January / Winter

June 2001

I've mentioned before on this blog numerous times that while I love Life With Loopy, I tend to distance it from the rest of KaBlam since I don't care for much of the rest of the show (besides the ska music and Action League Now but that's beside the point). And with Quiet on Set out, I'm reminded of this one scene from the Henry and June wraparounds that REALLY bugs me, even moreso now with all we know.

So there's this one bit where Henry washes his and June's clothes with disappearing ink, and since they're cartoon characters, this makes their clothes start vanishing piece by piece. They freak out, June ends up hiding, but we end up seeing Henry lose all of it on-screen as an APM music cue called "Take It Off" plays.

...already really creepy in the late 90s, absolutely horrifying when you realize how much it plays out EXACTLY like some Dan Schneider shit. There are adult jokes in Nicktoons (and actually most cartoons to be honest) and for the MOST part they're pretty funny (mainly because the majority of them are done by adult characters played by adults)...but this was waaaaaaaaaay too close to what was actually going on with Nick's live-action shows, even if not then, what we'd eventually see down the line (this was at least animated so they weren't making anyone do it on screen, but...still. It makes you think, especially with the things they got away with on the Nickcoms). It just leaves a really, really gross taste in my mouth and it makes it age even worse than the dated pop culture references.

There's a fine line between "risque joke we're throwing in for the parents watching" and ".....someone actually approved this". Now that I'm looking back at stuff in The Amanda Show and everything in a whole new light, I remembered this since it was on around the same time, and yeah. It's just really weird and really creepy.

hot take : animated films need to stop hiring popular actors and start hiring talented voice actors

KiRBY SUPER STAR Nintendo Super NES 1996