The Tandy replaced! Everybody is completely sure why!

To start off today’s post, we’ll be looking at SBEmail #40, vacation. It’s a personal favorite of mine, even though (perhaps because) it’s one of the more simplistic ones. Yes, I’ve just gone through like 20 posts saying how much the simple-format emails are lame, but shut up, this one’s different. You’ll see why, just watch it.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail40.html

When this email was first uploaded, only the first postcard was available, and then the other ones were added in every few days over the course of two weeks. And as with Marzipan’s Answering Machine, most of the humor here is audio-only (which honestly isn’t a huge difference from watching Strong Bad typing all of it). Personally, I find most of these postcards to be pretty great. So I’ll just go through them one at a time. But first, I must address “BrothaCheese”, which is by far the greatest name ever (and I’m not sure if Strong Bad was groaning at the name, the “filled with crap”, or both). And when Strong Bad got up, he made the Geddup Noise (the sound of the stool moving against the floor) vocally. For some reason. But yeah, postcard time.

1. Probably the weakest of the postcards, but I got a chuckle out of “I don’t like old ladies. I don’t even wanna see ‘em.” Otherwise, not much to say.
2. I like to think that one of the brothers would draw the postcard, and then the other would come up with the commentary for it. That’s probably the best way to come up with jokes like the one about the bike being welded to the house. That’s not something that you just come up with on the fly. I think this one’s pretty funny, and there’s a good Easter egg in it too.
3. Random guitar playing! I guess Strong Bad felt the need to show off after talking a big game in the guitar email from a few weeks ago. I don’t really have much else to say about this one, other than the fact that my town also has a broken clock tower in it. You’d think that one of these days they’d get it fixed, but it’s been broken for years. Maybe someone should start a fundraiser for it and inadvertently help out some time travelers. (Speaking of which, they missed an opportunity for a pointless reference here. They should have made the clock stop at 10:04)
4. The location of this one is practically an afterthought, but that’s fine with me, because Strong Bad’s little made-up email was hilarious, not to mention spot-on. “How can Homestar pick stuff up when he’s not wearing any Marzi-pants?” And then to top it off, there’s the Easter egg of a postcard-within-a-postcard, featuring Monkey D and his amazing “I <3 Stong Band” T-shirt. I’m not sure what Monkey D’s deal is (or whether or not he’s a reference to One Piece), but he shows up a few times in the future and always manages to catch me off guard.
5. Ending on a high note, as this is probably my favorite one. The idea of a town where everything is tan and the people eat antiques is something that needs to be implemented in like, Doctor Who or something. It would be the greatest thing ever. And once again, there’s a nice little Easter egg in this one, which probably should have just shown up on its own, but whatever. I like the random tennis racket.

Alright, so now that the vacation is over, it should be time to get back to emails, but first we need to Meet Marshie. Well, I suppose we don’t need to, but what could it hurt? Quite a lot, actually, but grit your teeth and just do it.

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

Marshie is probably the most disliked character on the entire website, but that’s kind of the point, I think. I guess. I don’t really know why he exists, to be honest, but he definitely succeeds at being an unnecessarily annoying (and “genuinely alarming”, as the Wiki calls him) mascot for Fluffy Puff. I don’t hate every appearance of Marshie, but this first commercial is somewhat weak. It has the completely pointless statements like “stuff some in your pockets for secret eating”, but it’s missing the over-the-top creepiness found in later Marshie commercials. Yeah, you’ll be seeing more of Marshie in the future.

I guess overall I’d consider this toon to be decent, but not great. The only problem is that there’s really nothing I can say about it. It goes by too quickly to even develop any coherent comments towards it. One second you’re wondering why there’s nails in the marshmallows, and then suddenly there’s an eye patch and a cigar, and then he’s hiding the marshmallows under a pillow, and it’s just … what? This is the kind of stuff that you’d see in an animutation, or possibly a Youtube Poop. And I enjoy those, but like I said, there’s not much you can really say about them, it’s something you have to experience.

Oh, and remember the last Fluffy Puff Commercial where you could press “L” to make a silhouette of Lincoln appear? This one has key-activated Easter eggs too. At the end, press “R”, and then “F”. It has to be lower-case or it won’t work. And no, I don’t know why Homestar says what he does. But anyway, with that distraction aside, we can get back to Strong Bad and his email-style antics with invisibility.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail41.html

This is a milestone in SBEmail history, as this email features the unceremonial ditching of the Tandy 400 and the first appearance of the Compy 386. As I mentioned a while ago when I talked about gimmicks, the change in computer doesn’t make too much of a difference, since they’re both pretty crappy, primitive, and text-based. But it does mark the definite end of the simplistic style of the older SBEmails that I kept complaining about. I can only think of a couple Compy-era emails that never leave the computer and focus on Strong Bad responding to the email and doing nothing else. And as you’ve probably seen from the current SBEmail menu, the Compy isn’t a permanent replacement. In fact, the DVD commentary of this email actually predicts exactly what he’ll be eventually moving on to. But don’t worry, the Compy will be sticking around for a few years.

I guess I should probably talk about the email itself sometime today. Personally, I’d say it’s one of the all-time best. There’s some that are funnier, more technologically impressive, or what have you, but I can’t think of anything that this one does wrong. The entire opening is great, the humor is great, what else could you ask for? Seriously, I can’t get over that beginning. He just shoves the computer off the desk, brings in the new one (which reacts to his statement with perfect comedic timing), and then moves on as if nothing happened. And then in the meat of the email itself, Bubs and Homestar act as if the floating Swiss cake rolls are an everyday occurrence. And Strong Mad is his usual self, with disastrous consequences.

At the end, hang around for a few seconds and there’s a little extra scene that plays out. We get to see the final moments of the Tandy (ok, maybe not the FINAL moments </spoilers>), with some nice little callbacks and stuff. Remember the Message Bored? The title of that page (the remnants of it, at least) was “Remember What the Tandy Told You”, which is actually referring to this particular Easter egg.

Well, I don’t want to spend too much time on this one (even though it is a good’n), so let’s take a look at action figure.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail42.html

I hope that eventually I’ll figure out what to say about these other than “this email was really funny and I have nothing creative or enlightening to say about it”. But yeah, this one was really funny and I have nothing creative or enlightening to say about it. But I’ll try anyway.

If this action figure really existed, I wonder if it would be possible to get all of the features to work. I remember there were some issues with that for the Buzz Lightyear toys, because it was apparently impossible to get both the extendable wings and the “helmet that does that… that-that WHOOSH thing” to function on the same toy. This one would have a few issues, like managing to get the spark mechanics to fit inside the head (since it’s detachable from the rest of the body). Also, I don’t know why, but the part I laughed at the hardest was Strong Bad making the little spark noises while the same noises were already playing in the background. You know what else this toy would need? Some sort of device that converts motor oil (or grapefruit juice) into radioactive goo.

As usual, there’s a nice little Easter egg at the end, where you get to see various other action figures. I like how they all share the same exact body, just painted differently. Apparently the He-man toys from back in the day used to be like that as well, but I never had any of those, so I’m only parroting what I’ve read. So once you’re all done looking at the various action figures and their useless features, then we can watch Strong Bad’s answers to some little questions.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail43.html

Poor translations from another language (or “Engrish”, as it is frequently called) are one of those things that are almost always funny. There’s two different types of this – automatic translators like Babelfish, and genuine mistakes from non-English speakers. This one’s most likely the latter (unless it’s just a joke), so I guess it’s technically offensive to be making fun of Viklas, but … too bad. It goes both ways when English speakers mess up other languages, and I’ve yet to see any major political movement against this kind of humor, so let’s enjoy it before it gets banned.

This email is one of those ones that has to be watched twice to really get the most out of it, since it’s hard to pay attention to what Strong Bad is saying/typing and the subtitles at the bottom at the same time. Or prehaps I am to say that much a difficulty could sometimes be had when the twice times are happens? Oh, and don’t’s to be forgetting about the springtime holiday egg that can be seen out at the conclude, wherein a flag does some manner of stylish jig. Which makes me remember it - come now, brethren, as we partake in the viewership of lures & jigs.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail44.html

This is it, everyone, the very first SBEmail I ever watched. It wasn’t the newest one when I first found the website, but since I never bothered investigating that particular part of the site, I missed out on the old Tandy days the first time around. I remember first hearing about this one from my friend at school, and when I got home that day, I finally checked out the Strong Bad Email section and was met with … well maybe not hours, but plenty of new material to keep me entertained for a while. Not to mention a reason to check out the site every Monday for new ones. Boy, I was stupid for missing out.

I can’t say that this is one of the most memorable emails for most people, but since it was my first, it always will be one for me. I do rather like the lake scenery and Strong Bad’s inexplicable tan lines. And the ending is pretty funny too. You’d think that he could just, you know, backspace to delete the part where he admits that he knows nothing about ladies, but apparently there’s a camera set up that streams these straight to the internet or … something. Oh, and I’ve never actually seen it, but apparently the “come on in the boat” thing was a joke from Sesame Street. Not sure if it was a direct ripoff, an homage, or a coincidence, but I figured I’d mention it.

There’s also a bit of weirdness with the Easter egg in this one too. It’s almost identical to the one from duck pond, but at the same time, it’s the exact opposite. Whereas that one started out with the playable version of the game and then it was eventually removed (for some reason), this one had the game added in months after the rest of the email was made. Both of them feature a lake, both have Strong Bad commenting on the graphics… yeah, I dunno what happened here. I should submit it to Stupid Coincidence Magazine and see what they have to say about it.

Next time… yeah, there’ll be some more emails. But there’s a couple other things to watch also. Not that it really matters, since the emails are basically just normal toons with Strong Bad talking at the beginning and end of it, but whatever, it’s all good.