A Hi-star-y Lesson (History of Homestar Runner)

Guess what time it is! It’s time for me to write a new post! Yeah, this is actually the first time I’m having to write a new post specifically to upload to the blog ASAP, instead of simply adding to my backlog so I can put it up later. This means that the updates are probably going to slow down a bit from now on, but don’t worry, I don’t have any plans to abandon this project. But anyway, today I’ll be looking through the last section of the Museum, as well as some other non-toon, non-game pages that I’d probably never find a decent time to comment on otherwise. So let’s start off with the “Old Flash Stuff” page in the Museum.

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

If the text at the bottom is to be believed, the original website actually looked like this, with random objects littered around the screen acting as links to various things. I’ve never seen an actual screenshot of this or any kind of archived link to prove that this was in fact true, but according to my sources (aka, the HR Wiki and nothing else), the current Main Pages weren’t added until May of 2000, and the site launched on January 1st 2000, so I guess it’s probably true. Well anyway, let’s take a look at the old junk on this page.

Salt shaker: For an animation test, this isn’t bad, actually. Certainly a lot better than some other attempts that I’ve seen. Obviously it’s not that entertaining to watch, but it was never meant to be.

Remote: Eh, I think the Pom Pom one is better. And why is there a TV sitting out in the field? And why does the tree look so terrible? And why am I being so critical of old animation tests? Ignore me.

Paper Bag: I actually can’t decide if I like this one more or less than the current “Everybody, Everybody!” one. This one has even more of the “kids’ website” feel to it, and I do like the colored lights in the newer one, so I guess I’m glad they replaced it, but I’m not a huge fan of either. Fun fact: the page title of this one in an older version of the Museum (when it would open separate pages instead of integrating them all into one page) used to be “That’s Mike going ‘Beeooo!’”.

Orange: This is actually the first “toon” ever made, but it doesn’t have any voice acting, so it’s usually forgotten about and Marshmallow’s Last Stand is considered the first. This one’s called Pom Pom, Too for some inexplicable reason, and is one of the only times that Pom Pom is given a lot of attention as a main character. Like I’ve said before, he sort of started fading away after the early toons. This one’s got a few little funky things in it, like the Trivia Time dog food dish, an earlier use of the noise that The Paper makes in SBEmails, random wedding music at the end, and also one of only two places I can think of where Pom Pom’s thoughts are conveyed in actual English, the other being the old Yearbook characters page. Speaking of which, I know I showed that at one point, but I don’t think I ever specifically talked about the autographs page. Well, I’m still not going to, but here’s the link again if you’re interested.

Beach Ball: This is the most boring Games page ever. I’m glad they replaced it.

Lemon: And here we have "She Loves Me!", the first “game” made for the website, if it can really be called that. I’d consider it more of a test in learning how to make interactivity in Flash animations. The website credits this as being the first appearance of Marzipan, but it’s unclear if this was made before or after Marshmallow’s Last Stand, where she appeared in the audience. This is the first time she’s referred to by name, though. Also, this thing is really glitchy.

Pie: This is the second Games page, evidently. I think it’s pretty cool, and I like the Atari style. Apparently they thought it was too difficult to navigate, though, so they scrapped it. I think if they had programmed it so Homestar only walked while you were holding the arrow keys, it would probably work a bit better.

Lava Lamp: Here’s the successor to the intro from earlier. This one’s not too bad, and the rotating shot is pretty neat, but I do prefer the other two over this one, because it just seems kind of irrelevant. The dopey laugh at the end is pretty great though. There’s actually one other intro that was created between this and the current one, and it does exist on the website, but there’s no way to access it without a direct link. I’ll get to that in a sec, but first, there’s one more page to look at here.

Shoe: At some point after that weird “trading cards” page was made (and then never actually linked to anywhere on the site – remember that thing, with Homeschool Winner and the Unguraits on it? I’ve shown it before, but here it is again), this was put up as the first Characters page. There’s not too much to say about this one with the exception of what they say about The King of Town. Apparently he was supposed to be Marzipan’s father in the early days of the series, which might explain the princessy-looking Marzipan sketches that we saw last time. But yeah, that’s no longer the case. And I don’t think Strong Sad is officially “disowned” either, but that’s not as big of a leap.
 
Alright, that does it for the Museum material, but there’s still some old pages that aren’t linked to anywhere that I did want to look at, starting with the third website intro that I just mentioned a second ago. Check it out.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/intro2.html

Yeah, I know it’s called “Intro 2”, but yes, it is the third one made. Don’t ask. And you know what? I think this is actually the best out of the four intros. Why couldn’t this be the one featured on the website? It’s the only one to feature other characters in it, and it’s nice and colorful, with some pretty decent effects going on. What the crap? Now I’m all cheesed off. Just… look at these old Toons menus or something. Grumble…

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

Both of these follow the same general format, as I’m sure you can tell from the screenshots, and they also include the same six toons. As I’ve talked about before, the first time I ever came across the website was in summer 2001, and at that point, they were already using the Chinese food menu for the Toons page, so I’ve never actually seen these in use. I’m curious to know if that first one actually existed on the site back when it was in its original “pile of crap laying in the field” format, but I don’t really have any way of finding out. All I can tell is that it must have been made after these first Toons were created (I believe A Jumping Jack Contest was the newest of the six), and I assume that by that point, the site had already evolved to have the main pages that we all know and love.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/newtoons2.swf

The second menu went through a couple different iterations, but I’m not going to bother linking to all of them because it’s not really all that interesting (if you really care, go here). But I will mention that in at least one version of it, the toon would actually play inside the TV itself. Which means you get a scaled-down version of it instead of the usual size. Cool idea, bad execution. And to go even unnecessarily further back, there was apparently another Toons menu that actually featured Pom Pom, Too. But the Flash file of it no longer exists on the website, and the only reason anyone knows it existed in the first place is because there is a page that can be accessed with some notes in the HTML. There’s really no point in linking to something that doesn’t work, but here it is anyway for the sake of completion: http://www.homestarrunner.com/toonsold.html

Moving on to some material that actually does exist on the website currently, we have the Downloads page, which nobody ever goes to because they stopped updating it about 75 years ago.

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

I’m not going to bother going through every item on this page, there’s no point. Feel free to download the various Sounds and Quotes Packs if you want. Nearly all the quotes are from stuff we’ve already watched anyway, so it’s not like you’ll be getting anything new out of it, but … yeah. I’m more interested in the graphics section. The Windows icons are pretty nice, I did actually use those back in the day. Never did use any of the AIM icons for some reason, even though I did go on AIM pretty frequently. I probably just never figured out how to use them. Looking at them again now, I must admit I’m surprised that the picture from The Secrets That I Keep is in there. It’s always been one of the more obscure pages on the website. Oh, and the walking Strong Mad has no M on his chest. ‘Kay then.

Then we have the wallpapers. The NEW! one is from an email that was uploaded in 2004, so yeah, I wasn’t kidding when I said that this page hasn’t been updated in ages. That and some of the things in the Songs menu are basically the only things that refer to anything on the site from later than like, 2001. Kinda sad, but every once in a while a new toon or SBEmail will have downloadable stuff somewhere in it, so I guess the page kind of became useless after a while. It’s got the neat little Strong Bad Clock though, which I’ve always had a soft spot for, so it’s not all useless.

And then there’s the weird Easter Egg. If you go to Balance Inquiry and click on “0.00”, you get a credit card. And then if you flip it over (click the top-left corner), you can find the PIN (seems like a bit of a security risk to put it there). Stick it in the slot, type in the PIN, and you get … an underwhelming prize. Kinda makes sense that it would be hidden like that though. And as a weird bit of trivia, the PIN (5675) is the last four digits of Homestar’s credit card number from that one SBEmail. I actually used to think that was the only way to figure out the correct number for a long time, thanks to some old fansite (it was either homestarrunner.net or the-coolest-stuff-ever, don’t remember which). So I guess that’s about it for this page, but why talk about only one useless page when we can also look at the Email page?

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

I swear that at some point, the title of this page was “It’s not just for email anymore!”, and then they changed it to the current one. I cannot remember for the life of me what was actually different about it, and the Wiki isn’t helping me on this one, so it’ll have to remain a mystery. But yeah, this is mainly just used for some contact information, but there’s a few interesting things it links to, surprisingly. First off, the letter on the bottom (which has a few obscure Thorax Corp references in it) links to the FAQ.

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

I think this page had been around for a couple years before I realized it existed. It was added in 2005, replacing this older one. I wouldn’t really bother looking through that one too much, but if you’re interested, it does have a few different quotes that can play at the beginning (it’s randomized), and Strong Bad makes some comments when you open some of the questions. The newer one (based on a Highlights for Children magazine) has a few little “activities” in it, which are kind of amusing, particularly the inclusion of the final character in the “guess whose eyes these are” thing at the end. For the record, it’s from a toon we haven’t covered yet, and the character only shows up like, twice on the entire website. Overall, I’d say these pages are worth looking at if you’re a Homestar fanatic like I am, but casual viewers probably don’t need to be bothered.

Ok, one last thing. I’d like to talk about the old Store page today also, but I’ll try to resist the urge for now. But yeah, go back to the Email page and click on the Strong Bad sticker on the side. You get… this.

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

This is the header for the old message board that was on the website. Now just to be clear, I never actually went to this board (I don’t think I was aware of it, and I’m still not sure how it was accessed back in the day), but I do know a few things about it from the Wiki. I wish I could have been part of the community back when it was running, but alas, at least I can share some of the things I’ve learned about it, such as the weird crap that Matt and Mike would post on it. Like this birthday cake that Matt made for his sister. Or a game where you get to kick a picture of a girl named Taryn who apparently posted a lot. And I assume that this weird tire cake was uploaded there originally too. Check for Easter eggs in both of those cakes, by the way. Weird flashing images ftw. And I do have to wonder where Taryn is today, and how she feels about being in a hidden page, repeatedly kicked by Strong Bad.

I know I've already filled this post with a billion links, but just a couple more, I promise. First, here's an archive of what the board looked like once upon a time. Not too much to look at, since you can't get into the actual topics at all, but at least you get to see what some people were discussing. And you can see Pablo (from the flag day email) in there too. And apparently, the bored was revamped at one point and then as soon as it reopened, traffic went crazy and it had to be shut down almost immediately. You can see the remnants of that here.

Lastly, there's the matter of the Bored Games. When you click on the "O" in "BORED" in the header, you can access three little arcade games to play. Even though this page has probably been my longest so far, I can at least take a look at them.

Armless Invaders: This one would be ok if it wasn't so easy to move the mouse outside of the game's borders and then mess up. At the start, you can type in a number to replace the 5 (for how many "chances" you have), which can lead to some weird glitches, like Homestar continually falling in the same spot, not falling at all, or simply giving you an instant Game Over.

The Cheat's Smoking Challenge: Yeah, this one's pretty boring. I tried to play it and take it somewhat seriously, but I lost interest in a couple minutes. What you see is pretty much what you get with this one.

Nighttime Driving Type Game: This one's the best of the three, but that's not saying much. You might remember this as the game Strong Bad was playing in his Main Page (accessed through Homestar Talker), which he challenged you to get a high score in. And indeed, if you manage to do it (get over 50,000 points), Strong Bad will congratulate you, but then immediately pull a Running Man and let you know that he just got a new high score that is one point higher than yours. Tough luck. This game also occasionally glitches out and lets you sit in the left lane forever, without ever getting hit. I think I've gotten it to do that before. It's the best way to see the little cutscene at the end (if you feel like this is something you can't live without).

I could talk about this stuff for days. There's still quite a bit of stuff that I've skipped over (like the old Flash-based Store, which I did want to talk about a bit, but I can't find an archive of the version I wanted to show), and there's plenty of other weird images and stuff hosted on the site, but I've gone on quite long enough, I think. So next time, I'll get back to the usual grind and see what Strong Bad's gotten up to. Hope I was able to keep everyone interested and maybe teach even the old fans some stuff they never knew about.

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.

More standard SBEmails. Clearly nothing exciting will happen.

I’m only about an eighth of the way through the SBEmail archives, and already I feel like I’m running out of ways to introduce them. At least I can say the worst is behind us. As I mentioned last time, early-to-mid 2002 was sort of a transitional period of SBEmails, where the “respond in a cynical fashion” emails started to get replaced more and more often by some toons with more substance to them. And today I’ve got several more to go through from this era, starting with 3 Wishes.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail27.html

Looks like we’re back to the “never leave the computer” type again for this one. I guess they didn’t want to abandon that style completely yet. Of the ones from that category, this is probably one of the better ones in my opinion, but the email’s subject is probably the least funny part about it, oddly enough. The horns are great and all, but I find it more interesting that Brandon asks what specifically the second wish would be. I’m not entirely sure what the first one would be. Strong Sad and Homestar’s pain and suffering? Catapult that launches balls of cobras? Ali and Ali’s sister? The guy has a lot of interests.

I also enjoy the part at the end where he complains about “crapfully yours” and its various alternative forms. I do like using that as a closing to messages (and also “eat a steak”), but seriously people, it’s not that funny. I’m not even sure how that got started. But I digress, because I do enjoy seeing Strong Bad getting all cheesed off over it whenever someone says it. But anyway, there’s not too much else to say about this one, so let’s move on to 1 step ahead.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail28.html

I rather enjoy this one. I was never really into the choose-your-own-adventure books as a kid, though I did try a couple of them, I found them more irritating than entertaining. But it’s a nice touch added to this one. Apparently when it was first released, only the “take it in a different direction” part would play and there were no other options available. I never personally ran into this, but I do remember the “maybe” option glitching out the first few times I watched it. Instead of playing the usual scene, it would skip to about halfway through the “different direction” scene. That must have been fixed quite a while ago though.

Out of the three choices, I actually like the first one (“yes”) the best, and “maybe” the least. I don’t like the idea of covering Strong Sad in red ants, and the lack of an audible reaction to it is kind of upsetting. However, something is just funny about Strong Sad getting repeatedly pegged by dodgeballs and being unable to do anything about it. And then when you click on him at the end, you get a little minigame to mess around with. The only thing worth noting about that is that you can aim for the left side of his body, and then you’ll actually bounce the ball through the basketball hoop and get an extra point. And I guess I should probably say something about the last option… but too bad, I’m not going to. It sort of speaks for itself, honestly. And I’d rather just keep going and watch superhero name.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail29.html

This one’s actually kind of hard to talk about. It’s the introduction of Strong Badman, but if you’re looking forward to this character appearing a lot more often, don’t get your hopes up. He does show up in Easter eggs every once in a while, but unless I’m mistaken, it won’t be until after the 100th email that we see any of those, so yeah. It’s kind of a shame, because I think there is potential for a superhero comic parody on this website, but they never make it into a recurring feature. Oh well. At least we got “Stiny” out of it, that’s gotta be worth something.

I’ll just go ahead and say it – Stiny is an awesome name. I actually used it for my Basculin in Pokémon White 2, up until I replaced it with a second Basculin named Stinym’n, which was implied to be the superhero alter ego of the original. Yeah, don’t ask. Let’s just ignore that and check out 12:00.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail30.html

“Corey Dewey-Smith” isn’t quite as great of a name as Stiny, but it comes pretty close. I love the way that Strong Bad pronounces that, and the fact that he keeps going back to it.

And uh… yeah. The rest of this one is kind of forgettable. The solution they come up with is pretty ingenious, I have to admit, but not the most practical thing for people who are also having this problem. Which I imagine is the majority of people who still have VCRs. And car clocks, for that matter. I hate having to mentally subtract 3 hours and 34 minutes from the time displayed on the clock in our car, but screw looking for the user’s manual. I’d much rather just duct tape The Cheat to the dashboard.

This email also has an Easter Egg in it, which you may have picked up on if you remember how to access Homsar’s character page. Just hit the Eject button, then click on the tape, and repeat to keep getting different labels. I’m too young to get most of the references, but alas. Next up is … oh hey, it’s actually not a SBEmail for once. So let’s take a short break from those and watch the equally as Strong Bad-centric toon known as The Interview.

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

I’ve always liked this one. It’s pretty simple, but has a lot of memorable lines. So I might as well go with the standard ”bullet list of stuff that I feel like mentioning” to cover this one.

• I think Homestar walking by the window several times before coming in is probably my favorite gag in this. I don’t really know why, it’s just hilarious to me for some reason. Especially because he keeps coming from the same direction.
• And then right after that, the whole exchange with “I drove”, “yeah, you’re probably right”, and “brass tacks” is pure gold. This is exactly why I love Homestar.
• Homestar’s “resume” (pronounced incorrectly) is a grocery list that includes “five” and “dentifrice”.
• Strong Bad has an interest in baking (as we have seen before), as well as doing the Jumbles (as we will see in the future). Jumbles are a type of puzzle found in newspapers, for the record.
• Gotta love the fight between Strong Sad and The Cheat. It might even be more epic than the knife fight between Coach Z and Pom Pom on the stone bridge.
• *abruptly leaves and starts prancing around*

Trivia Time: This toon actually has an unfinished “beta” version available, which is almost identical, but lacks a few lines here and there, and the animation is a little different. For some reason, this unfinished one is called “interview 2” in the url. You can find it here. And also, according to the DVD commentary, this was originally meant to be a secret toon that you would only learn about by finding the url in a magazine called “Metro Pop”. They then decided later on to release it normally. So yeah, I’m not sure what that’s all about, but I felt like mentioning it anyway. That was a nice little distraction, but I guess it’s time to go back to the emails again. Next up is … *groan* sugarbob.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail31.html

I’d love to say that this is the last of the really boring, basic emails, but there are still a couple more I can think of that we haven’t reached yet. I mean, this one isn’t awful, but it’s a distinct step down from the previous few, and it’s not like those were a monument of excellence either. I’ve already said several times now that I never found Strong Bad’s claims that he’s popular with the ladies to be funny. And I’m sure this isn’t the last time you’ll hear me say that either. But yeah, this one is annoyingly similar to making out, which I still say is probably the worst email ever. And I really have nothing else to say about it other than the Tandy once again exceeding its technical limitations. Whatever the next email is, please, save me. It’s apparently flag day.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail32.html

It occurs to me that I haven’t really addressed the background music used in toons very often. Whenever there’s a major song like O Decemberween, I’ll talk about it, and I’ve mentioned that I like some other ditties like the song from little animal (which was reused from Where’s The Cheat, incidentally), but then there’s stuff like the Strong Badian national anthem. The lyrics are obviously the main thing that people are going to pay attention to, but there’s the little tune played on the old Casio keyboard also. Yes, it’s only 9 notes long and isn’t all that noteworthy, but it’s catchy enough for me to remember it years after the last time I’ve seen the email, and it didn’t write itself. Next time there’s some background music in a Homestar toon, just realize that they did have to write an original song for that and then play and record it. It’s easy to take little things like that for granted.

So as for the meat of the email, I don’t really have a whole lot to say about the song itself (other than I like it, and it fits Strong Bad and his little dirt patch quite well), but the flag does deserve some comments. The first few times I saw this, I never really paid much attention to the colors and design of the stripes on the flag, but once it was pointed out to me, I find it weird that I never noticed. The brown and white represent the dirt and fence of Strong Badia, and the red probably represents Strong Bad himself. Then of course you’ve got the tire, which is sort of a given, seeing as how it’s the entire population of the area, the big knife, and for some reason a snake. Which says “Snake” on it. Because snakes are cool, I guess.

Lastly, there’s a few Easter eggs in this one, in case you haven’t gotten into the habit of clicking on the toon and holding Tab the entire time it plays (which you will probably want to start doing at some point, but I’ll keep pointing these out until they become a regular thing). For this one, you’ll want to click on “Pablo Phoenix” once Strong Bad starts talking about the name, and also click on The Cheat after Strong Bad’s coin goes away. I could probably say a few other things about this one, but it’s getting kinda long already, and I do want to do one last email today, so let’s finish strong with gimmicks.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail33.html

First off, before I even talk about the major event here, I have to openly disagree with Mike W. Some of the basic emails were pretty funny, like trevor the vampire for instance, but on the other end of the spectrum, there’s junk like sugarbob and the basics. I’d much rather take a “gimmick” over just watching Strong Bad respond to an email and not do anything interesting with it. This is probably like the 12th time I’ve mentioned this, but it’s a point I really do want to drive home. Now, some might say that having too many cutaway scenes would make the humor too Family Guy-ish, but for this series, I think it works better, because they’re (usually) not irrelevant, and they’re not interrupting a larger storyline. Strong Bad Emails (and all Homestar toons, really) are short things to watch that don’t need to try to have a real “purpose”, as long as they’re funny. And if you can show something rather than just talk about it, then by all means, go ahead.

Ok, with that out of the way, the Tandy explodes. I know I just got done saying that there’s no story or continuity with this series, but Strong Bad’s computers are an exception to that. This is the beginning of the end of the Tandy era. The eventual switch to a new computer doesn’t really provide much of a difference in the way that emails are handled, but the switch does solidify the switch from the old simple style to the new, “gimmicky” one. It’s been slowly getting there for a while now, but this is an easily recognizable turning point of the series. And the delicious irony of all this is the fact that Mike W apparently did not want this change to happen, and yet it did in the most abrupt and unexpected way possible. I love it.

Well, I couldn’t ask for a better stopping point than this, so I’m going to take this opportunity to take a break from Strong Bad emails for a bit and focus on something else. Yes, it’s finally time to go back and look at some of the stuff I skipped over from 2000, plus some extra Museum junk and assorted riff-raff. Not all of it is completely boring, I think it’s actually quite interesting to see how the website has evolved over time. Hopefully most of you would agree with me, but if not, then look forward to some pretty decent SBEmails once I get back to the usual content. Just bear with me for a couple updates as I enjoy the inherent weirdness of the older material on the website.

Crapfully yours - The early transitional period of SBEmail

Today we get to start out with an email that acts as a sort of mascot for the early SBEmail era. (I’d consider the first 30 or so to be the “early” ones, which are a lot more basic than the more recent ones, though there are of course still some gems to be found.) I plan on getting through a lot of these today, so instead of building it up any further, let’s just prepare ourselves for the legendary tape-leg.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail19.html

Honestly, I don’t completely hate this one. It’s one of those “so bad, it’s good” sort of things. And making out and the basics are way worse in my opinion. This one is at least self-aware of its badness, as you can tell with Strong Bad’s comment at the end, which I think kind of validates the entire thing. Like I’ve said before, a good portion of these early emails are answered in a pretty direct way, and are not really meant to go beyond that at all. They’re just funny replies to stupid emails, with the occasional cutaway gag. Now as time goes on, the cutaways become the main focus, and sometimes the direction that a SBEmail will take is completely irrelevant to the original email received. But for right now, we’re sticking with this short and simple style of humor. And if you like that, then you’ll probably love spring cleaning.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail20.html

I can kind of relate to Strong Bad here. When checking my comments or private messages on Youtube, sometimes I hope that I get stupid stuff just so I don’t feel the need to reply to them. Which isn’t to say that getting an actual well-thought out message is a bad thing, but a lot of times I’ll get something, not know how to reply to it, and then I’ll put it off and eventually forget about it, which makes me look rude for ignoring it.

Overall, I’d call this one repetitive, but enjoyable. I can’t say any one of these emails is that great on its own (though the “crap” one was kinda funny, and I like the reference to tape-leg being pathetic), but having them all in a row like this worked out pretty well. I do like the “DELETED!” running gag, and it will definitely be seen outside of this email in the future. There’s just a simple pleasure that comes from the loud BRAAAAP noise, and I’ve somehow come to take it for granted and not think about how weird it would be if a computer actually did that. I just like how Strong Bad asked for some “good ones” at the end of the last email, and these completely failed to deliver. So does the next one, as a matter of fact. It’s the incredibly generically titled cartoon.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail21.html

The best part of this one is definitely the “moral” learned from it, which I try to apply to life far more often than necessary, even when it’s completely irrelevant. Other than that, the only other thing I feel as though I must point out is the closing of this email. "crapful, geroge" is really funny to me for some reason, as is Strong Bad's pronunciation of the name. But yeah, there’s really not a whole lot else to say here. It’s not a bad email by any means, but it’s somewhat forgettable. Later on, there will be several other SBEmails that could also probably use this title (crazy cartoon, best thing, the facts, and for kids all come to mind), and this is definitely the weakest of the bunch, but it’s also the oldest of the bunch, so this is not surprising.

The only other thing I could really say about this one is to point out the irony that most of these early SBEmails have featured Strong Bad as the only character, and they still came out pretty good. They didn’t have him doing commentary over it though, so there is a difference. I’m trying to think of cartoons I’ve seen with only one character throughout the whole thing, and usually they don’t turn out particularly good. If it’s just someone talking about something else, like what SBEmails do, then it’s fine. But if it’s watching a day in the life of some person without any interaction with others, then yeah, it’s probably going to be pretty boring. Alright, now prepare yourselves for some weirdness in this next one. It’s simply called sb_email 22.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail22.html

Technically I’m breaking chronological order by showing this one right now, but bollocks to that. This one is called “The Lost Email” by the page title not just because of the joke involved, but because it actually is a lost episode of sorts. No, there never was a version of this where Strong Bad makes fun of the British, what you’re seeing is the full cartoon. But it’s the lost episode because #22 was accidentally skipped over in the original run of SBEmails, and this one was actually made after #40. The idea of making the email about something that would have gotten it banned is simply part of the joke. I’m sure most of you didn’t think it actually got banned, but hey, just being thorough here.

I feel like this is almost more of a bonus episode than one of the normal run of SBEmails, mainly because of its extremely short runtime and abrupt ending. Now, if you haven’t seen it yet, there is more to this after the newspaper shows up. Click on “press conference” at the end to see an additional scene, and then you can click on the papers for an additional Easter egg. I can’t say I’ve ever found this one to be particularly funny (though the “screw all y’all” was a great statement, I have to give it credit for that), and I’m not British, so I can’t even pretend to be offended by this, so yeah. That’s pretty much my synopsis of this email. It has its place in the site’s history, yes, and it’s a nice little jab at actual banned episodes (which are often banned for stupid reasons, like the Family Guy episode that was allegedly anti-Semitic even though it really wasn’t), but it’s not laugh-out-loud funny. The next one, on the other hand, kind of is, at least in my opinion. So going back to the original upload order, here’s little animal.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail23.html

You know, as simple as this one is, I like it. The best thing about it, of course, is the incredibly silly chase scene at the end. All the elements come together perfectly here. Strong Bad’s expression, the music, and the absolutely awful looping animation in the background just fit together into something that I can’t help but laugh at. I don’t think it’s really a reference to anything in particular, just old cartoons in general. Not an OLD cartoon (if you want to see that, then click Strong Bad’s head during the chase, and say hello to Strong Man and The Sneak), but yeah, you know what I mean. This is just a highly exaggerated version of it, and I love it.

I’d try to say something else about this email, but this is another really short one, and there’s just not enough substance to commentate on. I do like the comedic timing on both of the kicks, and the futility of Strong Bad’s situation once Graw Mad shows up. Yes, I’m going to call him Graw Mad, you can’t stop me. But as I cannot stress enough, I am not a professor of comedy, and I have no place to critique it, all I can give is my own opinion. And my opinion is that this email is incredibly simplistic and kind of stupid, but funny. And next, we have an email about swearing. Kind of. Very classy. Whatever. the bird.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail24.html

Groan. So far, I’ve tried to come up with at least one positive comment about every toon (“tried” being the key word), but I’m not even going to bother with this one. It seems rather out of place when compared to the rest of the family-friendly humor on the website, and the only real joke is that none of the characters have fingers (or hands, or arms, as the case may be) so we can’t see them actually doing anything. But that doesn’t make it funny, at least not to me. I could mention that this email takes place outside (and is the only email to do so for the entire duration), but that’s pretty obvious and not all that interesting. Oh, and Pom Pom peeks out from under The Paper at the end. I guess that made me smile.

The one other thing I will bring up is the stupidity of this concept in real life. I understand that flipping someone off is the equivalent of swearing, but I don’t understand why the media feels the need to blur it out. With actual cursing, I understand the need to do it. It’s so offensive language can be cut out of the audio when played for a general audience, and so kids don’t pick up on the language. But here, it’s a finger. If they blurred out the whole hand to avoid having kids do it to each other all the time, that would be one thing, but usually they just blur out just the one finger. It’s not like there’s anything to hide there, it’s just stupid. But whatever, I’ve given this way too much thought. Why couldn’t this one have gotten banned for content instead of sb_email 22? Oh well. Let’s just cleanse our palettes with super powers.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail25.html

Here we have what I consider a good example of a “transitional period” SBEmail. These past few have been slowly shifting away from the “reply to a stupid or poorly thought out email” style, to the “respond to a fan’s question with a cut-away scene” style. There’s been some like this before, of course, but this is a nice round number, and it does feel more like a more current SBEmail than some of the previous ones. It’s still a bit on the short side, but it did its job well.

Strong Bad’s power here is never seen again, for the record. It would have been nice to see it come back once in a while just as an in-joke or bit of continuity, but I suppose there’s not much else you can do with it. Homestar and Coach Z are definitely the highlight of this one though. I like scenes like this where you’re hearing the second half of a conversation. Maybe it’s just because you can bring them up in real life and have it make no sense at all, but it never made sense in the first place, so it’s slightly less stupid than your average out-of-context statement. Ok, maybe that’s a bad reason, but I’m sticking to it. Alright, just one more for today, let’s finish up with CGNU.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail26.html

I certainly hope most people know what this is referring to. I remember these stupid commercials airing constantly back in the day. Not sure if they still do or not, but here’s an example of one just in case you want a comparison. This email pretty much relies on you being familiar with those, otherwise the joke is mostly lost. Just in case you haven’t seen them, they pretty much ALWAYS have “TV/VCR repair” somewhere in there, and always end with “or get your degree”. The art test thing at the end is actually from a different type of commercial, but one that also used to air pretty frequently around the same time.

But yeah, the reference to those old commercials is pretty much the one thing this email is leaning on for comedy. Some of the subjects were pretty funny too (I like “cutting ones” and “sending me a dollar”), but I imagine that some of the effect would be lost if you’re not sure what it’s referring to. All in all, I wouldn’t consider this one of the best emails, and I probably wouldn’t list it in my top 5 from the first 40, but it’s still pretty solid overall.

Alright, well that’ll do it for right now. I know I’ve still gotta go back and look at the crappy 2000 material that I skipped over, and I’ll be getting to that pretty soon. But next time I do still want to do some more SBEmails, because I have a specific stopping place in mind. I hope people aren’t getting too sick of these. If you’re like me and would rather watch the standard toons than these short, simplistic ones, then don’t worry, we’re almost out of the woods. I guess you could say that Strong Bad will stop simply answering emails and being funny without some sort of gimmick. And some people may miss those days. But I’m not really one of them, so bring on the gimmicks. We may be in for some explosive surprises.