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COWNADO! Game Unboxing, Assembly and Review! – Dandy Fun House episode 59
Jun 12, 2026
19m 23s
RONCO The REAL Story! – Dandy Fun House episode 58
Apr 11, 2026
COWS IN SPACE Game Unboxing, Assembly and Review! – Dandy Fun House episode 57
Feb 16, 2026
13m 21s
WHAT’S HOT ON THE HORIZON FOR 2026! – Dandy Fun House episode 56
Jan 1, 2026
33m 54s
HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2025! – Dandy Spook Shack episode 55
Oct 25, 2025
20m 01s
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| Date | Episode | Topics | Guests | Brands | Places | Keywords | Sponsor | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6/12/26 | COWNADO! Game Unboxing, Assembly and Review! – Dandy Fun House episode 59✨ | game unboxinggame assembly+3 | — | COWNADO | — | COWNADOgame unboxing+3 | — | 19m 23s | |
| 4/11/26 | RONCO The REAL Story! – Dandy Fun House episode 58✨ | Ron PopeilRONCO+3 | — | RONCO | — | Chop-o-MaticVeg-o-Matic+4 | Dandy Fun HouseZERO DOLLARS OFF | — | |
| 2/16/26 | COWS IN SPACE Game Unboxing, Assembly and Review! – Dandy Fun House episode 57✨ | game unboxinggame review+3 | — | COWS IN SPACEDandy Fun House+1 | — | COWS IN SPACEgame unboxing+3 | — | 13m 21s | |
| 1/1/26 | WHAT’S HOT ON THE HORIZON FOR 2026! – Dandy Fun House episode 56✨ | future trends2026 predictions+5 | — | DANDY FUN HOUSE T-Shirts | Dandy Fun House | 2026Toy of the Year+6 | — | 33m 54s | |
| 10/25/25 | HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2025! – Dandy Spook Shack episode 55✨ | HalloweenMonster Cereals+4 | — | Monster CerealsJim Henson Studios | Spirit Store | Halloween 2025Dandy Spook Shack+5 | — | 20m 01s | |
| 9/22/25 | WILD WORLD OF WHAM-O! – Dandy Fun House episode 54✨ | toyspop culture+3 | — | Hula HoopSlip n Slide+4 | Dandy Fun House website | Wham-OHula Hoop+5 | — | 17m 07s | |
| 7/19/25 | JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH MOVIE REVIEW and RAVENOUS RAPTORS GAME REVIEW! Dandy Fun House episode 53✨ | movie reviewgame review+4 | — | Hungry Hungry HipposRAVENOUS RAPTORS+3 | dandyfunhouse.comYouTube | Jurassic Worldmovie review+5 | — | — | |
| 6/1/25 | WEIRDEST ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS IN AMERICA! – Dandy Fun House episode 52✨ | roadside attractionsweird+3 | — | DANDY FUN HOUSE T SHIRTSDandy Fun House | AmericaWinnebago+2 | road tripattractions+3 | — | 15m 38s | |
| 4/26/25 | PICKLEBALL BLAST! Game Review, Unboxing and Assembly – Dandy Fun House episode 51✨ | game reviewunboxing+4 | — | PICKLEBALL BLASTMoose Games | — | pickleballtabletop game+4 | — | 18m 34s | |
| 3/11/25 | SOUPY SALES – Behind the Slapstick! – Dandy Fun House episode 50✨ | comedytelevision history+3 | — | — | — | Soupy SalesMilton Supman+5 | — | 28m 51s | |
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| 1/24/25 | Let’s Make A PINBALL MACHINE! – Dandy Fun House episode 49✨ | pinball machineSTEM education+5 | — | PINBALL MACHINE MAKER – GUMBALL RALLYTHAMES AND KOSMOS | — | pinball machineSTEM kit+5 | — | 20m 01s | |
| 12/24/24 | 2025’s GOT ALL THE FUN STUFF! – Dandy Fun House episode 48 | watch the video below! listen to the podcast below! In this edition of the Dandy Fun House, we’re going to close out 2024 by looking ahead to 2025 and seeing what’s on the horizon for theme parks, movies, pinball and my favorite TOTY AWARD NOMINATION picks for the upcoming 2025 Toy of the Year Awards! All this ahead! Let’s step into the FUN HOUSE! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House 2024 year-end extravaganza where we celebrate retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff! I’m your host Neil Dandy and while most shows are just mailing it in this time of year and giving their audience a “best of” mishmash of what they’ve already done over the past year, this show is instead going to take the opportunity to look ahead into the New Year of 2025 and explore the most exciting things on the horizon. But first! I have to show you these futuristic DANDY FUN HOUSE T-Shirts! They do have a front and a back so you don’t get cold and we even cut 4 holes in them with the rattiest pair of scissors we could find! One to crawl your body into, one to stick your head out of and two to poke your arms through! All because we care! Find them in the Dandy Fun Shop at the Dandy Fun House website at dandyfunhouse.com While you’re there, be sure to load up on all the gogo juice you’ll need for the new year with our Coffee Badger t-shirts, mugs and bags of harshly-ground dark French Roast coffee! You don’t have to love France to love their harshly-ground coffee, but it helps! Just get your oui-oui over to dandyfunhouse.com and get busy! Alright, let’s get into this new year we’re starting down the barrel of. There’s a lot of amazing stuff on the horizon and we’re going to explore that right now starting with… THEME PARKS! And I’m going to start with the big thing everyone is talking about because it really is the attraction that is sucking up all the oxygen in the room right now as far as theme park chit chat goes and that is… UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, Orlando Florida – EPIC UNIVERSE. This is a brand new theme park located adjacent to Universal Studios and Universal Islands of Adventure and it’s going to include 5 different specially-themed areas: Celestial Park, Dark Universe, How to Train Your Dragon, Isle of Berk, Super Nintendo World and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic. Let’s just cut to the chase and talk about the REALLY interesting part of this new theme park and the only part that makes me want to visit: DARK UNIVERSE! This is a special land within Epic Universe that is dedicated exclusively to the classic Universal Monsters, Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man! Sorry, no live for the Mummy or the Creature From the Black Lagoon. I mean someone has to recreate the movie theater attack from THE BLOB at some point don’t they? Anyway, First off we’ve got an incredible looking ride called MONSTERS UNCHAINED: The Frankenstein Experiment. This one takes place inside Frankenstein’s Castle! Dr. Victoria Frankenstein continues the work of her ancestors deep below the family estate. A demonstration of her experiments to control monsters goes awry when Dracula leads a revolt of enraged monsters including The Wolf Man, The Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and more! Then we have CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF! This appears to be a roller coaster where you ride in gypsy wagons to escape a pack of hungry werewolves. One thing that stood out to me in the renderings was a picture showing people sitting sideways, forwards and backwards on this ride. The information doesn’t divulge whether or not the cars spin or if you merely have different choices on the type of seating, but further investigation into the animated tour of the overall land of Dark Universe actually does show the cars spinning freely from side to side. It has a top speed of only 37 miles per hour so as long as you can handle the werewolves, I think pops can probably handle this one with you! THE BURNING BLADE TAVERN: Upon first viewing from the outside looking in, this appears to be fashioned after the climactic final scene from Frankenstein where he (supposedly) meets his end in a burning windmill tower. It is indeed an eatery where you can enjoy burgers, wings, bratwurst and pretzels. But just the fact that they have the burning windmill from the movie Frankenstein with the windmill ACTUALLY ON FIRE is just blowing my frankin’ mind! Another eatery in this portion of the park is DAS STAKEHOUSE: (notice how STAKE is spelled). This is apparently the more upscale dining option in the area and is a Vampire-Themed dungeon filled with vampire artwork and artifacts. DARKMOOR MONSTER MAKEUP EXPERIENCE: This appears to be a laboratory where you, the visitors can yourself become on of Doctor Pretorius’ mad experiments and be transformed into werewolves, vampires, mummies and more! So, basically, two rides, two places to eat and a makeup shop. You’re not likely to spend your entire day in Dark Universe, but if the other lands, especially Nintendo, in this park interest you, then this very well may be worth your hard-earned theme park dollars. Regardless, you absolutely have to visit the Universal Orlando Website and see the animated tour renderings for yourself! They are amazing! Okay, let’s go to Sandusky, Ohio and CEDAR POINT: If you know anything about Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio then you know this is the Mecca for all things roller coaster. I don’t usually exhort about coasters on this show BUT they have a new one coming out for 2025 called SIREN’S CURSE based on the mythylogical Lake Erie lore of the sirens of the lake who lured sailrs to their doom with their sweet, seductive songs. Okay, a sea monster-themed roller coaster. Yawn! What’s the big deal about that? Well, this particular roller coaster is what is known as a “Tilt Coaster” meaning that the cars come up to a ledge where the track ends and then the entire track the riders are on tilts forward until they are all looking 160 ft straight down. The track then connects to another section of track which is also straight down and releases the cars to go hurtling at pretty much the highest rate of speed possible. Maybe some of you enthusiasts have seen tilt coasters before, but I personally have never seen anything like this before and it just looks absolutely sick! 2025 also marks the 40th Anniversary of DOLLYWOOD in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee! Of course there will be all sorts of special shows going on for the year-long celebration, but I’m really not noticing anything new here except they are touting a bigger and more spectacular drone and fireworks show. Come on Dolly, step it up a little!   Moving on to PINBALL – Ok, I’ve been trying to find some lists of the best new pinball machines we can expect in 2025 but in my research, all I’m finding is old articles about 2024 and the search results are otherwise completely clogged by some website called The Pinball Spot with misleading headlines and what appears to be articles written by A.I. that don’t deliver the promise of the headline. Not sure how the search engines are allowing this, but it is what it is. But being the professional that I am, I trudge on. The most anticipated new pinball release I’ve learned about coming for 2025 in my opinion would have to be from Spooky Pinball: THE EVIL DEAD featuring the actual voice of the man himself, Bruce Campbell. Evil Dead Pinball is the 4th game by the designer duo “Spooky Luke” and Corwin “Bug” Emery. It features a double barrel shotgun ball launcher and more goodies than you can imagine. The shack, the basement, the hand and a life-sized version of the old lady even pops out of the top of the backboard! This thing just looks absolutely bonkers! I can’t wait! Dutch Pinball is highly rumored to be releasing an all-new version of Back To The Future expected to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the film’s release and this would also mark 35 years since the release of the first Back To The Future Pinball release by Data East Pinball in 1985. I did learn via knapparcade.org of a likely new release from STERN PINBALL which would be X-MEN ’97. And if you’ll be around the Frisco, Texas area this coming March, you might want to flap your flippers into the 2025 TEXAS PINBALL FESTIVAL happening from March 21st through the 23rd at the Embassy Suites. This will have an abundance of exhibitors where you can see the latest and greatest along with long lost classics, tournaments and just about everything pinball your feeble brain can handle. Learn more and register to attend at www.texaspinball.com ! I also stumbled across the 41st Annual Pinball Expo which will be happening from October 15th through 18th in beautiful Schaumburg, Illinois at the Renaissance Shaumburg Convention Center Hotel. At the time of this recording it’s a bit soon to tell you about everything this expo will have, but after 41 solid years of holding this event, I’m pretty sure they know how to do it right and this one should be worthy of your time and attendance should you be able to get your shiny silver balls to Schaumburg! Are you ready for some MOVIES? Before I get into the movies I’m looking forward to in 2025, I want to acknowledge a few of my favorites from 2024. First off: JOKER Folie A Deux with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gag Gag. This movie was panned so hard I thought it would get a flat nose and I don’t see how this one is not going to receive a Razzie Award. It really is hands-down the biggest box office flop of the year. Knowing how everyone was screaming about what an absolute dud this thing was, I decided to go see it, clear my mind of all expectations of the payoff of finally getting to see Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker run around Gotham doing Joker stuff like everyone wanted to see him do. Instead, I let all of that go, cleared my mind and allowed the movie to take me where it wanted to and tell me the story IT had, not the story I wanted it to have. What I came away with was a magically tragic tale of the prison life of Arthur Fleck, his experience with a mentally unstable woman with a romantic prisoner infatuation combined with a burning desire for personal fame and attention. And no second thoughts whatsoever about using Arthur Fleck for however much of this she could wring from him. And finally the courtroom drama of Fleck’s mass murder trial and his ultimate, quite unspectacular demise at the hands of a fellow prisoner with a shank. It was an interesting-yet-uncomfortable tapestry of tragedy, fantasy and the human condition interwoven into a mega box office flop of preposterous proportions! And for the chutzpah of taking everyone’s expectations (and money), wadding it all up, tossing it in the garbage while extending a huge special finger to all the built-up pretense surrounding this sequel and the audience along with it, JOKER FOLIE A DEUX has indeed earned the respect of THIS moviegoer! What say you? Another one that surprised me was WICKED. I did not expect to like what I thought was going to be just some silly chick-flick. I tried not to like this. But I did. This is an adventure beyond measure, a massive undertaking from the visuals to the acting to the music. It’s just filled with performers that I don’t like who are blowing it all out of the water anyway and shoving their raw donut licking talent right in my face and making me eat a heaping helping of spectacle pie whether I wanted to or not. This movie abused me and I liked it! Fantastic all around, and this was just part one. Grab your broom and go see it! And speaking of broomstick riders, Demi Moore in THE SUBSTANCE! Wow! I mean just wow! If you’ve ever wanted to see Demi Moore in the craziest horror sci-fi film you’ve ever experienced, you have to see THE SUBSTANCE but don’t take the kids cause she’s nekkid in it. OK Moving right along to the movies I’m looking forward to in 2025! Lilo and Stitch, the live action remake. This could be good or it could burn like a kerosene-soaked tiki hut. Jurassic World Rebirth – I don’t know… I’m pretty over the whole Jurassic thing but I’m sure this will be a fun popcorn movie. Then we’ve got the new Superman movie entitled… Superman. As you probably know, Henry Cavill is out and David Corenswet is in. Henry was a fantastic Superman and was set to reprise this role and for some reason, Director James Gunn recast the part which I’m really troubled by. I was really enjoying the harder edged, darker places they were taking things with Henry Cavill and now I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I will say I like the new emblem which looks more like an alien symbol than the letter S, which in my opinion is exactly what it should have always looked like. A Minecraft Movie – This is the big Jack Black flick of 2025 and it looks like a fun one for the kids that adults can also enjoy. I’ve seen the trailer and to me if looks like one of the new Jumanji movies repackaged in that 4 people get sucked into the game and connect with an expert builder who helps them survive the endless challenges and pitfalls of this crazy, crazy digital world (zeros and ones!) Then there’s the live action remake of Snow White. There was a lot of ridiculous controversy this past year over a picture of a group of actors who were portraying the dwarves and people were wringing their hands and clutching their pearls in that they didn’t look like the dwarves they grew up with. And I’m going to say it, they were upset that the actors portraying the dwarves weren’t white and believing that they weren’t white because of the woke diversity-pushing agendas of Hollywood. I don’t even know where to begin with this except to say, These were pictures of the MOTION ACTORS BEING REPLACED WITH CGI ! They used these real actors to play against and to capture better human movements and interactions between the characters! It didn’t matter what they look like! I can understand being sick of identity being interjected for the sake of an agenda but for the love of God, get a clue before getting offended by every picture you see floating around the internet people! This stated… speaking of looks… The premise that the gorgeously stunning Gal Gadot playing the evil queen would be jealous of a Dora the Explorer-looking Snow White with clammy skin and a giant hairy mole on her face (still cute, I’m just saying in comparison to Gal Gadot) is beyond credibility. It’s like that SNL skit where Chris Farley competes with Patrick Swayze for the last open Chippendales spot. What are we doing here folks? Captain America – Brave New World : OK I’m not crazy about the title. It’s not bad. It’s just not good or interesting. That said, the upgrading of the B-level superhero FALCON finally putting on his big boy pants and taking up the shield of Captain America is an interesting angle that I’m looking forward to. It’s about time FALCON got his due. Too bad it will not be in the form of a true FALCON movie (I guess you could argue that this is a true FALCON movie in that it combines his strengths with the remaining assets of Captain America to take him to the next level), but this is pretty close and I’ll take it! I think what I’m reserved about is that I feel this movie is telling me that FALCON couldn’t measure up the way he was and needed Captain America’s leftover technology to bring him up to snuff. And to me, that hints of a disrespect for the legacy that’s been built up over several movies for the FALCON character. Regardless, it’s an interesting dynamic, I’m looking forward to seeing it. I just would have at least liked a better title. Brave New World is just sort of lackluster to me. Guillermo Del Toro’s new adaptation of Frankenstein which will star Mia Goth is also coming in the new year. There’s not a lot of information out about this one, much less a trailer but I’m of two minds about this one. Half of me us saying Do we really need another Frankenstein movie? Let’s move on to something new and fresh. While the other half of me is screaming with joy like a little teenaged fangirl. If course we need a new Frankenstein movie! Then we have Popeye the Slayer Man (yes, you heard that right) who was apparently misconfigured and physically altered by a chemically tainted batch of spinach. He now lurks in the shadows of the old abandoned spinach factory on the docks and metes out his horrific punishments on any who might dare trespass. I’m guessing the rights to Popeye have recently become public domain. Umm… Yeah . There’s a whole lot more in the world of movies but honestly it’s mostly sequels, remakes and reboots but hey.. Dogman is finally getting his own feature film and that’s Hollywood throwing us a bone! 2025 TOY INDUSTRY NEWS! Ok it’s a bit tough to get a list of next year’s most anticipated toys when we’re in the middle of Christmas season for this year, so in the TOY category what I thought I would do instead is to let you know some of the most interesting toys of 2024 that are currently nominated in various categories for a coveted 2025 TOTY Award (Toy Of The Year). ACTION FIGURE OF THE YEAR Probably the coolest nominee in this category I found had to be the Godzilla x Kong 13″ Mega Figures by Playmates Toys, Inc. How can you go wrong? COLLECTIBLES In the COLLECTIBLES category, the one that caught my attention the most would have to be Deddy Bears Plush in Coffin by Innov8 Academy which are cute stuffed bears that come in coffin-shaped boxes and I suppose the idea is for kids to get comfortable cuddling corpses? CONSTRUCTION PLAYSET OF THE YEAR For CONSTRUCTION PLAYSET OF THE YEAR I’m giving the nod to Gecko Run: Marble Run by Thames & Kosmos which is a playset where you set up a series of tracks, tubes, funnels and loops to hurl your marbles through crazy adventures and scenarios! CREATIVE TOY OF THE YEAR In the category for CREATIVE TOY OF THE YEAR I’m really liking the Clixo Tropical Birds Pack by Toyish Labs which consists of various colorful foam parts that you snap together to create your own flock of tropical birds! Now that’s neat! DOLL OF THE YEAR There’s also a category for DOLL OF THE YEAR which I’m going to skip because as a 56 year old man I don’t feel quite qualified to make a pick here but I will venture to say the doll collection NAME I found the most interesting in this category would have to be YUMMILAND! EDUCATIONAL TOY For the best EDUCATIONAL TOY I’m thumbs-upping the National Geographic Epic Circuits Science Kit by Blue Marble. I’m looking at pictures of this kit and I couldn’t tell you what half the things are here but it looks cool! Way cooler than the science kits I played with when I was a kid. I just want to dig in and geek out like crazy on this thing! GAME OF THE YEAR For the best GAME OF THE YEAR, honestly the only one nominated that I found interesting was SNAP 2 IT by Elenco Electronics which looks like a bunch if components you snap together to make various electronic gizmos that do electronic gizmo types of things. I’m not really sure how this is a game but I’m guessing it must be competitive in some nature for it to be in this category. GROWN UP TOYS In the category of GROWN UP TOYS I didn’t see much that really caught my attention except this line of high end hot wheels cars with crazy teal-colored tracks to run them on called Hot Wheels x Daniel Arsham Collection. This just looks like a super nice set of collectibles for the adult Hot Wheels enthusiast. The cars appear to practically be jewelry! Or if Hot Wheels and Faberge eggs had babies… INFANT / TODDLER TOY Speaking of babies! For the tiny tots in the INFANT / TODDLER TOY category, I found the Ms. Rachel Surprise Learning Box by Spin Master to be the neatest thing. It looks like you get a colorful box that you stick your hand into and pull out a variety of different toys. Because teaching kids to stick their hands and fingers into dark hidden places with the promise of a toy surprise is always a great idea dontcha think? OUTDOOR TOY In the OUTDOOR TOY category I’m really liking the EastPoint Sports Premium Axe Throw Target Game by Buffalo Games. It’s a freaking home version of axe throwing! How can you not want this!? PRESCHOOL TOY OF THE YEAR Fisher-Price Rockin’ Record Player has this one hands down! I mean, it has to be! It’s a modern version of the classic toy record player from the 60’s and 70s but instead of just being a glorified windup music box, this thing plays real recordings and scratches like a record when you move the tone arm and has a great modern look! Nicely done! SPECIALTY TOY OF THE YEAR I absolutely have to not only go with Pinball Machine Maker: Gumball Rally by Thames & Kosmos but I don’t see how I could stand to live with myself if I didn’t get my hands on one of these and do a full-on review for this show! It’s a kit where you put together your own actual working pinball machine that uses gumballs! It’s pinball and a treat! This WILL be on my show agenda for early 2025! TECH TOY In the TECH TOY category I don’t know if I actually like this thing, am creeped out by it or a little of both, but I found the Hero: Sound-Sensing Robot by Thames & Kosmos to be the neatest thing going here. You basically assemble a 6-legged robot that responds to audible cues via a handheld clicker not unlike robot toys we had in the 70s, but this thing is a bit more sophisticated I believe and it also dances. It looks kind of like a mechanical cyclops spider. Definitely something you want to point towards your sister’s bedroom and march right in there after dark! And that’s our look ahead at the amusements to watch for in 2025! What are YOU looking forward to? Let me know! If you’re enjoying this episode on one of the socials, leave a comment. Otherwise you can email me at neil@dandyfunhouse.com MY FAVORITE DANDY FUN HOUSE EPISODE OF 2024! I don’t usually like doing retrospectives but I am going to look back at 2024 for just a moment here and would like to say my favorite episode was undoubtedly the Halloween episode. It’s always the Halloween episode and it’s always the episode that results in my lowest ratings as far as viewership and listenership. But I don’t care. I love Halloween and this year we had the amazing return of Count Drahoon which just put everything on a whole nuther level! DANDY FUN HOUSE Plans for 2025 I would love to start including content from YOU! Yeah YOU! Like your theme park visits, toy and game reviews, favorite retro amusements. I would really like someone in the pinball business to show off new pinball machines as well retro classics. Just remember, while this show is not aimed at kids, it is family-friendly and made to be something you can enjoy with the kids! So don’t be raunchy. You can be gross, just don’t be raunchy! Feel free to include a quick plug for yourself and/or your business as long as the whole thing isn’t just one big commercial. Sound interesting? Send me links to your SHORT FORM videos at neil@dandyfunhouse.com or just use the contact form on the Dandy Fun House website at www.dandyfunhouse.com Where you’ll also find our PATRONAGE PAGE! If you’ve ever found any value at all in the Dandy Fun House and would like to support future productions, please consider either buying some merchandise from our DANDY FUN SHOP or becoming a Fun House Supporter via a financial donation ! SUPPORTERS gain access exclusive bonus content AND SUPER SUPPORTERS gain that same access plus I’ll personally send you something amazing from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios if you include your mailing address! Podcast Listeners may often support through a donation link in your listening app of choice of the app offers it, I understand not all do. And your 5 star reviews wherever you can leave them are always highly appreciated! And THAT ladies and gentlemen puts a bow on 2024. Come on back next year for some amazing new adventures in 2025,right here at the Dandy Fun House where everything is always FUN AND DANDY! See ya next year! Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment, musician, Emcee, Paratransit Driver and Author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
| 11/13/24 | TOP TEN THANKSGIVING GAMES AND ACTIVITIES! – Dandy Fun House episode 47 | watch the video below!   listen to the podcast below! In this very special Thanksgiving episode of the Dandy Fun House, I’m going to count down my TOP TEN FAMILY FUN FAVORITE GAME IDEAS FOR TURKEY DAY! And we’re gonna get to gobblin’ down on ’em… right now! Let’s step into the Fun House! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog! I’m your host Neil Dandy and this is where we always go for extra helpings of your favorite retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff! Today I’m going to count down the very best family fun game and activity ideas I’ve been able to find and I hope YOU’LL find them absolutely Dandy as well. But before we go any further, I do want to extend a very big thank you to the legendary Count Drahoon for batflapping into the Dandy Fun House Studios here in beautiful Murfreesboro, Tennessee to co-host our annual Halloween episode last month. I have to say he’s the only guest this show has ever had that literally appeared from a cloud of smoke. And speaking of smoke shows… I think it’s time to check out these smokin’ hot Dandy Fun House t-shirts. They’re super absorbent and perfect for soaking up all that giblet gravy dribbling down your chin at the dinner table this month. And not only are they super-stylish, but they also come with 4 holes in them. One to crawl your body into, one to stick your turkey neck out of and two to poke your wings through! Just head over to dandyfunhouse.com and get yours before the big bird thaws! And while you’re there, you might as well pick up one of our infamous Coffee Badger t-shirts and / or coffee mugs and/or bags of dark french roast coffee! I’ll let you figure out what a coffee badger is for yourself. I’m tired of explaining it. Once again, head over to dandyfunhouse.com to visit the Dandy Fun Shop and see all the frivolities we have waiting for you! Okay, without any further delay, I believe it is time to kick off our Turkey Day Top Ten Countdown of our favorite family fun game and activity ideas sure to make your Thanksgiving and absolute hoot! Ready? Let’s do it! #10: Corn Shucking Race: This is obviously a competition best suited for the early birds helping with the meal prep. As the name implies, everyone competes to see who can shuck corn on the cob the fastest. I personally shuck corn on a weekly basis and I’m still terrible at it. I’m always digging out those corn silk strings with a fork. But I will tell you my secret to super quick corn on the cob! Leave the husk on, cut off the ends with a serrated knife so that not only is the husk completely unattached, but also so that you can stick your cob-holders in. Then microwave your corn cob with the holders stuck in and the husk still on for 2 minutes. When it’s done, simply hold it by one of the holders upright on a plate and use a fork to pull away the husk and silk threads. Voila! Two minute corn on the cob! I make it every week! #9: Roll A Turkey Dice Game – This is a fun one. It involves game dice with arts and crafts. First you need to print out the game sheets with a turkey body on it along with the various parts of a turkey corresponding to the numbers on the dice. Secondly you need to print out sheets with all the turkey parts on them. Thirdly, you give everyone a pair of child-safe scissors so they can cut their various turkey parts out. Basically, everyone takes turns rolling the die. If you roll a one, you’ll put eyes on the turky, two you’ll put the beak on your turkey, three the feet and so on and so forth. Of course if you roll something you already have, you do nothing and the next person gets their turn. Whomever succeeds at completley building their turkey first is THE WINNER, WINNER TURKEY DINNER! You can find the game sheets ready to print at www.playpartyplan.com/roll-a-turkey/ I’ll leave a link in the episode posting for this show at dandyfunhouse.com if that’s too much to remember in your tryptophan fog! #8: Thanksgiving Charades – If you’ve had enough of Thanksgiving parades, maybe it’s time to try THANKSGIVING CHARADES! TheSavvySparrow.com website calls this an easy, low-prep game that’s simple to understand and play. I like it already! Just like traditional charades except players act out Thanksgiving-themed words and phrases for others to guess. All you need are the cards with the words and phrases which you can print out at www.thesavvysparrow.com/thanksgiving-charades (or you can just make your own, but these look amazing and they’re already done for you!). A one-minute timer (there’s one on your phone), a box or basket to jumble the cards in for blind-picking and cheap dollar store prizes to throw to or at the winners! #7: Pumpkin Sweep – This is a great yard game and a great use of your decorative gourds! To play Pumpkin Sweep, you give each player a pumpkin and a broom and set up a finish line on the other end of the yard. The object is to maneuver your pumpkin using only the broom across the yard and over the finish line before your opponents! Losers could have their pumpkins smashed (that last part’s optional and reserved exclusively for Extreme Pumpkin Sweep). #6: Turkey, Taters, & Terror, a Thanksgiving-Themed Murder Mystery Game This is the ultimate Thanksgiving Murder Mystery Dinner Party Game! It does require 8 to play and they say it’s best suited for grownups. It’s Thanksgiving dinner, and you’ve been invited to the home of Marissa Baron, one of the most innovative television producers in the past 20 years. Marissa has produced almost every successful show on Cluster, the entertainment industry’s most popular network. She has expressed interest in collaborating with a member of her inner circle and has invited her closest friends and family to pitch ideas for a new show at her holiday dinner. You find yourself at her mansion of a cabin in northern Minnesota. Shockingly, just before dinner, Marissa is tragically found dead! It seems she was electrocuted by a short circuit in the electric whisk while masking her beloved pumpkin pie filling. Let’s say she decided to “mix things up” a bit too literally! As you investigate the faulty wiring, you and the rest of the guests begin to wonder: “Could someone have tried to ‘whisk’ away this successful television producer on Thanksgiving?” That will be up to you and 7 of your closest friends and family to find out when you play TURKEY, TATERS AND TERROR – A Thanksgiving-Themed Murder Mystery Game! Find it at www.vanbiermurdermysteries.com See I told you this was going to be good! Just hang with me! Because now we’ve counted down to… #5: The Game of TRAFFIC YAM! This is a race you can win with your face! You’ve done the egg roll at a picnic before where you hold a spoon in your mouth and try to roll an egg across the lawn and over the finish line faster than anyone else? Okay, same thing but with… YAMS! And yams are a lot harder to control than eggs because of their odd shapes. Just ask Popeye! (I yam what I yam!). And the best part is… you can eat your yam when you’re sick of rolling it! (disclaimer: this game is best played with raw, uncooked yams only, but that’s really your business not mine) #4: Chicken vs. Hot Dog – A Flip it and stick it party game! This game is like bottle flipping but waaay more fun! This is something everyone can play without learning loads of rules. Basically you get a flippable stickable chicken and a flippable stickable hot dog and a stack of challenge cards which will tell you exactly how you are supposed to flip and stick your hot dog or chicken. This isn’t necessarily a Thanksgiving game, I just came across this thing and thought it was amazing, so amazing that I might actually do a full review on it. It’s by a company called BIG POTATO and you could buy it directly from them on their website, but I went to their website and was instantly accosted by popup after obnoxious popup and I don’t want to inflict that on anyone, so just do yourself a favor and go online to just about anywhere else to buy this thing. I found it listed at just about every major retailer. I’d prefer to support the company directly, but when they drive me away with a pitchfork for the crime of visiting their website, they’re pretty much asking for it. Anyway, this is indeed an awesome game! #3: THANKSGIVING BINGO – This of course is a turkey-day rendition of the game of BINGO. I think this is great because it’s something everyone young and old can play after dinner and spend some quality time together playing. You can do a search online to find plenty of printable Thanksgiving-themed bingo cards which is great if you already own a bingo set. You can also purchase a wonderful Thanksgiving Bingo set over at www.bigdotofhappiness.com #2: Turkey Bowling – The only reason this did NOT make #1 is because the true version of this sport is not something you’re likely to play with your family on the actual day of Thanksgiving. Anyway, the true version of this game is with a frozen Turkey and ten 2-liter plastic bottles for bowling pins. The rest is pretty self-explanatory. Two strikes in a row is a gobbler, a 7-10 split is a wishbone, and a spare is a hen. If a turkey is too heavy to handle, a Cornish game hen is also acceptable. But another actual practical version of turkey bowling also exists in the form of creating a set of turkeys out of plastic solo cups decorated with construction paper and googly eyes to resemble turkey bowling pins and rolling a whiffle ball or a small pumpkin at them on the living room floor. I also found this amazing professionally-manufactured turkey bowling set at Oriental Trading Company that has plastic turkey legs as the pins and comes with two small bowling balls! What could possibly be more fun except… #1: The Turkey Leg Wrap Game! Have you been looking for the perfect excuse to bind somebody up and sic the dog on them? Okay, maybe don’t feed them to Fido, but The Turkey Leg Wrap Game is not something you can buy off the shelf, but if you have two rolls of burlap fabric and two chef’s hat, then you have the makings of an amazing Thanksgiving day race activity you’ll want to do over and over. Simply split into two teams of two players and see who can wrap their partner from head-to-toe in the burlap and then jam a chef’s hat on their head at the end to make them look like a turkey leg the fastest! I really don’t know why I was so drawn to this game or why it’s number one, but it’s just so simple, silly and stupid where else could I possibly put it??? And speaking of places to put it, I think it’s time to put this Thanksgiving episode of the Dandy Fun House away, but not before I grovel for your spare change! SUPPORT THE DANDY FUN HOUSE! If you have enjoyed this installment of the Dandy Fun House and wish to support future production, just gobble over to the Dandy Fun House Website at dandyfunhouse.com and look for the Patronage page where you can become a supporter! SUPPORTERS gain access to exclusive bonus features and SUPER SUPPORTERS gain that same access PLUS I’ll mail you something turkeyriffic from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios IF you provide your mailing address! Podcast listers can support via the donation button in their listening app of choice if the app offers it And your 5 star reviews anywhere you can leave them always get our pecan pie flavored gratitude! Have a very happy Thanksgiving everyone and don’t forget to be extra Thankful for everything the good Lord has blessed you and yours with over this past year! Come on back real soon. Right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY! Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment, musician, Emcee, Paratransit Driver and Author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
| 10/19/24 | CREEPY HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2024 – Dandy Spook Shack episode 46 | watch the video below!   listen to the podcast below!   In this extra creepy Halloween 2024 edition of the Dandy Spook Shack, we’re gonna try the all-new Monster Cereal, Carmella Creeper. Also, we’re going to unbox, figure out how to play, and do a full review on the brand new extra creepy board game, Finders Creepers! Let’s step into the Spook Shack! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Spook Shack! I’m your ghost with the most, your ghoul of cool, Neil Dandy. And welcome to my haunted studio! Today, we’re going to dig into some Carmella Creeper cereal as well as review the board game Finders Creepers… BUT FIRST! I want to tell you all about the brand new extra creepy Dandy Fun House t-shirts! They come with a front and a back so you don’t get cold and also four holes in them. One to crawl your body into, one to poke your hopefully not decapitated head out of, two to poke your arms through! How’s that? I couldn’t have done better with a pair of scissors! Go to dandyfunhouse.com and get yours today! Oh and while you’re over at dandyfunhouse.com, check out the all new gear for the all new line of products, Coffee Badger. Why Coffee Badger? Well, a Coffee Badger is somebody who works remotely, but has to go into the office once in a while to make an appearance for absolutely no apparent reason, because their boss doesn’t want to feel like they wasted all that money buying the office space. So if you’re a coffee badger, you go in, you make your presence known, grab a cup of coffee, throw it down the old pipe, and then you badge out, wave adios and go back home to get all your real work done! Back to your own little haunted mansion, dungeon, whatever you’re doing. Maybe you live in a tree and hang outside down with all the bats. I don’t really know what you do. Hey, speaking of bats…   CARMELLA CREEPER MONSTER CEREAL Before we dig into this box of Carmella Creeper, it might be a real good idea to call upon someone who knows their bats! Who knows bats better than…Count Dracula!? Hey, do you think if we try real hard, we can summon Count Dracula? Let’s try it. Calling Count Dracula! Calling Count Dracula! (Smoke fills room and Neil starts coughing while a vampire who is not Count Dracula appears…) Neil: Uhhh… You’re not Count Dracula… Count Drahoon: No, no, I’m Count Drahoon. Sorry, Dracula couldn’t make it tonight. He’s actually on vacation right now, so they sent me. Neil: Wait, wait, wait. Aren’t you the vampire that took over my show a couple of Halloween’s ago and reviewed all the monster cereals? Count Drahoon: I sure am! Neil: Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Count Drahoon! (Audience goes wild with applause) Neil: The powers that be must have seen that we were introducing the new monster cereal, Carmella creeper and thought that you might be the better fit. Count Drahoon: Well, I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve actually ingested human food, but I’ll be happy to give it a try. Neil: Well, that sounds great. I’ll try it with you. I’ve actually got two blood red bowls! Count Drahoon: Oh, beautiful. No milk, though. We’re eating this depression era style. Neil: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Of course. I found this box of Carmella Creeper in the grocery store just last week. I was checking out the monster cereals. I was like, I have not seen this monster cereal before. Is it brand new? I don’t know. So I took it off the shelf and I learned a little bit about Carmella here. She’s a zombie. Count Drahoon: Okay… Oh, so she is. Neil: She’s Frankenberry’s long lost cousin and she’s a DJ and she likes to spin at parties at the haunted mansion. And apparently her flavor is caramel apple. Count Drahoon: Okay. It sounds good on paper, but… Neil: yeah… that’s pretty much what I was thinking there myself. All right. Are we ready? Count Drahoon: I’m ready if you are. Neil: Hey, you guys want to open this box of Carmella creeper??? Count Drahoon: Let’s do it. Let’s dive right into it! Neil: Wait. We didn’t really look at the box too closely. Count Drahoon: Let’s examine.So we have the Carmella Creeper. She looks pretty hip, I’d say. Yeah. Yeah. This is what the kids are into. Neil: Yeah. She’s got kind of a Latina vibe going on. Count Drahoon: Yeah, I could see that. Especially with the name like Carmella. Maybe we’re saying it wrong. Maybe it’s not Carmella creeper. It’s kind of a creepe. But that’s like if you’re eating crepes. Maybe she can have like a French alter ego when they do like a crepe flavored cereal. Neil: Looks like she’s holding a swirly bat. Count Drahoon: Yeah. It’s really green though. And I’m a little concerned about that because sometimes this color green, it could be really hit or miss. Maybe some of your spooks and spookettes know better than me. I’m old, but this is kind of like standard club lighting, isn’t it? Like this kind of green or just more like a traffic light. Neil: I don’t know. I’m more worried about what sort of chemicals they put in there. Count Drahoon: Oh, no, for definitely! Neil: I mean, you being being what? Three thousand years old… Count Drahoon: Well, not quite. More like a thousand. Neil: I don’t know if it would preserve you longer than you’d like to be preserved. I mean, formaldehyde, I don’t know. Count Drahoon:It might preserve me less. Neil: It looks like we have some skulls in there, a swirly bat. I mean, she’s even got a little snake friend up there. Count Drahoon: And he and the snake friend’s got stitches, too. So it’s like zombies. Yeah, a zombie snake or a franken snake. However, you want to spice that. Neil: What’s on the rest of the box? I think she’s holding up a certain finger on one of the sides I’m looking at. Count Drahoon: Oh, I didn’t even see that. Oh, yeah. She’s pointing up. Neil: It’s more of a more of a number one. Not the other finger. Count Drahoon: This is a kid’s cereal. And she’s got black fingernails! Neil: She does. And another zombie snake friend. Count Drahoon: So, yeah. And the fingernails, it’s like, is this a fashion statement or is this her corpse? You know, because they could be rotting fingernails. Maybe both. I don’t know. Neil: They don’t look like they’re falling off her hands. Count Drahoon: No. So they probably are manicured that way. So that’s that’s a good sign. Yeah. We got a franken snake down here and and it’s with frightful friends, marshmallows. Oh, yeah. Neil: What’s on the back? Count Drahoon: I kind of like the back. So it’s like different rooms in the house and each of these pets are doing different things. So you’ve got the snake. He’s doing a little the DJ scratch as it were. And then see, there’s an Igor, Count Chocula, fearless guard spider who’s fiercely loyal. Can you find his teddy bear? So it’s like a little scavenger hunt on the back of the cereal box. So that can keep you preoccupied for a couple of minutes. Neil: I like it. I like it. So this is the haunted mansion where she throws all her DJ parties. She’s got the Frankenberry and Count Chocula and Boo Berry and a little kitty cat. Count Drahoon: Yes. Meowberry. Oh, I like puns. I appreciate. I appreciate a good pun from time to time. Neil: All right. Well, let’s let’s try Carmella’s cereal! (pours cereal) That is some bright green cereal right there! Count Drahoon: It’s very, very bright green. That’s just really not right. Neil: I remember the last monster cereals we had. They tasted like styrofoam covered with sugar. (Neil and Count Drahoon taste the cereal) Count Drahoon: That’s not bad. I’m really not getting the caramel apple thing though. Neil: I’m not either. It’s sugary. Count Drahoon: There’s a very slight hint of the caramel apple towards the end. It’s more like an aftertaste, but it’s basically like fruit striped gum. It’s here and there. Neil: I’m going to try one of these marshmallow bats. Count Drahoon: It’s more like a shriveled dried up corpse of a marshmallow. Neil: Mine’s seen by the days as well. I tend to be getting more of the caramel apple thing off the marshmallow, but still not much. It’s more. I feel like we’ve been taken in by another gimmick. Count Drahoon: No, I think you’re right. It’s funny because I don’t taste the caramel apple with the shriveled up bat. Let me try the shriveled up… There’s also a shriveled up jack-o’-lantern??? Kind of looks like a really deformed bear. Neil: Actually, that’s not a jack-o’-lantern. Count Drahoon: It’s not? What is that? Neil: That’s Frankenberry. Oh. She’s Frankenberry’s long lost cousin. Count Drahoon: That’s right. Well, Frankenberry looks like he’s seen better days. Neil: Yes. I think they all have. Count Drahoon: But I’m not getting I’m not getting the caramel apple and the marshmallows. It just tastes like straight sugar marshmallow to me. Neil: This is indeed General Mills’ very first female cereal monster. Count Drahoon: Stunning and brave. Neil: That’s what I was going to say. That’s what we have to say by law. She was introduced in 2023, but I did not see her. Count Drahoon: I completely missed that. Neil: I didn’t see her on the shelf until this year, so I don’t know where they were keeping her. Count Drahoon: In the dungeon… Neil: What what are we rating this cereal? Count Drahoon: So… not as good as Count Chocula. Count Chocula is just the best. You can’t beat it. Neil: Well, I wouldn’t know because you ate the whole box. Count Drahoon: I did eat the whole box. I’m sorry. I owe you a box of Count Chocula. But Count Chocula is by far the best. I think I said that Frankenberry was a close second. Frankenberry was decent. But then once you get into Boo Berry and then oh, what was the other one? The fruit… It was the fruit one with the werewolf on the cover of it. Neil: Frute Brute! Count Drahoon: Oh yes! They tasted eerily similar. I will put Carmella Creeper above Frute Brute. Neil: Yeah, I would too. Count Drahoon: There is some semblance of a caramel apple flavor to it, but it’s very, very faint. So I would rate it better than Frute Brute but not quite as good as Boo Berry. Neil: Not quite as good as the classics! Count Drahoon: That’s right! Exactly. Neil: OK, well, then there you’ve got a Carmella Creeper, everybody. And I believe we’re going to continue snacking on Carmella Creeper while we check out the game of…   FINDERS CREEPERS AUGMENTED REALITY BOARD GAME REVIEW! Neil: Let’s look at the box… Count Drahoon: That looks kind of fancy. Neil: Look at the packaging. They have a little thing here. You move it around and find things on the box by moving this little viewfinder around. It’s by Micro Games of America, MGA. It’s an app-vanced game. Now, what that means is that it uses augmented reality with your phone. And in addition to finding monsters in the game, you also find monsters out in the real world. You basically hunt digital monsters with your phone. Count Drahoon: So we’re giving kids more of an excuse to use their phone! Neil: That’s pretty much the idea. Count Drahoon: Wow. Neil: Now, normally on this show I shy away from board games in particular and anything that doesn’t have a tangible object that does something interesting. But since this is the Halloween episode, I figured this had an interesting box and you’re going to be able to find animated ghouls and spooky things in here with your phones. I figured it might make for an interesting episode. Count Drahoon:I think so. Neil: Or we might find out that this is a complete piece of garbage. Count Drahoon: A complete dud. Just like the Carmella Creeper. CHECKING OUT THE BOX Neil: So here we’ve got the Finders Creepers box. I really like the way they’ve done this. Count Drahoon: It’s pretty eye catching. Neil: That’s what caught my eye was the eye catchiness of it. So you’ve got the front of it here where you can kind of use this viewfinder kind of thing to move around and discover things on the box. I think it’s just a piece of white cardboard behind it that makes stuff show up a little better. But still good packaging. Have a look at the sides here. They are pretty much all the same. Good graphics though. And then on the back you have a shot of the board itself. Count Drahoon: Uh, how you would use your phone? Neil: Looking at the board… Apparently you see the monsters jumping out of the board at you. That’s how you find them. Count Drahoon: And you’re supposed to hunt monsters? Neil: I believe you capture three of them to win. And then apparently the monsters can also appear around the room. Count Drahoon: This is already starting to feel like a Black Mirror episode. Neil: What is the black mirror? Count Drahoon: It’s this show that’s kind of like the modern Twilight Zone minus a host, but it’s like cautionary sci-fi and horror tales in an anthology format. And I just feel like the idea that you’re playing with monsters that come out of your phone just strikes me as a Black Mirror episode. Neil: By the way, you have just flown back from Hollywood. Count Drahoon: I did. Neil: And your bat wings must be very, very tired. Count Drahoon: That’s why I said I had a really long flight getting here. Neil: Ok, I’m here trying to open this box of Finders Creepers and I’m not having much luck with it. I cannot figure out how they’ve got this thing sealed up. I don’t see any tape on it. Count Drahoon: It must be packed in really tight. Oh, I think you got it. Yeah, you got a little bit of it. Neil: Ahhh… here it is! There’s a flap on the end with two pieces of tape. But that also means I have to find a sharp object to cut the tape. Sing a song. I’ll be back with something sharp. Count Drahoon: Um, how about a poem instead? Once upon the midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary over a many-acquainted and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I nodded nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping as if someone gently rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor, I muttered, only this and nothing more. Ah, yes, I remember it was the bleak December and every dying ember wrought its course upon my books, sir cease of sorrow for the lost Lenore. (Edgar Allen Poe) Neil: (back with a knife) All right, let’s slice it open and see what we’ve got! Count Drahoon: Slasher rules applied. Neil: There we go. Time to open the coffin lid. Oh, it magnetizes closed! They’ve really gone all out on the presentation here. Count Drahoon: Wow. Neil: (opens box) Look! It’s an entire graveyard! Count Drahoon: That’s beautiful artwork, actually. Neil: (reading the text over the graveyard) It was the fateful night the relentless members of Invisible Inc. had been waiting for. The paranormal hunters tracked down the tombs. 12 of the most horrible monsters you could imagine. Was it a mistake to open their graves and release them onto the world? Let’s not quibble about that now. There are monsters to be caught! Each member wants to prove they are the best and find and catch these creepers inside the horrible haunted house. Get ready to join the mission! (Looking at the graveyard) Now, this is kind of like an advent calendar. Count Drahoon: It does kind of look a little bit like it. Neil: You want to do the honors? Count Drahoon: Sure. So you peel open the first flap and you find Abby Stabby! Battery included is what the first gravestone says. You get this little number, this little chip right here (holds up an Abby Stabby game token). And let me tell you, she is she is a beaut, just an absolute beaut. Neil: Now, she one of the monsters? Count Drahoon: Yes! Next we have Papa Poppets. He’s a little like a professional wrestler from the 90’s named Papa Shango, who was like sort of like a voodoo guy. And that’s kind of what he reminds me of a little bit. Some of these characters however don’t they don’t feel entirely original. Neil: I will say they’re not flimsy! Count Drahoon: Next we have Curse the Cat. Neil: I see they’re they are on cardboard, but they’re on nice, thick cardboard. I’ve reviewed some games where it’s just like little cheap flimsy floppy things and this seems to have much better quality. This Curse the Cat character appears to be just a scary black cat. And I like that. Neil: Cats don’t really get scary on their own. I think cruel humans make them scary. Count Drahoon: Right. Especially when you’re walled up with one like in the movie The Black Cat! Next up, we have Harper the Hag. Is it a boy? Neil: I think a hag is usually reserved for a female. Count Drahoon: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Neil: Like the sea hag from Popeye. Count Drahoon: But I guess nowadays a hag can be gender neutral. Neil: Well, you know, once you visit the Vanderbilt Clinic, anything goes! Count Drahoon: Next we have Sir Henry Chestershire. It’s like a werewolf cat. Neil: A werewolf cat? Count Drahoon: That’s what it looks like to me. Neil: Nah, that’s just a werewolf. Count Drahoon: That’s a werewolf. But but but Chester, that’s kind of very cat name. Neil: Yeah, it’s a very cat name, but it’s kind of British. So, you know, the whole werewolf of London kind of thing. Count Drahoon: Our next monster is Slimm Grimm. This is more of a more of a ghoul kind of. It looks like Bat Boy all grown up and working as an accountant. Neil: (lifting out the cardboard graveyard and finding a large booklet) Well, I guess these are the instructions. The rule book. Now, I DID take the liberty of going online and watching a video on how to play. The video was 12 minutes long and there were five million rules to this things. And it was just the most convoluted, complicated thing I’d ever seen in my life. You know, I kind of just want to pull out the board game, flash my phone at it and look at the cool monsters. And you know, it should just be obvious how you play it. But from what I saw, it’s very involved. Now, I’m hoping once we actually get in and play this thing that everything will become real obvious. But first you have to download the app and I have already done that. And I’m going to launch it now. Count Drahoon: That’s a neat looking app I must say! (APP INTRODUCTION VOICE) Welcome members of Invisible Inc. The premier paranormal investigation organization. I’m your assistant, Boogle. Count Drahoon: Run! (App continues) your guide through your mission. Neil: You’ve got a tutorial here and it is 12 minutes long. We’re not going to do that today. Count Drahoon: What? A 12 minute tutorial? Neil: I’ll skip and scan through some of this. (App continues) 12 monster tombstone tiles, eight run special action chips and eight gear special action chips. You can pause. I’ll wait… The monster guide shows you the gear needed to catch each of the monsters. Your app includes the monster guide as well. Each monster has an icon associated with them. Place the tombstone tiles on the corresponding icons. Find the full list of icons in the rulebook. Now get the gear tiles ready. There are six kinds of gear to collect. Separate out the six haunted objects and four holy object tiles. Set four of the haunted object tiles aside. Shuffle the upside down gear tiles and make 12 stacks of three tiles. Now shuffle up the remaining six gear tiles, two haunted object and four holy object tiles and randomly deal one to the bottom of each of the piles. Neil: Be sure to hold your left earlobe while standing on your right leg… Count Drahoon: and be sure to scratch there. Sniff that. (App continues) Haley, Ruth or Diego. Count Drahoon: Who are these people? Neil: They’re the monster hunters. (App continues) If No one has spotted a spirit, The oldest player goes first. Count Drahoon: Well THAT’S discriminatory! (App continues) Place your hunter figurine at the enter gate. Now let’s use the app to set up a mission. One player must be the host and the other players will join their mission. Neil: So you would have to download the app and then join my mission with your phone. (App tutorial continues despite Neil desperately trying to stop it) Neil: I’m trying to stop this thing. Count Drahoon: You can’t. It doesn’t stop. It never ends. (App continues) Once everyone is done, it’s time to start the mission. Neil: I mean all that and we haven’t even started it yet. (Neil finally makes the app shut up!) I had to swipe the whole app away to get it to stop! 12 minutes. 12 minutes of that and it’s really complicated how you move from room to room, find things and if you don’t do something right, it sends you back to the start. Okay, there’s a bunch of cards here and I guess you have to punch them all out. Count Drahoon: Okay. Oh, it’s like demonic Beauty and the Beast. Neil: Fire extinguisher. You’ve got the Necronomicon. Count Drahoon:vYeah, this is a lot to break down. Neil: There are nets, Ghostbusters cannons and these are all the things you use to catch the ghost when then you’ve got a blowtorch and some kind of spike. Count Drahoon: So you so everyone gets these or do you get to choose? Neil: I’m not really sure and it would take you so long to learn what you have to do, I’m not quite sure I want to sit through all that. I will say they’ve gone all out on the graphics. Count Drahoon: They really have. Neil: I’m sure maybe once you spend some time with this and really get into it, you’ll understand what’s going on. Here’s the instructions on how to play. Several pages! (turning pages) We’re still going here. Still going… Still going… And do you really want to read all that? Count Drahoon: Out of curiosity how how long do most instruction manuals last for your basic board game? Neil: Most games that I review are usually just a one sheet thing and at the most it’s maybe two pages. You know what I haven’t found yet? Count Drahoon: What’s that? Neil: The board. The game board. Where’s the actual game board itself? Count Drahoon: Is it under that white cardboard flap? Neil: OH There’s a slot in the bottom of the box where it just slides in! Count Drahoon: That’s kind of neat. Neil: I was about to rip this whole thing apart. Count Drahoon: Wow. Neil: You want to give instructions? That’s what you should give the instructions on! I’ll tell you what. I absolutely refuse to read all these instructions in a game review. It’s just not going to happen. We’re just going to open the board and have whatever kind of fun we can have with this thing and leave it up to our audience to decide if you want to explore further. But wow! Look at the size of this game board! Count Drahoon: That’s a beautiful board. That’s amazing. Neil: Here is our game board. And I’m going to host the game. You can choose a high intensity or a low intensity version with the app. I’m going to choose high intensity. (Game asks for age verification for the high intensity mode) Count Drahoon: Nosey question. And it’s showing some interesting graphics here. I’ve never done anything like this. Neil: I haven’t either. Count Drahoon: So apparently you choose which hunter you want. I’m feeling Diego. (App starts game play) Get ready. Game is starting. Scan the board first… The monsters are out! Neil: OK, so you can see the monsters on the board with your phone. Count Drahoon: That’s that’s kind of neat. Neil: I think you’re supposed to memorize what rooms they’re all in. Count Drahoon: It’s my turn. I’ll try to catch a monster. (app instructs player to touch a room to search for monsters) Count Drahoon: Sure. I’ll touch a room and search for Numbskull the Clown monster. (zombie comes out and eats the player) Oh, what? What? What just happened? A zombie came out and ate me! Neil: So basically, I think the bottom line to Finders Creepers here is that this takes some time and attention. Count Drahoon: Yes. You have to be willing to get into it, get into the instructions, get into the game, learn the different nuances of it and really spend some time. Neil: And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Count Drahoon: No, it’s not. This is probably a game for somebody that has like intermediate gaming experience, both online and with board games. So if you’re good at both of those or if you have intermediate expertise with board gaming, I think this could be a good game for you. But for somebody that just maybe plays Monopoly casually, you’re probably going to need to make room in your schedule to sort of sit down and really learn how to do this because it does seem a bit complicated. I think it would probably be worth it, though, because it’s really neat how the whole game is set up. It really integrates AI very well. The designs for everything are really top notch. This is a high quality game. But yeah, it does seem a bit complicated. Neil: I agree. This game is more for the board game enthusiast. Somebody who wants to roll up their sleeves and dig into something. And it’s something that I don’t think they’ll get bored with it quickly because there seems to be a lot of things going on. And if you really want to sink your teeth into it, there’s a lot here to get into and sink your teeth into. I was personally ready to give this a bad review. And the reason I was ready to give it a bad review is because while I was preparing for this show, I was watching the video on how to play it. And it just got so involved that my eyes just glazed over. I was like, you know, drool black drool started coming from the corners of my mouth. Count Drahoon: Oh, that’s where it came from… Neil: Yes, yes. And, and I was just like, Oh, this is horrible. This is a train wreck. Who wants to do all this? But now that I’ve opened it, and I’ve looked at the quality that they’ve actually put into this game and how interesting they’ve gone into making the packaging and the development of the app. I mean, not only do you see ghouls and goblins and things in the haunted house jumping out at you through your phone, but there are parts in it where you’re going to be able to go around the room and see them actually where you’re hanging out. And for that reason, I’ve changed my mind, I’m gonna say they’ve knocked it out of the park with this thing. It’s not for me. But it wasn’t made for me. Count Drahoon: No, I agree. This is this is a hardcore game enthusiast game. So on that end, if you’re grading it on that curve, this gets high marks, definitely. Neil: FINDERS CREEPERS! Find it wherever you creep! CATCHING UP WITH COUNT DRAHOON Neil: Count Drahoon, you left us here in Murfreesboro all by ourselves for a while. And I believe you went and spent some time in Hollywood, California? Count Drahoon: I did. Neil: So what were you doing out there? And I understand that you’re now back in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. So tell us about that. Count Drahoon: Yes. So, California, I was out there just trying to sort of expand the web as it were for, you know, all things Count Drahoon. I think I did to an extent. I hosted horror films out of LA for a while. But I got homesick and I decided it was time to come back to Tennessee, because I think things are really happening out here. And I think this is the place to be. So I wanted to come back home to Tennesseevania and I’ve really started hitting the ground running and it’s almost as if I never skipped a beat! And I’m doing all kinds of stuff out here in in Murfreesboro! Neil: I noticed you’re doing Monday night classic horror films at Hop Springs Brewery. Count Drahoon: Yes. Neil: It doesn’t mean a whole lot to any of you who are not in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. But it means a lot to us. So you’re hosting classic horror movie nights there. What else are you doing around? Count Drahoon: That’s mostly what I’m doing right now. So Monday nights, I’ve dubbed it the Monster Movie Mondays over at Hop Springs. I’m doing double features every Monday for October and one Wednesday. And then I’m also doing a few other shows around town. We just had one last night from where we’re recording at Cedar Glade Brews. Went very well. I did that with my friend Scufflemoss Treeman, who’s a forest troll. Murfreesboro is a very strange town. We did a live riff track of the Beast of Yucca Flats, which is one of the worst movies ever made. But it’s a lot of fun. Neil: So for the people who are not in Murfreesboro who want to dig into the world of Count Drahoon, where do they go? Count Drahoon: Yeah, so I do have a YouTube channel. It’s called Count Drahoon Presents. And I do movie reviews of horror films, but I’ve branched out a little bit. So I do like top 10 countdowns of my favorite movies of the year. And I do include non horror titles in there. Neil: So basically YouTube is where you find Count Drahoon these days. Count Drahoon: Exactly. SUPPORT THE DANDY FUN HOUSE VIDEO SHOW, PODCAST AND BLOG! Neil: All right. And where you find the Dandy Fun House is of course at www.dandyfunhouse.com, where you can support the show! SUPPORTERS get access to exclusive bonus features and SUPER SUPPORTERS not only get access to those exact features, but also I’ll mail you something from right here at the Dandy Spook Shack IF you provide your mailing address! PODCAST LISTENERS often will have a little button with the dollar sign in your listening app of choice and you can donate to the show that way if you found any value at all. And if nothing else, FIVE STAR REVIEWS anywhere you can leave them get our undead gratitude! Count Drahoon, thank you for stopping by. Count Drahoon: Thank you for having me. Neil: Right here at the Dandy Spook Shack where everything is always FUN AND DANDY! So what do you do now? You just disappear in a puff of smoke? Count Drahoon: You’re kicking me out. Neil: The show’s over. Count Drahoon: I thought we could hang out for a while. Maybe dig into this Carmella Creeper cereal. I mean, that’s a lot of it… Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment, musician, Emcee, Paratransit Driver and Author. Aren’t you impressed?   | — | ||||||
| 9/23/24 | OSMONDMANIA! – Dandy Fun House episode 45 | see the video below! listen to the podcast below! Riddle me this funheusers! What is squeaky clean, Mormon to the max, has big teeth, more legs than you can count, has sold over 77 million records worldwide yet you’ll almost NEVER hear on the radio? … Give up? IT’S THE OSMONDS! And in this episode of the Dandy Fun House, I’m going to give you all the Osmonds you can eat! Let’s step into the fun house! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House video show, podcast and blog. This is where we meticulously polish all the retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff you can handle until it’s sparkly! I’m your host Neil Dandy and I hope you’re in for a wild ride on some Crazy Horses today because this episode is all about The OSMONDS! But first, I need to tell you about these funky fresh DANDY FUN HOUSE T-SHIRTS! With cloth harvested from the ancient fabric mines of darkest Peru and hand-woven by enchanted pygmies, you’re going to look and feel amazing. It comes with a front AND a back so you don’t get cold and we cut 4 holes in ’em for practicality’s sake. One to crawl your body into, one to stick your head out of and two to poke your arms through. I mean who wants a shirt they can’t stick their head out of? Well you won’t have that problem here! Just get over to dandyfunhouse.com and get yours today! Oh yeah! And if you have one of those remote jobs but your boss still makes you come to the office here and there for no apparent reason… so you badge in, grab a coffee, make your presence known then badge out and go home to get your real work done… then YOU are a Coffee Badger and here at the Dandy Fun House, we salute and honor you! We also feel your pain and frustration so we made a commemorative t-shirt just for you to be relentlessly passive agressive in! It’s the unlimited edition COFFEE BADGER t-shirt! Badge in. Caffeinate. Badge Out! and if that weren’t snarky enough, we even made a special Coffee Badger coffee mug to drive the point home to your jerk boss before you badge out, wave a few inappropriate hand gestures and drive home… Or to the coffee shop… You really overdo it with the coffee don’t you? Anyway, go get your quiet-quitting self over to dandyfunhouse.com and get your Coffee Badger gear before we run out! Alright… THE OSMONDS! Wow, where do you even start with a subject like this. It’s like trying to package up the Jacksons albeit without the psychic hot line and creepy home amusement park. (Lollipops! Lollipops!) But I guess we’ll start here! It’s the story of a humble farm family from Ogden, Utah who served their church as worship musicians, eventually finding themselves becoming household names worldwide. George Osmond Sr. and Olive Osmond had 9 kids: Jimmy, Jay, Alan, Merrill, Wayne, Donny, Marie, Virl and Tom. Virl and Tom Osmond Those last two were both born with hearing disabilities so in 1958 brothers Merrill, Wayne, Alan and Jay began singing around town to raise money for hearing aids and also church missions. Their ages at this time were ranging from only 3 to 9 years old. The Dapper Dans After a few years of performing locally, their father George entered the boys into a barbershop singing contest in sunny Southern California. During this trip, they went to Disneyland just for a family fun day and were being entertained by a vocal group in the park known as the Dapper Dans. Tommy Walker, Disneyland Director of Entertainment The boys started singing along and managed to catch the attention of Disneyland’s Director of Entertainment, Tommy Walker.Mr. Walker pulled the family aside and made an offer to hire the boys to perform in the park starting the following Summer. They accepted and the following year began performing in the park as The Osmond Brothers which presented the added benefit of new opportunities such as appearances in the Kurt Russell tv series, THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE McPHEETERS. The Osmond Brothers were also included in a 1962 episode of DISNEYLAND AFTER DARK. During the Osmond Brothers‘ appearance on Disneyland After Dark, a man named Jay Williams took notice of the group and called his son Andy and insisted that he book them on none other than THE ANDY WILLIAMS SHOW. The brothers became an instant hit and were invited back repeatedly throughout the remainder of the show’s run which continued until 1967. Donny Osmond Marie Osmond Jimmy Osmond George Osmond Sr. The Osmond Brothers didn’t take this newfound acclaim for granted and dedicated themselves to relentless rehearsal in a quest to be the best and “One-Take Osmonds” became their new nickname amongst the Andy Williams staff because they always showed up polished and ready to hit the mark. This discipline was largely attributed to their father George’s military background and strictness which was instilled into all the kids. During the group’s time with The Andy Williams Show, younger brother Donny was eventually brought into the fold and not too long after, Marie and Jimmy. America was falling in love with the Osmonds! What else was there to do but take the show on the road, so The Osmonds embarked on a very successful European tour with Swedish singer Lars Lonndahl. When the Andy Williams Show eventually came to a conclusion in 1967, without skipping a drumbeat, the Osmonds inked a deal to become regular performers on THE JERRY LEWIS SHOW which continued until 1969 at which time THE ANDY WILLIAMS SHOW came back and the Osmonds returned to Andy! It was like watching a dang ping pong match! As the 60’s came to a conclusion, the Osmonds made the bold and somewhat controversial move to embrace a more pop and rock sound which was a hard pill for father George to swallow as a devout Mormon, but he was eventually convinced and gave his blessing. This proved to be a very lucrative move because although they began making records in the mid-60’s, it wasn’t until 1971 when they released the pop song ONE BAD APPLE that they earned their first chart-topping hit. Mike Curb Rick Hall   Muscle Shoals Sound Studio This was largely due to record producer Mike Curb taking the band under his wing and teaming them up with legendary R&B producer Rick Hall whom they recorded with at iconic Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama. Mike Curb signed the Osmonds to MGM Records and ONE BAD APPLE topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 5 weeks straight. Their subsequent releases during this time like Double Lovin’, Yo-Yo, Sweet and Innocent, Go Away Little Girl, Hey Girl and the classic Puppy Love also charted but none reached number one. 1972 brought the cultural emergence of Album-Oriented-Rock (known today as Classic Rock or Dad Rock) and the Osmonds tried their own hand with a harder-edged sound. During this time, Donny was relegated largely to an instrumentalist role as a keyboardist due to puberty changing his voice. They released the album CRAZY HORSES which featured the hit songs HOLD HER TIGHT as well as the title track, CRAZY HORSES which was a not-so-veiled statement about vehicles and air pollution. They toured the United States and Europe where they racked up a staggering run of 13 hit songs on the UK charts in the year 1973. This global phenomenon of Osmond fever even sparked a new term: OSMONDMANIA! But you know you haven’t really arrived until they turn you into a cartoon! And cartoon the Osmonds they did with a Saturday morning series on ABC simply titled: THE OSMONDS. By the mid-70s, various members of the group found themselves becoming married and with multiple new families starting, their touring schedule slowed to a crawl and unfortunately along with it, their record sales. The younger siblings Marie, Jimmy and Donny decided to take matters into their own hands and all set out on 3 individual and successful solo careers with Jimmy hitting number one in the UK with LONG HAIRED LOVER FROM LIVERPOOL, Marie hitting number one on the American Country charts with PAPER ROSES and Donny smashing the top 40 charts with an unprecedented string of twelve hit songs. Donny Osmond was an undeniable teen idol! The Osmonds were still performing as a band, but now Donny was driving the Osmondmobile with the family band happily backing him up. In 1976 with the help of ABC, the Osmond family band was repackaged into a television variety show called THE DONNY AND MARIE SHOW which became a massive success. We’re talking a star-studded cavalcade of guest stars, lunchboxes, t-shirts, dolls and most anything else you can think of. DONNY AND MARIE WERE WHITE HOT! She was a little bit country! He was a little bit rock and roll! Together, they were a freaking cash cow! This show was so big that ABC even built Donny and Marie their own production facility named OSMOND STUDIOS in Orem, Utah where the show was filmed. But like most things white hot, they burned bright and fast and by 1979, America had had its fill of Donny and Marie and the show concluded. But that didn’t stop the brother / sister act from taking more shots starring in a movie called GOIN’ COCONUTS which went coco-nowhere and recording two unsuccessful albums, attempts at early 80’s sitcoms and a revival of their variety show. All falling flat. Now Marie Osmond as a solo artist did enjoy a string of country hits in the mid-80’s including her number one duet with Dan Seals “MEET ME IN MONTANA.” She also starred in Broadway musicials through the mid 90’s, a 1995 ABC sitcom called MAYBE THIS TIME and teamed up with Donny once again in 1998 for a new version of DONNY AND MARIE in more of a talk show format which lasted two seasons. in 2001, Marie released a book designed to help women suffering post-partum depression entitled MARIE OSMOND BEHIND THE SMILE and after gaining 40 pounds following her mother’s stroke, she followed Mom’s urging to re-dedicate herself to her health and in 2007 Marie started on the Nutrisystem plan losing 50 pounds and becoming the brand’s official spokesperson. She even developed her own program within Nutrisystem called COMPLETE 50 targeted for women 50 and older. Meanwhile, Donny got back to his solo career releasing the song SOLDIER OF LOVE in 1989 which became a hit in the UK, but in America, the Osmond brand had become a bit toxic due to the squeaky clean image and sensibilities of the modern times. So promoters in the US shopped the song as being from a “Mystery Artist” only revealing Donny’s identity once it earned some chart credibility reaching number 2. Donny followed this success with two more songs which became lesser hits: SACRED EMOTION and MY LOVE IS A FIRE which reached 13 and 21 respectively. In 1998, Donny lent his singing voice for the animated film MULAN with the song I’LL MAKE A MAN OUT OF YOU. Then like his sister Marie, tried his hand on Broadway as Gaston in the stage production of Beauty and the Beast and then a stunning 2000 performance run as the lead in the touring production of JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT. Donny also hosted games shows such as the revival of PYRAMID which ran from 2002 – 2004 and won DANCING WITH THE STARS in 2009. During this time Donny and Marie put together a 90 minute live show for the Flamingo Las Vegas which was originally only supposed to last for 6 months but became an overwhelming surprise hit to the point that the show continued for an 11 year run winning the BEST SHOW IN VEGAS Award for 3 consecutive years from 2012 – 2014. Their showroom was officially renamed to THE DONNY AND MARIE SHOWROOM in 2013 to honor the achievement. Now let’s rewind a bit back to the 80s to back up to speed on the rest of the Osmond clan. During the 80’s the Osmonds fell badly into debt due largely to teaming up with new business partners who ended up embezzling from them instead of investing in them. Many of these “partners” ultimately went to prison for their crimes but the damage was done. Due to the Osmonds strongly-held religious beliefs, father George was steadfast against declaring bankruptcy and ordered his children to honor all financial obligations by whatever means necessary, forcing the family to return to performing until all debts were satisfied. Thus the OSMOND BROTHERS reformed with Jay, Merrill, Wayne and Alan and leaned into the burgeoning movement of country pop.The Osmond Brothers enjoyed a couple of top 30 country hits but the new recordings largely fizzled with the more modern audiences. The family was also reluctant to tour and made the choice instead to set up their own theater, THE OSMOND FAMILY THEATER in Branson, Missouri and promote themselves through videos. By 1983, all family debts were satified and the OSMONDS were financially free! In 1987, Merrill Osmond teamed up with female country artist Jessica Boucher and had hit song called YOU’RE HERE TO REMEMBER, I’M HERE TO FORGET. But Merrill distanced himself from his clean cut Osmond ties by calling the duet simply Merrill and Jessica due to the lyrical content not really jiving with the wholesome Osmond image. Meanwhile, Alan Osmond retired from performing due to living with Multiple Sclerosis, but his eight sons took up the Osmond mantle performing as the OSMOND BOYS, later changing their name to THE OSMONDS, SECOND GENERATION. One of Alan’s sons, David went on to form the OSMOND CHAPMAN ORCHESTRA. Wayne Osmond survived a brain tumor in 1997 which rendered him deaf and also suffered a stroke which left him unable to play guitar. In 2002 The Osmond Family Theater in Branson, Missouri closed it’s doors for good but The Osmonds still perform in Branson, during Christmastime to this day. Despite all of the retirements and health setbacks, the entire Osmond Family came back together in 2007 to celebrate 50 years as a performing family and embarked on a European tour as well as filming a television special in Las Vegas which was their only US performance. Andy Williams even made a surprise appearance at the Vegas show. In 2018, Alan and Wayne teamed up with their family one final time at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, Hawaii in what was billed as their final performance ever. Jimmy Osmond also retired that year due to a stroke. In April 2022 Merrill Osmond also announced his own retirement. These days, DONNY AND MARIE continue to tour worldwide… and Jay Osmond continues to perform in Branson Missouri with Nathan Osmond. Despite selling over 77 million records worldwide during their incredible 50+ year run, you will rarely hear an Osmond song on the radio these days or used in film or television ranking the OSMONDS as one of the most successful yet least enduring music groups in modern history as far as having their classic hits survive in current rotation. Even so, the OSMONDS contribution to pop culture history and their influence throughout the decades cannot be denied. And now YOU have the scoop on just about all the Osmond history and happenings that I’ve been able to scrape up and force feed you! How’s it tasting? Do you have any special Osmond memories to share? Are Donny and Marie one of your secret guilty pleasures? Do you turn the volume up to 11 in your car with the windows rolled up while streaming PUPPY LOVE on Pandora? I want to know! Please leave a comment, like and subscribe depending on where you are enjoying this episode! And while you’re at it, if you have enjoyed this show and found any value at all in it, please consider becoming a DANDY FUN HOUSE SUPPORTER by visiting our patronage page at dandyfunhouse.com SUPPORTERS gain access to exclusive bonus content and SUPER SUPPORTERS not only gain that same access, but if you provide your mailing address, I’ll send you something awesome from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios in good ol’ Murfreesboro, Tennessee! Not there’s an offer you won’t find every day! PODCAST LISTENERS can usually support via a donation button in your listening app of choice if the app offers it and your 5 star reviews are always highly appreciated! Ok, it’s time for me to get the Osmond outta here! Come back soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY! And may tomorrow be a perfect day! Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment, musician, Emcee, Paratransit Driver and Author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
| 8/13/24 | CHICKEN POO BINGO REVIEW, UNBOXING, HISTORY, HOW TO PLAY! – Dandy Fun House episode 44 | watch the video below!   listen to the podcast below! Ten-year-old Cooper Dean of Valrico, Florida entered into a Young Inventors contest and caught the attention of an international toy and game company with her idea to bring a farmland pastime to kitchen tables everywhere! In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, we’re going to shovel in to the game of… Chicken Poo Bingo! Let’s step into the Fun House! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House! This is your home of retro pop culture, toys and games, and all the fun stuff. I’m your host, Neil Dandy, and in this episode, we’re going to shovel up something amazing with the game of Chicken Poo Bingo! And I’ll tell you more about that in just a few minutes, but first, I want to show you these awesome Dandy Fun House T-shirts! They look great! I designed them myself so you know they’re awesome, and they come with four holes in them! One to crawl your body into, one to stick your head out of, and two to poke your arms through! That’s how we do it here at the Dandy Fun House. It’s got a front and a back so you don’t get cold. Head over to http://www.dandyfunhouse.com today and see what’s shaking! Oh, and while you’re there, don’t forget about our brand new shirt, Coffee Badger. Are you a coffee badger? Do you know what a coffee badger is? Badge in, caffeinate, badge out. That’s how the coffee badger does it. Okay, back to the show! Cooper Dean, a 10-year-old girl from Valrico, Florida, was on a camping trip with her parents, and she noticed a game that they were playing at the campground, with chickens pooping on a board with a bunch of squares in it, and it was called Chicken Poop Bingo. It’s pretty obvious how it plays, the chicken eats chicken feed, then it walks around on this game board in an enclosed pen, and it poops on different squares, and that’s just like the bingo caller calling out the letter and number until somebody shouts, “Chicken Poop Bingo!” and they’re the winners. She took this idea and worked on it at home using a toy wind-up chicken that pooped little pellets out, (you’ve seen those things, the little kind that you get at the little dollar store), and she worked up a game that you could play at home that didn’t require real poop, and she called it Chicken Poo Bingo! She then took her new game, which she and her friends had a blast playing, and entered the People of Play Young Inventor Challenge, which allowed young inventors to present their ideas to big name companies! Well, one of these big name companies was Goliath Games, and if you haven’t heard of Goliath Games, well you should have, because you go back a couple of episodes here at the Dandy Fun House when we were talking about the game of Greedy Granny, and I brought you the love story of Adi and Margrethe Golad. It’s amazing, you got to go see it. Go back a couple episodes, check it out here. But anyway, back to this. Goliath Games took notice of this game, and they said that’s brilliant, it’s amazing, we’ve got to work with this awesome girl, and so they did! They had zoom calls and conferences, and they cut a deal, and the result is Chicken Poo Bingo, which you can find on shelves all over the world now! Alright, without further ado, I’m going to unbox this thing, assemble it, and we’re going to figure out how to play it. It’s just like Bingo, you already know the deal here, but I have no idea what to expect when I start cracking into this box. I made it an intentional decision to not look at it too much, because I wanted my initial reaction to this game to be exactly what appears on camera. So let’s crack into Chicken Poo Bingo! OUTER PACKAGING So as you can see, here’s the box, and it’s got great graphics. You never know where the chicken will go! They always do it great at Goliath Games, I’ve gotta tell you, it’s an amazing company. They didn’t do anything special on the sides, they just kind of put the same graphic on every side, but it’s an awesome graphic. They just kind of repurposed the front of the box. On the back of course, same as you always have with these types of things, you’ve got the kids playing on the back, as well as a picture of Cooper Dean in the corner, who invented the home version of this game! “This silly chicken has to go, so you can get Bingo. So, in this fun farm themed game, a chicken is in charge of which cute and colorful squares are chosen each round of Bingo. Just wind it up and watch it go. That’s right, the Chicken Poo tells you what to match on your Bingo card. Crazy cows, fluffy pigs, and more are waiting to be chosen every game. Match five in a row and shout Chicken Poo Bingo! to win and bring a blast of laughs to your family!” And I did pick this up at Bass Pro Shops. The reason I picked it up at Bass Pro Shops is because it was the only store local to me that actually had it on the shelf, and I was running a little late on time. I just overhauled my whole studio here, and I didn’t have time to order it online and wait for it to come. So, hit Bass Pro Shops I did, and I paid about eight extra dollars than I would have had I ordered it online, but you know that’s the price that I pay to bring you Chicken Poo! All right, let’s open this thing and see what we got here. And since the chicken is wind up, that was a question I had. I was concerned that I was going to have to get batteries, but Goliath Games came through once again and made it mechanical and not battery powered, and they’re really good about that stuff. So, another big shout out kudos to Goliath Games! Let’s open the box and get our first impressions here! UNBOXING There’s not much to see in that box, is there? It looks like a pretty empty box. It looks like I got ripped off! There’s nothing in there! Look at that! Look at this! It’s not empty, however… Just got to do a little creative digging here. We’ve got cardboard. Let’s lose that. Here we have an entire sheet of Poo tokens! Oh, and here’s different game pieces. This is kind of interesting here. Various game pieces with different patterns on them. Good branding on it all. What else we got? We have our instructions here.(…) We have a funnel… and little nuggets of poop. Yay! Poop funnel! And we have a chicken here. The star of the show, our chicken… and our chicken isn’t too bright. Chicken stuck its head in a plastic bag, which is not really advisable because there’s really no air holes in there for the chicken to breathe. And then we have the game board. I like this already, and you know why I like it? Because usually when you see a game board that it’s this small, it’s usually like you’ve got half of it in one piece, and then you’ve got a half-cut part, and then it flops open into a bigger board, and I hate that little quarter cut. I like it when you just open it and there it is. Now let’s turn it around and see what we got. All right, that’s colorful. You have a start square, and then I guess you just match up the different animals and farm features, I guess. These have got to be the bingo cards that you hand out, and they must be because they all have different configurations. Well, the first thing… We’ve got to fill up our chicken. And what you do is you grab it down here, probably not by the feet because the feet are motorized. So you want to grab it by the body and then just rip the head of the chicken off. And that’s pretty much how you kill a chicken anyway when you’re getting ready to pluck it for dinner. Then the poop pellets, obviously, go into this little hole right here, and I guess that’s where the funnel comes into play. You don’t really need the funnel, but I guess it just makes it easier to load your poop pellets into. I’m having trouble getting all these in here, so okay, I guess we’re not going to load them all in here for now. In our chicken head, there’s a tab to the side, and there’s a notch in the top of the chicken’s body. You want to line those up and just snap the chicken head back on. INSTRUCTIONS Object: Be the first to get five poo tokens horizontally vertically or diagonally and shout chicken poo bingo! Playing the game: The youngest player goes first. On their turn, players wind up the chicken about eight rotations or until the gear feels taut and set it on the start space in the center of the bingo game. Players may choose to place the chicken facing any direction. As the chicken wobbles along, watch for those poo nuggets as the chicken poo lands on the colorful squares. Players should match them to their bingo cards and place a poo token on that square on their own card. You never know when you might get a chicken poo bingo! If no one has a chicken poo bingo after everyone has finished checking their cards, that round ends and play passes to the left. The next player starts the next round by gathering the poo nuggets and refilling the chicken and winding it up and placing it on the start space facing any direction. Players take turns refilling and placing the chicken on the bingo game board and checking their cards each round until one player has five poo tokens in a row on their bingo card. Okay, so you just keep it going. You keep putting poo tokens on your game card and you don’t take them off after each round. You just keep it going until someone gets bingo it like you would if you were actually playing regular bingo somewhere without poop involved. You know what… this is the second fecal themed game that I’ve reviewed this year! HISTORY OF POOP BINGO But while I’m popping out poop tokens here, I’m going to tell you kind of how the whole concept of poop bingo started. It actually started as cow poop bingo (for lack of a more family friendly term) out on farms. They’d make a great big grid pattern on the ground in the cow pen and the cow would walk around and do what cows do and people would mark off their bingo cards until somebody got the bingo. Everybody would pay a few dollars to play and the money would either go to support the farm or a local charity. Well, there was a musician who was playing at a bar who had experienced this game happening out on farms and he presented the idea to his clients, the bar owners, of bringing in this game to their establishment but adapting it instead of cows (because cows can’t go to bars), chickens, which you could actually bring indoors if you needed to. The owners loved the idea and it brought in some additional revenue. And so that’s where our young inventor came up with the idea. Not that she’s going out bar hopping with her parents, you know what I mean? She saw it at a campsite, not at a bar that let in 10 year olds.uhh… yeah. All right, now we’re ready to play some chicken poo bingo! LET’S PLAY CHICKEN POO BINGO! I’m going to shuffle these cards so I don’t know which one I’m going to get here. I’ll pull one from the middle. Okay, that’s going to be my card right here. Youngest player goes first. Well, that would be me! So eight turns on the chicken… Okay, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, or until taut. I think it’s tight enough now. I don’t want to screw up the winding mechanism. So we’ll just kind of put it here in the center start space. Now, my big question is, is this thing going to walk in a straight line or is it going to, you know, meander around in circles, which I would think it would probably be better for it to do. You know, it should be a little unpredictable… So here we go… It dropped one in the start space on the border between the start space and on a line. I’m not going to count that one. All right. Got eggs, tractor. Oh, I see! The poop pellets roll around and they could land pretty much anywhere as long as you’re on a level surface. Okay. So the chicken has dropped on the tractor and the eggs. So do I have a tractor and do I have eggs? I have a tractor. I think everything’s on each card. They’re just in different formations… and I have eggs! Let’s, let’s wind up some more. I’m just going to leave the chicken right where it’s at. Oh wait. And we, and we got one on the dog. Where’s the dog? Right there! Okay. Then start it from right where it stopped. We’ve already got our cards marked. So we don’t really need to leave poop pellets sitting around on the board because that could get in the way of the chicken walking around. So rip the chicken’s head off again for our funnel here. You know, chickens actually will continue to run around after you pull their heads off in real life. Don’t ask me how I know that. They gave way more pellets than there’s room for inside the chicken. And I think that’s probably because they’re expecting you to lose some of them. Okay. Let’s, let’s go back to the start here and I am going to actually face the chicken the opposite direction this time. Go until the spring is taut. Instructions said eight turns, it probably meant eight full turns. Okay. Looks like I’ve got a bunny. Barn. Donkey. Cow. Another one on the barn. And I think that it’s gonna be tough to get the edge of the board because the poop rolls off the edge. The crease in the middle of the board can also play a role in this because the pellets fall into that groove. piggy… (…) Tractor… (…) I think a better idea would be to start the chicken in different positions on the board or just from wherever it stops. I think Starting the chicken in the middle start square is a losing proposition because the the chicken’s not going to walk much further than that and you’re gonna really miss the opportunity of getting droppings into the corner spaces. With this in mind, maybe we’ll start this chicken on the hay bales over here in the corner and it seems that wherever you start It’s a pretty safe bet that it’s probably gonna drop one there. But let’s ee what happens… (…) We got the lamb… (…) And of course we get the chicken… (…) And a cow! (…) Cow and chicken! I love that cartoon! I think I’m getting really close to a chicken poo bingo here… it’s kind of tedious having to rip the chicken’s head off every time I wish there was a better way to load this thing and I wish that it would you could just load it with all of the poop and not have to do this after every single winding. And it’s really easy to lose all these little pieces. I’ll talk about that more in the wrap-up. We’ve got boots… (…) Bunny… kitty, I’m getting really close here on my game card. Oh Oh CHICKEN POO BINGO! And that’s how you play Chicken Poo Bingo! FINAL THOUGHTS Alright, that was a lot of fun. I like the fact that it doesn’t use batteries. Goliath games is really good about keeping a lot of their games battery-free and that’s a great thing! This chicken… the fact that you have to pull it apart after every round to refill it with just 5 pellets and you can kind of feel plastic cracking under your fingers and along the seams and things.. I feel this translates to an early demise for this bird. I just don’t see it holding up over the long term. I think the tedious nature of having to refill this thing so much is going to be such a pain that kids aren’t going to stick with it very long. It’s like those little wind-up toys you get in your Easter basket. They’re fun for a few minutes. Then you get sick of it and it breaks quickly too. I could be wrong Kids could have a blast with it and the chicken could keep going for years. It just doesn’t feel like it to me. But also you’ve got these little tiny poo pellets. Is that a choking hazard? I don’t know. It’s so small. You know bigger kids are going be playing around smaller kids. Are they going find them all and put them away? Magic 8-ball says not likely. I think there’s just too much little stuff that’s going to get lost. Paper thin tokens and game cards too. It’s a great way to bring the fun of poop bingo whether it be cow or chicken to your dining room table, I just wish they made this more durable, with more poo capacity and a border around the game board so the pellets don’t roll off the side would be the only other thing on my wish list for this game. I FINAL RANKING So how am I gonna rate Chicken Poo Bingo here? Okay on a scale from one to ten chicken droppings… I’m giving it a SEVEN because I love the concept. I love the back story too. I think it’s awesome! Do I regret buying this? No, not at all This actually was fun and I’m going donate this to the youth room in my church and see what reaction it gets.Especially since we just had a flood in the church. So maybe some of the games I had up there might be ruined when I go in on Sunday morning and this will be a nice new one. SUPPORT THE DANDY FUN HOUSE! If you’d like to help keep this show out of the poop house, please consider becoming a Dandy Fun House Supporter by visiting https://www.dandyfunhouse.com and look for the patronage page in the menu. You can donate in a variety of ways: Buy Me A Coffee, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, whatever you want to do! Supporters get access to exclusive bonus features not available to the general public and Super Supporters get those same bonus features PLUS I will mail you something poopy from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios IF you provide your mailing address! Podcast Listeners can usually donate via a little button in your podcast app. There’s usually a little dollar sign button and that gives me cryptocurrency. I take cryptocurrency, bus tokens, belly button lint… DON’T SEND ME BELLY BUTTON LINT! And if you don’t have anything to donate but still wish to support, please leave a five-star review anywhere you can. That would be really really appreciated because it helps the show grow! Alright, that’s gonna be about it. I’m gonna get the poop on out of here! You guys come back soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY! Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment, musician, Emcee, Paratransit Driver and Author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
| 7/10/24 | The Story of DEVO! – Dandy Fun House episode 43 | watch the video! listen to the podcast! Akron, Ohio. 1973. Before new wave. Before punk rock. Two Kent State graduates, Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis found their destinies when they met up with a keyboardist from a band called Flossy Bobbitt. His name? Mark Mothersbaugh. Together they formed something entirely different. Releasing their mongoloid creation upon an unsuspecting wiggly world with spudniks designed to whip it at every turn. In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, we venture to ask the eternal burning question… Are We Not Men? For THIS is the story of DEVO! Let’s step into the Fun House! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog. This is where we whip up the very best in retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff! I’m your host Neil Dandy and in this episode, we’re going to carry out our Duty Now For The Future by bringing you the story of DEVO! BUT FIRST! I must tell you about these awesome Dandy Fun House t-shirts! You can show your support for this show while spreading the word oh so stylishly and the design actually doesn’t look stupid! Just buy the front of the shirt and we’ll throw the back in free! But wait! There’s more! Order now and not only do you get two holes to crawl your body into and poke your neck out of but we’ll also include two more holes to stick your arms through! Now how much would you pay? Just visit the Dandy Fun House website at www.dandyfunhouse.com and click on SHOP to order yours today! And while you’re there, be sure to check out our brand new NO ROBOTS! T-shirt! Tell Cyberdyne where to stick it! That website once again is www.dandyfunhouse.com . Order today! Alright! DEVO! If you’re older like me, you probably remember this weird, punky, electronic band going as far back as their appearances on the original Saturday Night Live in the 70’s back when it was funny. If you’re a bit younger, you might be familiar with their 80’s hit WHIP IT. Well… not only is DEVO still a creative force today, but they have quite the storied past that goes back farther than you might think!… MUCH FARTHER! It’s the late 60’s and two Kent State University art students named Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis make an art project together reflecting the theory that mankind is not only NOT evolving, but actually DE-EVOLVING! Both of them were budding modern artists and also musicians. Casale was performing with a band called The Numbers Band. Around 1970, this band began fraternizing with another local band known as Flossy Bobbitt which featured a crazy but talented keyboardist; a one Mr. Mark Mothersbaugh. The musicians began jamming around with each other and creating a more cutting-edge feel than what was around at that time during the height of hippie culture. They also discovered that they shared a love for satire. One day, Mark Mothersbaugh was sharing a pamphlet to the other musicians called “Jocko Homo Heavenbound” which featured the character of a winged devil named D-EVOLUTION. This pamphlet would later inspire the classic song “Jocko Homo” as well as the band name but we’re not quite there just yet. Then May 4th, 1970 the infamous massacre at Kent State took place and the theory of De-Evolution became all too real and far too close to home for the guys. Gerald Casale was a witness to the event and personally saw two of his friends gunned down. His life changed in an instant. He stopped being a hippie and became angry. Very angry. Bob Casale Bob MothersbaughAlan Lewis Funneling his anger into artistic expression, this historical event would ultimately become the inspiration for the official coming together of this group of musicians to form a band with the underlying theme highlighting the regression of mankind. In 1973, they made it official with Gerald Casale recruiting his brother Bob and Mark Mothersbaugh with HIS brother Bob while also adding in Alan Myers, Rod Reisman and Fred Weber to round out the group. Thus SEXTET DEVO (as they were originally called) was born. Exactly when the name was shortened to simply “DEVO” is up for debate but from all the information I’ve been able to gather, it happened rather quickly during the formative years of the band. This newly-formed ensemble threw conventionality out the window experimenting with electronic sounds mixed with sensibilities of the burgeoning roots of what would soon become punk rock. DEVO performed around the university over the next few years with various players coming and going. Sometimes as a 4-piece, other times as a larger unit and under the creative direction of Gerald Casale whom experimented heavily with the format of music videos. Devo created their first videos for the songs “Secret Agent Man” as well as their classic “Jocko Homo”. In 1975 they eventually settled in with a solid lineup of five members that would last for the next ten years. Director, Chuck Statler In 1976, a short film including the band called “The Truth About De-Evolution” was released by a director named Chuck Statler and gained some notoriety as well as winning a prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. This gave DEVO some much-needed publicity and also caught the attention of avant garde rock star David Bowie who befriended the band and ultimately helped negotiate a recording contract with Warner Music Group. And in 1977 they released their first single with Warner called “Mongoloid”. A 45 rpm record with “Jocko Homo” as the b-side. They followed up this release with their cover of “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones. Come 1978, DEVO finally released their first full-length album. “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!” produced by Brian Eno and proceeded to gain national exposure with an appearance on Saturday Night Live, (when it used to be funny), performing Satisfaction and “Jocko Homo”. In the following year, 1979 DEVO release the album DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE featuring the song “Blockhead” as well as a cover of Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” Devo toured extensively in support of the album and actually opened for themselves on many dates pretending to be a Christian soft rock band called “Dove (the Band of Love). ” They would appear the following year as Dove the band of love in the 1980 televangelism parody film, Pray TV. THEN CAME THE 80s! When the 80s rolled around, DEVO had lain the groundwork to put themselves in the right place at the right time with the right quirky look and the right back catalog of videos and songs to take full advantage of the juggernaut that commanded the airwaves, MTV. (yes kids, MTV had music back when they used to be watchable). DEVO made a new album with songs that were catchier and more radio-friendly but still very much DEVO. The album? Freedom of Choice. The lead single? Whip It. The video featuring crazy red flower pot hats on the band (which instantly became synonymous with the group) and Mark Mothersbaugh using a bullwhip on everything in sight (including whipping a cigarette out of a model’s mouth) was a breakthrough hit for the band and catapulted them into new wave rock star status worldwide. The album also featured two other “medium hits”, Girl U Want and the title track Freedom of Choice. While they continued touring and releasing music and exploring deeper levels of creativity, they never did have another hit quite as big as Whip It. The Freedom of Choice tour tore relentlessly through Japan, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada and of course the United States. The following year in 1981, DEVO hit down under in a big way releasing a live EP in Australia called DEV-O Live which became a huge hit in Ozzyland landing them at the top of the Australian charts for 3 weeks solid. For you young-uns who don’t know what an EP is, it’s a 12″ vinyl record with usually just a couple of songs per side. EP stands for “Extended Play” which meant longer than a 7″ 45rpm record but still not quite a full album. DEVO continued to enjoy success in Australia for many years to come with live TV appearances, lots of radio support and their videos staying in heavy rotation. Australia in the 80’s simply could not get enough DEVO! DEVO also released a song around this time which was recorded during the sessions for the album Freedom of Choice but never made the final cut, Working In A Coal Mine. They submitted it for the soundtrack of the movie HEAVY METAL but Warner Brothers ultimately rejected it, so they released it as an independent single in the run-up to their next album: NEW TRADITIONALISTS. 1981 also found the band becoming the backing band for Hollywood choreographer-turned-actress-turned-pop-artist, Toni Basil (you know that song “Oh Mickey You’re So Fine, You’re so fine you blow my mind…” Yeah, her.) And in 1982 DEVO released the album “Oh No It’s DEVO” with limited success and also contributed two songs to the Dan Aykroyd movie, Doctor Detroit. 1984: DEVO put out an absolute flop of an album (commercially speaking) called SHOUT which featured a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced.” I personally loved the song and the video featuring the band wearing inflatable outfits and floating in the air with a psychedelic theme permeating throughout (with the DEVO twist of course!). But unfortunately the album tanked hard and their label wasn’t in the mood, so Warner bought out the remainder of their recording contract and DEVO was out on the street with flower pot hats in hand. Alan Meyers This led to long-time member Alan Myers also deciding that he had his fill of whipping it and exited the group citing lack of creative fulfillment. Lack of creative fulfillment? In the band DEVO? David Kendrick Three years later in 1987 DEVO bring in former Sparks drummer David Kendrick to replace Alan Myers and proceed to re-record the bulk of their most popular songs as easy listening muzak which they released on cassette to their fan club (club DEVO) and later as a CD entitled E-Z Listening Disc which they would play as house music prior to their concerts. However, their most notable project of 1987 would be recording the soundtrack for the horror film Slaughterhouse Rock starring Toni Basil which was released in 1988. DEVO also signed a new recording contract in 1988 with Enigma Records releasing the album Total Devo and set out on a brand new world tour with hopes running high. But unfortunately the album did not do well. In 1990 DEVO take yet another shot at glory with a new album called “Smooth Noodle Maps.” This would prove to be their absolute worst-selling album of all time. The attempted tour to support SMOOTH NOODLE MAPS also fell apart as their record label, Enigma filed for bankruptcy and ticket sales were practically nonexistent. The tour was canceled midway through and DEVO sadly devolved themselves into non-existence and disbanded. Mark Mothersbaugh would later be interviewed about the breakup to which he replied that time they did our their final tour in Europe, and were watching This Is Spinal Tap on the bus and said, ‘Oh my God, that’s our life.’ and said to themselves ‘Things have to change.’ So the agreement was made that they wouldn’t do live shows anymore.” Following the breakup of DEVO, Mark Mothersbaugh established a music production house along with the two Bobs from DEVO to form Mutato Musika. This production company enjoyed a great deal of success creating the soundtracks for such popular shows as Pee Wee’s Playhouse, the Nickelodeon cartoon Rugrats and countless other television and film scores. Mark did the composing and his brother Bob was the chief audio engineer. Gerald Casale meanwhile dove headfirst into his love of video production, creating videos for bands like Rush, Soundgarden and the Foo Fighters as well as television commercials. While DEVO was no longer officially a band, they did reunite in 1995 to re-record their classic song “Girl U Want” for the terrible movie Tank Girl. (Sorry. I’ve tried to watch that tank wreck of a flick a few times but just couldn’t make it past the first 15 minutes. I mean it’s bad.) But what’s NOT bad is the fact that coming back together led to talk of performing live and in 1996 DEVO returned to the stage at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. From there, they proceeded to perform in the rotating mystery slot at Lollapalooza and also recorded a cover of the song “Head Like A Hole” by Nine Inch Nails which was used in the movie Supercop. DEVO was back! They had such a warm welcome from their Lollapalooza Mystery Slot that they were invited back for 1997, but this time as headliners. As the internet became more ubiquitous throughout the 90’s, DEVO found themselves and their music reaching an entirely new generation of fans and in 2001, a fan convention focusing on all things DEVO (including a 5k footrace) was launched in Cleveland, Ohio and continues to this day. By the mid 2000’s DEVO’s music began finding it’s way into television commercials for the likes of Swiffer (using the song Whip It) as well as Target utilizing what is probably DEVO’s 2nd most recognizable song, Beautiful World. DEVO also toured extensively throughout this time. Mark Mothersbaugh in an interview discussed how being older and deciding to tour again after several years off the road didn’t come without it’s challenges. After being a studio producer for that long, he and the band discovered they had some physical challenges performing the way they used to and decided they weren’t willing to bring the fans less than their best, so hit the gym they did and the group whipped themselves back into shape in order to be able to bounce around, invade the audience the audience and perform at the levels they once did. Their newfound dedication ultimately led to a reunion in 2009 with their former record label Warner Music for re-releases of their classic albums, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and Freedom of Choice followed by a tour playing both albums in their entirety. This reunion with Warner continued and in 2010 DEVO released their first full-length album in 20 years “Something For Everybody” and also became the recipients of the very first Moog Innovator Award at Moogfest 2010 in Asheville, North Carolina. (For those of you who don’t know what Moog is, it’s a brand of keyboard synthesizers which revolutionized music during the 60s and 70s bringing electronic sounds into our modern culture.) Bob Casale Sadly in 2014 tragedy strikes and founding member Bob Casale dies of heart failure at the age of 61. DEVO honors him by embarking on a 10 city tour as a quartet to raise funds to support his family. 5 years later in 2021: Toymaker Funko honors DEVO releasing two different versions of DEVO Funko Pops highlighting the looks from their videos Whip It and also Satisfaction. Shortly thereafter, merchandising continued with an official DEVO branded Vodka through the Trust Me Vodka Brand. 2022: DEVO are nominated for the third time for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But like their 2018 and 2021 nominations, are ultimately not chosen. I’ll just say it and everybody knows it. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is little more than a pathetic joke. It’s a handful of guys sitting around a table deciding who gets in and who stays out. Their personal political and musical preferences taint the process every step of the way and the whole world wrings their hands about it every single year. It’s just sad and half the acts that get inducted have absolutely nothing to do with rock and roll while so many actual deserving rock artists are completely passed over. Hopefully now that the idiot from Rolling Stone Magazine, Jann Wenner is no longer on the board some things will change for the better and groups like DEVO, Journey, Foreigner, Iron Maiden (there is literally an ocean of people at every single Iron Maiden concert!) and dare I say Ted Nugent will receive their long overdue honors. But I’m not holding my breath nor do I actually care that much. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has in my opinion, squandered any and all shreds of credibility it may have once had over the years and it’s cost them their relevance. WHY AM I EVEN TALKING ABOUT THEM RIGHT NOW!? THEY JUST DON’T MATTER! Rant over. In 2023 DEVO toured in celebration of 50 years and in 2024 a Documentary Film about DEVO simply titled “DEVO” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Also another film entitled 50 Years of DEVO Premiered at the Marquis Theather in Park City, Utah on January 22, 2024 followed by a live performance of the band themselves This year was also marked with a special box set release on Rhino Records: DEVO 50 YEARS OF DE-EVOLUTION: 1973-2023 featuring 4 LPs on clear vinyl with the labels spelling out DEVO when you line all the records up. An absolute must for any rabid fan! And speaking of fans, if you would like to check out the official DEVO FAN CLUB, Club DEVO, you can find it at http://www.clubdevo.com/devo-home/ at least that’s where I ultimately found it. I tried to go simply to clubdevo.com but the website was under renovation at the time. This is also the official DEVO website. And speaking of official, DEVO has capped their 50 years with an announcement that they have officially retired from touring. Will there be any future creative output from the band? Maybe we’ll see some answers once the website is finished with it’s renovations. Only the spuds can tell. And if YOU couldn’t already tell, THAT’S the story of DEVO! And if you’d like to help me afford that nifty Rhino Records box set I’ve had my eye on, please consider supporting future productions of the Dandy Fun House by heading over to our website at http://www.dandyfunhouse.com and clicking the link that says PATRONAGE! Supporters gain access to exclusive bonus features and Super Supporters get those same features plus I’ll mail you a special Dandy Mystery Package from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios IF you pricier your mailing address! Or just go to the website and buy a t-shirt! Podcast listeners can support via the donation button on their listening app of choice if the app supports it. Just look for a button with a dollar sign on it. And 5 star reviews wherever you can leave them help the show reach a wider audience and get our undying gratitude and it just makes us feel good! And on that note, thanks for hanging out here at the Dandy Fun House and come back real soon right here where everything is always FUN AND DANDY! are we not men? Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment, musician, Emcee and Author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
| 6/6/24 | GREEDY GRANNY – History, Unboxing, Assembly and Game Play! – Dandy Fun House episode 42 | watch video below!   listen to the podcast below!   Do you have a fat, stingy grandma? Have you ever wanted one? Well today’s your lucky day because on this episode of the Dandy Fun House we’re going to unbox, assemble and play none other than the game of GREEDY GRANNY! Let’s step into the Fun House! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House video show, podcast and blog! This is where we hoard all the retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff we can find! I’m your host, Neil Dandy and today we’re going to get into a game that’s been around since about 2018 and started off as a Toys R Us exclusive. Obviously Toys R Us isn’t around anymore but now this game can be found just about everywhere and the fact that it’s had the staying power to endure on the toy and game aisle shelves for this long is a testament to it’s appeal. I’m talking about the game of GREEDY GRANNY by Goliath Games (try saying THAT ten times fast!) from Deutschland.   But first I want to show you these awesome DANDY FUN HOUSE T-SHIRTS! They come with a front AND a back so you don’t get cold and we even cut 4 holes in them! One to crawl your body into, one to stick your head out of and two to poke your arms through! Find them at our website https://www.dandyfunhouse.com ! And while you’re there, check out our brand new NO ROBOTS! T-Shirt and tell Cyberdyne where to stick it! HISTORY OF GOLIATH GAMES The history of Goliath Games is actually a love story about two people named Adi and Margreeth Golad who fell head over heels for each other over a game of Rummikub while visiting the Israeli desert. We don’t know if it was the moon or the Manischevitz but in addition to their passion for one-another, they also found a burning passion for the game of Rummikub. Margreeth soon returned home to the Netherlands where she shared this game with her family who also became consumed with an unquenchable passion for the game of Rummikub. Margreeth and Adi soon connected back up and decided to not only join together to pursue a business desire to bring Rummikub to the world but also join together in holy matrimony and in 1980 founded GOLIATH GAMES. Adi left his mechanical engineering career and traded in his car for 500 games of Rummikub which he sold on the streets of the Netherlands, obviously not out of the trunk of his car. I guess he set them out on a blanket and probably started a lot of conversations with “Psst buddy!” There were challenges along the way, but when they were hungry, Rummikub kept them alive (Hey, I think that’s and Eagles song!). Nonetheless, Adi and Margreeth persisted on their all-out Rummikub rampage and proceeded to build the game into the iconic, multi-generational classic that it is today. In fact, the game eventually became so popular that it set the world record as the most number of games played per capita in a single year. Goliath Games and Rummikub still hold this record to this day! Together, Adi and Margreeth built the foundation of Goliath Games and nurtured it into a leading global manufacturer of toys and games in over a dozen countries around the world. Their slogan? “Clever Together.” Adi and Margreeth Golad, The Dandy Fun House video show, podcast and blog salutes you! Now let’s get into this game of GREEDY GRANNY! For a game that’s been around since 2018, I found surprisingly little information on the backstory or origins of this game while researching for this episode. I was unable to find who invented it, what the inspiration was or anything more than simply reviews on how to play it which I avoided looking at because I wanted my initial reactions to this game to indeed be my initial reactions. Pretty much all I know is that this is a TWAG (toy with a game), Granny sits sleeping in a chair with a tray of treats and the players take turns stealing treats until Granny abruptly wakes up and spits her teeth at you which means that not only do you lose the game, but you’re in for a round of butt whipping with a wooden spoon! (At least that’s what my grandmother, Alma used to do to me. And in full disclosure, I deserved it every single time.) Ok, enough lollygagging! Let’s get into this game of GREEDY GRANNY! Here we have our game of Greedy Granny! I’llupt it here on the table and let’s look over the box here… Great graphics on the front. You’ve got Greedy Granny jumping out of her chair. It looks like she’s spitting one of those Grandma cookies, you know the kind without much flavor in them but they’ve got this weird red dot in the middle of them? Yeah, one of those! I’m sure somewhere she’s got a bowl of little hard candies nobody likes but we eat them when we’re at grandma’s house because there’s nothing else to grab (at least until dinnertime.) Oh wait! There’s her dentures right there! Okay, so she’s spitting out her dentures and a cookie and there’s a little hand coming in here grabbing a pretzel And over here you’ve got one of those unfrosted flavorless cookies and a tiny little picture of what the game actually looks like down here in the corner. All well and good. Let’s have a look at the sides. And this says Will You Risk It For The Biscuit? Biscuits are what they call cookies in Europe and Goliath Games being from Deutschland… Well, there you go. And it looks like all the sides have the exact same artwork. So let’s have a look at the back! We’ve got kids playing the game as usually it is with these games. They’re showing the spinner, a close-up of the game, how it sets up and then Granny jumping out of her chair. “Granny loves treats and she wants to keep them all for herself. When Granny falls asleep, it’s time to make your move! On your turn, swipe a treat from her tray, but be careful… one wrong move can wake Granny up and send her chompers soaring!” Contents: One Granny in an armchair which apparently comes in two pieces, one set of Granny’s teeth, One Spinner card with plastic spinner and 12 treats complete with instructions. UBOXING Without further ado… Let’s crack Granny open! Looking in the box looks interesting lots of different colors going on here. Usually I pull one thing out at a time, but in this case, I think I’m just going to dump the box . Here’s the instructions and you know what we do with instructions, right? We toss them! And we try to figure it out without them. We will refer to them if we need to so And we’re going to start with the spinner. The spinner is well protected in its packaging and I like that. It shows that it was actually made by people who care or maybe by people who didn’t want to deal with returns. It’s cardboard, kind of thin, kind of warpy, kind of cheapy, but does it work? Not so much. Oh, okay The the back of it kind of popped out so it did it needs to be sat down on a table so it pops up correctly and then and then you can spin it. You might want to tape it into place. We’ve got frowny faces a no-go 1x 2x 3x on the board with various arrows. And it looks like some of these arrows indicate if you land on them to get a treat. I think the green means lose a turn and the purple means proceed and tells you how many treats you take and how many treats you give back I don’t know. It looks like I’m gonna have to refer to the instructions so that I know what the heck to tell you guys to do. But now let’s have a look at these various parts And uh, I’m starting to get a dark feeling about this game from some of the stuff I see here Here’s Granny’s Dentures! We’ve got three nasty biscuit cookies Got three weird grandma red cookie things Three pretzels (that’s what I’d be going for!) And we got some other types of nasty rectangular biscuits that nobody wants and Ready for this… two severed arms! Apparently she caught one of the kids! Actually the the arms are kind of uh bony and uh… These are old lady arms actually. So obviously these are Granny’s arms and we’re gonna have to build her like a robot. And speaking of which… Hopefully this is mechanical and we don’t need batteries. I do not see a battery compartment… That would be really cool if we didn’t need batteries for this thing and it appears we do not! I like it when it’s made just to work out of the box! We’ve got granny’s chair with her torso has been severed apparently… And there’s her treat tray. And I guess you push the button for how many times you are required to do so. She’s got her legs sticking out. Something tells me I’m gonna like this game! I’m not really sure what to do here but I am very very happy that I don’t see any battery compartment. Let’s break out Granny! Now, for her dentures… And let’s go ahead and put in her arms.You know, we want Granny to have some hands here because she needs to make dinner at some point tonight.and talk to you for an hour on your way to the car! And then you lean her back in her chair and it makes her go to sleep. Night night Granny. I’m going to put a bunch of treats on her tray…and refer to the instructions here to see what we’re supposed to do! INSTRUCTIONS Greedy Granny is a mischievously fun game that is perfect for the whole family Your mission is to swipe a treat from Granny’s tray as carefully and quietly as you can. One wrong move will wake her up and send her teeth flying! Will you risk it for a biscuit? The youngest player goes first. Well, that would be me! If the spinner lands on purple the player must put a treat back if they have one and press the button the number of times indicated on the spinner Okay, I have three x so i’ve got to press this button three times one two three And I lose! And if you land on green, that tells you how many treats you take and how many times you push the button. The aim of the game is to collect one of each treat. If granny wakes up, the player who woke her must place all of their treats back on her tray. Once the player’s treats have returned reset granny and the game continues! And that’s how you play GREEDY GRANNY! FINAL RANKING: On a scale of one to ten false teeth. I’m gonna give her… I don’t know. Let’s say eight and a half dentures! SUPPORT THE DANDY FUN HOUSE And before we spit our own dentures, I would like to ask that if you have found any value at all in this episode to please supporting production of future episodes by visiting the patronage page at our website https://www.dandyfunhouse.com Supporters gain access to exclusive bonus features and Super Supporters gain access to those exact same features PLUS I’ll personally mail you something completely saliva-free from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios IF you provide your mailing address! Podcast listeners can support through their listening app of choice if the app supports it (look for a button with a little dollar sign on it) and 5 star reviews wherever you can leave them always get our undying gratitude! I’d love to stay and chew the Freedent with you longer, but now it’s time to get gone! Come back soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY! Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment, musician, Emcee and Author. Aren’t you impressed?   | — | ||||||
| 5/6/24 | CRAZY MAGAZINE! – Dandy Fun House episode 41 | watch the video below! listen to the podcast below! Hey there! It’s me, your old pal Obnoxio the Clown. I know it’s been a while but I couldn’t help but crawl out of my clown hole once I heard what the Dandy Fun House had planned for this episode of their show! Not only that, but they also made the incredibly bad decision to ask ME, your old pal Obnoxio to host!They would have asked the Nebbish, but he doesn’t really talk so much. Ok, by now I have to imagine about two of you are really excited but most of you are really confused, so let me bring you up to speed. I used to be the mascot for CRAZY Magazine and I’m here to tell you the story of this wacky little rag that had a pretty good run back in the 70’s and 80’s! So without further ado, Let’s step into the Fart House! What? Oh the Fun House! Yeah that’s it! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Flop House, Fun House or whatever they call it! Video Show, Podcast and Blog! I’m your old long-lost pal, Obnoxio the Clown and I’m here to tell you the story of an obnoxious humor magazine that existed from 1973 to 1983 which yours truly was honored to be the mascot for during it’s final few years. But first, let me show you these crazy new t-shirts from the Dandy Fun House (did I say it right this time?) now available in the Dandy Fun SHOP! It’s got a front AND a back so you don’t get too cold and comes with 4 holes in it. One to crawl your body into, one to stick your head out of and two to poke yer arms through! You can find it at the Dandy Fun House website at http://www.dandyfunhouse.com or go directly to the store at http://www.dandyfunshop.com . Now back to this glorious freaking episode! Ok, CRAZY MAGAZINE! We were published by Marvel Comics believe it or not and were sort of in the vein of Mad Magazine, Cracked, Sick Magazine and National Lampoon. In the beginning back in 1953, Marvel Comics was actually called Atlas Comics and they decided to try their hand at competing with the behemoth of all novelty mags, MAD Magazine. So they published 7 issues of a comic book called CRAZY! Which skewered pop culture and included gags galore. It was a nice trial balloon, but didn’t exactly take the world by storm so they shelved the idea of publishing a satire for the next TWENTY YEARS until 1973 when it was revived for the purpose of republishing some of Marvel’s more wacky bits from their late-60’s comic called “Not Brand Echh.” What the heck kind of a name is “NOT BRAND ECHH!?”   STAN LEE MARV WOLFMAN For some reason they decided to give the old CRAZY Magazine another crack at success and kept things rolling under the guiding hand of the Marvel man, myth and legend himself… Stan Lee along with Co-Editor Marv Wolfman. Lee wanted to go for a straight up Mad Magazine and Cracked Magazine vibe while Wolfman wanted something more along the lines of National Lampoon. They came to an agreement somewhere in the middle and this gave CRAZY its own unique flavor. Kind of like sardine ala mode! It was decided that CRAZY needed a mascot, and so kicked around ideas until they came up with a small, buggy looking guy in a floppy hat and some sort of black cape-looking trench coat thing and they called this guy “The Nebbish.” Later they gave him the more proper name of “Irving Nebbish.” This Nebbish guy served as the mascot for CRAZY Magazine for seven solid years and he did a fine job I must say. I mean, I eventually STOLE his job but no hard feelings Nebby! That’s show biz! STEVE GERBER Wolfman wasn’t the only editor Crazy Magazine had. A man named Steve Gerber took over editing for issues #11-14 with a desire to set the magazine apart from its competition and try to convince the readers that the creators themselves were crazy. Gerber’s run as editor came to an abrupt end however when he published a very dark feature called “… And the Birds Hummed Dirges” which featured high schoolers engaged in a suicide pact. I think Mr. Gerber went back to making baby food after that! LARRY HAMA AL MILGROM ALAN KUPPERBERG CRAZY Mag did alright for a while. At least good enough to keep getting published but by 1979, sales were slumping so they brought on a new editor named Larry Hama who tried something really obnoxious and created me, Obnoxio the Clown to be CRAZY Magazine’s new mascot starting with issue #63 in June 1980! Larry wanted a mascot for the mag that would be more proactive and in your face than the other humor rags, so there I was! They modeled my face after some schmuck named Al Milgrom and I was mostly drawn by artist Alan Kupperberg. Back then I had hair. Today not so much. Too many Nair pies to the head’ll do that to ya! And let me tell you, we had the best features during my run as mascot and those days were a blast! Some of my personal favorite features were: The Kinetic Kids where you would flip two pages back and forth to give the illusion of animation and bring gross and violent pictures to life Howard The Duck! The Nebbish! My old pal! No hard feelings Nebby! The Obnoxio The Clown Fun Pages where I would bring you stupid puzzles and parodies! It’s what I do! Page-O-Stuff – This is where they stuck all their random ideas that didn’t work anywhere else! Comic Book Parodies – Sendups of famous comics like Kaspar the Dead Baby, Ritchie Retch and stuff like that! Believe it Or Else! The Eleventh Hour Special with Behemoth Jack – Where we would parody song lyrics long before Weird Al was a thing! My favorite was our sendup of Paul McFartney and the Things! Fantasy vs. Reality, Aunty Nuke, Gross Encounters and so much more! Ahh! Those were the days baby! A couple decades later we even made it into an episode of the Simpsons! (ok, it was a glancing mention, but still!). Come to think of it, that Crusty the Clown’s act seems awful familiar! Get my lawyer on the phone! I had a great time corrupting the world’s youth, but like the bright burning star that I am, I got white hot and burned fast. That’s right, even your old pal Obnoxio couldn’t save the publication from all the modern distractions the world was offering. People just didn’t have time for good old fashioned gross humor anymore. CRAZY Magazine closed its covers and printed its final issue in April 1983 and I had to go back to twisting balloon animals in the old folks homes. We did have a reunion in 2019 for a one-off issue featuring new material and bringing back some of the best blasts from the past but that pretty much stuck a fork in us! And now you know pretty much all there is to know about the brief but disgusting run of CRAZY MAGAZINE! We had a good run I suppose! Whaddaya want from me!? I come out of retirement to do a guest-host spot on this no-name production and I can’t even get a bottle of seltzer water in my trailer! I used to be a star! I used to be in command of million-dollar machines! I come back home and I can’t even get a job as a dishwasher! Say what? Oh yeah, you’re right. Sorry I Rambo sometimes. Hey! You! Yeah I’m talking to you! If you have found any sort of redeeming value to this production at all, the producers of the Dandy Fun House would like to encourage you to show your support and help them afford seltzer water for the guest host trailer by visiting the Patronage Page at the Dandy Fun House Website www.dandyfunhouse.com Supporters gain access to exclusive bonus features not available to the general public. I might even show off a few highly worn-out issues of Crazy Magazine. And… Super Supporters get access to the exact same bonus features as the cheapskates get PLUS we’ll mail you something special from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios IF you provide your mailing address!Maybe a Nair Pie! Ohhhh! Nair Pie! Podcast Listeners can donate directly from the podcast app of choice IF the app supports it (look for a button with a dollar sign on it usually) And 5 star reviews wherever you can leave them get my undying gratitude! THERE! Have I shilled enough for you leeches!? Give me my 20 bucks and let me go home now! Thanks for hanging out and come back soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY! Is it just me or does the Nebbish bear a striking resemblance to the Hamburglar? Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment, musician, Emcee and Author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
| 4/1/24 | PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES Game Review, Unboxing and How To Play! – Dandy Fun House episode 40 | watch the video below!   listen to the podcast below! If there’s one thing in this world I am a sucker for it’s snouts, fat bellies and squiggly little tails! It’s great in real life, but it’s even better when it comes in the form of a TWAG! What’s a TWAG you ask? It means Toy With A Game… TWAG! In this episode number 40 of the Dandy Fun House we’re gonna make pigs fly! And we’re not just gonna make ’em fly, we’re gonna make ’em bounce too as I review the TWAG known as PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES! Let’s step into the Fun House! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog where we use our delicate snouts to sniff out the very best in retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff! I’m your host Neil Dandy and before we begin I want to acknowledge a milestone! Since this is just a monthly show (other than the fact that I do post daily snippets online), there are some that have expressed to me that if this show were to reach 40 episodes… then pigs will have flown! Well, not only has the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog Officially reached 40 episodes as of the episode you’re currently consuming, but we’re going to celebrate by making pigs fly or at least bounce because I’m gonna unbox, assemble, play and review an awesome looking game from PlayMonster called PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES! But first I want to let you know that the brand new DANDY FUN SHOP online merchandise store has officially launched! You can find it on the Dandy Fun House website at dandyfunhouse.com and just click on “SHOP.” You may also visit it directly at dandyfunshop.com . As of now you’ll find the all-new awesome looking DANDY FUN HOUSE t-shirt with both a front and a back (because we don’t Want you to get cold) which I’m real proud of! I think it came out looking great. You’ll also find some other novelty designs I’ve created not necessarily Connected to the show just some crazy designs I like to make when I’m not cranking out these episodes. I’m hoping that as the shop grows, it will help promote this show and this show will help promote the shop in what we in the Industry refer to as cross promotion. But enough about me! Let’s learn a little bit more about the company behind PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES, PlayMonster! PLAYMONSTER Now I don’t really recall hearing of this company before, but with a game called PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES bouncing out at me from the Walmart shelf, how could I not get this game and learn more about this company? So I log on to their website at playmonster.com and before I can even see or do anything I’m instantly disrupted by this horrible pop-up right in my face asking for my name and email address so they can add me to their mailing list before I even don’t anything about them! It’s like an over eager first date and I’m in my nice prom dress. (You know what I’m talking about). I don’t know who at PlayMonster marketing needs to hear this but PlayMonster we need to talk. Come here… (soft music plays) We just met and you’re already asking for all my personal information. It’s just too much too fast I’m not ready for that type of commitment at this place in my life. Let’s get to know each other a little first. We’ll take a walk down the beach maybe to the park. It doesn’t need to be all on you either. I can pack a nice lunch for two and we can just sit and talk and see where things go and if the feel is right… NO PLAYMONSTER! NOT THAT TYPE OF FEEL! Where was I? Oh, yes, if things go well maybe we can hang out at my place and watch the Hallmark Channel together and maybe… MAYBE then I’ll let you hold my hand and well… you’re making me blush PlayMonster! There goes my heart again! PlayMonster are you hearing me? I hope so! I’m just not that kind of toy and game reviewer! I have morals and values and boundaries which need to be respected! Okay… So I click the annoying pop-up away and start checking out their featured image showing their most featured products and I’m having a gander over what they wish to put out front and center for their company which remains on the screen for exactly five seconds. (Yes I timed it) before the image changes to yeah, you guessed it… ANOTHER SOLICITATION TO SIGN UP FOR THEIR EMAIL LIST! PlayMonster! We just talked about this! Didn’t we just talk about this!? At this point, I’m not just annoyed, I’m downright ticked off! I feel violated and cheap! My mascara is running and I think I tore my dress. PlayMonster! Let me out of the car! Just let me out! This company is literally doing everything it can to make me run screaming but I decide that I must persist, put my big-girl pants back on (don’t ask) and proceed forward for the sake of you, my audience. Upon further exploration I see something familiar; the TOTY (Toy Of The Year) award-winning game, Yeti In My Spaghetti which I actually had the pleasure to give a favorable review to just about a year and a half ago! (episode 22 if you’re playing along at home). I’m also reminded that PlayMonster is currently the purveyor of the classic toy brands Spirograph, Playskool, Koosh, Fashion Plates and Colorforms along with a good handful of others I’ll admit I’m not familiar with, but look interesting. So I actually HAVE encountered the “handsy” PlayMonster before! I must have just blocked it out like that creepy balloon twister from my fifth birthday party. Diving in further, I learned from their ABOUT US page (which thankfully does not bludgeon me to sign up for their spam list) that this company began in 1985 by a pair of brothers named Ryan and Bryce Patch under the name PATCH PRODUCTS. They started with kids puzzles before expanding to toys and games and eventually acquiring other brands and growing their offerings henceforth targeting both youth and adult demographics. In the year 2014, Patch Products were themselves acquired and in 2016 changed the name to PlayMonster. They are based right here in the good old US of A in Beloit, Wisconsin and are distributed all over the world. They support the charitable foundation the TOY BANK FOUNDATION distributing joy and happiness to children in need wherever they may be! Well, there you go! Good PlayMonster! Awesome! See… I DID find something nice to say about PlayMonster after all! Okay onto this awesome looking game… PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES! THE BOX Here we are! PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES and let’s have a look over the box. I just love the graphics they did on it and it’s got like a soft look to the whole thing. It’s set out in the middle of a green field and you’ve got pigs bouncing on trampolines and landing in the mud puddles and they just they did a bang-up job on this! You’ve got different pigs on different sides of the box which is great because what most companies do is they just mail it in and put the exact same graphic on every side of the box. On the back you’ve got the obligatory kids actually playing the game Which everybody does, but then you need to do that because you have to see what the actual product looks like and not just the marketing graphic. The product looks great on the box. “Yippee jump for joy with Pigs on Trampolines! Use the trampolines to bounce your pigs into the pigpen and try to land in the mud puddle. Every pig you land in the puddle earns you a mud pie! Keep bouncing your pigs until all the mud pies are gone. The muddiest piggy wins! UNBOXING Sounds good to me. Well, let’s open it! Without further ado… (THIS is the part I love!) Whoosh Here we have color instructions! The instructions are awesome-looking. They show you how to put it all together and it appears to be in very plain English and very simple gameplay. I think we get the idea. You try to get them into the middle of the mud puddle and you collect mud pies. we have three trampolines right here and they make great little tom-toms! And The legs are all different different lengths so that the trampoline can sit at an angle to bounce the piggies the proper direction. You’ve got the mud puddle platform trunks(which hold up the mud puddle platform) which just snap together. It’s a durable plastic. I don’t think there’s a great risk of breaking it. Not like that brittle plastic you get in some games. We have the cardboard graphical platform for the mud puddle which fit into slots in the top of the platform. You have the mud puddle itself which is just a brown plastic cup that fits into the middle of the platform and the object is you want to try and launch your pigs into that cup. THE PIGS And last but not least we have our piggies! I’m a little disappointed that PlayMonster didn’t give our piggies names or any sort of fun bio. I think that would have added a real special touch. So I supposed we’ll have to give them our own names! We have: THE MASKED PIG! BALLERINA PIG! BICYCLE PIGGY! SUPER PIGGY! TROLL PIG! and… DAREDEVIL PIG! These are your beloved PIGGY BOUNCERS! GIVE ‘EM A HAND! MUD PIES AND HOW TO PLAY! What you win if you actually get your pig into the middle of the mud puddle are mud pies! They look like little brown plastic splats. And you get seven of them so there is no chance for a tie game. You can also play an easier version for small children where a mud pie is awarded for simply bouncing the pig onto the platform or if an adult is playing with a small child, to make it fair the adult would have to make it into the cup and the child just has to get it onto the platform. The secret which they reveal in the instructions is to bounce the pigs on their tails. I had more than a few frustrating go-rounds before I finally discovered this pointer along with aiming the angle of the trampoline correctly. Out of the six piggies, I landed two in the center cup and won two mud pies! Yay for me! FINAL RANKING! PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES! More fun than a bucket of mud! PATHETIC GROVELING FOR MONEY And speaking of buckets… I could really use a bucket of begonias about now to help pay for all this dandiness as well as all the behind the scenes stuff I do and encourage you, dear audience that if you have found any value at all in this program to please support future productions by becoming a DANDY FUN HOUSE SUPPORTER! Just visit the patronage page at dandyfunhouse.com where you can also visit the newly launched Dandy Fun Shop, which I’m currently filling with wacky stuff, t-shirt designs (including the all-new Dandy Fun House t-shirt, which I just know you’ll love!) SUPPORTERS receive access to exclusive bonus features not available to the general public and SUPER SUPPORTERS gain access to that exact same stuff plus I’m gonna mail you something awesome from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios if you send me your mailing address! PODCAST LISTENERS can donate via a button which appears on most podcast apps (you’ll see a little dollar sign on it) and sends me cryptocurrency. And FIVE STAR REVIEWS, LIKES and SUBSCRIBES wherever you enjoy this show (including all the major social networks) always receive my undying gratitude! Okay, well it is time for me to bounce like a winged sow! Come back soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… Fun and Dandy! Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment, musician, Emcee and author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
| 3/5/24 | TOASTER PASTRY SHOWDOWN! – Dandy Fun House episode 39 | watch the video below!   listen to the podcast below! The humble toaster pastry. It’s been our molten, tongue burning sweet little friend since the 60s. It’s a quick little pick me up when we need a tasty treat. Sometimes it’s breakfast on the run and in all the world, one little toaster named Milton reigns supreme with his empire of handheld, sugary rectangles known as Pop-Tarts. In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, we’re going to give three off-brand toaster pastry underdogs a chance to dethrone the mighty Milton and claim the title TOASTER PASTRY CHAMPION OF THE WORLD! For this is the Strawberry Toaster Pastry Showdown! Let’s step into the Fun House! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog! This is where we cook up the very tastiest in retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff. I’m your host, Neil Dandy, and by pop-tartular demand, this episode is going to cook! And yes, I’m coming to you straight from the Dandy Fun House Studios Kitchens, where today we’re going to have the showdown of the century! I have here before me the four most popular toaster pastries in America… Alright, they’re the only four different types of toaster pastries I could find after visiting four different grocery stores, but you get the idea, right? OK, here we go!   Upon conducting my search, scouring grocery store shelves for toaster pastries to pit against one another, I discovered that strawberry is apparently the most common flavor amongst all toaster pastries. So that’s the flavor we’re going to test today. Here we have Millville Toaster Tarts, which is the Aldi brand. We have Toaster Treats, which is the Kroger brand. We have Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastries by Great Value, which is the Walmart brand. And last but certainly not least, we have the reigning toaster pastry champion of the world, Pop Tarts. I want to be really careful to not rip off Matt Mitchell’s Bless Your Rank, which I absolutely love. So instead of lining up these four contenders to the strawberry toaster pastry throne, I’m instead going to conduct this contest like a boxing match with an undercard and a main event, after which I will pit the winner of the undercard against the winner of the main event to give the underdog a shot at the title! I will be judging on packaging, the look of the pastry and of course how they taste both untoasted and toasted.   I will not actually be swallowing any of these toxic treats. I’ll instead be taking a bite from the best corner of the pastry, chewing it, allowing it to roll around my palate for a moment, and then spitting it out while swishing my mouth with water between bites. I feel this is the most fair method of conducting this contest, and you deserve no less than the best!   I think we can all agree that Pop Tarts is the 900 pound gorilla in the room as far as worldwide popularity, followed most likely by Great Value, the Walmart brand. And that’s going to leave Millville Toaster Tarts and Kroger’s Frosted Toaster Treats as our undercard. You guys ready? Come on, LET’S GET READY TO CRUMBLE! Okay, here before me, we have our undercard match. We have Millville Toaster Tarts from Aldi, and we have Frosted Toaster Treats from Kroger. Looking at the packaging… they both have pretty good packaging, I must say. I’m not crazy about the Millville logo. It doesn’t sound very appetizing, but then again, neither does Kroger to me. So I’m going to give it a tie on the packaging. Let’s crack ‘em open and see what we’ve got! Here’s Millville Toaster Tarts. Foil, very basic foil. And the frosting, you can see there’s a lot of edge exposed, but you might have to have that edge exposed. It seems to be rather thick, so that’s a good sign. The other pastry in the package has even less frosting on it, so I’m going to take the best one here and take an uncooked bite! Not bad, not exactly bursting with flavor. The look of the coloring, it’s not bright red like I would expect. I’m going to go ahead and put this other whole pastry in my toaster here. (Spit out and swish) Now let’s look at Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats. Wait a minute… The foil design is absolutely identical! Is the toaster pastry going to be identical as well? I’m starting to get suspicious here. They look almost exactly identical, except the Kroger brand has some blue greenish sprinkles on it, which the Millville Aldi brand does not. I taste absolutely no difference between the two, but while I swish my mouth around, let’s go ahead and toast these babies. I’ve got my toaster set at about almost up to three, which is like the 10 o’clock position, which is normally where I like my toaster pastries. Let’s go ahead and get it cranking here. Time for a little history about the brave little toaster! The first electric toaster was introduced in 1893 and was called the Eclipse. It was made by Crompton and Company out of Chelmsford Essex. It had iron bare wires toasting the bread. But the Eclipse had a serious problem. The technology wasn’t really there to have the wires last, at least not any length of time. And the wires would burn up really fast and the toaster would be junk in a very short amount of time. The problem of the heating elements was solved in 1905 by a man named Albert Marsh who was an engineer and came up with an alloy of nickel and chromium or… “nichrome.” The first automatic pop-up toaster was patented in 1921 by a man named Charles Streit. The Waters-Genter Company refined the design and proceeded to release the model 1A1 Toastmaster, the first automatic pop-up household toaster that could toast bread on both sides simultaneously, set itself on a timer and eject when finished. (toaster ejects pastries) And here we go! Now I tasted Millville first and Kroger second so let’s be fair here and try the Kroger toasted first. I’ll grab it with some foil so I don’t burn myself. Woo woo woo woo woo woo woo woo! Hot! Hot! Hot! (Neil takes a bite)… Yummy! Once again, not exactly bursting with flavor but when it’s toasted it’s nice. It’s real nice. Alright Millville Toaster Tarts. Let’s see if I can do this without any foil on my hand since it’s had a second to cool. Bite the side with the most frosting… I gotta tell you, this is really really close… They are identical on their inner packaging. I’d be willing to bet that they’re made by the exact same company but the Kroger brand has an extra color of sprinkles on it and I kinda think that I got a little more flavor off the Kroger brand. So even though it’s very very close folks, I’m gonna have to give the undercard match to Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats! WHICH BRINGS US TO OUR MAIN EVENT! POP TARTS vs. GREAT VALUE TOASTER PASTRIES! The champion! The reigning supreme heavyweight in all the world without a question, without a doubt… Pop Tarts! And the competitor who wants Pop Tarts Crown is Great Value Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastries! First let’s look at the packaging. I mean,(…) come on guys. They put almost no thought and no design whatsoever into the Great Value brand. There’s no question that Pop Tarts has the better branding and better packaging. Advantage Pop Tarts. Let’s look at the inner foil: Pop Tarts has some design, the Pop Tarts logo on there and it’s blue. Whereas the inner foil for the Great Value brand has the exact same foil design as both competitors from our undercard. So generic is as generic does. I wouldn’t be surprised if this tasted absolutely no different than any of our undercard competitors, but we’re gonna give it a shot. So I’m going to start here with the untoasted test with Great Value. And opening up the foil, I’m seeing some weird brown stuff in the grooves and I’m a little disturbed by that. It looks like it got burnt a little bit on the assembly line. The front looks exactly the same as the Kroger brand. Same sprinkles, same everything, but it’s kinda mushed up. It looks like something happened to it. Yeah, same here with the 2nd pastry in the package. Something weird happened to the frosting here. But let’s give it a taste. It looks and tastes absolutely no different than any of our undercard competitors. Now, what about Pop-Tarts? Can Pop-Tarts live up to its legend? Well… the Pop-Tarts brand looks exactly the same as the generic undercards. Maybe a little difference. The Pop-Tarts brand seems to have more holes. It’s not as thick on the edges, but it’s got the exact same kind of sprinkles and it seems to be frosted really terribly. There’s like almost no quality control on that frosting. It’s all the way to the edge on one part and definitely over the edge on another part. I mean, come on, come on Kellogg’s! I’ll say the inside filling is red.The others were kind of like a dingy red. This is more a bright red, but honestly, that’s probably from some kind of weird chemical that you really shouldn’t be ingesting. You really shouldn’t be ingesting any of this and I’m not. I’m swishing my mouth between bites and spitting all of this out I seem to be tasting a slight, very slight bit more sweetness from the Pop-Tart and it’s very slight, almost indistinguishable. So for the untoasted, I got to give it to Pop-Tarts. Let’s try toasting them! HISTORY OF POP TARTS! I can’t really give you a lot of history on the Great Value brand because it’s a generic brand. So all I can really talk about here is Pop-Tarts. In the early 1960s, Post-cereals invented a process for dehydrating food and enclosing it in foil. The process was originally designed for packaging dog food, but they adapted it to produce the first toaster pastry in the world. It was called Country Squares. Post’s biggest competitor, Kellogg’s wasted no time jumping on this toaster pastry bandwagon and introduced their own called Fruit Scones that very same year. The name was soon changed to Pop-Tarts as a nod to the Pop-Art craze of the time. Pop-Tarts became so popular that the initial run sold out in just two weeks and Kellogg’s had to run apologetic advertising for the empty store shelves and this only increased the Pop-Tart fever across the nation. Of course Post cereals was left with their jaws on the floor and warehouses full of Country Squares wondering what the heck just happened! “Frosted” Pop-Tarts didn’t debut until 1967. Milton the Toaster, the brand’s mascot, debuted in 1971 and was voiced by an actor named William Shallert who was best known as the Dad on the Patty Duke show. Milton the Toaster was one of the few cartoon jobs that Shallert had. His main talent was the ability to time his voice overs perfectly and work quickly to save time and money in the production room. As of 2024, there are over 20 Pop-Tart flavors including Hot Fudge, Sundae, S’mores, Raspberry, and Grape. DANDY FUN FACT! Did you know that if you leave a strawberry Pop-Tart in your toaster for too long, it can burst into flames and it can go up to a foot and a half high? That’s right… fire! Fire! This very situation happened in 1992 when Kellogg’s was sued for damages after a guy’s Pop-Tart got stuck in the toaster and caught on fire. Since then Pop-Tarts carry a warning on every box. It’s in tiny type on the back and barely noticeable. But it’s there. And it reads: If pastry is overheated, frosting filling can become extremely hot and could cause burns.(…) Due to possible risk of fire, never leave appliance unattended when in use. Oh look, four ways to try Pop Tarts! Right from the foil, which we have tried. Toasted, which we’re about to try. Stacked, which means I guess you put two of them together. And frozen! I have never eaten a frozen toaster pastry before. If you have, please let me know! (toaster ejects) And here we go! I think we should give the Great Value Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastry first shot since it is the least known of the two! Hmm… Not exactly bursting with flavor…I’d have to say that’s even less flavorful than either of our undercard competitors. Let’s try the Pop-Tart… It kind of toasted up all funky. Really weird, it’s got, it’s all burned up on the side. I’m not impressed, Pop-Tarts, not impressed. Like that filling oozing out of the holes, it seems kind of thin. Seems to have a tiny bit more flavor than the Great Value brand. And the look of the pastry… the Pop-Tart looks like a train wreck happened to it. Like someone ran over it with a something. I’d say the Great Value looks a little better, but that’s about all it’s got going on. Hardly any difference in taste. The packaging for Pop-Tarts is much better. I’ve got to give the nod to Pop-Tarts. OUR MAIN EVENT WINNER IS POP TARTS!   FINAL SHOWDOWN! And that brings us to our final showdown, which is going to be Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats against the mighty Pop-Tarts for Toaster Pastry Champion of the World! Okay, back to basics. Packaging: Both of them are pretty darn good on the front. The back of the Kroger is pretty much the same as the front, almost. The back of Pop-Tarts, they put a little more effort into it. Gave you some fun stuff to look at, some fun things to ponder. Pop-Tarts has the better packaging. There’s no doubt about that. This Kroger Toaster Treat looks like it got ran over. The taste is still the same as before. Okay, let’s try Pop-Tarts. Better inside packaging. We’ve already determined that. So advantage on the packaging overall goes to Pop-Tarts. Do these look any better than before? No, it doesn’t look good. It just doesn’t. These Pop Tarts look worked over! They look like somebody’s already chewed these things up and spit them out and I didn’t really mention it before but they’re noticeably thinner than the generic brands! Awful! Just awful! They really look like somebody ran over these things with a truck! Time to try it. Not nearly as much filling as the Kroger brand and really not much taste. I’m going to give advantage of Kroger brand on the amount of filling, the quality of the appearance and the thickness of the product in the cold stage. So right now, we’re kind of one-to-one. Now let’s toast them up! Who will it be? This is for all the toast! Will it be the world champion Pop-Tarts or the scrappy underdog Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats? It can only be one, folks! (toaster ejects) Oh, a little smoke came up there! All right. Two toasted toaster pastries. They both want to be world champion, but it can only be one. Ow! Ow! I’ve had my fingers burned by both. Let’s give it a second here. Okay. I’ll taste the Pop-Tart… Now the Kroger Frosted Toaster Treat… The filling on the Kroger brand is bright red and very attractive, actually. Hmm. I guess it can vary from package to package. The Kroger Frosted Toaster Treat, it’s good. It’s not exactly bursting with flavor, though. Time to try the Pop Tart! This filling looks exactly the same color on the inside. Nicely toasted but overall It looks horrible. It doesn’t look appetizing, but I’m going to try it anyway. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner… And it’s not Pop-Tarts. Our winner of the Toaster Pastry Championship of the World is none other than KROGER FROSTED TOASTER TREATS! GROVEL FOR MONEY: And if you would like to help me afford to pay for the cleanup of all this, go check out http://www.dandyfunhouse.com and visit the Patronage page. Supporters will get access to exclusive bonus features! and… SUPER SUPPORTERS will get access to those exact same bonus features plus, I’ll mail you something amazing from right here at the Dandy Fun House, and it won’t be a glass full of spit-up Toaster Pastries, I promise. It’ll be better than that. And five-star reviews, anywhere you can leave them, get my undying gratitude. If you’re a podcast listener and your podcast app supports it, usually there’s a little button on there with a little dollar sign. Click that and make a little donation. Every little bit helps, and it’s always appreciated. But that’s not why I’m here. That’s not why I’m doing this. I’m doing this because I love doing the show! Also! I put out short videos on the various social media platforms throughout the month which you can enjoy on the platform of your choice. You know all the big ones. You can find me. I’m not that hard to hunt down, everybody. Anyway, I’m going to get on out of here. You guys, thanks for coming to the Dandy Fun House and hanging out with me right here, where everything is always… Fun and Dandy! Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment and Productions, musician, DJ, Emcee and author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
| 2/4/24 | The SID AND MARTY KROFFT STORY! – Dandy Fun House episode 38 | watch the video below!   listen to the podcast below!   Two Canadian brothers born in the early 1900s, sons of a clock salesman, they found a mutual love for puppeteering which led them on an amazing journey of a lifetime through the Land of the Lost, Sea Monsters, Bugaloos, Pufnstuf, Banana Splits and much much more. In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, I proudly bring you the story of the Yolas brothers, but you might remember them better as… Sid and Marty Krofft! Let’s step into the Fun House! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House, video show, podcast and blog! This is where we get lost in the land of retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff. I’m your host, Neil Dandy and in today’s episode, this is one I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but I sort of got held up wrapping up the year 2023. Now that that’s all behind us, I figured I’d kick off 2024 with a bang and bring you the story of the amazing creators of some of the most timeless kids shows of the 70s and 80s, Sid and Marty Krofft! If you don’t know who Sid and Marty Krofft are, (I being in my mid-50’s find this almost unfathomable, but there might be some younger viewers, listeners and readers who have never heard of them and I want to be welcoming if you might fit this description.) these guys created iconic TV shows like Land of the Lost, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, The Bugaloos, H.R. Pufnstuf, The Banana Splits and a whole lot more. A lot of their work was kinda like Muppets before the Muppets were a thing, but more fantasy type. I hope that made sense. Together, the Krofft Brothers’ resume boasts a whopping 26 television series and 21 specials! But to really get an idea of who these guys were, I think we need to start back farther…MUCH FARTHER!!!!!!!!! Two Canadian brothers, Sid and Marty Yolas of Greek and Hungarian descent were born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1929 and 1937. Sons of a clock salesman, Peter Yolas, their family emigrated to the US in the early 1940s, landing in Rhode Island but eventually settling in New York City, assuming the more American last name of Krofft. The father, Peter, in addition to his profession of clock salesmanship, also enjoyed the theatre and producing plays. Sid discovered a love for puppeteering and he performed some of his earliest work debuting in one of his dad’s stage plays, an adaptation of Snow White. From there, Sid had the puppet bug and went into the world of vaudeville as a teenager before running away with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, which billed him as the world’s youngest puppeteer! This allowed Sid to take his one-man show called The Unusual Artistry of Sid Krofft International and parlayed his newfound circus notoriety into being the opening act for iconic performers like Judy Garland and Liberace. Meanwhile back in New York, Sid’s younger brother Marty started putting his older brother’s second-hand puppets to work, earning some money with local stage performances and honing his own set of skills and more importantly, business acumen. His business smarts attracted the attention of older brother Sid, who eventually asked him to team up in an effort to bring his visions for bigger, better and more spectacular productions to life. In 1957 they did just that, developing their first show together, a mature audience production entitled Les Poupees de Paris. They ran this production for several years, earning acclaim worldwide, performing for over 9 million people collectively while also providing more family themed productions for Six Flags amusement parks. But it wasn’t until 1965 that they eventually found themselves making their television debut after being invited onto the Dean Martin show! By this time, they had built a renowned puppet costume and set building facility in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California and were approached by Hanna-Barbera to create set designs and walk around costumes for The Banana Splits, which went on to become a cult classic which is still enjoyed to this day. In 1969 they struck a deal with NBC to produce their own TV series, HR PufnStuf, which featured colorful sets, lots of puppetry, life-size soft, Muppet-like characters and lots of rudimentary special effects. HR PufnStuf was a hit, a huge hit and it led to a movie with Universal Pictures. DANDY FUN FACT! Early in their career, Sid and Marty Krofft received a little sage advice from Mr. Walt Disney who told them, “Always put your name above everything you create because someday it’s gonna be worth something.” They took his advice and put their name at the top of everything they made, which is why their name is as recognizable today as the shows they created! The Krofft brothers found their forte with Fantasy Adventure, mostly aimed at the Saturday morning kids audience, which they dominated. Throughout the 70s, Sid and Marty Krofft were a non-stop hit factory with shows like The Bugaloos, which kind of took the Banana Splits story model of a rock band made of animal characters and placed it into the insect world. Sigmund and the Sea Monsters! I’m actually wearing my poor attempt at a sea monster hat right now. I think the kelp turned out alright, but the googly eyes and uni tooth turned out really bad so I had to take them off. Our rescue dog Carly has a fixation on googly eyes so I have to hide them or she’ll chew them all up because they’re the size and texture of a squeak toy. These guys produced Land of the Lost and also the somewhat forgettable late 70s series, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, a low budget Wonder Woman meets Batman and Robin, and also Wonderbug, which was a low budget Herbie the Love Bug that looked more like Speed Buggy. In fact, almost everything they produced was low budget and extremely campy, which was also a large part of the charm and brilliant from a business standpoint! Money not spent is money in the pocket, isn’t it? The Krofft brothers became so popular that at one point they entered a deal in 1976 with a developer to launch their own amusement park, the World of Sid and Marty Krofft in Atlanta Georgia, which unfortunately didn’t do real well, suffered poor attendance, and closed only six months after their grand opening. DANDY FUN FACT! Did you know that Sid and Marty Krofft built the set for the TV show All in the Family? This was used for the first two seasons! As they progressed into the 1980s they found themselves putting their names on less successful shows such as Pryor’s Place with Richard Pryor, DC Follies which was a puppet show that skewered modern politics and also oversaw reboots of their classic shows like HR Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost, and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. Nonetheless their San Fernando Valley Factory stayed cranking, with touring stages for bands like Earth, Wind and Fire and anyone else who wanted that Krofft Brothers touch in their shows! In the year 2000, Sid and Marty Krofft kicked off the millennium by dazzling the American Music Awards with giant 25 foot high puppets for the performance of the boy band N’SYNC. In 2015 they teamed up with Nick Jr. on a show called Mutt N’ Stuff which followed the adventures of Calvin Milan, son of Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan, and Calvin’s dog, Stuff. It lasted two years. In 2018 the Krofft Brothers get honored at the Daytime Emmy Awards with a Lifetime Achievement Award! Sid was asked on the red carpet what his secret to success was and he replied, “Get Marty for a partner.” When Marty was asked who his favorite character was Marty replied, “My favorite character has got to be Sid.” Brothers to the end. And in 2020 they received their long overdue star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2022 Krofft Kon was launched, which is a convention around all things Sid and Marty Krofft. Both brothers attended the inaugural year and the annual event to this day continues to feature stars of their various productions throughout the years which you can meet in person if you attend Krofft Kon. MARTY KROFFT Sadly the world lost Marty Krofft in 2023 to kidney failure at 86 years of age. SID KROFFT Sid still goes to conventions and loves meeting fans old and new and he’d love to meet you! And ain’t that a how do ya do? There’s the story of Sid and Marty Krofft, the campiest, kookiest, cheesiest, craziest couple of brothers you ever heard of! Their works will live on in infamy for many a millennia to come! And you know what else lives on? The overhead costs of producing this show! Therefore I beseech you dear viewers, listeners and readers to please consider supporting future productions of the Dandy Fun House by visiting the website at http://www.dandyfunhouse.com and clicking on the Patronage page where you can donate some cashola, moolah, begonias and share some cheddah with yours truly! Supporters will receive access to exclusive bonus features not available to the general public! and… Super Supporters will receive that exact same access. Plus I’ll mail you something special from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios if you provide your mailing address! (Maybe a lock of kelp from my sea monster hat!) Podcast listeners can donate via a button in your podcast app of choice. It usually has a little dollar sign on the button, at least on my app (I listen on Podcast Addict.) And five star reviews wherever you can leave them always receive my undying gratitude! And that’s gonna do it for this episode of the Dandy Fun House. Time for me to puff my stuff right on outta here! I really appreciate you stopping by. Come back real soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always Fun and Dandy! Sea Monster Ya Later! Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment and Productions, musician, DJ, Emcee and author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
| 1/2/24 | MURFREESBORO*OPOLY Game Review and HOT MOVIES COMING IN 2024 – Dandy Fun House episode 37 | see video below!   listen to the podcast below! In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, I’m going to self-indulge just a bit and pay a bit of homage to the town I live in and love: MURFREESBORO, TENNESSEE! And I’m going to do it in the only way that I can actually make it relevant to this show and that’s with a game review! Now for those of you who don’t live in Murfreesboro and couldn’t possibly care less about my town, I know you’re asking yourself right now why you would ever care about a game review involving the town of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Here’s why: because the company that makes the game I’m about to review also makes this exact same game customized special for individual cities and towns all over the world, most likely including yours and this episode will hopefully give you a sneak peek at what you might expect if you were to purchase this particular game for where YOU LIVE! NOW do I have your attention? I hope so because I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy this game for a long time now for THIS is the game of… MURFREESBORO*OPOLY! Let’s step into the Fun House! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House! This is where we unwrap the very best in retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff! I’m your host Neil Dandy and in this year-end extravaganza I’m going to unbox, set up and show you how to play the Monopoly spinoff game – MURFREESBORO*OPOLY! And at the end of the show, I’m going to do a quick rundown of some of the best movies I enjoyed from the year 2023 and ones I’m looking forward to in 2024! Let’s get to it! This game appears to be made by a company out of Cincinnati, Ohio called Late For The Sky. That’s a pretty odd name for a toy and game manufacturer. But let’s see what we can find out about them. Looking over their website it appears their entire business model is solely making specialized versions of the game Monopoly and boy do they have a lot of them! They have versions for different colleges, alcoholic beverages, Shark*Opoly, Zombie*Opoly. Educational versions like America*Opoly, Dino*Opoly, Space*Opoly, Bible*Opoly, Boooo*Opoly, Christmas*Opoly, Farm, Fishing, Hunting, Rodeo, Cat, Horse, Ocean, Penguin, and 18 DIFFERENT BREEDS OF DOGS OPOLY! Sheesh! There was only ONE GAME on their entire website that was not a version of Monopoly that I found and that game was and is THE MAN GAME! Which includes: flick football (you know like that triangular folded piece of paper you would try to flick between your friends’ finger goal posts while you were goofing off in school?), a ball for cup pong, a tape measure to see which guy has the biggest uhhh… bicep! Yes bicep! Rope for sailor knots and a regulation deck of playing cards along with poker chips. No wagering please! Apparently their business concept started with MIAMI*OPOLY because their founder and president whom they don’t give the name of was a graduate of Miami University. They grew their college line of games to over 80 different titles and just kept going from there. No mention of any licensing deal with the makers of Monopoly although I’m sure there must be one. Just ask the makers of Ghetto*Opoly who got unceremoniously shut down after just a few months on the market. Hey! I just happen to have Ghetto*Opoly right here! I can’t review it on this show because we’re strctly family-friendly but in recent years, I have noticed it for sale again in various places. I don’t believe Late For The Sky has anything to do with the re-release of Ghetto*Opoly however so moving right along…. Apparently, you can hire them to customize a game for you as well. This seems to be more of a corporate offering where companies can have a game created highlighting special details of their business which can be a great marketing tool if used correctly! Digging in just a little deeper, it appears that Late For The Sky is really big on the environment which is great and I’m not noticing any nutty climate change wackiness or anything like that. Just reasonable and responsible stewardship of the environment which I can get behind. Things like using recycled paper, soy-based inks rather than alcohol although I’m not really sure what the significance of that might be, corn-based shrink-wrap (I’ve never heard of that before!) recycled glass and 100 percent Made in the USA in their very own Cincinnati, Ohio facility! And all parts are manufactured within 50 miles from their operation. NOW THAT’S REALLY COOL! If you’d like to check out all their awesome stuff, just head on over to http://www.lateforthesky.com and see it all for yourself! Alright, enough about LATE FOR THE SKY, let’s get into this game of MURFREESBORO*OPOLY here! Right here we got it Murfreesboroopoly a fun game celebrating the BORO and on the front they give props to MTSU, Main Street Murfreesboro, Cannonsburg Village. Nice nice nice. Good packaging they didn’t completely rip off Monopoly on the front they just kind of paid homage to it. (I mean I guess they did.) The sides have pretty basic branding, nothing too spectacular. On the back you can see the entire the entire playing field and they got a lot of stuff right here and I’m really looking forward to it. I don’t want to do reading for the blind I’ll just get the bullet points here. How do you make a game about the great city of Murfreesboro Tennessee? While it’s impossible to ridicule everything we jammed all the Murfreesboro we could into this box. Here’s a quick idea of how to play. They’ve got the full version of Monopoly where you sit there and play for hours until everybody gets frustrated and quits because the game is never gonna freaking end! And there’s a one hour condensed version as well. Let’s unwrap this rascal! UNBOXING ! Get my corn based shrink wrap off the box here. Is this really corn based? (sniff) Doesn’t smell like corn. Here we have it and let’s go ahead and lift the lid. And it’s a box with nothing special showing right away. We’ve got the the game board right here. I’m going to save that for just a moment and we’re going to look over the pieces. Oh looks like we got some of that soy based paper there. Um how do I unwrap this? I have no fingernails I’m a guitar player. So let’s very odd. A couple odd things. A couple loose pieces that kind of seem to have popped out of their bags. Hmm but let’s see if I can open this with my teeth… This is all the money and they are a little bit different than the game of Monopoly. Same denominations but they did apparently go for their own designs. I don’t know how much licensing they needed to purchase from the makers of Monopoly or if they needed to purchase it all. Did it just become did it just become part of the public domain? I do not have a clue. And then you get a 500 dollar bill there. All the denominations that you would normally have in a game of Monopoly is included in Murfreesboroopoly and I do not expect them to make a different design for every town they do. Here are all the uh the cards. They don’t have question marks on them, they have exclamation points and thumbs up on them. And then we have the properties and the properties are all just what’s on the board. THE GAME BOARD! Let’s see how good they did for the town of Murfreesboro! Besides forgetting about Premiere Six Theater. (Maybe they asked who wanted to be on here and maybe Premiere 6 just said we’re too cool.) By the way I’m wearing my Premier Six Theater shirt today in homage because I knew they weren’t on here. Oh and there was one other drastic oversight that they left out of the game… City Cafe. It’s been here over a hundred years and it’s right off the square. How could they leave that out of Murfreesboro-opoly? Okay you got Batey Farms right there. That’s the place where you go and pick your own strawberries in the springtime. The world’s largest cedar bucket in Cannonsburg Village which is an old timey village which they were talking about ripping out and replacing with a AAA baseball park and got a bunch of people up in arms about this year. Mercury Boulevard which has been renamed Martin Luther King. So that’s actually outdated now. Boro Beach. The most crowded swimming hole ever. Lanes Trains and Automobiles. That’s a cool one. That’s a bowling alley and arcade with great food and fun. We love them. Discovery Center. That’s sort of like an adventure science center kind of thing. Traffic Jam. Yeah we’re getting more of those with the way Nashville’s been blowing up. (Murfreesboro is 30 minutes outside of Nashville). Slick Pig Barbecue. Home of the famous Smoked Wings. MTSU Student Film Festival. They they appear to be very enamored with MTSU here. I mean it’s a big part of our community. We love them. I like to take in a baseball game over at MTSU especially on two dollar Tuesdays because I’m cheap like that, but there’s much more to Murfreesboro than just MTSU. Main Street Saturday Market. Where you go around the square and visit all the farmers. Mayday Brewery. A crown jewel of the city! Memorial Boulevard... Barfield Crescent Park. That’s a wonderful park we have with trail heads and and a nature center that you can go learn about turtles and stuff. Cannonsburg Village like we talked about earlier. Stones River Greenway. Here’s MTSU, Johnnie Red Floyd Stadium which is in MTSU. Murphy Center also in MTSU. Come on guys enough with the MTSU. Northwest Broad Street. Oaklands Mansion which is a Civil War era mansion that we have here and they’ll give you guided tours and ghost tours too! Bradley Academy Museum. Main Street Jazz Fest. That’s the big event every year out on the square. Museum of Natural History. That’s a good one and that’s kind of on a little side street that we have here. You kind of kind of go looking for that one but it’s a very cool place. Stone’s River National Battlefield. We had a very large Civil War battle here in Murfreesboro and you can go get into the history of that right there on the battlefield. It’s an amazing day trip! Center for the Arts. The Square where you got the jazz fest and the neighborhood market. And finally… Main Street. And the big main graphic for the game is actually the dome of the courthouse in the middle of the downtown square, Pre-Civil War era. Center of Tennessee. Yes we have an obelisk. Murfreesboro is the geographical center of the state of Tennessee and we have a pile of pointy rocks to prove it. Actually it used to be the capital of Tennessee at one point. Parking ticket pay $75. Well… our parking tickets downtown, it’s kind of cute. They’re more like $3. And… I’m back to start. Okay there is the board! You put your money. Someone’s got to be the banker. Contingency and big fun. I’m going to assume that the exclamation points are the contingency cards and the thumbs up are the big fun. GAME PIECES I’m going to assume that the game pieces are going to be the same for any town. They’re not molding special pieces for your town. You got a couple of die here.As far as the player pieces go you’ve got the big smile, a heart. These are all metal! Oh that’s quality. It’s not plastic junk. You actually have real metal pieces here. A pretzel, a hand for slapping someone who gets silly with you, the boot and the little doggy. So they kept some of the old. You don’t have the car, thimble, iron or anything like that. PROPERTIES Boy you can’t even call these houses. Instead of houses and hotels you have little gray boxes which unfortunately is pretty much all they’re building for housing these days. And you have golden keys because you have to pretty much be made of gold in order to afford one of these little gray boxes they build in these subdivisions which is all the new construction around here. That’s the only thing bad I’ve got to say about Murfreesboro. It’s getting overdeveloped because Nashville has gone crazy and with a huge boom over the last 10 years and all the surrounding areas outside of Nashville have been going up with it and the housing prices have been going through the roof. The people who can’t afford to live to Nashville all come here and drive up our cost of living. I’m glad we bought our house before it got too crazy! And here we are here at the Dandy Fun House Studios as a result and very happy to be here by the way. All right well that’s the layout! I’m not really going to show you how to play the game of Monopoly which this basically is because I don’t want to insult your intelligence. Everybody knows how to play Monopoly and if you don’t I’m sure somewhere around your house you probably have a game of Monopoly sitting around. FINAL THOUGHTS AND RANKING Murfreesboro*Opoly! What can I say? It’s just really cool. I’ve wanted to get this thing for the past three years and finally got my hands on it and I’m glad I did. It’s just really cool to have a board game about your own hometown and a really good gift that you can share with your friends and family who might not live in your town to help them learn more about it. This hits the mark in a lot of ways. They didn’t really go too deep into our local culture here but they got the major high points and I’ll give them props for that. Late for the sky I think you did a great job on this and I’m just I’m loving this and I can’t wait to play it with my family! My rating for Murfreesboro*Opoly… I will give it an eight out of ten and I almost never give anyone a ten so that’s a pretty darn good rating! MOVIES! MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF 2023! GODZILLA MINUS ONE! I will say hands down my favorite movie of 2023 is without a doubt GODZILLA MINUS ONE! If you haven’t seen it, go! Just go! Why did I love this movie? For me, it felt exactly like a classic Godzilla movie from back in the days when they took time to build a good story and characters you actually care about rather than what most movies do these days which is write a flimsy story and just get to the action. A movie is just so much more impactful when you actually care about what’s going on and what happens to the people in it. The story is about a Japanese kamikaze pilot at the end of World War II who gets cold feet and aborts his mission under the guise of a plane malfunction and lands on an island where the Japanese military had a repair facility. While on the island, they get attacked by a smaller Godzilla before he grew to full size and power. The kamikaze pilot is presented with an opportunity to kill this smaller version of Godzilla (which was still pretty large and fearsome) but once again gets cold feet. The monster proceeds to kill everyone on the island except for the pilot with cold feet and one mechanic who holds the pilot responsible. For the rest of the movie, the kamikaze pilot struggles with his guilt and shame throughout various attacks on Japan as the creature gets larger and larger until he finally figures out a way to supposedly kill Godzilla and summons up the courage to place his own life on the line to carry out the plan. The entire movie is in Japanese and has English subtitles, but for me that only made everything even more authentic, unique and enjoyable. WONKA I’ll admit I was very skeptical going into this one. In fact, the only reason I went was because my family was going so I tagged along. How in the world can you even try to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the original? Good thing they didn’t try. Instead they cleverly imagined and quite successfully captured what a young Willy Wonka might be like just starting out on his chocolate career. I’m not a guy who’s big into musicals, but in my opinion, this was good. Real good and the people who made this movie just did an excellent job. Great film for the whole family, I highly recommend it!   MOVIES I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO IN 2024! DUNE 2 I remember last year around this time I was talking about how much I’m looking forward to DUNE 2 coming out. Did this thing ever come out? Did I miss it? Nope, it’s scheduled for theatrical release March 1st. This time with twice as much Zendaya! Which will mean about TEN minutes… GHOSTBUSTERS FROZEN EMPIRE Man they brought this franchise back with a bang didn’t they? The last one was so good and recaptured the spirit (no pun intended) of what Ghostbusters is all about. I can’t wait to see Frozen Empire! Who you gonna call? It’d better be me if you’re headed to the theater to see Ghostbusters Frozen Empire! Slated to hit theatres March 29th! KUNG FU PANDA 4 Umm… Sure why not! GODZILLA X KONG Ok, what’s the X all about? Is it Godzilla VERSUS Kong or Godzilla AND Kong as in teaming up and fighting a giant space worm or something? I have no idea but we’ve already had a recent Godzilla and Kong movie and it was pretty decent. Not nearly as good as Godzilla Minus One, but pretty good. Is there anything new to do with these guys together or are we just milking the money cow here? Will I go see it? Yes I will! There’s your answer I suppose! DEADPOOL 3 I guess Ryan Reynolds got some free time away from Mint Mobile to rehash another Deadpool movie. Always entertaining, always fun, never for the kids. Parents be advised. KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES YES! YES! YES! YES! I’m sorta looking forward to this one… THE GARFIELD MOVIE Ok, I guess this is going to be sort of an origins story of how Garfield and Jon connected because it’s labeled as a reboot. I hope it does well, but I’m not sure kids these days even know who Garfield is anymore. It’ll be interesting to see how this does. BAD BOYS 4 Ok you can stop it with this one already. DESPICABLE ME 4 Something to take the kids to I guess MUFASA: THE LION KING This one is going to be a prequel and I think it’s a great idea. Mufasa definitely has an interesting story to dig into and since he was killed off very early in The Lion King, I think giving this character his own feature is a great move by a cheese-eating empire (which I do not mention on this program) that has made nothing but stupid, family-unfriendly moves over the past decade. I’ll support this one and hope they don’t ruin it which they hopefully won’t but probably will. VENOM 3 Venom 1 was great. Venom 2 not so much. Hopefully they get this train back on track here because when Venom is good, Venom is real good! Don’t let me down guys! CAPTAIN AMERICA – BRAVE NEW WORLD Ok, I love me some Captain America! The superhero movies have been a bit overbaked and it seems the entire world has superhero fatigue. But if there is one out there who can reignite the flame, I’ll put my money down on the Captain America horse every time! HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON This one is going to be awesome for the little ones! How can you go wrong!? BEETLEJUICE 2 Alright! Strap yourselves in! First Michael Keaton reprises his role in Batman and now Beetlejuice!? I’m pretty sure Wynona Rider is signed on for this. Not sure if they managed to get Gina Davis and Alec Baldwin. Might want to pat down Alec before he comes on the set though. TRANSFORMERS ONE I liked the last Transformers movie. I’ll admit I never really got into the whole Transformers thing but the flicks are enjoyable. I’ll check this one out! SAW XI Been there. Saw that. What are we doing here guys? JOKER: Folie à DEUX The talent is certainly there with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga teaming up. I’m just really happy to not be seeing Margot Robbie doing Harley Quinn anymore and she’s probably happy not to be doing Harley Quinn anymore. It’s the voice. I can’t take the voice. Make it stop! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAKE IT STOP!!!!! SMILE 2 Why in the world are they making another one of this? WOLF MAN Ok, I can get behind this! A classic Universal Monster that hasn’t had a refresh in decades. Long overdue in my opinion. Starring Liz Cheney Jr.! GLADIATOR 2 Wait… Didn’t he die at the end of the first one. Went to Valhalla after defeating the emporer in the colosseum and was reunited with his family? What are they going to do? Drag him to the Roman doctor and revive him? LORD OF THE RINGS: WAR OF ROHIRRIM For you rabid LOTR fans who just can’t get enough, I can’t count myself amongst you but… respect! Here you go! A new bone! Chew my doggies! Chew! SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 Does Jim Carrey really need the work this badly? Ad that pretty much Christmas wraps it for 2023! I’ve been very blessed by God that the following for this show has seen healthy growth over the past year and I think that can be attributed to a clearer vision for the type of content I produce, freshening up the branding to make it better-reflect that and also the production of a series of under-one-minute short videos for each episode which appears to be supercharging the reach of the show. A big thank you to all of you who take the time to hang out with me here when you can. SUPPORT THE DANDY FUN HOUSE! Please don’t forget that if you would like to support what The Dandy Fun House does, you can visit the patronage page at http://www.dandyfunhouse.com and donate to the production of future episodes which helps me purchase the things I review along with props that make the show more interesting, website hosting, podcast hosting and keeping the lights on in general. It all has a cost. Supporters gain access to exclusive bonus features! and… Super Supporters also gain access to those same features plus I’ll mail you a special surprise from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios IF you provide your mailing address! Podcast listeners can also contribute via the donation button on the podcast app of your choice. And 5 star reviews wherever you can leave them always get my undying gratitude! Are you ready for 2024??? I know I am! Lots of exciting stuff on the horizon and I’m going to be bringing it to you right here at the Dandy Fun House! So come on back soon where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY! Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment and Productions, musician, DJ, Emcee and author. Aren’t you impressed?       | — | ||||||
| 12/1/23 | MONKEY SEE MONKEY POO Game Unboxing and Review – Dandy Fun House episode 36 | watch video below!   listen to the podcast below!   In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, I’m going to unbox, review and show you how to play a true game of glorious disgusting fecal flinging fun! This is one I’ve been avoiding for obvious reasons for a while now because I’m not exactly sure how you review something like what we’re about to get into, so all I can say is I hope you have your hazmat suit handy because we’re going into primate pen. THIS is the game of MONKEY SEE MONKEY POO! Let’s step into the Fun House! Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House video show, podcast and blog! I’m your host Neil Dandy and this is where we shovel up the best in retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff! And boy do we have a banana-scented treat for you today! I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’m not going to do a tease, I’m not going to get super cute with this one because I have a feeling this game review is going to speak for itself. It’s the game of MONKEY SEE MONKEY POO by Spin Master. Ok, my show is not very big yet but for those of you who ARE avid consumers of this program, you’ll know that as of late I’ve been very heavy with the reviews of Spin Master games. I want you to know that I am NOT a shill for Spin Master. In fact, when I choose a game to review, I do not even look to see who makes it. I simply choose the most interesting ones I can find and then do a deep dive into the product. The fact that three of my last four or five reviews have been from Spin Master is purely by happenstance although I have trouble saying that because I choose what catches my eye and apparently the things that Spin Master makes does indeed catch MY EYE. I HAVE AN AXE TO GRIND WITH SPIN MASTER! To be honest, I’m actually a little annoyed with Spin Master in one regard because every time I review one of their games, I send them a nice note through their website to let them know I’ve reviewed one of their products and the response is… CRICKETS! NOTHING! NADA! BUPKISS! ZILCH! Not a thank you, not a we look forward to checking it out, not an automated reply, NOTHING! It’s like shouting into the ether and it’s frustrating. I know I’m not the biggest fish in the pond out here, but not only am I a reviewer but I purchase these products with my own money and I’m by no means a wealthy person. I think a little shred of common courtesy could go a long way with your customers there Spin Master. Ghosting them when they send you nice letters isn’t exactly great PR. Ok, now that I’ve vented my frustration, let’s see what we have here. I want to let you know upfront that while I usually give the back history on the company that makes the product, since I’ve recently reviewed a couple of other Spin Master products, I feel a little silly giving their history yet again. You can check out the review of the game SOGGY DOGGY if you’re interested in learning more of the company history. I think I have enough on my hands with a game that’s all about throwing poop here so let’s get into this and see what we’ve got. THE BOX Here we go. Monkey See Monkey Poo with banana-scented poo. I am looking forward to smelling some bananas, and I think that’s a good thing they did there. There’s a little picture of the actual game there in the corner of the box, a cartoon of a monkey throwing poop at other monkeys in a tree and big bunches of bananas and some monkeys sticking their tongue out. Got a little peek at the toy there through the cellophane in the box. That’s what we call a TWAG, a toy with a game. Let’s see what’s on the sides here. Just the logo. Good logo, good marketing. They’ve even got a song. I’ll put a link to it at the end of this article for your enjoyment. On the back of the box, we’ve got some instructions and it says: If a monkey sees, then a monkey poos. In this game, so will you! Well… I’ve never played a game that’s made me poop myself, so this will be a first! “Fill the monkey with banana-scented poo, climb and collect bananas!” I’ve watched a few videos from people who don’t do it as good as me, of course but the object appears to be that you knock down bunches of bananas in the tree. If you knock them down, your monkey climbs a level. Then you reach the top. Then you start all over again??? That doesn’t really make sense to me. It makes more sense that if you reach the top first, you should win. The instructions I saw were online from the company. They were kind of convoluted and sort of complicated. I don’t know what’s up with that, but I don’t like complicated. I like simple so we’re just going to do this in a way that’s simple and actually makes sense! To heck with the instructions, Let’s open this thing up. UNBOXING There’s a piece of tape right there. Do I need to get out my axe? Oh, good. Glad I had an axe to grind with Spin Master. Otherwise, I’d have had trouble getting it open. Okay, so first on top we’ve got a clear bucket of monkey poop. I’m guessing it’s going to be sort of the consistency of Play-Doh (not the philosopher) Digging deeper, there’s a little plastic green base here. I think there’s going to be a lot of assembly. …cardboard divider, get rid of that. Let’s see what else we’ve got here. Instructions! We know what we do with those. Goodbye. Next we have the monkey’s creepy detached hands. They are cupped ready for a ball of poop. You attach them to the monkey body, apparently. Let’s see what else we’ve got here… Flourescent green-colored ropes, things to stand stuff up on, and an arrow, I guess, for the game spinner. Okay, we’ve got a bag with various other parts with the– Oh, oh, the slap disk! You slap on that to make the monkey throw the poop! I have absolutely no idea what this oval-shaped orange piece is here. Here’s another orange piece, and I have no idea what it is, but it has some kind of– Well, it looks like bananas and poop combined, stamped into the plastic. This is a pretty darn disgusting game, people! …Monkey feet. Another plastic bag here… And this appears to be the main pieces of the game. You’ve got a bunch of little cardboard bananas that you kind of punch out of the sheet there. You’ve got different monkey characters, which you punch out of the cardboard sheet. Banana bunches of various sizes. This is all cardboard stuff and some kind of design elements for the tree. Ahh we come to the spinner board! Need to attach the spinning arrow and the part that keeps the spinning arrow from spinning off! Apparently I’m going to have no choice but to read some instructions. And we have the monkey tree. Monkey tree, monkey poo. I think the idea is you’re going to have to kind of fold the monkey tree a little bit so that it stays upright. This is basically a glorified McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy! Well, without further ado, let’s get to the star of our show here… THE MONKEY! “Here we come, walking down the street. Throw a handful of poo at everyone we meet.” It is a plastic monkey kind of hunched over, not really in a pooping position, but more in a pitching position. Much like a baseball pitcher on the mound and I don’t think I want to know what that mound is made of. Let’s see if I can get this monkey out of its restraints. And here is the monkey unleash. [monkey noises] Wow. Just wow. Hunched over. The arms are going to snap into the sides pretty obviously. I think we can go ahead and do that.I mean, if you’re going to throw poop, throw it right. …Okay. The monkey arms are in place. They’re ready to pitch the fecalia. They come around behind the posterior of the monkey to catch the pitchable substance, which comes out the end. And apparently there’s a thing you slap and it makes it do kind of a throw from the butt over the top of the head and flinging forward. Oh yeah, this is going to be great! I’ll go ahead and attach the feet now. Everything appears to just snap right into place.   Okay… This big green thing I pulled out at the beginning. A plastic platform. It’s got indents that are foot-shaped, so that’s pretty obvious that the feet will snap into there. And our monkey is in place. And the slapper, oh, okay, I get it. I get it. The slapper fits into a couple of notches here on the monkey base and there’s a protruding element that goes under the hands, and when you slap, I got it. It flings the monkey’s hands forward. Now, I’m going to assume this orange thing, which I did not understand what it was, appears to be the monkey butt. And it appears to be half blocked. I don’t know what the purpose of that would be. Why would you want to block the monkey poop? Maybe so it makes like good curls or something… Am I really reviewing this product here? Am I really reviewing a monkey poop product!? I apparently am. Lord help me! Okay, the monkey’s butt is affixed into place now. And here’s the last orange piece right here in my hand. I figured out what it’s for. This is the crammer that pushes the monkey poop through the monkey’s body. Kind of like a food processor, you know, that thing you use to shove the food down the top hole of the food processor? Sort of the same principle. There’s a snap on the back of the monkey’s body. There you go. It snapped into place. And I see now it’s supposed to be the monkey’s tail! Well, let’s go ahead and push a little! We’ve done enough assembly here. It’s time to have a little fun, okay? Here’s like the Play-Doh looking poop stuff. I’m going to take a whiff of it… It doesn’t really smell like bananas to me… I made a smoothie this morning, a chocolate banana smoothie, in honor of the occasion. And my smoothie smells more like bananas than this bucket of Play-Doh looking stuff does. I’m going to go ahead and pull out the banana poop clay here… And I don’t think I need to form it or anything. You just kind of need to cram it into the hole on top of the monkey. It’s got a different consistency to it, though. It’s more rubbery than like Play-Doh-y which feels to me like it probably won’t dry out as fast as something like Play-Doh. Okay, so I’ve put a wad of the monkey poop compound into the back of the monkey. And now I’m going to cram it with the special monkey poop crammer to see what we get. Oh, isn’t that lovely! And it doesn’t pinch itself off. You have to pinch it off by hand. Really? Come on. And I don’t even think that process is necessary because you can just put a wad of the monkey poop directly into the monkey’s hands without cramming it through, but where’s the fun in that? Okay, so now I got the poop. I’ve pinched it off from its butt. (might need some Charmin in there, pal…) And now we’ve got the curled up loaf in the hands. What the heck? I’m going to put my left hand in front of the monkey and I’m going to slap the slapper with my right hand, and I’m going to see if I can catch the monkey poop in my hand. (SLAP!) And it didn’t fly worth anything. (SLAP AGAIN!) Okay, that flew. (SLAP AGAIN!) Slapped a little harder that time. There’s like things under the slapper. Maybe that’s affecting it. (SLAP!) Huh. So I guess I’m not able to get this thing to fly very far, so I’m guessing I’m going to have to get really close to the tree. Or maybe the whole thing’s just a gimmick and it doesn’t work very well. Who knows? We’re going to find out. (SLAP!) That didn’t work very well. I kind of stick it on the fingers. (SLAP!) Some experimentation might be in order… (SLAP!) Oh! (SLAP!) I stuck the poo. Instead of in the cup of the hands, I stuck it on just the tips of the fingers, gave it a slap, and then it flew really well! And my dog’s freaking out. I’m glad you know we lost Emma-Lou back in the middle of the year of 2023 and we’re fostering another doggy. Her name’s Carly, and she’s here in the room with me, and she’s being extremely well-behaved. And I am thankful for that. Okay, I’m going to put that monkey poop back in the container because we’ve got to make progress here! I think I need to assemble the tree, and I’m going to have to do some instruction reading here. And I’m sure that this also means that we’re going to do some fast motion video here. Let’s go!   GAME ASSEMBLY Uh, putting the tree together, it’s a cardboard tree. You have to fold it. Sort of like a big McDonald’s happy meal toy is the best way I can describe this piece as a cardboard with different designs on it and you fold and then you push the platforms into slots and you make it. And the trouble I got, there’s different platforms to put bananas on. The trouble I came into was the very top level. It tells you to align three slots. Well, the only way it fits, there’s two slots that fit into the top of the tree and then there’s a line where I’m guessing there was supposed to be a third slot unless I’ve really made a mistake and there’s a protuberance from the top of the tree support that looks like it’s supposed to go into that slot, but no slot was cut. So I had to take out my trusty Swiss army knife and cut my own slot. Okay. So I’m attaching bases to the bananas and sticking bananas in the tree. I think we’re going to put the smaller banana bunches on. On the lower tiers, there’s five bunches of bananas in total. The last thing it appears is to attach these fluorescent neon greenish ropes. I guess they’re supposed to be jungle vines and they’ve got knots at the end of them. And I think it’s pretty self explanatory how to attach them to the tree. There’s one, two, three. For ropes and there’s one, two, three, four. Well, there’s.(…) There are five slots. So maybe that top tier was supposed to go in the other way, but I couldn’t make it go in the other way. I could not. And according to… Oh, I’ve got the top tier of the tree on backwards! That’s why it wouldn’t fit and I thought I had to cut it, but the slots didn’t line up, so I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. And then and then when I do line them up and and put this the top tier on the other way… Ohhh I may have potentially assembled the entire game backwards! Well, I’m all confused here now. The instructions aren’t real, real clear here. See if I can find the picture of the monkey taking the shower and use that as a reference point with the picture on the box… Oh, I see what I did here. I assembled the entire tree backwards. That’s why nothing fits like it should. They weren’t real clear as to which was the front and which was the back. That could use some improving! Instead of the support attaching to the rear, the support goes into the front! I just assumed that the support would go in the back. OK, my apologies to Spin Master but they should make that more clear in the instructions. Oh, that fits in so much nicer. OK, I’m putting the platforms back into their proper slots, which are properly cut out and it fits together like a charm. All right. So if you have trouble putting this thing together and you’re wondering what is going on, put the put the tree support in the other way. Let’s put the bananas back in their pooper places. Oh,(…) how many poop puns can I make in one day? So now we’ve got our monkeys here. We’re going to attach them to the vines and we are just about to start some gameplay flinging some fekai!   GAME PLAY We’ve got four different monkeys here. I’ll refer back to the instructions set up game play. (…) Number one, choose a monkey. Well, who’s going to be your monkey? Do they have names? Did they give them names? Doesn’t appear that they gave them names. OK, we got one just holding a banana in the hand and kind of a bewildered look. And that’s a pink monkey. We have one brown monkey and it’s shoving a banana up its nose and half winking. And then we’ve got purple monkey, very astute looking English gentleman monkey with a little tiny English mustache, banana peel for a hat, drinking a very tiny little cappuccino and holding a walking cane in one hand. And finally, our fourth monkey, we have the blue monkey. Who’s holding a banana in its tail and appears to be quite frightened of the flinging fecai coming its way. OK, choose a monkey. Then you spin. (…) I spun a 3. What does that mean? Do I throw 3 times? Then you poop the monkey… and the monkey poops into its hands. I’ll try not to use “his or her” because you never know. Female monkeys can can poop in their own hands. It’s it’s not gender specific, you know. So we’ve got a big, big, big wad of poop. And I guess one of the fun things is you get to design it how you like. After the monkey poops, you kind of you can kind of make a poop design of your choosing. I made sort of a soft serve ice cream swirl. think that’s not bad for a beginner! (…) To fire, place one hand on the monkey flinger’s base. Keep it steady with your other hand over the launcher.(…) Aim at the tree, slap the launcher and let the feces fly! (SLAP!) Well, I knocked down the biggest bunch of bananas, but I didn’t actually knock it down. It was more me pounding on the table. See if I can do this a little better here. (SLAP!) Pretty much knocked everything down that time, but that wasn’t aiming. That wasn’t skill. That wasn’t anything but a ball of poop hitting the tree and making it all come down. Collect banana tokens after fleeing the poo, collect a banana token for each banana bunch you knocked over.(…) One, two, three, four.(…) So I.(…) OK, so I’m going to pick up my banana tokens is what they call these individual bananas. So I’ve got four. (…) Tree climbing, when a player collects three banana tokens, it’s time to trade them in and climb to the next level on the tree. (…) So I’ve got three. So for every three, you climb a level. So I have climbed up to the second level there. (…) If you knock over the entire tree, it’s a BANANA BLOWOUT! Collect one banana token and your turn ends. No more poop for you. So it’s a bad thing to knock over everything. So pretty much by knocking over four of the five banana bunches here, I maximized and got the most tokens one can get in a turn because I left one standing. Now, if you think you’re going to build up the skill to be able to aim this you might want to think again. I think it’s just a poop show here. (…) I will say the poop squeezes through pretty darn easy and that’s half the fun is making the monkey poop and you will get hours of fun just pooping your monkey. You can take your monkey for walks. Make sure you carry a bag.   FINAL THOUGHTS And there you have MONKEY SEE MONKEY POO! the most fun you can have pooping a plastic toy monkey. What’s this show turned into? What am I gonna rate this thing? How do you rate a game like this? It’s the most fun you can have throwing poop and that’s just all there is to it. Go out and get it. It’s a whole lot of fun. Fill out your Christmas shopping. I think I just did because somebody’s gonna get that because I can’t take this to the youth room at my church.   SUPPORT THE DANDY FUN HOUSE And if you’d like to relieve me a little bit from my financial misery please consider becoming a patron of the Dandy Fun House by visiting http://www.dandyfunhouse.com Supporters get access to exclusive bonus content. Why you would want bonus content of this? I have no idea but I sure appreciate it. Super Supporters not only get all that exact same bonus material but,… butt, of course butt, I’m gonna mail you something from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios. Maybe a present from Calamity Carly the wonder dog. And if you listen to the podcast and your app supports making donations through there, I’m set up for that too. Just click the probably a little dollar sign button or something like that you’ll see in there. Click that and that sends me cryptocurrency. Alright that does it for me. I’m getting the poop out of here! Neil Dandy out! Guys come back next month for the after-Christmas episode right here at the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY! Clean up time… Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment and Productions, musician, DJ, Emcee and author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
| 10/30/23 | MONSTER SQUAD MASHES AGAIN! – Dandy Fun House Halloween Special 2023 – episode 35 | watch the video below!   listen to the podcast below! Happy Halloween everybody! Let’s see if you remember this one! A young criminology student and inventor takes the night watchman shift at the local wax museum so he can go to school during the day. One of his inventions (a crime computer) accidentally wakes up 3 of the creatures from the Legendary Monsters exhibit bringing them to life along with their memories of past misdeeds! But now they feel guilty about all the people they used to disembowel and wish to make amends! So they team up to fight crime… MONSTER STYLE! In this Halloween 2023 special episode of the Dandy Fun House, get ready to get scary crime-fighting funky with… THE MONSTER SQUAD! Let’s step into the Fun House! Hello and welcome to the 2023 Halloween Special Edition of the Dandy Fun House video show, podcast and blog! This is where we wolf down the best in retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff. I’m your host Neil Dandy and in this episode, we’re going to open the coffin lid (start tv show intro) on a Saturday morning tv show from the mid-70s that ran for less than a year but still managed to make it’s bite marks on tv pop culture history and to be Frank… should have gotten more attention than it did. I’m talking about… THE MONSTER SQUAD! The Monster Squad was a Saturday morning tv series produced by D’Angeleo-Bullock-Allen Productions that aired on NBC from September 11, 1976 to September 3, 1977 and starred a young Fred Grandy who later went on to greater tv pop-culture fame playing the role of Gopher on The LOVE BOAT! Fred played a criminology student named Walt who took a night watchman job at Fred’s Wax Museum. There wasn’t a whole lot to do hanging out all night in a wax museum, so Walt passed the time tinkering with his invention, the “crime computer” which he kept stashed away inside a stone sarcophagus next to the legendary monsters exhibit. Well… When Walt plugged his crime computer in for the first time, oscillating vibrations unwittingly brought the wax statues of Dracula, Wolfman and Frankenstein’s Monster to life! Upon their awakening, the monsters found themselves filled with remorse for all the blood sucking, skull crushing and peeing on fire hydrants they were remembering from their past lives and had a desire to right their wrongs with humanity, so they teamed up with Walt and his crime computer to become supermonster crimefighters and take on supervillians all over town. Not sure what it was about this particular town that attracted all the evil weirdos of crime but I’m guessing they weren’t here in the South where I’m located. Lock and load my friends! Basically the monsters would go out and fight crime while Gopher err… I mean Walt would hang back in the cushy comforts of the wax museum and monitor everything from the crime computer. Every once in a while Walt would get off his tukus and come help his monster friends in the final climactic battle and rescue them from their screw-ups when he had to. The Monsters were played by: Henry Polic II Henry Polic II as Dracula: Henry’s best known for his portrayal of Jerry Silver on the tv show Webster. Buck Kartalian Wolfman or Bruce W. Wolf was played by: character actor Buck Kartalian and Michael Lane Frank N. Stein was played by: an actor named Michael Lane. Bruce Kartalian (left) and Michael Lane (right) from their wrestling days SCARY FUN FACT! An interesting note about Buck Kartalian and Michael Lane. They both came from the world of professional wrestling which I’m sure came in handy for the agility needed in action scenes! MONSTER SUPER POWERS: Franky had superstrength. Wolfie could climb walls and fight like a rabid dog (he also curled up on rugs and had a crush on Lassie) and Drac could… umm… turn into a bat??? Yep that’s pretty much it! Of course they had their own decked out Monster Van with wall-to-wall carpeting because you know… It was the 70s baby! And they all wore utility belts because… Batman. Stanley Ralph Ross, Head Writer of The Monster Squad The show actually looked and felt a lot like the Batman tv series, or maybe the discount store version of the Batman tv series with a lot of the visual and scriptual elements mainly because the creator, Stanley Ralph Ross had been one of the head writers on Batman. But it had almost zero star power. They did bring in the legndary Catwoman Julie Newmar (meow) for one episode to play the supervillianess, “Ultra Witch.” Her evil plot was to turn the entire world’s milk sour and she used a ray gun to turn the monsters into cardboard cutouts. In the end, she stupidly fires the ray gun into a mirror and turns herself into a cardboard cutout. There’s Darwinism in action for ya! They also brought in Alice Ghostly, best known as Esmeralda the housekeeper on Bewitched to play a villainess named Queen Bee who conducts an enormous swarm of killer bees in a plot to take over the world. Other than that, the special guest actors and actresses were very much B and C list. SCARY FUN FACT! The title of every episode of the Monster Squad was also the name of the super villain! TRUCKER HANDLES! Since it was the 70s Convoy was a bit hit and the CB radio fad was all the rage, of course they all had to have trucker handles! Walt back at the museum was “Chamber of Horrors”, Drac was “Nightflyer”, Frank was “Green Machine” and Wolfie was “Furball.” You know, I can’t imagine why this series didn’t last longer than it did! HOME VIDEO RELEASE: Although it lasted just under one year, it DID finally receive a modicum of respect when in 2009 Monster Squad: The Complete Series was released on home video. May I also add that there was a movie released in 1987 called THE MONSTER SQUAD which has absolutely no relation to the tv series. WHAT HAPPENED TO FRED GRANDY? Fred Grandy went on of course to earn pop culture legend status playing the role of Gopher on the iconic tv series The LOVE BOAT and later went on to serve four terms in the US House of Representatives for the great state of Iowa serving on the Ways and Means Committee, Agriculture, Standards of Official Conduct, Education and the Workforce. He also won EIGHT Watchdog of the Treasury awards! Go Go Gopher! From 1995 – 2000 he was President of Goodwill Industries International and later became a commentator for NPR! These days he spends a great deal of time contributing to think tanks for the purpose of combating domestic terrorism. A big BIG Dandy Fun House Halloween Special salute to you sir, Mr. Fred Grandy! Thank you for all you have done and continue to do for our country, but more importantly, pop culture history! Umm… ok… there you go! THE MONSTER SQUAD! Campy and goofy as all get out, but still a lot of fun and perfect for a Halloween regurgitation here on the Dandy Fun House! In my opinion, every bit as good as anything Sid and Marty Krofft ever made. That oughta fire up the comments board! Do you remember the MONSTER SQUAD? Share your thoughts about it with me by dropping a line through the contact page at www.dandyfunhouse.com While you’re there, consider supporting the production of future episodes by visiting the Patronage page and becoming a DANDY FUN HOUSE SUPPORTER! Supporters receive access to exclusive content and SUPER SUPPORTERS also gain access to exclusive bonus content PLUS I’ll send you something cool from here at the Dandy Fun House Studios IF you provide your mailing address. If you listen to the podcast and your app supports making donations, we’re set up for that too. 5 star reviews wherever you can leave them are also highly appreciated! Alright my Halloweiner Dogs, that about Mummy-Wraps up this Halloween 2023 edition of the Dandy Fun House. Don’t be a turkey. Come back next month for the Thanksgiving episode right here at the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY! Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment and Productions, musician, DJ, Emcee and author. Aren’t you impressed? | — | ||||||
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