Amongst all the greatest epics, there is Honey I Shrunk the Kids. It's no small pun to say that this film was epic in size, and yet it all took place between the backyard and the kitchen. They just made the most of everything in it... from the epic broom scene to the giant blades of grass they slide on, not to mention Antie the friendly ant, the ride on the bee, the scorpion, the lawn mower, the sprinkler system, the cereal bowl... Rick Moranis! ...this movie is just scene after scene of death-defying goodness! (And possibly the origin of why I used to fantasize about being shrunken down and living under my older cousin-in-law's bed ((yeah, I had a cousin crush back then... slap the cuffs on me. But in my defense, I was the 8yo me, she was more like a cousin-in-law, and she was a teenage chick.))
In any case, it's all very vivid to my memory, and mainly because they really did a great job making the small world look so damn REAL (although "big" movements were still painfully slow for some reason once they shrunk)... and man did these kids get messy in this movie! If they weren't dripping wet with mud, they were soaked with giant water droplets, or covered in big yellow globs of pollen, or bathing in milk. And it all looked so real, like how it might actually be if you were that small and had to make your way across the "ten or so mile" backyard, sleeping in a Lego brick, riding down a river of grossness, and fighting off bugs along the way. The film also had good kid characters, biting each other's heads off and yet sticking it out for one another the whole way.
Each one of them almost died a number of times too, whether it was due to a ride on a bee, or getting sucked up in the lawn mower, or getting hit by the sprinkler jets, or getting hounded by a scorpion... and then they were all separated, and reunited, and that big ant "Antie" saved their lives and finally ended up paying the ultimate sacrifice (which was beyond sad). And while all of this epic stuff was happening, the bumbling Rick Moranis was combing through the yard with a magnifying glass to find them and still not making their journey any easier. One kid even almost pays the ultimate sacrifice too at the end nestled inside a giant Cheerio... because of Rick Moranis!
So please, a moment of silence is due for Antie, the one (and only) thing NOT working AGAINST them in the film, whose brave sacrifice is duly remembered.
My recent look back at Legends of the Hidden Temple forced me to instantly remember other great 90s Nick game shows, and here's one that definitely made me go, "Oh man! I totally forgot about this and now I totally remember it!" Of course you know what I'm talking about, because you're feeling it too. It was called What Would You Do? or if you prefer: "wha-wha-wha-would you... wha-wha-wha-would you... wha-wha-wah would you do?"
This show was basically "pies and eyes." It had a lot of pies, and for some reason, a lot of creepy eyes. They were everywhere: googly eyes with lashes blinking, popping out of walls, spinning around here or there... even the title had a couple eyes in it. Very strange. After that, every episode started off with Marc Summers looking something like a Ken doll in a hypnotic dress-shirt and standing against a set looking something like a pastel comic book with splatter paint and leopard skin patterns and random shapes. He'd tell us where the heck we were, and then we'd enter the "bouncing-ovaly-eyes-against-neon-green-polygons" dimension (what they normally call an "acid trip"), and we'd see shots of Marc gargling the air, dressing as a banana, and painting a French mustache on his face all screwed up. "You're doing it wrong!"
The audience was a pool of funky neon, tucked-in bulky shirts, pink scrunchies, white shorts, and bare legs, and you'd spend so much time looking at them in the running time that you'd actually begin to tell them apart from one another. Who was wearing the weird costumes and who was wearing the normal clothes? It's impossible to know these days. The people back there were just a stack of colors, stripes, and poka dots, with fanny packs and plastic visor hats as far as the eye could see. Blinding to look at, but always eager to stand up, accept a challenge, and get a pie to the face. Seriously, at this point, what planet was this show beamed in from?
Step on up to the Wall O' Stuff!
As to what it was actually about... I'll fill you in as soon as I know (controlled substances may be needed). But from what I can piece together, it seemed to be about kids torturing their parents in various ways that usually involved humiliating tasks and every possible way to put a cream pie into someone's face. And I really mean that. This show started a pie-face contraption industry. It had the "Pie Pod," the "Pie Slide," the "Pie Pendulum," the "Pie in the Sky," the "Pie Roulette," the "Pie Wash," AND the "Pie Coaster." But you could only take one of these things for a spin by picking a number and retrieving a card out of the trippy and colorful doors on the "Wall O' Stuff." Afterwards, those cream pies probably tasted pretty good, especially pasted to your shoulders and dripping off your chin.
Simply put, this show was idiot TV as high art, but sure fun enough if you were the kid who got to see his dad dress as a bee, strap a stinger to his can, and try to sit on a series of balloons to pop them. You know if he makes ten in 60 seconds, he'll look like an idiot, and if he doesn't, he'll get to go sit in the Pie Pod and have a pie launched at his face. Sounds radical doesn't it? And I guess the show gets its name from the segment where kids had to decide whether to get a pie to the face or do what was written on a card strapped to their head... or maybe it had something to do with what number door you'd open in the Wall O' Stuff, but who really knows? Usually getting the pie to the face was the better option because half the time the card had them eating the sauerkraut and jelly bean sandwich. Yuck. At least cream pies are tasty.
Still don't get it? What can I say, it was the 90s!
In the vast ocean of otherwise mediocre Sega Genesis games, only about one or two really spoke to me that didn't have anything to do with a blue hedgehog or Jurassic Park. One of them was the insanely classic and insanely hard Ecco the Dolphin 2: The Tides of Time. I never played the first one, so I have no idea about it, but this one had mystical crystals and teleportation rings and time traveling dolphins with super telekinetic powers. It was as New Agey as it gets, and even the soundtrack often sounded lifted from one of those Pure Moods samplers... but man was it awesome. After Free Willy, all the girls were into marine biology suddenly, and somehow so was I. But sue me because dolphins are F'kin Awesome! Mystical, magical, and SUPER-intelligent... like girls!
I loved dolphins. They were my favorite animal and it might've been because of this game, I'm not sure, but this game had sharks and squids and turtles and orcas and just everything cool about the ocean. Every level had some kind of shipwreck in it too, and how the ships got down there was no mystery seeing as giant jagged rocks were basically everywhere. Even Ecco could barely move around underwater without slamming into something and making that painful "squeaking" sound that used to drive me crazy! Play this game for two minutes and all you hear is *squeak* *squeak* *squeak*...etc. I mean, ouch already!
The other thing that used to drive me crazy about this game is just how LONG it is, and how HARD some of these levels ended up being. Take "Tube of the Medusa" for instance. Thanks to the fact that you have no lives, I spent hours sometimes trying to get around that giant squid monster and only ended up getting chucked back time and time again. And when you get chucked out of the sky tube, you fall back TWO LEVELS EACH TIME and have to work your way all the way back up every time you screw up EVEN ONCE... it's nearly impossible! Also, as soon as you lose your powers and have to start surfacing for air and looking for bubbles, the game becomes a constant challenge. My brother and I never beat it. We didn't even come close.
But is it a great game? Of course! This game inspired me to invent all kinds of stories around those super-intelligent dolphins, and many a backyard make-believe focused on playing Ecco like we were making a movie version of it or some kind of weird role play. The game was so movie-like already. It did what it was supposed to do and made the ocean mystical and magical, and though it was hard as hell and involved a LOT of "back and forth a hundred times between two points collecting stuff", it was at least imaginative along the way. Any time I got in a swimming pool, I was playing Ecco.
Of course I used to pronounce it "EE-co" for some reason. It took me years to figure it out: "oh... echo... I get it." I can't say I was super-intelligent of course. I was not a dolphin. Or a girl.
Sheer awesomeness all around. So let's start with Olmec, a talking rock... head... god... thing, who has some legend to tell about some sub-Young Indiana Jones artifact that a team of kids have to compete to find (Legends brought to you by Sketchers, it's the S!). And there's a lot of swirling camera angles. Chances are if you're in your 20s and teaching archaeology right now, you have this show to thank. And chances are if you're not TEAM SILVER SNAKES, then I probably have nothing to say to you... except that the game was rigged any time we lost. This is the closest thing to a sports fandom I ever had, and I will die on this hill... after failing at the Silver Monkey.
Speaking of which, let's just get to the teams... all in dashing yellow helmets and beige cargo shorts. There's always the Red Jaguars (usually the jocks), the Blue Barracudas (jocks), the Green Monkeys (nerds), the Orange Iguanas (dorks), the Purple Parrots (losers), and of course... the Silver Snakes (the most badass team of the bunch). (And trust me, it really was a better personality horoscope than what you see in the newspaper.) They all had colorful T-shirts emblazoned with their sacred golden animal insignia only 90s kids would be able to tell apart (or buy on a t-shirt!). Did I mention that I was always rooting for the Silver Snakes? You know, the kids in the white shirts with the gold who kicked ass every time AND just so happened to have the most awesome team name?
Okay, sometimes they lost. So if they didn't make it, then (and only then) the Blue Barracudas. And after that... well fuck this game. And yeah... I know people have done mini dissertations breaking down the stats on this show and have proven the Green Monkeys and Silver Snakes technically tied for "winningest"... even with the Orange Iguanas technically most in contention... but you know, "trivialities." At least we can all agree that the Purple Parrots sucked ass! Anyways it always seemed weird that for a temple so "hidden," it certainly seemed to get a lot of traffic...
This guy named Kirk Fogg hosted, and he seemed like a nice chap... looked more like your cool young science teacher than an adventurer, but the cargo shorts and swinging in on a fucking vine will take ya a long way. First there was always some pool challenge called The Moat, where the teams simply had to splash through some kiddy wading pool either by swimming through it or swinging across, or jumping on platforms, and Olmec would always be like "when Kirk gives the signal...," and "If you fail, go back and start again!" The first four teams to hit the podium button and set off the gong sound would advance to the next round. The other two would be sent home with Flubber on VHS (the mark of a loser).
The four remaining teams would progress to the Steps of Knowledge, which were basically stairs that lit up when they got a question right. The first two teams to the bottom would advance, and the other two would be sent home with a Nerf football.
The two last teams would then compete in an American Gladiators-style series of Temple Games, involving riding things, shooting things with giant slingshots, climbing walls, balancing beams, and whatever else they could fit into the episode's theme, whether that be the Cross of Coronado or the Broken Trident of Poseidon. The team that won the three challenges would be bestowed two pendants to shield them against future temple guard molestation once inside.
What would happen after that is still the most mind-altering, crazy awesome three minutes to hang on the edge of your seat for in television history (second only to the typical ending of GUTS). The winning team would have to make a run through the temple, and with room names like this, you know it was quite hardcore:
Silver Monkey... it's only three pieces!
"Start out in the Crypt to retrieve the Book of Skeletons! With it, proceed to the Pit of the Pendulum! Swing on the rope, knock over the column, and enter the King's Storeroom! Smash the clay pots, find the key, and the door will open to the Room of the Ancient Warriors! Place yourself in the correct suit of Mayan armor, and proceed to the Room of the Secret Password! Find the correct inscription tablet and shout out the password to enter the SHRIIIIIINE of the Silver Monkey! Assemble the monkey statue and open the Pharaoh's Secret Passage! Climb down the tunnel to the Quicksand Fog and smash through the rocks to the Dark Forest! But beware of the temple guards that hide in the trees! Find the key to the Jester's Court, and match your body to the correct glowing wall paintings to enter the Tomb of the Headless Kings! Attach the correct skull to the skeletons and race back to the temple gate with the artifact! Retrieve it in time, and you get the home stereo, and the dude ranch vacation..."
"The choice is yours and yours alone! Good luck." Three minutes on the clock, and... GO!
You couldn't watch a minute of that without shouting at the screen. "Turn around! Go up the ladder! No! Go back to the Silver Monkey! Oh get it together you idiot!" Those kids were always getting terribly lost, or confused about how to put that Silver Monkey together, or snatched back to the darkness by the temple guards. They didn't have the benefit of the little map at the bottom of the screen with the pink line of their progress running through it like we did lounging back on the couch on those weekend afternoons, but still, "get it together!"
Go Silver Snakes!
It would've been the dream of a lifetime for me to test my radical powers of mental agility in the temple, but I know I wouldn't have made it past the Silver Monkey either, unless I was on team Silver Snake. They were still cool, even if they lost sometimes.
Nothing says "small-something" more than a big fancy Hot Rod in the driveway. That's the law of nature. BUTT... what if those Hot Rods are small themselves? Well, give them long stretches of track and big loops to be shot through of course! And thus, male over-compensation begins early. So naturally, I had one of those Hot Wheels track systems when I was a kid (draw your own conclusions), and I got to say, they never worked! Okay, they worked, but they never made me feel like "big man on cul-de-sac." They were probably more fun to set up and think about than actually play with. First of all, they came with, like, 20 sections of track and the connector pieces were always getting lost. If you ran out of connector pieces, that was it. You had a jumble of tracks you could "kinda-sorta" lay next to one another, but it was useless for high speed anything. Don't lose the connectors!
Secondly, you had to be a serious pro to keep the cars on the tracks. On the slightest bump, they'd go flying off. On the extreme corners, they'd shoot out and get lost behind the desk or under the bed. On the loops, well, you could forget about the loops unless you had one of those motors that could push it up to 88 mph and careen it into something in another time period. The only place those cars never seemed to be though was at the top of the loop, and particularly if they were the heavy car with the engine bursting through the hood. Thirdly, there were speed problems. I think half of what I know about physics I learned from trying to make Hot Wheels cars go fast enough to take those loops. I had to start them off at a height usually taller than me, like a shelf or something, but not too high or else the car wouldn't grip the track on the way down, and not too low or else it would jam up at the loop or hit the incline and fly off into another dimension. It was very precise.
Don't lose these!
The last gripe was anything that involved a jump. Yeah it looks great in the commercial when the car flies off and lands square on the next piece of track, but was that take 79 or 156? Those jumps were made to keep your car off the track as long as possible. To keep it going, you needed more downhills than anything else...something hard to come by if you're already on the floor, but then again, to really get it going anywhere you either had to pay for motors or pay for more sections of track to go for higher altitudes. I think if you ran one from the top of Mt. Everest you'd probably finally score three loops and a complete track run out of it using only normal physics (assuming it stayed on the track).
In fact, it all used to make me wonder (because as a kid these things are more than just toys, but potential reality situations). In my mind, somewhere out there in the Hot Wheels dimension, roads were just constructed as giant loops for no particular reason and every now and then ordinary vehicles might be expected to perform vast jumps and corkscrews as part of their daily commute. Who would build such a roadway and why didn't factor in so much as the thought of how cool it would be if this was how it was in our dimension! Then we could run our real hot rods through real giant loops... and really be over-compensating! Awww yeah.
Dedicated devotees in this dimension however have managed to make impressive and lengthy loops of these things that cover whole living rooms and neighborhoods (whether or not it's one continuous track is a subject of intense debate), and others have even made life sized versions featuring real cars. My brother and I though probably used the tracks more to sword fight.
Crossfire (or is it, CROSSFYAAAAR!!), the rapid fire shoot-out game. Everyone knows the commercial with those Highlander-lite boys on the floating platforms zipping around the clouds of Thundera with the constant lightning and fire and screaming spectators all around gripped by the gladiatorial "ultimate challenge" being accepted. This game made it seem the fate of the world rested on the outcome, the showdown of good and evil, played out from the peaks of Olympus/Valhalla/Hell, or wherever this was (all it says is "some time in the future"... really specific) on some small plastic game board that could even call downlightning from the very sky! and vaporize the loser on site! It's safe to say that if you were paying close enough attention, you might've gotten the impression that this game was badass. I don't know, I never played it.
It had something to do with shooting little balls and knocking around some triangle thing and getting "caught up in the....Crossfire!" One look at it and you know it probably won't be anything like the commercial. And if it was, it'd probably be a big deal. The Pentagon might want to know about it. But truth be told, Crossfire would've made a better popcorn summer blockbuster than a board game (just look what they did to Battleship!). But that's the thing with boy toys. Out of the box, they're fun enough for a few spins and then somehow manage to pile up in the basement. With girl toys, it's a pony and a tiny hairbrush, come on... it's lame on the commercial and lame out of the box, and will probably end up buried in the yard or sucked up in the vacuum, but you know what you're getting and what it does. With boy toys, they know we boys are dumb and crave power, so they don't even have to tell us what they're selling half the time! Just put a lot of cool stuff on the screen and we'll want it, lame or not, regardless of what it even is.
"Those other boys there look pretty cooling doing...whatever that is... so hoo-rah!
And did I want it? Of course. Did you SEE that lightning??
Since I've been shopping around for a better car, I've of course been checking out the specs on the cars from Jurassic Park. I was never really into cars, but if you asked the 8yo Me what my favorite car was, I probably would've said "the Jurassic Park car", and since there were two great cars in Jurassic Park, let's see how they stack up.
They see me rollin'...
By "Jurassic Park car," I probably meant "the one with the no doors." They were just so cool and rugged, and door-less, and could purr away through the mud and ferns quite nicely when outrunning a T-Rex. They were actually Jeep Wranglers, and yes some of them had little doors, but any car that was rugged and could outrun a T-Rex would've had me sold, and I'm apparently not the only one. It seems that turning your Jeep Wrangler into a JP Jeep, with decals and all, is an official hobby, and there's even a fan club about it. "What dinosaurs does it outrun? Perfect, let's sign the papers!
It was the other JP car though that made the better toy... that being the tour cars that drove themselves. "Look it! A ghost! Ahh!" These turned out to be Ford Explorers, and boy did they shine up pretty in the movie with that yellow-green fade and the red "Dino" paint on the hood. Plus they had that awesome sun roof that was just like one big window. They also had the miracle of "INTERACTIVE CD-ROM! Just touch the right part of the screen and it talks about whatever you want!" Join the future... these were the original touch-screen "smart cars!" Unfortunately it didn't hold up against the T-Rex very well, but it was a damn tough nut to crack! People also deck out their Ford Explorers to look like the Jurassic Park tour car too.
The reason I said that the tour car was a better toy was because they merchandised it (like anything they could slap a JP logo on). The toy came with a cool rocket launcher on the back and a front section that could pop off.. (No mom, I didn't break it, that's "Dino Damage!"). It was called the Jurassic Park Jungle Explorer set, and I definitely wanted it, just like I wanted anything with a JP logo, but I never got it. You can find it though at this really cool collector's site JPtoys.com, where I also quickly learned how much money these things were, and why "spare no expense!" didn't work on my parents.
Amongst all the greatest epics, there is Honey I Shrunk the Kids. It's no small pun to say that this film was epic in size, and yet it all took place between the backyard and the kitchen. They just made the most of everything in it... from the epic broom scene to the giant blades of grass they slide on, not to mention Antie the friendly ant, the ride on the bee, the scorpion, the lawn mower, the sprinkler system, the cereal bowl... Rick Moranis! ...this movie is just scene after scene of death-defying goodness! (And possibly the origin of why I used to fantasize about being shrunken down and living under my older cousin-in-law's bed ((yeah, I had a cousin crush back then... slap the cuffs on me. But in my defense, I was the 8yo me, she was more like a cousin-in-law, and she was a teenage chick.))
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