost really, it when it when it debuted, it came with a fully functional language, foreign language, which is spoken by the Picoonies, and the Crofts actually thought that this language within the show would make it more educational. But I love how it's just like nonsense. However, they hired UCLA linguistics professor Victoria Fromton to invent a language, and she was an expert in West African languages. So she drew from a language spoken in Ghana, which is called AKAN. I just don't want to. It's a con, a can, but AKAN. She created 200 words for the Picooni. She developed this language basically so that children watching could slowly learn it over the course of the show. So that when Chaka's talking, maybe by season end of season two, children, you know who we know are little sponges. Yeah, they might go, "I know what he's saying, because it was an actual, they didn't just every time come up with nonsense words. This was a language she created. I wonder if

Speaker 5 1:15:45

anybody knows any pacuni words. I mean, I don't. I I did not approve. If you're listening, if you

Speaker 3 1:15:50

do, yeah, let us know if you speak

Speaker 5 1:15:52

pacuni. If you speak pukuni,

Speaker 9 1:15:55

what's all the noise? Yeba. Do

Speaker 10 1:15:59

you

Speaker 1 1:16:02

remember? And then we. we we know we've talked about this fact before, but it's so fun. We're going to mention it one more time. So we know the sleeve stacks; they're famously tall, right? You know who else is generally tall, Carolyn? Who else is who? I would say that basketball

Speaker 3 1:16:15

players are usually on the taller side.

Speaker 1 1:16:16

Ding, ding, ding! You're right. High school basketball players, which is why the producers of the show, they reached out to Palos Verdes High School, which was very close to where they were filming, to see if any of their more you know vertically gifted students wanted a role. And one high schooler who took them up on it was future NBA star

Speaker 3 1:16:36

Bill Walton.

Speaker 1 1:16:37

Bill Lambier. Oh, Lambier. Oh, sorry. Yeah, Bill Lambier, maybe Walton did too. I don't know, but Bill Lambier did. He was 611 Oh my god, you guys! And he was in high school. Wow, 18 years old. Yeah, he played. He was a sleigh stack before he left for college at Notre Dame, where he began that basketball career that would see him play 11 seasons with the Detroit Pistons, and then later become a WNBA coach. He says a quote from him says, "It was easy money. People on TV only work 20 minutes out of a whole day. It was a lot of fun and a good experience, especially when you were 18 years old. I just think that's so fun to know. And and I remember Wesley told us that sometimes between takes and like when it was a lunch break, they did. It was so much of a pain for them to get out of those slee stack costumes. But you would see them. They would take that like the helm, like the head off. But from the neck down, they were still slee stacked, and they would just be walking around carrying like the head under their arm, or sometimes shooting baskets. Gosh, that would be a great photo

Speaker 5 1:17:39

out there right now. There are people out there who were sleestacks, and Amanda, you're like you're at like an offsite for work, and there's like a there's a team building exercise, like two lies we don't know about, two

Speaker 3 1:17:52

truths and a lie.

Speaker 5 1:17:53

I was a sleestack. Oh

Speaker 1 1:17:54

my god, that would be a great two truths and a lie, Carolyn. Yeah, so we you know land of the lost, well deserved first place. Let's all give it a round of applause. Good job, or let's all give it a hiss.

Speaker 5 1:18:18

That's it, you guys. Your favorite croft fever dream was Land of the Lost. Even though you still have nightmares about sleep sex, thank you for your participation. Thank you for caring about giant foam puppet things and the role that they played in the culture of the Gen X childhood. That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next time.

Speaker 1 1:18:36

And to everyone supporting us on Patreon, thank you. Your generosity keeps the lights on and the memories rolling, and because of you, we get to keep doing this fun job that we have. We get to keep revisiting the songs, the movies, the cultural touchstones that helped raise us, and it means more than we can say that you choose to spend your time and a little bit of your money keeping this Gen X conversation alive. Today, we're giving a special shout out to these patrons: Laura, Shannon, Jen, Teresa, Dawn, Melissa, Annabelle, Sandra, Rosa, Christy, Jenny, Sherry, Nina, and the Dead Sleep Podcast. That's so fun! When another podcast, you know, we're all we're all on this together, and that is one that we love. So if you guys have trouble falling asleep at night, plug that in your ears.

Speaker 5 1:19:28

In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast, courtesy of the cast of threesome threes what three courtesy of the cast of threes company. Two good times, two happy days, two little house on the Prairie. Cheers. The information, opinions, and comments expressed on the Pop Culture Preservation Society podcast belong solely to Carolyn, the crushologist, and Hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we are always right, there is always a first time. PCPS is written, produced, and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional WJM Studios and our beloved Mary Richards. Nanu nanu, keep on truckin' and may the force be with you.