Underunderstood Wiki

Missing Media Mailbag

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Summary

We go through some missing media cases listeners have sent in.

Show notes

The show notes this week are a little different. We’re including most of the emails verbatim, since they contain lots of details about the mixed media. If your podcast app cuts these off, you can read the full post on Patreon.

If you know where any of this missing media is, or you just want to drop us a line, email hello@underunderstood.com or leave us a voice message at (212) 994-4882!

The Soulmates: The Gift of Light

Christmas Special

My question is about an animated Christmas special that aired in the early 2000s that always scared me to the point where I never watched it until the end. In fact, I would estimate I only reached the end of the first act at most.

I remember it centring around the theme of Christmas being commercialised, so there was one scene where a news reporter talks about reindeer being packaged into boxes and sold for mass market at malls. You would see Rudolf inside a cardboard box with a plastic window pane and children would come up to it begging for their parents to buy it for them. The next scene I remember is a lonely CEO-type at his desk. He’s reminiscing about the past and looks at a photo of a tiny woman that my memory tells me is the tooth fairy. The CEO is overwhelmed with guilt and grief. His body trembles as hair starts to grow on his skin as if he’s transforming into a werewolf. I’ve never watched past this part and as I grew older and challenged myself to finish it to the end, it just stopped airing.

I know for sure it aired for at least two years. When I was a kid, I literally only watched three channels (all Canadian): YTV which tended to air nickelodeon shows, Teletoon which often had Cartoon Network shows, and TVOkids which was basically Ontarian PBS. (These aren’t exact one-to-one equivalents, but that’s the gist.) I feel like I most likely found this special on YTV because, forgive me for my lack of precision, but it had Nickelodeon vibes. I can neither confirm nor deny if it was Nickelodeon or if this special even aired outside of Canada. Just the vibes based off of the studio’s brand identity and its properties.

The style of the special was very characteristic of late 90s early 2000s animation where everything was kind of ugly and gross and ironically cynical and dry. The colour palette was muted, the linework was thin and squiggly in an imitation of pen work (think Rugrats) and the character designs were reminiscent of Gary Larson’s Far Side or Bill Plimpton movies where everyone is round and fat with big noses, hairs, buck teeth etc. The point of this kind of style was to look funny or gross; that you were above looking cute or polished.

No one I have ever spoken to knows what TV special I’m talking about, granted I didn’t look much farther than asking some friends my age. I’ve exhausted every big online database: IMDb, Wikipedia, the YTV website, the other production websites etc etc. It would seem the special was so unpopular, no one thought to record its existence anywhere. Not to sound dramatic, but I may not be able to call myself an adult unless I see the end of that Christmas special. Just kidding. Or am I?

Thanks for reading and love the show, Lily

Mulch Worm

I have a distinct memory of an ad that was in some home and garden-type magazine in Boulder, CO in probably the 90s and 2000s, but I can’t find it through the ole’ google method. My dad owns an arborist business and would put his own ads in these types of magazines, so I would end up looking at them when he brought one home.

The ad that I remember is of a worm, standing upright, with a speech bubble next to its head with the word “mulch” inside. I am positive that this existed but I couldn’t find it in 20 minutes of googlin’ so I gave up.

This is very important because I fully intend to have this tattooed on me. I attached a sketch of what I remember, but I am a geologist and not a cartoonist, so yeah.

Thanks! Keep up the good work. Sam

Ben Folds Five: Kate

Hi, guys!

This is a case of a missing music video of the past—I used to be obsessed with the song “Kate” by Ben Folds Five, and when YouTube was just a fledgling, I remember watching the music video of the group snuggling in bed (Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee on the arms of Ben Folds), singing the song while seemingly, happily napping. I’ve recently gotten back into listening to “Kate,” but I can’t find the video anywhere. The only mention of it missing is in a 2016 Reddit post with 4 comments and a broken link. Can we understand what happened to the video and re-experience the full joy of the song?

Thanks!! Heidi

Our notes:

Disney Commercial

I grew up in Oakland, California in the later half of the 1990s. I have vague memories of a Disneyland commercial from my childhood (pretty sure it aired on ABC or another free non-cable channel), and I have been trying in vain to find a clip of it.

I don’t remember too many specific details, but I believe there was a jingle with these lyrics:

I wanna go to Disneyland I wanna be with my Disney friends Let’s go where the fun never stops Where the smiles never end

And after this verse, there was a voiceover where the narrator says the following (I don’t remember the second part of the statement):

Summer time can be even more fun….

And towards the end, there’s a lyric that goes something like:

What a happy feeling!

I emailed Disney Archives about a year ago to try and find some answers or even clues, but they responded just today saying that they were unfortunately unable to help. I will likely continue to try on and off to locate this commercial, but I don’t have high hopes of ever finding it.

I described this predicament to a colleague at work today, and she recommended getting in touch with you to see if you could potentially help.

If you are able to help with this, I would be incredibly grateful. Thanks for reading!

Best, John

Robot

During fall of last year, I took a course at my college titled “Games and Culture.” A discovery I made while interested in the material for this class led to me falling down a rabbit hole I have not left for the past 10+ months. A website called “The Arcade Flyer Archive” introduced me to a 1975 pong variant called Robot. On this flyer, Allied Leisure advertises an alluring description of human/machine interaction along with an early sci-fi example of machine sentience — this began my fascination with the game. I shortly discovered that there was no recorded version of Robot in existence. It has vanished completely.

I have since searched every corner of the internet (I’ve dumped my most significant findings Links), posted on Facebook pages, online forums, and reached out to some really helpful people within the arcade and Bronze Age games community. My greatest luck has been finding a physical manual at a shop in Canada, along with the schematics, flyer, and Cash Box Magazine mentioning Robot on eBay.

Despite being told by people I have talked to that it would be very difficult to find Robot (as there were only around 500 sold), I know for sure that there is one out there. According to Wayback Machine, an anonymous person uploaded images of Robot’s cabinet, marquee, control panel, and PBC around 2011-14. I believe that this upload is the best chance I have of finding somebody who owns Robot.

I care deeply about the preservation of Robot and machines like it, especially since it was considered a flop for its time. When I generally think about preservation, my mind goes to digitally archiving information. For arcade collectors, a different generation, preservation is a far more physical labor than digital process. I think that this is why the search has been challenging: internet deep diving can lead you in the right direction, but sometimes not to your destination.

Almost half a century ago, one last arcade decided to turn off Robot forever. If possible, with your help — I would like to turn one back on, and make it known again. Though this machine could be seen as insignificant to some, I believe that its contribution to our human history alongside of the machines we create is what makes it worth saving.

I really appreciate you reading this email.

Thank you for your Podcast.

Best regards, Alyssa

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