Pink Panic (The Pink Panther, 1967)

When I was a kid, Saturday morning was a 6-hour nonstop binge of cartoons and toy commercials (and some of those cartoons, come to think of it, weren't much more than toy commercials themselves). Sunday, then, was the sober, morning-after hangover. On Sunday, the television was dominated with serious religious programming and dry, magazine-style light news shows aimed at the grown-ups who'd gotten up early to read their Sunday paper.

Oh sure, there were a few token scraps tossed to the kids still coming down from the previous morning's cartoon high... Schoolhouse Rock, the various incarnations of Superfriends, kid-centered variety show Kids Are People Too, the Hal Linden hosted nature show Animals, Animals, Animals, and my own personal hair-of-the-dog, The Pink Panther Show.

As a kid, I never did quite understand the connection between the Pink Panther shorts and the Peter Sellers Inspector Clouseau films (which I was also a fan of), but I always enjoyed the cartoons' quirky tone and unique, dialogue free gags. And of course, the classic theme song by Henry Mancini.

Here's a few screen caps from one of my favorites shorts, in which Pink wanders into a spooky old ghost town. Originally a theatrical short, its Pink Panic (1967).

Pink's first clue the hotel may be haunted... a stray ink blot from the registry pen starts scurrying across the page like a spider.

An old draped chair turns out to be a ghost and stalks Pink to his room.

Pink accidentally uses him as a bath towel.

Turning to blow out a candle, Pink doesn't realized he's laying next to a skeleton.

Later, the ghost emerges from a wine barrel looking a bit soused.

Tiring of the ghost's antics, Pink inflates and busts him like a balloon, but each little piece become a tiny ghost!

Fed up with the noise caused by all the ruckus, the sheriff marches Pink, the ghost and the skeleton to jail at gunpoint.

But when the sun rises, the spooky trio disappears, as well as the entire town of Dead Dog. Was it all a mirage?

Hey Kool-Aid!

For a brief period in the early 1980s, I had a Kool-Aid Man phase. This wall-busting, "Oh yeah!" spouting mascot for General Foods' Kool-Aid drink mix started life as a mere smiling glass pitcher, but eventually evolved into the walking, talking, and destroying pitch-man who delivered cool servings of himself to the thirsty kids of America.

While I enjoyed the drink, I never gave much thought to the Man himself until this 1983 comic book ad, a sneak-preview of a soon-to-be released videogame built around the character.

This ad tickled certain receptors in my brain... the one's that respond to things that are so lame they are kind of cool. I had to admire the sheer audacity of a videogame centered around a corporate mascot whose personality was barely there. There was also the novelty factor, at that time, of using the videogame medium as a product tie-in (although that same year, both Purina and Johnson & Johnson would offer videogames as mail-in promotional items as well. Purina's Chase The Chuckwagon was themed around the miniature dog-food hauling stagecoach featured in their commercials, while Johnson & Johnson's was a toothbrushing game, Tooth Protectors).

Don't be too dazzled by the eye-popping graphics depicted in the above ad... the fine print reveals this screen image is merely simulated.

This later ad reveals a more accurate approximation of the game's graphics, as well as the price point... 125 Kool-Aid points.

Kool-Aid points were found on the proof-of-purchase symbols on the product packaging.

After obsessively collecting enough points and mailing in for my game, I had to direct my recently acquired Kool-Aid Man fixation somewhere during the 6 to 8 week interim it would take to process my order. So I started seeking out other Kool-Aid Man shwag to be had.

A tote-bag? Mother's Day is coming... it's win-win.

Kool-Aid Man kite and keychain.

A stamp collecting kit. Since this doesn't seem to have anything to do with Kool-Aid or Kool-Aid Man, let's look away.

This inflatable Kool-Aid Man allows you to express your fetish in bizarre and confusing ways.

There was also this Kool-Aid Man Secret Decoder Game, which came in the 10-quart canisters. You used a red anaglyph decoder card to reveal hidden messages and collect Thirsty chits.

Between ogling the Kool-Aid Man merchandise catalog and playing the decoder game, the 6 to 8 weeks passed quickly. One day, upon walking home from school, this cartridge box was waiting for me in the mail.

Those yellow creatures that look like miniature suns are the "Thirsties". In a throwback to Dark-Age misconceptions of science and medicine, feelings of dehydration and thirst are attributed to these mischievous gremlins.

You control a pair of children trapped in a "haunted house" surrounded by the ghost-like Thirsties. You must gather the 3 ingredients (sugar, a pitcher of water, and a packet of Kool-Aid) to summon Kool-Aid Man, who busts through the wall in a crude cut-scene that must have ate up half the available RAM, then turns the tables on the Thirsties by trying to catch them before time runs out.

Although allegedly set in a "haunted house", about the only thing remotely scary to be found is the vaguely unnerving high-pitched electronic shriek the kids let out when one of the Thirsties catches them and sucks out their soul makes them thirsty. (My mother was actually disturbed by this sound!)

At this point, I should point out that this game is very lame. Back in 1983 there was an ongoing and bitter rivalry between the Atari 2600 kids and the Intellivision kids, but this game finally brought these two warring factions together. Both sides agreed that Kool-Aid Man sucked. In fact, a videogame magazine of the day dubbed it "the stupidest game of 1983".

But I wasn't ready to give up on Kool-Aid Man just yet. I just transferred by attention from the electronic medium to the printed.


Yes, there actually was a short-lived Kool-Aid Man comic book, something to keep my Radio Shack and Mulligan's Stew comic books company. Published by Marvel, The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man followed his exploits from the neighborhood baseball game to outer space and even back in time, but they always followed the same basic structure: the kids have been made thirsty by overexposure to the sun and lack of proper hydration the Thirsties, and call on Kool-Aid Man to help.

Kool-Aid Man, who is monitoring the children of the world from his pitcher-shaped headquarters, busts through a fence/wall/airlock to dispatch the Thirsties and deliver cool servings of himself to the parched kids.

Every superhero has his weakness. Superman had his kryptonite, and Kool-Aid Man has his center of gravity. The opportunities for intense action sequences are severely limited when your hero has to constantly stand upright or risk spilling himself all over the floor.

Kool-Aid Man attempted to educate as well as entertain. In one adventure, we learn the important part that the Thirsties and Kool-Aid Man played in the American Revolution.

Each adventure ended with an important life lesson, such as how Kool-Aid Man's presence makes it harder to discern winners from losers...

Some pages contained instructions on how to build your own Kool-Aid stand...

...while others invited you to mail in a photo of your stand for some kind of contest.

Other pages had puzzles and games.

My excitement tempered by the awful videogame (and correspondingly awful comics) my Kool-Aid Man phase ended as suddenly as it had begun.

How I Missed "The Hobbit": A Cautionary Tale for Children

It was the summer before starting fourth grade that I first read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. At 255 pages, it was the biggest book I'd read by that time. This was also the summer that a strange new game was starting to get attention in my circle of friends, having trickled down from older siblings and some of the bigger kids at school: Dungeons & Dragons. So even though the book was, by this time, over 40 years old, it still seemed very much new and relevant to what was going on in my fantasy-rich world.

While I loved the book, I was probably just as captivated by the cool maps on the inside covers as the story itself. I couldn't count how many times I copied those maps by hand, or made Xerox copies of them for use as props or gaming material.

I also memorized the Dwarvish rune lettering that is used on the maps and sleeve art, learning them well enough to write camouflaged cheat sheets for school spelling tests (a foolproof technique that I exploited for years.)

In addition to trying to invent my own games built around the maps and elements of the book, I also had this 1978 Milton Bradley board game, The Hobbit Game (which, if you look closely, is actually inspired by Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings film.) With its many 3-D scenery pieces, the gameboard practically doubles as a diorama.

But my first encounter with the The Hobbit was actually a good year or so earlier, via the 1977 Rankin Bass animated adaptation, when it aired on TV in prime-time, in two parts, spread across two nights.

Part One ended on a cliffhanger of sorts, right in the middle of Bilbo's scary encounter with the giant spiders. There was a lot of excited discussion about the film at school the next day, and a I couldn't wait to see the second part that evening.

But for reasons both tragic and comical, I didn't end up getting to see the conclusion that second night.

You see, my parents, while not generally strict, did cling to certain old-fashioned principles of proper behavior, among them that you did not watch TV during dinner, AND you ate everything on your plate before being excused. The night Part Two of The Hobbit aired, pork chops were served, a food that, as I child, I just couldn't bear (note: I have no problem with them today... just one of those quirky childhood things).

So after stalling as long as I could over my plate (all the while hearing the program's audio from the TV in the next room) I finally tried to force down the (by then cold) pork chop, only to reflexively throw it up all over the table. My Dad, not amused, sent me to bed as punishment, and so I never got to see Part Two of The Hobbit.

No videotaping or reruns back then, kiddies. I would have to wait several months before finally experiencing the conclusion of the Rankin Bass adaptation, after randomly receiving the storybook record album as a birthday gift from an aunt. Listening to the highly abridged audio while flipping through 12 pages of film stills was a weak substitute, but it was all I had.

I know. Tragedy.

The incident, with its elements of strict parental discipline and harsh punishment, has all the makings of one of those Struwwelpeter-esque cautionary tales for children.

Hmmm.... I'm beginning to like the sound of that!