Friday, March 14, 2014

Friday Bad Cartoon Trivia Bomb

So here's what happened.

I billed something like 59 hours this week.

That's billed. God knows how many hours I actually worked.

This was a hell-week, and finally Friday arrived, and I was able to get back to the shop, drop off my truck, and punch off the clock. Opened up the corporate timesheet program and started knob-dicking in my hours.

(Knob-dicking? Never heard that before? For some reason that was the term we used in the field artillery to describe typing entries into the battery fire control computer system. Knob-dicking. I have no idea.)

As you can imagine, I had a LOT of knob-dicking. Took me probably half an hour to knock all my time into the timesheet application. I was on my last line or two when...

The fucker locked up on me.

Now I'm a total devotee of the "save early/save often" school of computing. But it was late, I was in a hurry, so I didn't.

Yep. The fucker ate my fucking timesheet.

So - punctuated with a LOT of creative profanity - I re-created the vanished timesheet, and as I did for some reason I took breaks thinking about some of the bad cartoons I watched as a kid.

I was a kid in the Sixties and early Seventies, so there was a lot to go to, there. Underdog. Speed Racer. Whacky Races.
Not that there wasn't some classic comedy; you had Rocky and Bullwinkle, the old Bugs Bunny cartoons (though I had to get to adulthood before I got to see some of the really out-there stuff like Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips...).
But it got me thinking; it's kinda sad, how much useless information I know about those old Sixties and early Seventies cartoons.


And what's the use, if I don't put it to some use?

So here's your Friday Bad Cartoon Trivia Bomb.

No fair using Google unless you're REALLY stumped.

1. When Underdog says "the secret compartment of my ring I fill..." what's he got in there?

2. What sort of container does Henry Cabot Henhouse III drink his Super Sauce out of?

3. Why does Speed Racer wear a "G" on his shirt?

4. In the anime series imported to the U.S. as "Star Blazers", the spaceship "Argo" was originally the...

5. What kind of animal did George of the Jungle think his elephant pal was? (Bonus point - what was his pal's name?)

6. What was Jonny Quest's dad's first name?

7. What was the name of the explosive compound that Bullwinkle hid inside a banana? Why was it so awesome?

8. What was the actual title of the original cartoon that has recently been remade as "Mister Peabody and Sherman"?

9. Speaking of Mister Peabody, what did he call his time machine, and why?

10. What was the name of the character that Dick Dastardly and Muttley of "Whacky Races" were always chasing in the show they were later spun-off in? (Bonus point - what was the name of the spin off?)

Have fun.

I've almost got that goddamn timesheet fixed.

8 comments:

Ael said...

Man, zero out of ten for me.

I recall most of those names, however, so I am not completely culturally ignorant.

Leon said...

Well being too young in the sixties, and only really remembering the Looney Toons and Tom and Jerry of the seventies, I can only answer 3:
1. power pill?
4. Space Battleship Yamato (only one I tried to watch)
5. dog

FDChief said...

Leon:

1. Yep "The secret compartment of my ring I fill...with an Underdog secret energy pill."

Underdog was a doper who fought crime hopped up on greenies.

4. Got it in one.

5. "Shep is doggie! Big, gray, peanut-loving poochie!"

Syrbal/Labrys said...

Oooh, I never got to watch many cartoons until I had kids of my own…so yes, I know the Battleship Yamato one!

Big Daddy said...

7. probably Hushaboom, the silent explosive.
8. Peabody's improbable history.
9 the wayback, bit I can;t remember why since it's been years since I watched my old Bullwinkle VHS tapes.

FDChief said...

BD:

7. Yep; the critical part was that it DIDN'T go "boom"...

8. Right again.

9. Well, you're right in that it was always pronounced "Wayback"; but the writers said that they meant it to be a pronunciation of the acronym "WABAC" as a jape on the old original UNIVAC-series of computers and the ENIAC-BINAC lineage that preceded them. Mind you, they never actually provided the words that "WABAC" stood for...

FDChief said...

OK, so here's the answers and the name of who got them correct:

1. "a "super energy pill" (Leon)

2. a martini glass. The Henhouse character was the "secret identity" of SuperChicken, and the joke was that when he wanted to get all super he'd slosh down a martini (his "super sauce"), get sauced, and go off superheroing.

It's pretty amazing, between Underdog's pep pills and the "super sauce" that the people who were goofing about kid's cartoons in the Sixties - and there were quite a few of them, tho it's hard to remember now - weren't more upset with Jay Ward's cartoons...

3. The original Japanese name for the cartoon that came to the U.S. as "Speed Racer" was "Mach Go Go Go!". The name was a play both on the English word "go" as well as the Japanese word "go", which is the number 5 (as in "Mach 5", the racing car). The title character in the anime was named "Go Mifune"; so the letter on his shirt is his first initial.

4. The HIJMS Yamato (Leon)

5. A dog (named "Shep") (Leon)

6. Benton; Dr. Benton Quest is the "scientist" dad. I always thought it was kind of fascinating that exactly what KIND of "scientist" Dr. Quest was was never revealed. Let's face it; in 1966 it was enough to wear a lab coat. You were "a scientist" and that was fucking cool...

7. "Hush-a-boom", and because it was a silent explosive (Big Daddy)

8. "Peabody's Improbable Histories" (Big Daddy)

9. The WABAC; as a play on the words "way back" and the acronyms for the early computers of the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties (ENIAC, UNIVAC) (Big Daddy)

10. It was a freakishly annoying carrier pigeon called "Yankee Doodle Pigeon" by the other characters of the show, which was titled "Dastardly and Muttley and thier Flying Machines". It ran for one season between 1969 and 1970 and was clearly at some point inspired by the 1965 film "Those Magnificant Men in Their Flying Machines".

Among the Saturday morning cartoons of the Sixties and Seventies (and, remember, we're talking about the era that produced gems like "Funky Phantom" and "Hong Kong Phooey") this may well have been one of the most bizarre and pointless.

Even as a kid I thought it was crap.

And yey, I still remember this worthless trivia.

Sigh.

Ael said...

It is funny how much we are all interconnected. The wayback machine is the internet archive.