Early Experiments and Holiday Hijinx

After the nice little distractions of main pages and character summaries, I think it’s about time to get back to some good old-fashioned toons. There’s still a fair amount of material from 2000 to go through, so let’s dive in and try to finish it off… with a few exceptions. I’m still going to skip over a few things, since one’s in the Museum, one used to be, and the other probably should be. We’ll be taking a look at those sometime later when I deem it necessary to take a look back at more of the site’s history. Instead, let’s enjoy some very … unique toons, starting with Kick the Can.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/old.html

Wow, ok. I’m not sure where to start with this one. It’s obviously a parody of really old cartoons where the fact that it’s an animation is enough to keep people entertained – it doesn’t have to actually be entertaining in its own right. Never mind the fact that Felix the Cat is 14 years older than this thing claims to be, and it had actual story structure. But anyway, as stupid as this may sound, I actually find these terrible 1930s Homestar cartoons to be really funny in their own way. Not this one in particular (though a couple of them did make me at least crack a smile), but there will be more where this came from, and they just keep getting weirder. I’ll save most of my thoughts for when we get to some actual voice-acted ones.

If you don’t feel like going through all 15 reels of film in that, don’t worry, you’re not really missing out on anything terribly exciting. There are a few that stand out above the rest, particularly the ones in the stack of three. If you’re going to watch any of them, I’d say go for those. Once you’re satisfied with watching Homestar kick around a can and have weird crap happen, we can move on to another really bizarre old cartoon, The Reddest Radish. My excitement cannot be underestimated.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/radish.html

I really have no idea what I just watched. It’s been a while since I watched this … thing, since I remembered it being really stupid and not funny, and … well, I did laugh a little, but mostly because it was so dumb I couldn’t help it. I want to know what inspired this cartoon, because it seems to be based on something, but I have no idea what. The crayon-colored paper doll art style is never used again, and I don’t think the canned laughter is either, except for places where it’s actually somewhat appropriate. So let’s just look at some things worth noting here.

• Strong Bad is still obsessed with winning competitions. I think this and A Jumping Jack Contest are the last ones where this is a major part of his character. (I’m going to consider “needing to be the center of attention” to be a separate trait)

• Homestar kicks a can in this cartoon. Because we haven’t seen enough of that yet. He does it in Where My Hat is At also. It’s kinda weird how that’s a recurring theme in these old cartoons.

• I don’t know why, but the part where Strong Bad and company run off and leave a ghostly image behind that also runs off is probably the funniest part of this cartoon. It’s like… seriously, what?

• I think at this point, The Brothers Chaps just like exaggerating and making fun of their characters. They did it a lot in Yello Dello, and here, Homestar’s voice is very whiny and elongated. After this, the animation style and voice acting will more of less reach a level that they’re comfortable with, and the weirdness of these old toons starts to slowly disappear.

Alright, so that’s two really weird experimental animations out of the way, now time for a third. Except this one doesn’t really qualify as an animation, and this one actually spawned quite a few follow-ups. Behold, the first iteration of Marzipan’s Answering Machine.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/answer1.html

I’d say this one is so-so. It’s not the funniest thing I’ve ever heard, and it’s easily topped by many of the future Answering Machines, but it’s not too bad. Coach Z’s message is definitely the highlight. I just like the mental image of Marzipan doing a silly dance and sticking something in Homestar’s pants, and Coach Z nodding approvingly as this happens. Strong Bad’s secret soft spot for baking shows itself again, and Strong Sad attempts (poorly) to be assertive and get his CDs back. I like to picture him giving Marzipan the new CDs and hoping that she would realize he wants his old ones back, but being too afraid to actually mention this in person. I think that some people would rather see these things happen in an actual animation, but I think it’s interesting just hearing about it too. It’s a good way to put in funny conversations without worrying about animating lip sync and having interesting visuals to go along with the scene. Having it just be the audio every once in a while like this is fine with me.

I’ve also got a bit of a personal story with this one. Back in the day, the menus for the Toons and Games pages were totally different than they are now. They used to look something like this:

Notice how Marzipan’s Answering Machine is on the Games page? So is Strong Bad Email, actually, and it isn’t even labeled as such. It just says “E-mail Strong Bad”. So way back when I first started looking through the site, I got to the Games page, tried “Audition with Marzipan”, since it was the one on the top of the stack, and I found it to be pretty boring. I don’t remember if I actually went to Marzipan’s Answering Machine or not, but if I did, I think something led me to believe that it was just for recording your own voice and then playing it back. Somehow I missed the fact that it actually had sound clips on it that were worth listening to. And likewise, after going through the other games and finding them somewhat mediocre, I managed to skip over the “E-mail Strong Bad” option as well, since I figured it wasn’t worth bothering with.

And then this is the part where anyone who knows anything about Homestar starts laughing at my misfortune. Thanks to me overlooking something on the Games page that looked like it would be for sending a fictional character an email and then getting an automated reply, I managed to miss the majority of the cartoons on the website. I don’t know what my excuse is for ignoring it in the First Time Here thing. My guess is that I only watched it once, didn’t actually choose any of the options, and then forgot about it. But yeah.

Next time, we’ll be looking at those older games. But first there’s still a couple other toons I’d like to get through, one of which is actually pretty decent. It’s the first Holiday Toon on the website – Homestarloween Party.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/homestarloween.html

With every toon that I’ve covered so far (with the exception of Strong Bad Sings, which I showed out of order specifically to interrupt less funny cartoons), I’ve had to give make some sort of a statement like “well, this one isn’t that funny, but give it a shot anyway…”, or “this one has a couple funny parts in it, so enjoy it for those few moments…”, but I don’t believe I need to make any sort of statement like that for this one. It’s the first of the annual Halloween cartoons, and it’s a pretty dang good one, I think. My thoughts and other random comments:

• The egg-throwing game thing at the start is really bad. The collision detection sucks majorly, and even if it didn’t, I still can’t imagine it being any fun. Good thing the rest of the toon makes up for it. I’ve gotta point something else out though – the game was put in to play while you’re waiting for the cartoon to load. Remember when Flash cartoons like this actually took a couple minutes to load on dial-up internet? Good times.

• The Gremlin has a flux capacitor in it. Bubs’s rambling description of it (apparently from the movie Dazed and Confused) does not mention this.

• This is the first appearance of The Goblin, the Gremlin, the sad kids, and that particular robot. Yes, they will all reappear in the future.

• The character models in this one are still a little dated, but they’re pretty close to the current ones. It’s kinda weird that this would be the first cartoon they appear in, since everyone’s wearing a costume that will never be seen again.

• I know I’m biased, but I think Strong Sad’s part of the story was the best. Yes, it’s incredibly depressing, but that’s exactly why it’s hilarious. I particularly love the way he says “And none of them lived”.

• I recognized about half of the costumes in this one. When I watched this 12 years ago, I had no idea who Flavor Flav, Rerun, Kurt Cobain, Slim Goodbody, or Gorbachev were. And even now, I only know them because these costumes inspired me to look them up. This will be a trend for future Halloween cartoons – expect there to be at least one really weird, obscure costume per year.

Just one more toon for today, and then we’ll almost be done with the relevant material added to the site in 2000. Remember how I said I wasn’t going to need to give a warning before most cartoons anymore, because most of them are going to stand on their own pretty well? Yeahhhhh, this one does need a bit of a disclaimer. First of all, I didn’t find it all that funny (except for a part at the end), and secondly, some people might actually find it a bit offensive. Let’s just get this one over with. A Holiday Greeting, everyone.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/xmas.html

To address the elephant in the room (not Strong Sad), I personally don’t think Strong Bad (and by extension, Matt and Mike) was calling Jesus stupid or making fun of him in any other way. The song wasn’t exactly church material, but really, all he was doing was saying that “they said he was stupid”, which… yeah, “they” did. I’m not going to get into a religious argument here, especially since the song doesn’t even address Jesus by name, and it could easily be some nonsense that Strong Bad made up. But the point remains that this cartoon is sort of dumb and I personally wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, especially since there’s way better holiday cartoons on the website. Halloween got off to a pretty good start, but Christmas is going to have to wait another year before it gets something worth watching.

So next time, like I said, I’ll be taking a look at some old games and stuff, and then, depending on how long that takes, probably go straight into some 2001 toons. It’s either that or go through the Museum (and other old stuff that isn’t actually linked to anywhere on the site), but I’d rather watch some more quality material before looking back at the old, unfunny stuff. That can wait for a while longer.