Halloween 2003 Goodness (Also, I'm Not Dead!)

I don’t want to start a trend of beginning posts with something along the lines of “well, the reason this one is late is because of [blank]”. But I suppose I won’t have to worry about beginning posts that way if I would actually update on schedule. So yeah, it’s been a long time, and I don’t have any major reason for slacking off as much as I have, other than getting a new computer sent to me shortly after posting the previous article and getting addicted to Minecraft for a while. Then following that, some various Pokémon shenanigans distracted me as well. So right now I’m taking a break from my playthrough of Pokémon Y to finally get back to this blog and cover the Halloween 2003 material before Halloween 2013 is actually upon us. This time around, there’s no fewer than four separate things released for the holiday, so let’s get started with the Malloween Commercial.

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

Huh. Didn’t the last post also start with a Marshie commercial? Kinda weird how that happened. But this one is significantly better, in my opinion. If you hate Marshie commercials in general, then this one probably isn’t going to change your opinion on them, but the character is kind of made to be hated in the first place, so I think these are meant to be enjoyed in kind of an ironic way.

So in this one, Marshie ups the creepiness level a bit from last time, not necessarily due to the vampire costume or anything, but just his mannerisms in general. His appearance at the beginning is almost somewhat of a jump scare, he starts choking randomly in the middle of a sentence, talks about scaring your dad, and is also seen briefly freaking out backstage. And if that kind of behavior isn’t exactly your cup of tea, then hopefully lines such as “orange and black flavored marshmallows” and “a tidal wave of marshalades” are at least worth a smile. Now what I’d like to know is what the whole “Monte Negro” thing was all about. He’s just kind of a drawing on the side of a marshmallow that says “oh yes” and then that’s it. I don’t get it.

Homestar’s appearance in this is solid all-around. I do like his shirt, the giant eyeball, and his generic can of “Can D”. Plus seeing him annoy Strong Bad at the end is always funny. Overall, I’d say this is a pretty decent toon, at least considering the fact that it was pretty much meant as something to tide you over until the proper Halloween toon the next week. And if this wasn’t enough, there’s even a game based on this toon that was released a while later, so the Chapmans were definitely busy at this time of year. So let’s go check it out – here’s Marshie’s Malloween Mix-Up.

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

Out of all the games listed on the current Games menu of the website, this is the one I find the most forgettable. It’s not the one I’ve played the least, since there’s one on there that I have still to this day not actually played for more than maybe two minutes. I’ll be getting to that one eventually. But for now, I’ll try to think of something substantial to say about this game. For one thing, it’s actually more interesting to play than the majority of the things on the Old Games page, and actually, it’s more fun than a couple on the New Games page too.

It’s basically a poor man’s Ikaruga (which is incidentally a game I have never played, but I’ve seen some stuff about it, and the color-changing mechanic is almost certainly inspired from that game), but also reminds me a bit of Fantasy Zone in the way that you drop the bombs. And then of course there’s the death animation straight out of Mega Man, and the Konami pause sound effect. Yet with all those references to old games (Ikaruga isn’t old, but you know what I mean), this is actually the only thing on the New Games menu that isn’t done in a pixellated style. And since I like to explain site history whenever I get a chance to, I feel like I should explain that this game was originally only accessed through a link on the Main Page for a few weeks, then it was never linked to anywhere on the site for almost a year. It was finally brought back once the Games menu split into the old (Handheld) and new (Shooter) menus and there was adequate space to fit it in. But anyway, I didn’t want to resume this blog just to talk about below-average material, I want to get to some funny stuff. So I’m definitely looking forward to revisiting the bizarrely titled 3 Times Halloween Funjob. Let’s do this like Brutus.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/ween03.html

Overall, I feel like this toon isn’t quite as good as the past couple Halloween toons, but I can’t find anything negative to say about it either, so I guess it just had some tough competition. I’ll be going over the toon in standard bullet point format in a second, but first I want to address the costumes. I won’t be explaining each one of them in detail or anything, because I’d basically just be copy/pasting info from the Wiki, but I will list the ones that I actually knew about before having to look up info on them: The Cheat (Izzy), King of Town (Hamburglar), Stinkoman (Speed Racer), and Poopsmith (M. Bison). Some of the other ones, like Slash and Magnum PI, are things that I am somewhat aware of, but I wouldn’t be able to explain who those people are if someone asked me. Anyway, onto the dissection:

• I looked up the meaning of “credenza”, and I remembered correctly – it’s a type of furniture. Apparently it was also the term used for a servant that would test food or drinks for poison before giving it to someone of high importance. I guess I can kind of see the loose connection between that definition and how the plant died (Homestar watering it with Yoo-Hoo), but … actually, no, even then, it still doesn’t make any sense. Marzipan, where the crap did you get that name from? I guess it makes about as much sense as naming a character after a type of candy, though.
• I rather enjoyed the King of Town’s attempts to be cool in this cartoon. It’s rare to see his character actually do something even remotely interesting, and I just like how he kind of quickly degenerated to “the character who eats a lot” to “the character who is really lame and fully acknowledges this”. And although his usual eating shtick is usually not funny at all, I did enjoy him eating the candy corn lights near the end.
• Also regarding character development, this toon reveals that Coach Z’s accent is probably just done for attention, and not because he just naturally talks that way. He’s able to say “trick or treat” just fine after Bubs berates him for saying it stupidly the first time, and then also explains that it’s a crowd pleaser. There was already a hint of this being the case back with “get your head in the game, The Chort! The Cheat is wide open!” back in mascot, but I think this is the first time when it’s formally addressed.
• We have the return of The House That Gave Sucky Treats briefly in the middle of the toon, and just like in the original, there’s multiple choices you can pick for different dialogue. And in addition to the three choices you’re initially given, you can give them the pumpkin on the ground (or just click somewhere else on the screen) and have Stinkoman show up for three more choices. Since it’s rather time consuming to play through the first half of the toon six times to see all the results, I did everyone a favor and just recorded the different outcomes. You can see them here.
• After going through the toon all those times, I realized that the following scene shows the Poopsmith doing his usual routine while everyone else is out having fun. Poor guy. Well, he might be doing it voluntarily, but that’s still a little sad. Then again, if he had hung around with the King of Town like usual, then the KoT may not have gotten up to the antics that he did in this toon, so I can’t really complain. And as with the last two Halloween toons, clicking ol’ Poopstick’s head in the scene where Homestar brags about his bum candy will cause Homsar to appear in a rather random fashion.
• Credenza actually did come back to life. That’s awesome. It actually shows up a few times later on in the series, but you have to be a pretty diehard fan to notice, because … well, it’s a plant.
• Homestar of course can’t go through the toon without a few classic lines, in this case, I’d say that pretty much anything he said towards the ending was pretty great, the highlight being “somebody’s a-grabbin’ a-my butt”, but I also rather enjoyed him quietly cheering for himself getting a million pounds of candy, and referring to The Goblin as dressing up like a Santam’n.
• The ending scene has plenty of gags when you click on different characters, mainly of the “hey whoever, I really like your costume. [guesses incorrectly]” variety. Though I have to admit the one you get from clicking on Strong Sad caught me off-guard, because I remember first hearing that gag from a Spoony video and not knowing what it was referring to. I didn’t remember it being in this at all. And no, I still don’t know what it’s referring to. Yes, I know the wiki explains it, but too bad, I’m not going to read that.
• The best Easter egg of the toon is definitely the one from clicking on one of the candy corn lights at the end. Seriously!

Alright, so now that the main Halloween cartoon is over, you’d think that the next toon would be a standard SBEmail or something, but nope, in 2003, we got a little something extra, which turned out to be one of my favorite recurring segments on the site: Fan Costume Commentary.

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

Strong Bad really brought some of his best material to this riffing. Always the jerk to make fun of people’s names or spelling in emails, he has now been promoted to making fun of people’s costumes, and it’s hilarious. Honestly, half of these costumes aren’t even that bad. The one of Homestar that Strong Bad wanted to shoot with a compound bow (and take the Kleenex boxes off its feet) was actually really good looking. But yeah, the mashed potato man and Dumpy Robert Smith, among others, were not so great. I hope the people who submitted these photos enjoyed the humor and didn’t take the insults personally.

I must also acknowledge the whole “squirrel gnawed The Cheat into a pumpkin” bit, because I always found it really funny for some inexplicable reason, and I like quoting it whenever anything even barely tangentially related comes up. Mainly “those squirrels’ rates are … pretendous”. I think anything involving Strong Bad and squirrels is just inherently funny – just look at “some people are squirrel-handed” from kids’ book. Or maybe I’m just weird. And I also noticed that Strong Bad referred to the hypothetical video game levels as "boards". I've heard a few people use that term before, but it still seems weird to me. Not sure if it's a regional thing, or what. I guess it's kind of like soda vs pop.

This has been a relatively short post, but I think right now actually a pretty good place to stop, because I don’t want to get burned out too quickly, and this way, the post has one clearly defined theme to it. It’s better to do this than to review all the Halloween stuff and then also a couple random SBEmails. So seriously, I’m hoping this means that I’ll be able to commit myself to writing these regularly again. I don’t want to promise anything, because last time I said that, there was a two-month wait. But I’ll try. Oh, and as one last thing, check out this article. I don’t really have anything specific to say about it, but it’s just nice to see praise for Homestar, and knowing that other people still care about the series.