You want to get rich? Then do this: start
taping children's shows. Commercials and all; leave out nothing.
Then, as each tape fills up, put it in a large cardboard box with
"DO NOT OPEN FOR 20 YEARS" printed on it. 20 years
later, open the box and take out the tapes. There will now be an
entire legion of people who will do ANYTHING to get their hands
on a copy, no matter how poorly-dubbed, and will pay you ANY
AMOUNT YOU ASK.
My generation, the late 80's/early 90's bunch, was the first to
grow up with the VCR and for the first time, if we have the right
tape, we can watch anything from our childhood as it originally
appeared. The children of the 70's don't have this option, and I
pity them(although based on what I've seen of 70's programming,
it might be good they can't go back). The only problem is, very
few of us thought to pop a blank tape in when we were watching
our favorites. Those that did now wield great power on the
Internet. You can either wait for a large corporation to bow to
you and release a DVD set, or you can look for a bootleg dubber
guy and get the closest thing to a time machine technology will
allow. As for me, I have every season of Garfield taped from
season four to season seven; the CBS originals. Very soon now,
they'll come wanting these...
But I have something even better! It's not
valuable yet, but it will be in a few years, I'm certain of that.
I kind of taped it by accident and I was hoping I hadn't erased
it, and it turns out I hadn't *phew*. I have a complete taping
of...KIDS WB'S VERY FIRST AIRING OF POKEMON.
If you have to ask why this will be such a hot find
someday...this half-hour was the gen-Y equivalent to the Beatles
appearing on Ed Sullivan---it was an immediate signal that the
craze had begun after months of buildup. The show had been airing
in syndication for a few months, building a bigger audience every
week, but not in all areas. Buzz was high and when the WB
announced three weeks prior that it would be running NEW episodes
of Pokemon, every kid in America waited for this morning to come.
The resulting ratings shot Kids WB well past its competitors for
the first time and officially lit the firecracker that the
Pokemon franchise was going to turn into. The trend changed the
face of TV and shifted programming dramatically toward anime. The
programming shift turned the small production/dubbing company
4Kids into a gigantic juggernaut, eventually growing powerful
enough to buy out Fox Kids and control something like half of
broadcast children's TV.
The year before they brought out Pokemon, 4Kids put out something
called "The New Adventures of Mr. Men and Little Miss."
I have that on tape as well, but only two minutes. From that I
got all this:
....I have no idea what's going on.
Anyway, few events on TV are as
big a watershed as this one turned out to be, and pretty much
every kid was into the first season of Pokemon. They're going to
want this tape, mark my words...
Announcer: "Hey kids, it's
party time at Kids WB!"
Toast: "Awriiight!"
Announcer: "Join all your favorite cartoon stars as we
welcome Ash, Misty, Brock, and all the new Pokemon! It's the
POKEMON PREMIERE PARTY!"
Batman's butler Alfred: "What should I wear?" He's
saying this while Batman is typing the Pokerap into his high-tech
computer. Loads of classic Kids WB characters dancing with the
beast that killed them---it's surreal, to be sure. And the coming
months would bring more where that came from: Pinky and the Brain
getting fried by Charmeleon, MIB agent Kay replacing Jay with
Bulbasaur, and the grand-medal winner of them all: Batman trying
to lull Robin to sleep by singing, "Jiigg-ly-puufff,
Jigg-lyy-puuuffff..." He stops there, and Robin demands,
"No, the WHOLE THING!!" Every time I tell people about
that last ad, they ask to see it. I don't have it on this tape
and I don't know where you can get it.
And there you have it--the first
episode of Pokemon aired on network TV was episode #42, "The
Problem with Paras." There are over 300 Pokemon episodes in
existence now, so you might not remember this particular one.
It's the one where they go somewhere and meet a Pokemon with a
problem, and the gang try to solve that problem, and Team Rocket
tries to mess it up. It's that one.
I don't want to spend this page talking about the episode...I
think it'll be far more interesting to examine who sponsored it.
I mean, whoever paid to get their ad into THIS certainly got
their money's worth---it was the Super Bowl of kidvid they didn't
know about. Who got the maximum exposure? The VERY FIRST AD that
paid for Pokemon was.....
.
.
.
.
.
.
Hoboy, here we go. A kid is
sitting at a table declaring his love for Peanut Butter Crunch.
His sister goes, "If you love it so much, why don't you
marry it?" Instead of blowing her off, the kid goes,
"Hmmmm...." and fantasizes about marrying Peanut Butter
Crunch. First at a giant ceremony, where apparently in attendance
are several aliens and a guy in a chicken suit...Then we get
scenes from the couple's fast life--they're shown SURFING, as
astronauts in SPACE, and living a quiet life as yak herders. Then
he appears on a talk show(maybe Tom Snyder's), where the guy
asks, "So how does it feel to be MARRIED to a bowl of Peanut
Butter Crunch?" The kid yells happily, "I LOVE
IT!" and takes a bite out of his wife.
Wow...well. I wanted something
interesting, and...wow. Now you see why I couldn't wait another
10 years before reviewing this moment in history. THIS was the
first ad. However, I think everyone who remembers it wants to
strangle me now for bringing the memory back, so we'd better move
on to Ad 2.
MOVE ON TO AD 2