Superhero Memories

I've never really considered myself much of a Superhero fan. When I was little my cartoon and comic book tastes gravitated always towards the funny animals. I'd take Yogi Bear over Superman any day of the week. With the recent explosion of Superhero movies coming out of Hollywood, I had still kept some distance from most of the fare offered. I had seen some of the older Batman movies, and Superman Returns and even the first Spider-Man film, but I still didn't really pay much attention to the genre. Then came the 1-2 punch of Thor (2011) and The Avengers (2012). I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Thor only a year later to be completely blown out of the water by how awesome The Avengers was. With Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel this Summer, I found myself way more into the comic book movies than I ever was before. It got me thinking about the handful of Superhero stuff that I did like as a child...the few things that made an impression on me. And with the release of the new Thor movie this past weekend (It was awesome!) I thought it would be a good time to unveil this list of my Top 10 Childhood Superhero Memories...


Spider-Man (1967-1970)

 This was the first Spider-Man cartoon which I wasn't alive for the first time it came around but I remember catching it early in the morning and, for the first time, being drawn in by the storytelling instead of the slapstick and laughter. This is the show that gave us the classic "Spider-Man" theme song too! Growing up, the only time I saw this show was if I was able to wake up early enough on a Saturday morning. In Baltimore, Channel 2 ran reruns of Spidey at 6:30am, an hour and a half before the network cartoons started. It was always a treat if I could sneak out into the living room and watch Spider-Man sling his webs through New York with the TV sound turned down real low so I didn't wake my parents up.

 



Spidey Super Stories (1974-1977)

Spider-Man would also pop up on segments in The Electric Company, a show designed for graduates of Sesame Street. This show was awesome because it was presented like a comic book with the different scenes taking place inside panels of a comic book. The real-life comic book motif was played out more by having Spider-Man only speaking in word bubbles above his head. This Spidey was a web-slinger of very few words but the other people in the stories could read the bubbles above Spider-Man's head. In these stories, Spidey didn't fight Doc Oc or the Green Goblin, but instead dastardly villains like the Spider who sat down beside Ms. Muffet. There was also a print version of these stories in The Electric Company Magazine which I'm sure I read every issue at least 100 times!

 

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981-1983)
 

I LOVED this show and never missed it on Saturday Mornings. Spider-Man joins forces with Firestar and Iceman to stop various Marvel Super Villains. Spider-Man would do his thing while cracking jokes and tossing off one-lines, while Firestar shot fire everywhere and Iceman would surf around on a path of ice he shot out of his hands. Apparently, Iceman is also a member of the X-Men, which I didn't even know the X-Men was a thing until those movies started coming out in 2000. I don't know if Iceman makes an appearance in any of the X-Men movies past or future...but if he does I would watch the crap out of that movie! I loves me some Iceman!

 

Superman: The Movie (1978)
Superman II (1980)
 

Back before HBO or VHS, if a Superman movie was on TV - you dropped what you were doing and watched it. You just did because it was Superman and we showed respect to our elders that way back then. I think these are still really the gold standard in Super Hero movies, funny and exciting and easily accessible to children. Later, when we had HBO, I easily caught these two movies a million times each. They are still great films and fun to watch. (I've still never seen Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and I hear I'm not missing much.)

 

Fantastic Four (1967/1978)
 

I don't remember much about this show except that I loved it and thought the drawings were really cool. There were actually two versions of this show; a 1967 series from Hanna-Barbera and a 1978 version from DePatie-Freleng. I'm not sure which ones I saw, possibly both, but whenever I could catch it I was on board! This show is so ingrained into my memory that I was excited when the recent movies came out.

 

Batman (1966-1968)
 

 As with most people my age, this version of Batman was THE version of Batman and so much so that when the Michael Keaton movie came out in 1989 I was just like, "What is this crap? That wasn't funny at all!" Besides the cool costumes, crazy villains and bright colors...I loved how they put the action words on the screen during a fight scene. That was the best!

 

SuperFriends (1973-1986)
 

My #1 TV nerd memory of this show was that it was the first time a cartoon that I knew from Saturday mornings came to strip syndication after school. So, it was a nice change of pace from all the old Popeye and Casper cartoons we had for our viewing pleasure in the afternoons. Not pictured above, but the Wonder Twins would make the best Super Hero movie out of them all!

 

Wonder Woman (1975-1979)

Simply put: Wonder Woman's invisible jet remains the single most coolest prop ever built in the history of television.

 

Hostess Comic Book Ads (1977-1982)
 

My only exposure to (then) second-string Superheroes like Captain America, Flash, Green Lantern and Iron Man were in one page ads that ran in all the comic books...including the talking animal comics that I read. In each of these comics, a noted Superhero would use tasty Hostess Apple Pies, Twinkies or Cupcakes to overpower a super villain. Who needs all the gold in the world when you can have a bit of golden & delicious Hostess Cupcake? Even an 8 year old me knew this was a ridiculous concept...and I ate up every page of it!

 

Spider-Man for Atari 2600 (1982)

As with any Atari game that I owned, I played it one hundred million times in my youth. As it turns out, this one was the very first video game based on a Marvel Comics property. In it, you would sling webs and try to get your three pixels that represented Spider-Man up to the top of a skyscraper to defeat Green Goblin.  Did I say I played it a hundred million times, now that I'm looking at the picture I'm sure it was closer to 30 zillion billion times. What a great game!

 

 

Now's the part where I ask you to share some of your Super Hero memories in the comments section......

Vintage Cereal: Inside and Out

We like to think of ourselves as big cereal fans here at WWoB. And of course, we love all things old school. So, we were pretty excited to get a heads up on these new...or should I say old, cereal box designs that General Mills is rolling out exclusively at Target this month. They are indeed pretty cool and a extra warm, fuzzy way to start off any day. We didn't receive much information beyond the time and place, but the picture provided above does indicate that they are also throwing in some retro prizes inside these specially marked packages! The cereal premium has been a dying art form for many years and perhaps General Mills is on to something that some good ol' fashioned free prizes might jump start sales a bit!

I'm very anxious to see what goodies are in store with a box of Cheerios. Besides the fact that I've pretty much regulated my daily morning diet to a bowl of Cheerios and some yogurt, the Cheerios box features their one-time spokesmoose Bullwinkle J. Moose! Bullwinkle used to appear in commercials for the cereal as well as make often appearances on their box. A Bullwinkle themed prize would be the cat's meow...don't you think.

You'll also notice on the Honey Nut Cheerios box there is an Atari 2600, the greatest video game system of all time. My Internet research indicates that it's actually the new Atari Flashback 2 which is pictured. It's a new Plug n' Play system that duplicates the look and feel of the old Atari with 40 games programmed into it. Honey Nut Cheerios is running a contest where you can win one of these old school retro Ataris as well as a pretty neat looking Atari prize pack. Keep your eyes open for details on that!

Another interesting sidenote that I discovered about these boxes...while the art work and design is retro, by law the photographs of the actual product on the box must be up to date. So you might be looking at the 1950's Trix Rabbit, but he's eating a bowl of 2010 cereal. As long as the cereal inside isn't from 1950...it's all good!

The Best Cartoon Video Games

Hey! Did you know that I like classic cartoon characters!? I like them in my movies, I like them on my breakfast cereal, and I like them in my video games. More often than not, a cartoon based video game is slapped together quickly - sometimes the game doesn't even have anything to do with the cartoon. For instance, Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular where you have to help Snoopy and his brother Spike carry a stack of pizzas over a finish line...in Italy?! Other times, cartoon gaming experiences are pure joy! Here's some of the best video games based on cartoon properties that I've ever played...

The Little Mermaid (NES) Here's a game where you'd think it was going to be only for four year old girls. But instead, the great game developer Capcom created this multi-level intricate platform game where you swim Ariel through six levels of undersea peril. This was the first video that I played all the way through and beat. That was about 20 years ago and I still talk about it...pretty sad, eh?

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (NES) Here's another Capcom Disney game that I beat. Based on the Disney Afternoon series of the same name, this game allowed two players at the same time running through the city and picking up and trowing everything in sight. This was a fast paced game with alot of tricky obstacles and challenging enemies. Even though the cartoon show took some liberties with the Chip `n Dale characters, the video game stayed very true to the spirit of the show. Just don't get me started on how we all got gypped out of a Rescue Rangers movie.

Popeye (Arcade) This might be the first arcade video game to feature a classic animated character and I think most video game aficionados would agree that Popeye is one of the all-time classic old school games. Popeye has to catch the little hearts that Olive Oil is tossing out. He's got to catch them before they reach the water at the bottom of the screen. Standing in Popeye's way is his ol' nemesis Bluto. Luckily, Popeye can always grab a can of spinach and punch Bluto square in the face, or he can hit a punching bag and drop a bucket on Bluto's head. The game even works the obscure Sea Hag character into the mix! Even the cartoons forgot about the Sea Hag!

Donald Duck in Goin' Quackers (Playstation/PS2) This game really blew me away because it's just as challenging and complex as any Mario Bros. game you'll ever play. There's level after level of frustrating situations to make Donald mad. One of the neatest features of this game is that they worked in the animation of Donald's trademark temper tantrum. There's also a full cast of supporting characters from Donald's hometown of Duckburg. An all around really well-done game that took me months to beat...but I did it!

B.C.'s Quest For Tires (Commadore 64) Perhaps the best game ever that you can play with the arrow keys on your keyboard. Thor the caveman must ride his stone unicycle while jumping over rocks, animals and holes in the ground all on his way to save his girlfriend from an evil dinosaur. Good times! A better game has never been put on one of those gigantic black floppy discs.

Sorcerer's Apprentice (Atari 2600) Mickey Mouse has starred in at least a dozen video games over the past few decades, this is one of the earliest and the only one I've ever really gotten into. Based on the sequence from the 1940 film Fantasia, this primitive game was made up of two screens. The first, pictured here, involves Mickey shooting and catching stars. I never really got this stage and never spent much time playing it, but if you exit the screen to either side you got to the meat of the game. On the other screen you had to stop the walking brooms from making their way to the bottom of a staircase and dump their bucket of water. The more brooms you missed, the higher the water lever rose in the room. Quick, simple game play that was also addictive and fun. (There's a new Wii game around the corner called Epic Mickey that looks pretty darn cool!)

Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle (Colecovision/Atari 2600) You have no idea how bad I wanted this game when I was younger! After years of lusting over it, I finally got to play it on a neighbor's Colecovision. It was pure video gaming heaven for this young Smurf fan. Not only does this game incorporate the world of the Smurfs into it, the game is made up of the greatest basic objective in all of video game history: run through a forest, jump over things, collect things. It's all as simple as that! Later on in high school, somebody mentioned that they had this game and I made them dig out their old Atari games and find it for me so I could finally sit and play it. Another check-off on my bucket list! (Here's a link to the old commercial.)

The Simpsons: Road Rage (PS2/Game Cube) The Simpsons have had a long career in video games since the show debuted 20 years ago. I remember playing a game called Bart vs. the Space Mutants quite feverishly back in the day, and The Simpsons arcade game stands out as a classic. But I really loved this 2003 variation of the hit game Crazy Taxi. Road Rage is almost the same game except that it's filled with The Simspsons brand of humor and wonderful cast of characters. The game looks an awful lot like the TV show and you get to drive around town exploring all the nooks and crannies of Springfield. Probably one of the games I've logged the most hours on in my adult years.

Tiny Toons 2: Trouble in Wackyland (NES) In my book, when you mix amusement parks with video games there is much goodness to be had. Using a theme park as it's center, this game was a collection of mini-games based on different theme park rides. There was a roller coaster game, bumper cars, a train ride, and a log flume. They were all pretty addictive, if I recall correctly. I'm not sure how well the game captured the spirit of the Tiny Toons cartoon but it sure was a fun game.

The Flintstones: Rescue of Dino & Hoppy (NES) Like others on the list, The Flintstones have popped up in more than one video game. This Nintendo game was my favorite as it was built around the simple side-scrolling platform engine that I've come to adore in video games. Of course you've got Fred and Wilma and the whole cast of characters from one of my all-time favorite TV shows and there's lots of rocks and boulders to smash. I don't think I ever got past the end of level 2 where you had to beat Joe Rockhead at a game of basketball. Thanks Joe Rockhead!

Darkwing Duck (NES) Finally one last fantastic Disney Afternoon inspired game from the folks at Capcom. Darkwing Duck was a show I really enjoyed and I loved the video game just as much. I consider this one of my all-time favorite video games. The game play is so smooth and fun, with lots of things to shoot at and grab hold to and jump on and over...it's just alot of fun. The game also incorporated the entire world of the show very nicely. I easily burned way too many hours playing this in my Community College days. Tell well spent if you ask me!

Please share with us any toon games you've loved over the years...

Classic Commercial Sunday - 9/6

I spent many childhood hours playing this great game...

Classic Commercial Sunday - Roddenberry Rolls Over In His Grave Edition

Virtual Windmill

I spent many of my childhood hours playing video games on the Atari 2600. A good chunk of that time was invested in a Jim-Dandy of a game known as Miniature Golf. Made in 1979, Atari's Miniature Golf brings all the thrills and chills of Mini Golf to your living room without all the....walking?!? In Miniature Golf you assume the role of Medium-Sized Blue Square. Your objective is to get you small yellow square into the tiny blue rectangle.

But Watch Out! There are obstacles on the way: like Back and Forth Moving Bigger Red Square! He'll knock your 2-bit butt all over the place if you're not careful! Miniature Golf on Atari is also unique in that the course is made up of holes that resemble nothing you'd actually find on a real Mini Golf course. This screen shot on the left I guess is supposed to represent a castle. The other holes are made up of random yellow obstacles.

I'm making a little fun of this game, but it's actually one of my favorite games from my childhood and I did spend a ridiculous amount of time playing it back in the day. It's nice that the one half-sport I did play as a child I could also play laying on my floor in my bedroom. Ahh...good times!