The stuff I skipped (Because I didn't want to scare off newbies)

Come with me, my friends, to an age long forgotten. A time when Beanie Babies were actually relevant and AOL still flooded the world with unwanted trial CDs. Yes, it was indeed a simpler time, when going online actually required a computer, and it took about 2 minutes of listening to a screeching modem. But on the other hand, there was no hurry to get online to post what you had for lunch on facebook so your friends could approve.

I am of course referring to the late 90s – December 1996 to be specific. Homestar Runner had still not made an appearance on the internet, but the original book was written earlier that summer. As a Christmas present for their brother, Mike and Matt (and Craig Zobel, apparently) worked on an animation featuring the characters from that book. And thus, the very first Homestar animation was made. But unlike all the other toons we’ve watched, it wasn’t made in Flash. This one’s a bit more retro than that. The name says it all – Super NES.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/supernes.swf

This cartoon has very little substance, but because of its place in the history of the website, there’s actually quite a bit to say about it. The first thing I have to bring up is the effort that went into creating it. Having actually made a lot of stuff with Mario Paint back in the day, I can appreciate the time that went into making this. For those who don’t know, the animation feature in that game was pretty limited. You don’t get a timeline or anything, you just have the ability to draw a background, draw another object to place over the background (with up to 9 frames of animation), and you can move the object around the screen. That’s it. And once you’re done with that, you have to erase what you’ve already made before you can make anything else. So this animation here was made by actually filming many different smaller animations, and then splicing them all together.

This animation is noteworthy for having the first appearance of Strong Mad and Strong Sad (albeit they’re quite strange looking), as well as a few other weird relics like Strong Bad’s teeth and green tongue. Obviously the designs were still not finalized yet (and it’s not like there were any plans to take these characters any further at the time), but it’s still funky to see these earlier concepts. Also there was a scene where Pom Pom had a white head, even though it’s correct in some other scenes. Guess they just forgot to color it in or something.

So… why the weird singing and the random Japanese? I’ll quote Mike for this one: “Craig and I wanted the original kids' book to feel like it was from another country or poorly translated from Japanese maybe.” – Adventure Gamers interview
… I can’t really say I ever got that vibe from the original book. It was definitely eccentric, but it didn’t have much of an Engrish feel to it. This Mario Paint cartoon does though, and the song is friggin’ weird. I kind of like it for its cheesiness, and it is admittedly pretty catchy. I can see this being the theme song of the Homestar Runner show, if such a thing existed. Speaking of which…

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

This is the very generically titled Theme Song Video. I’m once again breaking chronological order to talk about this one now (even within the context of this particular post), because it’s very obviously a remake of the Mario Paint one. So that’s one of the reasons why I’ve decided to skip over this one until now, the other reason being … well, it kind of sucks. The major thing I should mention about this one is the fact that the cartoon ends a good fifteen seconds before the song ends. Apparently when making this toon, the Chaps had a very laggy computer that actually did cause it to line up properly when they played it back, because the framerate was completely shot. When this toon eventually got put on a DVD collection, several other scenes were added in to fill up time so it would end properly. These scenes were animated in an imitation of the older style (so they wouldn’t look completely out of place), and a couple of the scenes include Homsar and the Tandy 400, which weren’t invented yet when this toon was originally released. Which, for the record, was summer 2000, sometime between A Jumping Jack Contest and Strong Bad Sings.

As with the Super NES toon, there’s not a whole lot to say about the visuals here (aside from Strong Bad throwing a knife at Strong Sad. Yikes.) It’s clearly meant to look like the intro to your typical cartoon show, which just features a bunch of unrelated scenes meant to represent the show as a whole. I think it captures that feel pretty well, though it is missing the obligatory “main character in space” scene that was present in the Mario Paint version, and will be included again in a SBEmail way later on. 

More Pointless Trivia Time: “LEMKE” makes another appearance in Pom Pom’s rumpus room at the end, and the arcade machines in the scene with Bubs are for “Dokle” and “Dokle 2”. That was actually the answer to one of the questions in the Homestar Quiz, as I’ve touched upon before. But I think I’ve pretty much drained this one of anything worth talking about, so I think it’s finally time to watch the first full-length Homestar cartoon made. You know, the one that was apparently bad enough to warrant its removal from the website. Yes, I am referring to Marshmallow’s Last Stand. Brace yourselves.

http://www.hrwiki.org/mirror/marshmallow2.html

I went into this one thinking I was going to talk about how it actually isn’t as bad as everyone claims it to be, then I actually watched it again, and … yeah, it’s as bad as everyone claims it to be. Now for a first cartoon, it’s definitely excusable. I’ve seen way worse Flash stuff out there. But it’s definitely no masterpiece either. As the little warning at the beginning states, the characters are not particularly funny here. Actually, there aren’t even very many attempts at being funny in the first place, aside from some of the wrestling shenanigans, and the painfully lame “why don’t you look over there, for no reason” at the start. Also, I’m not entirely sure why I noticed this, but the idea of hiding stuff under the wrestling ring to cheat with seems to be a recurring theme in stuff that I watch. It was in “Raging Bender” from Futurama and “The Punchy Pokémon”. I mean, that’s three whole things I’ve seen it in, come on! Yeah, I dunno.

Ok, so I’ll try to think of some things I like about this toon. There’s the weird constantly-changing picture in the background at the marshmallow stand, which reminds me of a similar thing in the original “Arthur’s Nose” book and probably countless other places that I can’t remember off the top of my head. Strong Bad’s completely ineffectual windmill punch was at least worth a smile (and again, reminds me of something else – in this case, “the whirlwind” from the “Stow Away” episode of Home Movies… and a similar thing that Fry does in “Insane in the Mainframe”) And … uh… Strong Bad and Strong Mad’s combined weight being one million pounds is kinda funny I guess, if only because it’s so ridiculous. Not sure what was up with the weird bell with a face, or the redneck looking guy in the audience. And no, the redneck guy doesn’t remind me of something from another cartoon. Though now that you mention it… yeah, no, I’m just kidding. That’s probably about it though. Like I said, there’s not too many funny things in this one.

Now I’ve already sort of touched on this before, but it’s worth repeating. This cartoon, along with A Jumping Jack Contest, is no longer featured anywhere on the website. Whereas the latter used to be in the “big toons” list along with all the other old ones, Marshmallow’s Last Stand was already in the museum when I first came across the site. It was on the old toon menus before the Chinese Food Menu one, but then it got pushed into the Museum once the site got an overhaul. And honestly, I think it should still be in there. Yes, the toon is really lame, but it’s still a part of the site’s history, and it should be viewable somewhere on the site. I can see why they wouldn’t want to showcase it along with the rest of the work, but still. Obviously they’re not too ashamed of it, since it did make it onto a DVD, but I guess there’s not much of a point in theorizing over these sorts of things. It was apparently taken off for “personal reasons”, and I’m not going to argue with that.

At this point, I feel like going through some more of the old material, but this post is already getting pretty close to the length I usually like to stop at, so I’ll be saving some stuff for next time. Right now though, we can at least take a look at the old sketchbook and fan submissions in the Museum. Well actually, the fan stuff is no longer linked to anywhere on the page, but no worries, there’s always a backup. Here’s the two links, I’ll just leave it to you to shift through them on your own, and then I’ll just make some useless comments.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/oldsketch.swf

• The top-left Strong Mad design reminds me of Wreck-it Ralph for some reason.
• If you weren’t sure why I kept using that little dog picture when I point out useless trivia, now you know.
• Lots of Strong Sad designs. It’s probably just because it’s the one I’m used to seeing, but I agree that the one they settled with is the best. The vaudeville and Strong Glad ones are pretty great though.
• I’m trying to imagine how Dijjery-Doo would have been used in cartoons, and yeah, it’s probably a good idea that they dropped it. The Cheat fills that role quite well on his own.
• Hey, it’s Original Bubs! Can you see me from over there? (yeah, I know newbies aren’t going to get this reference.)
• The ice cream bars originally had their own page for some reason. I have no idea why.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/stuff1.html

• Out of the various pumpkins, the Homestar one is my favorite. Simple, but gets the point across.
• If that screenshot of the high score in Strong Bad’s Egg Throwing Game is real, then that’s A, amazing, B, depressing, and C, amazingly depressing.
• What’s the “raised eyebrows” image even supposed to refer to?
• I wasn’t entirely sure what was up with the blue chick (with Freakazoid and the Animaniacs in the background), so I checked the Wiki, and apparently the creator of that is a freelance animator. Huh. http://www.cupojo.net
• “Lumpy” is definitely the best character.
• I wonder if Rich Gaccione still has the Strong Badia tattoo. I’d never get one myself, but I’ll admit it does look pretty cool.
• Lots of crappy MS Paint drawings (some worse than others). I’ve actually made some pretty decent drawings with that program, but it does take a lot of patience. And can you even draw stuff in Photoshop anyway? I’ve used it a bit in school, and I thought it could only edit pre-existing images.
• Strong Dad is freaking creepy.

Alright, that’ll do it for now. By going over these toons today, I believe I’m basically caught up without any other major stuff that needs to be talked about. But like I’ve been saying, there’s still some other miscellaneous junk (some in the Museum, some not) that I want to at least briefly acknowledge before getting back to SBEmail. So you’re just going to have to wait a little while longer before you get to see the fate of the Tandy.