NOTE: This article was originally written for Toy Collector Magazine, and was their cover story for their September 2007 issue. Article written by Chuck Miller. Go! Speed Racer Go! Written by Chuck Miller Forty years on, the voices of Speed and Trixie reveal the back story behind the now-classic TV series His skills were unmatched…
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I bet Karen Parker of Schenectady, New York wished she NEVER filmed that commercial …
You gotta love the YouTube algorithm. Thanks to it, I’ve had a bit of a deep dive into classic television commercials, including a series of ads for a 1980’s-era diet supplement. And in this commercial, several svelte, easy-on-the-eyes women offer their own personal testimonials about losing a lot of weight with a specific diet caramel…
Read MoreThe cheapest Marvel Cinematic Universe TV show ever made.
Last week, I blogged about the arrival of the new Fantastic Four: First Steps movie, and in the blog I mentioned that the Fantastic Four’s first TV appearances came from a 1967 Hanna-Barbera animated series. At the time, the Fantastic Four were part of an onslaught of Marvel super heroes on weekend television. For while…
Read MoreDoes Kylie Minogue know the plural of Coca-Cola?
Okay, follow me here. Kylie Minogue is an incredible singer and actress, and she’s drop-dead gorgeous. And at one point in time, she did a commercial for Coca-Cola. In fact, here’s the commercial. Minogue places an order for some pizza and soda, and a delivery driver scurries through a hotel to bring the food order…
Read MoreI was scared straight by Scared Straight!
Imagine this. It’s 1979, and there’s a documentary on local broadcast television. It features juvenile delinquents who enter a New Jersey prison and spend the next three hours learning the stories and experiences of the inmates. All the details. All the grisly, gory, seedy, scary, frightening, terrifying details. And we saw it all, unexpurgated and…
Read MoreDealer’s Choice: The game show that taught you how to gamble
It’s 1974, and local station WRGB just added a syndicated game show to its evening lineup. The game show, filmed in Las Vegas and featuring casino-style games, was called Dealer’s Choice. First hosted by Bob Hastings, and then by Jack Clark, survived for three seasons, and offered contestants the chance for big money and prizes…
Read MoreChevrolet’s chopping onions on my blog again.
It’s the holiday season, and this means companies will put together some seriously potent, heart-pulling commercials. In England, those commercials usually come from department stores. Here in the United States, we get the commercials from automobile manufacturers. And leading the pack, once again, is Chevrolet. Because of course they are. I blogged about this phenomenon…
Read MoreWhy did none of you tell me about Colin From Accounts?
Maybe it’s because I have a high bar for televised situation comedies. The characters work best in a presumably believable relationship, and the situations for each episode must make some sort of logical sense. All In The Family worked for me, so did M*A*S*H* and Cheers and The Big Bang Theory. And I also have…
Read MoreNow these are the Saturday morning shows I would watch – in Super Panavision.
I’ve blogged about this before – there’s a YouTube community that takes various TV and movie properties and re-imagines them as 1950’s-era motion pictures – complete with two-minute AI-generated movie trailers and stentorial narration. Fun stuff. Now recently I’ve come across a YouTuber who went for some impressive projects. He’s taking classic Saturday morning cartoons…
Read MoreJourney to the Center of the Earth – are you sure Jules Verne had a hand in this?
Follow along with me. It’s Saturday morning, you’re grabbing a bowl of Frosted Flakes and plopping yourself in front of the television while your parents get a late sleep. And right off the bat, one of the shows you watch features an episodic, formulaic science-fiction show that takes VERY literally the Jules Verne fantasy story…
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Chuck The Writer 
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