The "You know what?" thread

[D'Snowth]

You know it's still too warm outside when it's the end of October and the ice cream man is still making rounds int he neighborhood.

 

[minor muppetz]

Recently, in the "will Looney Tunes ever find success again?" thread, DrTooth mentioned that it seems like the classic Looney Tunes shorts were always more widely shown on television, but the classic Disney cartoons were just a little more popular. And in time for Halloween (okay, a little late, but I did think about this a few days before Halloween, just didn't get around to bringing this up here until now), I feel you could say the same about The Addams Family and The Munsters.

I feel like The Munsters was always a little more widely rerun while The Addams Family was always a little more popular. And it could just be me. It took me a while before I was able to see full episodes of The Addams Family, while Nick at Nite began airing The Munsters half a year before TV land (which reran the show when the channel was launched) went on the air (and my cable provider didn't pick up TV Land until a year and a half later). And even after I got TV Land, I feel like I still watched The Munsters a lot more than The Addams Family.

Of course, The Addams Family not only has the luxury of being a hit television series (though both shows only lasted two seasons), but also had two successful theatrical feature films (in addition to a made-for-TV movie and a made-for-video movie), while The Munsters movies don't seem to be that popular (with the only theatrical one being released around the time of the shows original run). Also, The Addams Family had two animated series, while The Munsters never had an animated show. There were also a number of Addams Family video games (though I haven't been too familiar with them, I mainly know about them because of The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Fester's Quest, though now I'm remembering that the original video release of one of them included a promo for an Addams Family video game). And of course both shows had television revivals which aren't as well-remembered, and both shows had iconic theme songs. And the fact that The Addams Family started as a comic strip could have helped its popularity (though I think it's origins as a comic are a little obscure).

 

[D'Snowth]

The thing that bothers me about both THE ADDAMS FAMILY and THE MUNSTERS is that they've pretty much been ghettoized into this Halloween product that you never see them at any other time of year anymore. Sure, there's the whole asthetic of them sending up the horror genre and all, but you have to remember, these originated as primetime shows, like any other. There was a time when TV Land would play both throughout the year, but afterwards, they pretty much were relegated to October. Then WGN, for a few years, had that Munsters marathon hosted by Alice Cooper every Halloween, but they don't even do that anymore either.

 

[Drtooth]

Recently, in the "will Looney Tunes ever find success again?" thread, DrTooth mentioned that it seems like the classic Looney Tunes shorts were always more widely shown on television, but the classic Disney cartoons were just a little more popular. And in time for Halloween (okay, a little late, but I did think about this a few days before Halloween, just didn't get around to bringing this up here until now), I feel you could say the same about The Addams Family and The Munsters.

I have a problem that retroTV rerun stations just run the same shows over and over, even for different channels. Andy Griffith, MASH, Gilligans Island, All in the Family, Happy Day...all great shows and all, but seems like Lavern and Shirley, Mork and Mindy, ALF, and many others to name just aren't getting the same love. They either appear infrequently, or to coincide with a certain time of the year. And, yes, I'd love someone to run Perfect Strangers.

Now, I know Cosi TV has The Munsters (too bad we lost Cosi to some Televangelist station because that's still a thing) and THIS TV did run Addams Family on Sunday early Afternoons for a while. Seems that these shows should be in rotation in more retro TV programming guides, but they aren't.

Still, you'd think some channel would rerun 80's and early 90's retro TV. Nick at Nite still airs Full House after all. Why no Family Matters?

 

[minor muppetz]

Here's a commercial I recently saw for the first time in years:

In it, it's implied at the end that the Simpsons characters are playing Simpsons games, but then Lisa and Maggie are both handling controllers for the NES, and neither Bart vs. the Space Mutants or Bart vs. the World are two-player games. Of course, you could argue that either they are playing a game that's not advertised at this point, or that Maggie is just playing with the second controller without actually playing a game (I'd believe that more at the time this commercial was made, while today it'd be more believable that she would be playing the game with Lisa).

I didn't think that was odd back then, though I was probably too young to think about that. But at the time, I mistakenly thought Bart vs. the Space Mutants was an NES release of the arcade game. I had Bart vs. the World but wouldn't have the other for a few years later (and it'd be the Game Gear version), but I also heavily compared The Simpsons with TMNT because both franchises had a memorable arcade game at the time, with both being "beat 'em ups" and I think both made by the same company, and TMNT II was the arcade game. If I didn't notice the lack of scenes from the arcade in the commercial, I probably figured they were levels I hadn't gotten to (back then I'd only made it to level 2. By now I have made it to level 3).

It;s also hilarious how Bart talks about these games as if they are the best, while many fans are known to have been frustrated by them, but they had to make them look good to sell them (and back then, aside from never being able to pass the first level of "Space Mutants", and taking a while to get to world 2 in "The World", I didn't really see them as horrible games).

 

[snichols1973]

In RoboCop 2 (1990), OCP's head honcho, "The Old Man", makes the folowing statement in his proposed corporate bailout of Detroit:

"The Old Man": There's going to be a big call for this unit, and we'll make him right here in Detroit. That means jobs we can all be proud of, and make "Made in America" mean something again.

It's almost creepy how The Old Man's speech bears an ominous similarity to Trump's current campaign slogan of "Make America Great Again".

The RoboCop franchise has its moments of social satire, including corrupt corporations, and Reagan's ill-fated SDI "Star Wars" program from the first film, with the SDI satellite fictionally depicted as misfiring on Santa Barbara and killing two former presidents who lived in the area.

 

[Drtooth]

It;s also hilarious how Bart talks about these games as if they are the best, while many fans are known to have been frustrated by them, but they had to make them look good to sell them (and back then, aside from never being able to pass the first level of "Space Mutants", and taking a while to get to world 2 in "The World", I didn't really see them as horrible games).

Marketing. Why would they say that a terrible game made by a terrible company that came out of and contributed to terrible LJN was terrible? That's hurt sales of 50 dollar cartridges at the time. Though it's not like Simpsons writers were unaware of their merchandising.

 

[D'Snowth]

How is it that a number of the biggest feminist crusaders out there are actually some of the same ones who are actually part of the problem to begin with? Lena Dunham? Anne Hathaway? Now Mila Kunis? I mean, if the issue were reversed and we were talking about male issues the same way we were female issues, do you think guys like Charlie Sheen, Howard Stern, Levi Johnston, or even Drumph himself would be ideal role models regarding the issue?

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

How is it that a number of the biggest feminist crusaders out there are actually some of the same ones who are actually part of the problem to begin with? Lena Dunham? Anne Hathaway? Now Mila Kunis? I mean, if the issue were reversed and we were talking about male issues the same way we were female issues, do you think guys like Charlie Sheen, Howard Stern, Levi Johnston, or even Drumph himself would be ideal role models regarding the issue?

I understand where you're coming from where Lena Dunham is concerned, but what did Anne Hathaway and Mila Kunis ever do?

 

[D'Snowth]

Anne Hathaway hardly ever does movies in which she doesn't take her clothes off. Mila Kunis to a lesser extent - she's not quite as blatant about it (or, at least, she seems to keep her clothes on for the most part), but she hasn't exactly done the kinds of roles that paint positive images of women. . . . Then again, she's saying it's because producers have threatened to "make sure she never works in Hollywood again" if she didn't.