October 3, 2023 • 43 mins
It's a two-fer folks! It's all Bill & Ted all the time this week! We start out discussing one of the most intrguing media tie-in cereals, and then we talk about the show that went along with it. Your enjoyment of this episdoe will depend greatly on your fondness for the characters. I think you'll enjoy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
It's time to PLoP down in frontof the TV and the way back machine
with the bowl of your favorite cerealto relift the cartoons that made it worth
waking up early on the weekend.It's the Saturday Morning super Cast. Hello,
(00:42):
and welcome to the Saturday Morning superCast, where it's always Saturday morning
and the cereal bowl was always full. I'm Jeff, I'm Corey and Olivia
and we have a bit of akind of a two for for you today,
folks. The subject of both ofour discussions are going to be the
same. We are going to talkabout Bill and Ted's excellent Adventures, the
animated series, not the live actionseries that aired at the same time of
(01:04):
season two. But before that,we're going to talk about Bill and Ted's
excellent serial Righteous and I think it'sjust Bill and Ted's excellent cereal. Yes
it is, so before we start, are we are we all Bill and
Ted fans here? Yeah? Bigtime? I guess. Yeah. That
(01:29):
sounded really enthusiastic. But you atleast don't dislike it, right, That's
true that I do not. Okay, Okay, she took way too long.
Yeah I know. I think thatthat was a political answer I think,
well, we'll talk a little bitlater about our disparate feelings about Bill
(01:52):
and Ted as a franchise, butfirst I wanted to talk about Bill and
Ted's Excellent Cereal. This one wasalways interesting to me because it came out
in nineteen ninety and didn't even lastas long as the TV show. The
TV show last or for twenty oneepisodes over two years, and I think
it was on shelves about that longor less. The thing, the weird
thing about this one is there area couple of things that I do like
(02:14):
about this When they used the gimmick, well because instead of just putting out
some generic cereal, they actually themarshmallows are shaped like music notes, which
I thought was pretty cool quarter notesto be specific. And then we have
a little like I think those werequarter notes? Oh are they not?
Oh? Now I got to pullup the picture because I assumed you had
(02:35):
them all pulled up already, folks. In case you didn't know, Olivia
is a music teacher, which isone of the reasons that I defer to
her expertise on these sorts of things. I'll okay now, because that window
got closed when I pulled up theone for this cereal. Okay, my
bad, my bad, fixing itnow. No, those are eighth notes
(02:59):
with really bad flags. Okay,see I always thought that an eighth note.
Okay, So explain to me thedifference between the what a quarter note
looks like and what an eighth notelooks like that, Olivia, please,
Okay. They both have the samebody colored in black head, solid head
with a stem. Eighth notes havesome kind of tail or flag coming off
(03:28):
the top of the stem. Ifit's a single eighth note, if it's
a barred or beamed eighth note,then it's going to be connected to multiple
friends right with the beam across thetop. And the quarter note doesn't have
the flag. It's just got theline straight up right just the stem.
Okay, got it. It's beenjust long enough since I've read any music
that I looked at it. Iwas like, oh, those are quarter
(03:49):
notes because they're single. I wasthinking eighth notes were always because I'm always
used to seeing them, you know, barred like you said, barred together.
So as I was saying, folks, these are eighth notes the morseligership
like hate notes and we have thecereal itself, or are these you know,
just generic sort of oh shaped.Here's the weird thing. I want
to talk to you guys about this. The cereal is cinnamon oat flavored.
(04:10):
Uh huh. That does not soundlike it would go well with marshmallows to
me, does it to you either? Review? As I remember eating it,
I thought it was pretty good.I didn't even ask that question.
I didn't. I just assumed noneof us had ever had it. Corey,
you've actually had Bill and Ted's excellentcereal. It's one of the boxes
that I saved in my collection.Yeah, awesome. Okay, Well,
tell us about your experience with it, and as far as you remember,
(04:31):
you said you enjoyed it. Yeah. I thought the cinnamon, I guess
you can quit it to not quitethe kick of a cinnamon toast crunch,
but hun down just a bit.And the marshmallows were just kind of marshmallows
spectacular to it. But yes,I remember I had it multiple times.
Huh. So I just I can'timagine because you always think of with with
(04:54):
marshmallows. So we have like luckycharms, you know, it's basically like
alphabets with marshmallows. Make sure thatand we got other other cereal, it's
like fruit flavor with marshmallows. Forsome reason, the idea of pairing cinnamon
with like a very sweet marshmallow justseems like it wouldn't work. Olivia.
Do you did you have the samereaction to that? Am I the outlier
(05:16):
here? M It depends on howstrong this cinnamon is. Yeah, and
Corey said it wasn't super strong,so right, And as I recall,
or well I guess based off oflike me squinting at the box art because
I never had it. Am.I correct, Corey, that was a
(05:38):
cinnamon flavor, but it was notin any way like cinnamon sugar dusted or
anything. Correct. Okay, Sothat makes more sense to me. If
it was something like a cinnamon toastcrunch where it's all stuck on the exterior,
I could see adding the marshmallows beinga bit too much, right,
(06:00):
Yeah, same for me, Samefor me. And I think that's what
I was thinking, because when Ihear something described as cinnamon, I think
of like a very intense cinnamon flavor. But if it is just kind of
you know, we talked about oatmealsquares a while back, a long time
ago, I'm sure, and wetalked about at the time that oatmeal squares
had a very little mild or lightflavor, and I guess that's sort of
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what we're talking about here. AndI guess from that standpoint, if the
marshmallows, Corey would would sort oftake center stage. Okay, interesting,
Yeah, So Corey, what wasit that made you pick out this cereal
when you were but a wee ladnot only once but multiple times. Obviously
(06:42):
you liked it, so you hadmore, But what was it that made
you pick it out the first time? Because I love Bill and Ted?
Okay, we are of the samemind there, Okay, And I should
say it was produced by Ralston andit was a most awesome breakfast adventure Bill
and Ted's excellent cereal. And thebox art had, you know, the
animated versions of Bill and Ted withus in the phone booth, and yeah,
(07:03):
it was. It was a tiein, and it included there were
a ton of giveaways on this one. Uh. There were hysterical postcards,
not historical postcards, time travel luggagetags, dial a dude phone number organizers,
and plastic cassette cases meant to looklike the telephone booth that the duo
used as a time machine. Didyou have any of these, Corey?
(07:23):
And do you still have any ofthem? No? I don't think that
I've got any of them left.The postcards seemed to strike a memory bell,
but nothing too nothing too much.Yeah, okay, well we all
know that you know Corey's memory Swisscheese. So I'm amazed that you that
you remember this much about it.I'm impressed, very impressed. Uh.
(07:47):
The other thing that I thought wasreally cool was there was a promotion where
you could win a real phone booth. That's pretty cool. That can you
imagine like winning a phone booth?If your dial a dude things said you're
a winner on it, then youwin this phone booth. I don't I
can't imagine that this ever got givenaway, and if it did, that
the kid got to keep it.I mean, I don't see why they
(08:09):
wouldn't have a phone booth just kindof sitting around. Who says that it
had to work necessarily, I'm sureit didn't work. Yeah, I'm sure
it was all just for play.But I mean, you know, you
can put in the corner of yourroom and just have this glass a glass
case of emotion, like to puthim in time out. Yeah, if
anybody needs a documentary idea they coulddo. You know, did anybody get
(08:33):
the phone booth promotion along the linesof PEPSI, Where's My Jet? Yeah,
that's a good point, that's agood call. Yeah, I'm I'm
for that. We should, definitely, we should. Somebody should get to
work on that. And the diala dude thing. I'm guessing it's it
says it's small enough keeping your pocketto keep your awesome friends phone numbers back
(08:54):
when we didn't have phones and youactually had to write those down. I'm
guess it looked kind of like ajCard from a cassette and you just wrote
them down on there. Okay,interesting, So yeah, the serial again,
it was on store shelves for againabout a year, maybe a year
and a half, and we hadall of these promotions and the Mister Breakfast
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page has a lot of really coolphotos of of these boxes. Like there's
one that has the the Phone Boothcassette case and it was like on the
box, it wasn't inside the box. It was like cellophane around it.
It was like shrink wrapped onto thebox and it looked pretty cool. It
had like the antenna on top ofit and everything, but really it looks
less like a tape case and morelike a soap dish to me, right,
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or a small eight track cassette,something along those lines. And then
yeah, we have the postcards.And they also had the luggage tags.
Yeah lost some time luggage tags,I guess, so you could put on
your actual luggage. But so,Corey, let me ask you. Then,
did the flavor of the cereal?I don't know. I would have
(10:03):
expected Bill and Ted to have avery bright, vibrant fruit flavor. Why
do you suppose they decided to gowith cinnamon? I think the bright and
vibrant was taken care of by themarshmallow coloring. True, probably with Ralston
taking care of this. This isprobably just some cereal that they had around
from another filled cereal or something elsethat they have currently. They just decide
(10:28):
to enhance it with the marshmallows.Yeah, I think that's probably fairly accurate.
Olivia, what about you? Howdo you feel about the flavor combination
here? The flavor combination doesn't botherme. I will say, colorwise,
it kind of looks like a superduper cranked up version of like Apple Jacks.
(10:56):
That's sort of. I don't know, honest, in the picture,
it's hard to tell if the piecesare supposed to be like a true red
or more of an orange. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna ask if
you knew what shade you would callthose, So okay, let's they kind
(11:18):
of look orange compared to the redbanners, so I'm gonna call him orange.
But then you've also got like thepink and yellow music notes, and
there is no shortage of food diesin this, No, not at all.
I would I would hate to seewhat what the bathroom looked like when
you were done the next day.Who I don't know. I'm having a
(11:41):
hard time like trying to like thinkof, like would kid Live find this
appetizing? Grown up Live does not? So I don't know. Okay,
yeah, I don't know. Iget it. Yeah. I think I
would have been put off by thecinnamon and marshmallow flavor. Again, when
(12:05):
I was a kid, I didn'tlike marshmallow cereal, so I would not
have gone anywhere near this, especiallyknowing that it was cinnamon and marshmallow,
because again I just in my mindthat combination doesn't work. But Corey said
it was delicious, so I willI will defer to him. But so
this is one of the boxes thatyou do have still in your collection.
And reminder, Corey, how manyboxes do you think you have in that
collection? Probably about twenty to thirty. Nice, do you ever have any
(12:28):
plans to do anything with a likedisplay them anywhere? I gotta get up
in the attic and find them firstand see what kind of shapes there's still
in. Yeah, maybe you knowor maybe okay, so question project.
Yeah, that it'd be cool.So Olivia has already sort of tipped her
hand that this if they if theyreintroduce this, this is probably not something
that she would be interested in.I would probably give it a shot based
(12:52):
on Corey's recommendation. But Corey,if they rerelease this, is this one
that you remember finally enough that you'regoing to out and buy a couple of
boxes just to have anyway? Yeah, sure, why not? Yeah?
I think so as well. ButI am. I am intrigued about the
fact that it didn't last. Butyou know, that's not really that surprising.
Very few tie in cereals are arereally made to last. We talked
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about that before, especially in theeighties and nineties, so that that could
be part of it. So willthat's I think that's pretty much all we
have to say about Bill and Ted'sexcellence here, Lucy, any of either
one of you have any other thoughtsabout it, we can take a break
and come back and discuss the cartoon. Yeah, let's go on, Okay,
Yeah, all right. So Billand Ted's Excellent Adventures the cartoon was
(13:43):
produced. The first season was producedby Hannah Barbera. The second season,
which was only eight episodes. Thefirst season was thirteen, the second season
was eight, for a total oftwenty one episodes. Was produced by Deek
Entertainment, who produced you know,Pole Position and some of the other first
runs into cation shows that we sawas kids. But it came out in
nineteen ninety, which which surprised mebecause that's just a year after Bill and
(14:07):
Ted's Excellent Adventure came out in eightynine. However, I don't know if
both of you know this that Billand Ted's Excellent Adventure was actually filmed in
nineteen eighty seven. I did not, No, Yeah, it was filmed
in eighty seven and sat on theshelf for two years before it got passed
around to different studios after it wasafter it was released, I think the
study that produced it went bankrupt,and then it just finally got dumped into
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theaters and you know, sort ofdeveloped a kind of a cult following.
So before we talk about the cartoon, you know, Corey and I are
both big fans. Olivia said she'sshe doesn't dislike it, but it's maybe
not not high on her list.Well, so we'll keep in mind too.
I was really a little too youngfor it the first time around,
(14:52):
so fair Yeah, I wouldn't havereally caught it until probably it had already
been out for a good four orfive years, because I mean, at
that age, my parents were superkeen to go spend a ton of money
at you a first run movie theater, which I totally understand. And then
(15:16):
while we rented a ton of moviesas kids, I could also see like
mom not really wanting to rent thatbecause you know, it might have broadcast
to her as being older than maybeit necessarily skewed. Okay, sure,
(15:41):
So I don't think I even sawBill and Ted until maybe it aired on
a cable channel, and I wasprobably by then in like upper middle school
there high school. By the timeI finally got around to seeing it.
So yeah, I just I wasn'tthe right age when first release, so
(16:04):
I didn't really have that same kindof context. Got it makes sense.
I don't know about Corey, butfor me, the three Bill and Ted
movies, there's Bill and Ted's ExcellentAdventure, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey,
and then twenty twenty I believe,or twenty twenty one, we got Bill
and Ted face, the music,the the final story about it. But
(16:26):
what I find is when I goback and watch the first two now,
I still love them and I appreciatethem for different reasons. Do you find
that they sort of age with you? Corey? Yes I do, and
yes, much like you, theystill hold a very special place in my
heart. Yeah, there's jokes youget now that you might not have gotten
as a kid. I actually I'mkind of an outlier here. I prefer
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Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey to ExcellentAdventure. Okay, I find that Journey
had the better soundtrack. Oh,definitely, definitely, And I will go
to my grave saying that William sadOr was robbed of an Oscar nomination for
playing the Grim Reaper in Bogus Journey. He is definitely one of the reasons
that makes it a good film,he is. It did not do as
well, you know, because it'sa bit darker. It was originally going
(17:10):
to be called Bill and Ted goto Hell and they think better of it.
I thought, that's kind of abad that's kind of a hard sell.
So it didn't do as well becauseit was a bit of a departure.
It wasn't about time travel. Theywere, you know, going through
the underworld and everything. But Ithought it was a really good expansion of
the lore and everything. But Facethe Music, I thought, Corey,
(17:33):
did you see Face the Music?Oh? Yes, many times. I
own it. Okay, I dotoo. It seems like it's missing an
act. To me, the endingis very and it just yeah, it
just seems it seems like there's anact or half an act missing from it.
I still love it. It's it'sstill a lot of fun, but
(17:53):
but it is a little a littleodd. But I tell you, the
actresses that play their daughters in Himare are phenomenal. Yeah, it was
a lot of fun. Yeah,so okay, so so live again.
I feel like you're you're sort ofone of those people you understand why we
love it. But it's just notyour cup of tea. So I'll be
(18:14):
interested to hear both of your thoughtson this before we talk about the cartoon.
Why do you think that it wasn'ta bigger franchise than it was more
successful than it was, because,again, teenage boys in the early nineties,
we're eating it up. But thenwe got this series, this animated
series. It lasted basically a seasonand a half, the live action series,
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which was awful. Is it becausethose two things just sort of sullied
the reputation, and maybe Bogus Journeysort of left a bad taste in people's
mouth. What do you think Ithink part of the problem was. And
I feel like I feed into thisas well, because this is part of
the reason why I didn't have areally you know, I didn't have that
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strong grab to it is a propertythat you guys do the movie. Would
you say that you felt the moviewas geared more towards like teens tweens both?
What do you think? I thinkmore teens than tweens, just because
(19:22):
of some of the more adult humorin it. But you know, I
was a tween that came out andI loved it, So maybe maybe the
whole gamut. I'm not sure theoriginal movie had a PG rating, but
this is a late eighties PG rating, and a late eighties PG rating is
you both know, was much morebroad and online compassing than it is nowadays.
(19:48):
And so I see a couple ofthings. The movie skewed older into
more of a teen category. Theanimated because it's animated, that seems to
come younger for more like adolescence andtweens. But there's a chance that not
(20:11):
all adolescence and tweens you know,have seen the movie. Maybe they're older
brothers or sisters did, but theydidn't see it, And they're older brothers
and sisters are not necessarily sitting downand watching cartoons. And like you said,
the live action just wasn't good.So I'm going to leave the live
(20:34):
action series encapsulated by itself because ifit just clearly had quality issues, and
that speaks for itself. Right,Yeah, I think I think this was
a problem of they're trying to catchan age group that didn't necessarily see the
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first movie. I think that's fair. That's fair. Yeah, Corey,
what say you think it goes ontosomething in regards to the cartoon. Yes,
I think they're trying to bring ina younger audience to maybe get them
interested in the property and then goback and watch the movies themselves. But
as far as the overall appeal tothe Bill and Ted franchise, I think
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it was just a flash of thetime, and I think probably had had
Keanu and Alex been interested and continuing, something more may have been able to
be done with it. But Ithink both of them were pretty much done
when two was over. Yeah,I don't know that Bill and Ted really
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appeals or could have as much ofthe nonsense in these days and times.
I think with the with the eightiesand early nineties, they were able to
get away with a lot of thenonsense of it and wrap it up easily.
But I'm not sure that it couldhave carried on. I think you're
onto something there. I think,and I've always thought that it was simultaneously
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behind and ahead of its time.You know, it was filmed in eighty
seven, so if it had comeout in eighty seven, I think the
reception would have been a lot different. Right, and and again by the
time ninety one, when it BogisJourney comes out in ninety one, you
know, grunge is already hit.So their style of you know there there,
you know, these these Southern Californiarockers, that that style had sort
(22:33):
of gone away, and people justweren't listening to the music that much anymore,
that that type of music. AndI feel like, yeah, I
feel like if it had come outin eighty seven, the audience was there
for it, whereas in eighty nine, we're kind of in a transitional period.
You know, Hollywood had changed alittle bit. In eighty nine,
that's a year we had Batman,Last Crusade, Ghostbusters to Will be huge
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summer. You know that that waswhen the real blockbuster like the bloodbuster franchises
were really starting to take hold.I feel like, you know, Indiana
Jones and Star Wars aside. Yeah, so I've always kind of thought that
it was, yeah, simultaneously aheadof and behind its time. I think
had it come out a little laterin the nineties, with maybe a different
(23:18):
vibe to it, it might havedone much better. Or again, had
it come out in eighty seven whenit was meant to, I think it
would have felt like it was morevery much of its time, whereas in
eighty nine it's sort of a filmwithout a home. I couldn't see that.
Yeah, And keeping in mind too, I mean this time period of
(23:41):
late eighties early nineties, there wasno shortage of cartoons, whether that was
Saturday Saturday mornings or after you know, daily after school syndication, whatever,
there was plenty to watch. Yes, there was. Yeah, so it
(24:03):
had. It was entering the markettoo, at a time that there was
already a fair bit of I wouldsay, really established competition. Agree.
I agreed. Okay, so there'sour discussion to Bill and Ted as a
franchise. Let's now talk about thecartoon and again. It started in nineteen
ninety. It follows the protagonists whoare visited by rufus, man from the
(24:26):
future who needs him to graduate fromhigh school, start a rock band,
and inspires people in the future.They traveled to various time periods, making
sure that history happens as it should, more or less. As I said,
the first season was animated and producedby Hannah Barbera entered out on CBS,
and it actually had Keana Reeves,Alex Winter, George Carlin, and
Bernie Casey were reprising their film roles. And I didn't realize that until I
started watching. I was like,this sounds exactly like Keanu Reeves and Alex
(24:48):
Winter, and that is definitely GeorgeCarlin, and the woman who played missy
Elson pressed her. I think itwas pretty much everybody that was in the
cast. I did it. Yeah, second season except the father, Yeah
he did. He sounded like hewas in his eighties. But the second
season. In nineteen ninety one,they switched production companies to Deck and was
(25:11):
airing on Fox Kids, and Foxwas also planning the live action series with
the same name. The casts replaced. They were now voiced by Evan Richards
and Christopher Kennedy, who would goon to play Bill and Ted in the
live action series, and the Rufuswas voiced by Rick Overton, who played
(25:32):
Rufus on the TV series as well. I have not ever seen an episode
of the television series. I thinkit lasted about eight episodes as well.
Either of you have any experience withthat at all? I cannot remember it.
No, I can't either. I'venever heard anything good about it.
It seemed it always just seemed likethey kind of missed the point of the
(25:55):
of the movie. Because the factof the matter is with the movies,
Bill and Ted they're not necessarily dumb. They figure things out. They just
do it in their own time andin their own way. That's what it
always always, that's what always madesense to me at least, and at
the end of the day, they'reboth really sweet kids, you know,
And I think that's that's why itworks. And I think that comes through
(26:15):
at least in the first season.Now you can find several episodes on YouTube
with the first season, I wasnot able to find any of the second
season episodes on YouTube. Did eitherone of you come across any at any
point? I didn't see any either. They're not in its entirety. There
were a lot of there's there's alot of clips, I would say,
(26:37):
between one and four minutes, butnot a full complete episode. Okay,
yeah, same for me, andI did. I did see some clips.
I was watching a video about thehistory of it on another channel.
It was a twelve minute video andabout seven minutes was actually about the show.
The first three minutes were talking aboutthe channel, and the last four
(27:00):
minutes were asking you to subscribe tothe channel. So yeah, typically you
two, yeah, yeah, SoI did see a bit there. The
only thing I noticed there is inseason one. I thought it was odd
that Bill's eyes he had, youknow, white white eyes and black pupils,
and Ted just had the black pupils. I loved it. But but
(27:22):
in in the in the second seasonhe there their eyes match. So Corey,
you liked that idea, Okay,So so tell me what why did
that work for you? It wasthat art style in the first season was
very much as if you were agetting your caricature done at a carnival.
Yeah, I can see that.Yeah, And so Ted was his eyes
(27:44):
much like Keanu's, were very small, and so they did the bad eyes.
And Alex Winter's face is much moreexpressive, so they definitely enhanced that.
Yeah, yep, okay, AndI you put it that way,
it doesn't bother me as much.It bothered me when I was watching the
show because it just seemed seemed whatsure, I'm looking for, inconsistent?
(28:10):
Okay, okay, But but theway Corey explained it, you turned me
around on it, So I'm goodwith it now. I'm completely good with
it. And I love that Rufushad his shoulder pads on his on his
suit were ridiculous basically look like awalking triangle, which like I said,
when you look at Rufus's face,it was very much a caricature of him.
(28:32):
So yeah, very much so,very much so. And again I
think phil like the use of thefilm actors, at least in the first
season, makes it feel a littlebit more legitimate. And I thought that
Bill's dad sounds like he's much olderthan Missy, which I guess is kind
of the point, right, Yeah, because Missy's supposed to be around their
age. So I did watch thefirst episode in a little bit of another
episode. The episode I watched wasthe very first episode. The intro to
(28:56):
the show contains all of our exposition. But I did think the theme song
was pretty lame for a song aboutBill and Ted. Who are you know,
really into like rock and roll?Did you guys get that as well?
M It didn't bother me that much. I wouldn't say it bothered me.
At the same time, I don'tfeel like it was as memorable as
or as catchy as other shows we'vecovered. Yeah, just kind of generic.
(29:21):
And the second season I did.I did watch the credit sequence for
the second season, which is muchmore streamlined. We do still get some
expedition, but it's less expository,but the theme song is different but equally
lame. But I did think,and Olivia, I'll be interested to hear
what you think. I thought thatfor the second season. I thought the
voice actors were decent sound alikes.It didn't didn't completely disrupt me or take
(29:45):
me out of it, but youcould definitely tell that there was a difference.
But I thought they worked. Didyou kind of feel the same way
when in the clips that you saw, Yeah, I didn't have. I
purposely made sure that I watched theactually, the full episode that I watched
was from the second season, okay, and then the yeah yeah, second
(30:11):
season, so the I purposely madesure I found clips of first season so
that I could hear the voice difference, and well, yeah, it was
different. I didn't find it offputting. Yeah, no, I thought
it worked. I thought it worked, Okay, yeah, yeah, So
you can definitely see why they wouldget these guys cast in the live action,
(30:33):
live action series. Although anytime Isee photos of them in the show
or anything like that, they don'tboth just look dead eyed and and and
just dumb. And I think Billand Ted are dense, but they're not
dumb. And I think that's whatmaybe what didn't work for me. But
in watching Corey, how many episodeswere you able to get through? I
(30:56):
watched the first two, okay,and so so tell me your take on
it. I'll tell you my takereal quick. I thought that the the
vibe of everything I thought worked,but the pacing I thought was better than
a lot of the shows of thisera. Still a little bit slow,
but not awful, but it reallyfelt like a show from maybe like the
(31:18):
mid nineties rather than the early nineties. What did you think about it?
Yeah, I think it was fine. I think it matched the tone,
the playfulness and kind of dropping alittle bit of knowledge about where they're going
and the people. I enjoyed thecampingess of it. I thought pacing was
fine for a thirty minute show,but I think it's it's a It's a
(31:41):
good accompaniment to the movies, especiallyif you were wanting something kind of bite
size. I think it was.It was a lot of fun. I
did too. I really was pleasantlysurprised because I remembered watching this when it
first aired and thinking this is kindof what I was expecting when I watched
it back in the in the earlynineties. But but I I really did
get a lot more out of itthis time around. Olivia. What about
(32:01):
you, what did you think ofthe episode that you were able to watch?
I mean, in general, Iagree with all of that. I
don't feel like the pacing was asbad as some of its counterparts at that
time. The arts dial didn't botherme. They weren't really great transfers though,
(32:24):
so I was giving the benefit ofthe doubt on that just because you
know, it's a it's an it'san eighties whatever the format was that they
were pulling from, whether that waslike you know, Mima recording on a
blank VHS or it's whatever. ButI chalk that up to just the the
(32:52):
recording format and how it got uploaded. But like the art visually didn't bother
me, And I actually found oftenBill and Ted's them, specifically their dialogue
to be like clever quippy, right. Yeah, That's one thing that I
(33:14):
notice is there there's a lot ofthe humor is very much that sort of
nineties sarcasm with a little bit ofsnark, with also a lot of pop
culture references, some of which theintended audience probably wouldn't get. Like in
the first episode, they have toget they go to medieval China or yeah,
not medieval but ancient China, andthey get they find a story called
(33:36):
the Thousand Vases of Doctor Lao.I knew you would, Corey. Yeah,
stuff like that, and they hadto build the Great Wall in this
one. They do the whole thingin two days, but then it falls
over like dominoes. So I thoughtthat, yeah, some snark and some
pop culture references that even the popculture references, I don't think they have
necessarily aged poorly because some of themwere kind of day did as it already,
(34:00):
like the Thousand Bases of Doctor Lao. And I have to wonder if
a lot of this was just thewriting crew just amusing themselves knowing that most
kids are not going to get thesejokes. That or the parent that passed
through what the kid was watching theshow. Yeah, true, true,
Yeah, But I'm just thinking,like even the episode titles, like episode
(34:21):
three is called the Most Excellent RomanHoliday. The more hainous they are,
the harder they fall. Birds ofa feather, stick to the roof of
your mouth. That's that would correct. Pocket Watchful of Miracles, Babe brute
this Babe Ruth babe is a dude. Dude and never the Twain shall meet,
so that because of course they haveto go meet Mark Twain. Yea,
(34:44):
and yeah, a grim story ofan overdue book. That's all season
one and then season two. Myfavorite one from season two is now I'm
museum. Now you don't because youknow, guys know I'm a big fan
of puns. Yep, I'm awarewe do. Yeah, And they have
one Leave It to Bill and Ted, where they have to go into a
TV show called Leave It to Badgerto try to I guess the show was
(35:06):
going to get canceled. They don'twant to get canceled or something like that.
I think so. And there's alsowell there's anothering called this a Bogus
Day in the Neighborhood where, uh, there's a their favorite show, mister
Radish's Condominium is being canceled because theythe television executives think that kids don't want
nice on TV anymore, right,And then yeah, I just, like
I said, I feel like someof it may have been the crew amusing
(35:30):
themselves and like Corey said, giventhem, you know, given them something
for the parents. But for themost part, you know, we watched
a lot of these shows and thejokes just don't land. A lot of
jokes landed on this one for me, and jokes landed for me as well.
I think it was really funny.Yeah, I was. I was
pleasantly surprised to how will this sulltiment? Sounds like both of you are as
well. You can get some ofthe episodes on DVD, and it's I
(35:54):
think it's out of print, butAmazon does have I don't even think it's
the best of You can't even buythe whole series, but it's got it's
got several it's got like I thinkit's got eight episodes from season one and
the entirety of season to all theepisodes of season two, so it's got
Yeah, basically the first eight episodesof each season are on there. But
(36:16):
yeah, it's it's it's out ofprint, so it's not really uh,
not really available. It's it's likeeighty nine ninety five if you want to
buy it now. But if yeah, but but you could, like I
said, you can watch some onYouTube. I would I would recommend everybody
going check this out, especially ifyou're a Bill and Ted fan, aolutely
corey. Uh, you said youwatched the first two episodes. Did was
(36:38):
there one that you liked more thanthe other? I liked the first one.
I think the pilot, as itwere, was a really good one.
Sweet and sour Chinese Adventure to Go. Yeah, that was fun because
they had they end up inadvertently,uh inventing Chinese takeout the Polo, Mister
(37:00):
the Polo. Yes, Mark,Yeah, mister mister the Polo and Polo.
That was right, because they thoughthis first name was just yeah,
Marco Polo. Yeah, mister Opolo, that's what it was, Yeah,
Marco Polo. The one problem Ihave with it is that the fortune cookies
that they got from the restaurant isnot accurate because fortune cookies are an American
invention, so so be it,I know. And it's just the part
(37:22):
of me that's thinking as an adult, if they're supposed to be teaching,
if this is supposed to be sortof educational, it's a little bit of
a stretch. I would have preferredthat they make stuff like that a little
more obvious. But again, also, the King's dog was named Spaghetti,
and he's like, what am Igonna call these noodles? Hey, I
gotta figure out something. Come on, we're not a good point, and
(37:46):
this time period was not known forit's razor sharp accuracy and cultural representation,
So what's a good point. Yeah, yeah, they do trade in a
lot of stereotypes here, never tome, never mean spiritedly, right,
(38:08):
But it's it's something that you know, you may want to have a discussion
if you're gonna watch it with yourkids about and the second score. You
said you watched the second episode whichis the Birth of rock and Roll or
two Hip for the womb Ye wherethey meet both Mozart and little Richard,
Yes, and William Tell. Iguess I need to. I need to
because it was actually a little Richarddoing of the voice, right, I
(38:30):
think so? Yeah, yeah,so I'm pretty sure us obviously wasn't Wolf
ganging Amadeus Mozart doing that voice orWilliam Tell. But I believe that they
did get a little Richard for thatfor some reason. Hannah Barbera had a
little bit of juice and they couldget you know, some of these the
bigger names. But yeah, Ithought the show did a good job of
using the time travel concept to teachkids about history, and I feel like
(38:51):
the sense of humor from the movieis still intact without some of the more
off color jokes and references that wewe can't really talk talk about because this
is a family show. But Iwould like to note that there is a
toy line, a Bill and Tedtoy line, and it's based on the
look of this cartoon, specifically seasonone. Right. We talked about it
(39:12):
on Talking Toys with Taylor and Jeffseveral months back, so if you want
to listen to our thoughts on that, you can go. It was actually
a really cool toy line, I'mfrom, really cool toys that they had.
So again, this is one ofthose one of those franchises like they've
they've done a lot with it,but it just never seems like they did
enough with it to me. Maybeit's just because that I realize as I
get older that I have more ofa soft spot for this franchise than I
(39:37):
realized. And maybe it is becauseas I get older, I appreciate it
in different ways. Could be maybeI don't know. So yeah, Olivia,
first off, I'll ask do youguys have any final thoughts on it?
And then I'll say, Olivia,do you would you recommend people seeking
it out? I I would sayif I had to kind of put it
(40:00):
all in a nutshell, I thinkit was better. I think the animated
series was better than a lot ofIt's It's cohorts at the time. I
think part of the problem was kindof like with the first movie, timing
and the age that it was thatwas part of their their core target audience,
(40:28):
and again, kind of like thefirst movie, just it seems like
it just it suffered from some littlelike kind of mismanagement issues that possibly could
have made it hit the right audienceat the right time a whole lot better,
(40:49):
right, agreed? Agreed? UhSo, Yeah, I guess that,
and I would I would recommend peopletaking a peek at it, especially
if you're a fan of the moviefranchise and like you know, like us,
you're eighties nineties babies and and lovea good bit of nostalgia with an
(41:15):
animated show that I think holds upa lot better than It's It's counterparts at
that time. I agree, Iagree with it. Yeah, Cory,
what about you? Any final thoughtsand would you recommend final thoughts? Yeah,
just go see it. I thinkit's a really fun representation of the
time of the franchise. I'm gladthat the original actors were able to play
(41:37):
their parts. It is a littlestilted at times with the voice acting,
but I don't think either one ofthese guys have ever done any voice acting
before, but all the people aroundthem made up for the lacks, and
I think it's it's definitely worth theshop, Okay, And yeah, I
would agree again. I was pleasantlysurprised. I was planning to go into
this and expecting to be a littlelet down because of, you know,
(42:00):
our past experiences with shows like this, But man, this, yeah,
this show. I think I thinkthe crew got it. I think the
writing team and those that were workingbehind the scenes got it. They understood
the concept, they understood the materialand the property, and I think were
they to redo it today, Ithink it would be hilarious and I think
(42:23):
it would be awesome because they wouldbe able to aim it at an adult
audience. And I think I kindof hope somebody will think about it,
because I think there I think there'sstill a lot of material to be mined
from it. But I also kindof just wanted to leave it alone now
because the way it ended was waspretty good. So I would definitely recommend
(42:45):
this. If you have access tothe DVDs, check it out, otherwise
hunt them down on YouTube. Itreally is a lot of fun. I'm
actually going to go watch some moreof these, which is not something I
normally do, but I just hadsuch a good time with it that Yeah,
I'm really looking forward to it.So, folks, we'd love to
hear your thoughts on us. Weheaded to the Facebook page and let us
know what you think about Bill andtad uh And until next time for the
(43:07):
Saturday Morning Supercast, I'm Jeff,I'm Corey, and I'm Olivia and remember,
be excellent to each other. I'mParty Party on dudes, totally.
Thank you for listening, and don'tforget to follow the show on Facebook It's
Saturday Morning Supercast and follow at MarvinDog Media on Twitter. M
It's time to PLoP down in frontof the TV and the way back machine
with the bowl of your favorite cerealto relift the cartoons that made it worth
waking up early on the weekend.It's the Saturday Morning super Cast. Hello,
(00:42):
and welcome to the Saturday Morning superCast, where it's always Saturday morning
and the cereal bowl was always full. I'm Jeff, I'm Corey and Olivia
and we have a bit of akind of a two for for you today,
folks. The subject of both ofour discussions are going to be the
same. We are going to talkabout Bill and Ted's excellent Adventures, the
animated series, not the live actionseries that aired at the same time of
(01:04):
season two. But before that,we're going to talk about Bill and Ted's
excellent serial Righteous and I think it'sjust Bill and Ted's excellent cereal. Yes
it is, so before we start, are we are we all Bill and
Ted fans here? Yeah? Bigtime? I guess. Yeah. That
(01:29):
sounded really enthusiastic. But you atleast don't dislike it, right, That's
true that I do not. Okay, Okay, she took way too long.
Yeah I know. I think thatthat was a political answer I think,
well, we'll talk a little bitlater about our disparate feelings about Bill
(01:52):
and Ted as a franchise, butfirst I wanted to talk about Bill and
Ted's Excellent Cereal. This one wasalways interesting to me because it came out
in nineteen ninety and didn't even lastas long as the TV show. The
TV show last or for twenty oneepisodes over two years, and I think
it was on shelves about that longor less. The thing, the weird
thing about this one is there area couple of things that I do like
(02:14):
about this When they used the gimmick, well because instead of just putting out
some generic cereal, they actually themarshmallows are shaped like music notes, which
I thought was pretty cool quarter notesto be specific. And then we have
a little like I think those werequarter notes? Oh are they not?
Oh? Now I got to pullup the picture because I assumed you had
(02:35):
them all pulled up already, folks. In case you didn't know, Olivia
is a music teacher, which isone of the reasons that I defer to
her expertise on these sorts of things. I'll okay now, because that window
got closed when I pulled up theone for this cereal. Okay, my
bad, my bad, fixing itnow. No, those are eighth notes
(02:59):
with really bad flags. Okay,see I always thought that an eighth note.
Okay, So explain to me thedifference between the what a quarter note
looks like and what an eighth notelooks like that, Olivia, please,
Okay. They both have the samebody colored in black head, solid head
with a stem. Eighth notes havesome kind of tail or flag coming off
(03:28):
the top of the stem. Ifit's a single eighth note, if it's
a barred or beamed eighth note,then it's going to be connected to multiple
friends right with the beam across thetop. And the quarter note doesn't have
the flag. It's just got theline straight up right just the stem.
Okay, got it. It's beenjust long enough since I've read any music
that I looked at it. Iwas like, oh, those are quarter
(03:49):
notes because they're single. I wasthinking eighth notes were always because I'm always
used to seeing them, you know, barred like you said, barred together.
So as I was saying, folks, these are eighth notes the morseligership
like hate notes and we have thecereal itself, or are these you know,
just generic sort of oh shaped.Here's the weird thing. I want
to talk to you guys about this. The cereal is cinnamon oat flavored.
(04:10):
Uh huh. That does not soundlike it would go well with marshmallows to
me, does it to you either? Review? As I remember eating it,
I thought it was pretty good.I didn't even ask that question.
I didn't. I just assumed noneof us had ever had it. Corey,
you've actually had Bill and Ted's excellentcereal. It's one of the boxes
that I saved in my collection.Yeah, awesome. Okay, Well,
tell us about your experience with it, and as far as you remember,
(04:31):
you said you enjoyed it. Yeah. I thought the cinnamon, I guess
you can quit it to not quitethe kick of a cinnamon toast crunch,
but hun down just a bit.And the marshmallows were just kind of marshmallows
spectacular to it. But yes,I remember I had it multiple times.
Huh. So I just I can'timagine because you always think of with with
(04:54):
marshmallows. So we have like luckycharms, you know, it's basically like
alphabets with marshmallows. Make sure thatand we got other other cereal, it's
like fruit flavor with marshmallows. Forsome reason, the idea of pairing cinnamon
with like a very sweet marshmallow justseems like it wouldn't work. Olivia.
Do you did you have the samereaction to that? Am I the outlier
(05:16):
here? M It depends on howstrong this cinnamon is. Yeah, and
Corey said it wasn't super strong,so right, And as I recall,
or well I guess based off oflike me squinting at the box art because
I never had it. Am.I correct, Corey, that was a
(05:38):
cinnamon flavor, but it was notin any way like cinnamon sugar dusted or
anything. Correct. Okay, Sothat makes more sense to me. If
it was something like a cinnamon toastcrunch where it's all stuck on the exterior,
I could see adding the marshmallows beinga bit too much, right,
(06:00):
Yeah, same for me, Samefor me. And I think that's what
I was thinking, because when Ihear something described as cinnamon, I think
of like a very intense cinnamon flavor. But if it is just kind of
you know, we talked about oatmealsquares a while back, a long time
ago, I'm sure, and wetalked about at the time that oatmeal squares
had a very little mild or lightflavor, and I guess that's sort of
(06:21):
what we're talking about here. AndI guess from that standpoint, if the
marshmallows, Corey would would sort oftake center stage. Okay, interesting,
Yeah, So Corey, what wasit that made you pick out this cereal
when you were but a wee ladnot only once but multiple times. Obviously
(06:42):
you liked it, so you hadmore, But what was it that made
you pick it out the first time? Because I love Bill and Ted?
Okay, we are of the samemind there, Okay, And I should
say it was produced by Ralston andit was a most awesome breakfast adventure Bill
and Ted's excellent cereal. And thebox art had, you know, the
animated versions of Bill and Ted withus in the phone booth, and yeah,
(07:03):
it was. It was a tiein, and it included there were
a ton of giveaways on this one. Uh. There were hysterical postcards,
not historical postcards, time travel luggagetags, dial a dude phone number organizers,
and plastic cassette cases meant to looklike the telephone booth that the duo
used as a time machine. Didyou have any of these, Corey?
(07:23):
And do you still have any ofthem? No? I don't think that
I've got any of them left.The postcards seemed to strike a memory bell,
but nothing too nothing too much.Yeah, okay, well we all
know that you know Corey's memory Swisscheese. So I'm amazed that you that
you remember this much about it.I'm impressed, very impressed. Uh.
(07:47):
The other thing that I thought wasreally cool was there was a promotion where
you could win a real phone booth. That's pretty cool. That can you
imagine like winning a phone booth?If your dial a dude things said you're
a winner on it, then youwin this phone booth. I don't I
can't imagine that this ever got givenaway, and if it did, that
the kid got to keep it.I mean, I don't see why they
(08:09):
wouldn't have a phone booth just kindof sitting around. Who says that it
had to work necessarily, I'm sureit didn't work. Yeah, I'm sure
it was all just for play.But I mean, you know, you
can put in the corner of yourroom and just have this glass a glass
case of emotion, like to puthim in time out. Yeah, if
anybody needs a documentary idea they coulddo. You know, did anybody get
(08:33):
the phone booth promotion along the linesof PEPSI, Where's My Jet? Yeah,
that's a good point, that's agood call. Yeah, I'm I'm
for that. We should, definitely, we should. Somebody should get to
work on that. And the diala dude thing. I'm guessing it's it
says it's small enough keeping your pocketto keep your awesome friends phone numbers back
(08:54):
when we didn't have phones and youactually had to write those down. I'm
guess it looked kind of like ajCard from a cassette and you just wrote
them down on there. Okay,interesting, So yeah, the serial again,
it was on store shelves for againabout a year, maybe a year
and a half, and we hadall of these promotions and the Mister Breakfast
(09:18):
page has a lot of really coolphotos of of these boxes. Like there's
one that has the the Phone Boothcassette case and it was like on the
box, it wasn't inside the box. It was like cellophane around it.
It was like shrink wrapped onto thebox and it looked pretty cool. It
had like the antenna on top ofit and everything, but really it looks
less like a tape case and morelike a soap dish to me, right,
(09:41):
or a small eight track cassette,something along those lines. And then
yeah, we have the postcards.And they also had the luggage tags.
Yeah lost some time luggage tags,I guess, so you could put on
your actual luggage. But so,Corey, let me ask you. Then,
did the flavor of the cereal?I don't know. I would have
(10:03):
expected Bill and Ted to have avery bright, vibrant fruit flavor. Why
do you suppose they decided to gowith cinnamon? I think the bright and
vibrant was taken care of by themarshmallow coloring. True, probably with Ralston
taking care of this. This isprobably just some cereal that they had around
from another filled cereal or something elsethat they have currently. They just decide
(10:28):
to enhance it with the marshmallows.Yeah, I think that's probably fairly accurate.
Olivia, what about you? Howdo you feel about the flavor combination
here? The flavor combination doesn't botherme. I will say, colorwise,
it kind of looks like a superduper cranked up version of like Apple Jacks.
(10:56):
That's sort of. I don't know, honest, in the picture,
it's hard to tell if the piecesare supposed to be like a true red
or more of an orange. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna ask if
you knew what shade you would callthose, So okay, let's they kind
(11:18):
of look orange compared to the redbanners, so I'm gonna call him orange.
But then you've also got like thepink and yellow music notes, and
there is no shortage of food diesin this, No, not at all.
I would I would hate to seewhat what the bathroom looked like when
you were done the next day.Who I don't know. I'm having a
(11:41):
hard time like trying to like thinkof, like would kid Live find this
appetizing? Grown up Live does not? So I don't know. Okay,
yeah, I don't know. Iget it. Yeah. I think I
would have been put off by thecinnamon and marshmallow flavor. Again, when
(12:05):
I was a kid, I didn'tlike marshmallow cereal, so I would not
have gone anywhere near this, especiallyknowing that it was cinnamon and marshmallow,
because again I just in my mindthat combination doesn't work. But Corey said
it was delicious, so I willI will defer to him. But so
this is one of the boxes thatyou do have still in your collection.
And reminder, Corey, how manyboxes do you think you have in that
collection? Probably about twenty to thirty. Nice, do you ever have any
(12:28):
plans to do anything with a likedisplay them anywhere? I gotta get up
in the attic and find them firstand see what kind of shapes there's still
in. Yeah, maybe you knowor maybe okay, so question project.
Yeah, that it'd be cool.So Olivia has already sort of tipped her
hand that this if they if theyreintroduce this, this is probably not something
that she would be interested in.I would probably give it a shot based
(12:52):
on Corey's recommendation. But Corey,if they rerelease this, is this one
that you remember finally enough that you'regoing to out and buy a couple of
boxes just to have anyway? Yeah, sure, why not? Yeah?
I think so as well. ButI am. I am intrigued about the
fact that it didn't last. Butyou know, that's not really that surprising.
Very few tie in cereals are arereally made to last. We talked
(13:13):
about that before, especially in theeighties and nineties, so that that could
be part of it. So willthat's I think that's pretty much all we
have to say about Bill and Ted'sexcellence here, Lucy, any of either
one of you have any other thoughtsabout it, we can take a break
and come back and discuss the cartoon. Yeah, let's go on, Okay,
Yeah, all right. So Billand Ted's Excellent Adventures the cartoon was
(13:43):
produced. The first season was producedby Hannah Barbera. The second season,
which was only eight episodes. Thefirst season was thirteen, the second season
was eight, for a total oftwenty one episodes. Was produced by Deek
Entertainment, who produced you know,Pole Position and some of the other first
runs into cation shows that we sawas kids. But it came out in
nineteen ninety, which which surprised mebecause that's just a year after Bill and
(14:07):
Ted's Excellent Adventure came out in eightynine. However, I don't know if
both of you know this that Billand Ted's Excellent Adventure was actually filmed in
nineteen eighty seven. I did not, No, Yeah, it was filmed
in eighty seven and sat on theshelf for two years before it got passed
around to different studios after it wasafter it was released, I think the
study that produced it went bankrupt,and then it just finally got dumped into
(14:28):
theaters and you know, sort ofdeveloped a kind of a cult following.
So before we talk about the cartoon, you know, Corey and I are
both big fans. Olivia said she'sshe doesn't dislike it, but it's maybe
not not high on her list.Well, so we'll keep in mind too.
I was really a little too youngfor it the first time around,
(14:52):
so fair Yeah, I wouldn't havereally caught it until probably it had already
been out for a good four orfive years, because I mean, at
that age, my parents were superkeen to go spend a ton of money
at you a first run movie theater, which I totally understand. And then
(15:16):
while we rented a ton of moviesas kids, I could also see like
mom not really wanting to rent thatbecause you know, it might have broadcast
to her as being older than maybeit necessarily skewed. Okay, sure,
(15:41):
So I don't think I even sawBill and Ted until maybe it aired on
a cable channel, and I wasprobably by then in like upper middle school
there high school. By the timeI finally got around to seeing it.
So yeah, I just I wasn'tthe right age when first release, so
(16:04):
I didn't really have that same kindof context. Got it makes sense.
I don't know about Corey, butfor me, the three Bill and Ted
movies, there's Bill and Ted's ExcellentAdventure, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey,
and then twenty twenty I believe,or twenty twenty one, we got Bill
and Ted face, the music,the the final story about it. But
(16:26):
what I find is when I goback and watch the first two now,
I still love them and I appreciatethem for different reasons. Do you find
that they sort of age with you? Corey? Yes I do, and
yes, much like you, theystill hold a very special place in my
heart. Yeah, there's jokes youget now that you might not have gotten
as a kid. I actually I'mkind of an outlier here. I prefer
(16:47):
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey to ExcellentAdventure. Okay, I find that Journey
had the better soundtrack. Oh,definitely, definitely, And I will go
to my grave saying that William sadOr was robbed of an Oscar nomination for
playing the Grim Reaper in Bogus Journey. He is definitely one of the reasons
that makes it a good film,he is. It did not do as
well, you know, because it'sa bit darker. It was originally going
(17:10):
to be called Bill and Ted goto Hell and they think better of it.
I thought, that's kind of abad that's kind of a hard sell.
So it didn't do as well becauseit was a bit of a departure.
It wasn't about time travel. Theywere, you know, going through
the underworld and everything. But Ithought it was a really good expansion of
the lore and everything. But Facethe Music, I thought, Corey,
(17:33):
did you see Face the Music?Oh? Yes, many times. I
own it. Okay, I dotoo. It seems like it's missing an
act. To me, the endingis very and it just yeah, it
just seems it seems like there's anact or half an act missing from it.
I still love it. It's it'sstill a lot of fun, but
(17:53):
but it is a little a littleodd. But I tell you, the
actresses that play their daughters in Himare are phenomenal. Yeah, it was
a lot of fun. Yeah,so okay, so so live again.
I feel like you're you're sort ofone of those people you understand why we
love it. But it's just notyour cup of tea. So I'll be
(18:14):
interested to hear both of your thoughtson this before we talk about the cartoon.
Why do you think that it wasn'ta bigger franchise than it was more
successful than it was, because,again, teenage boys in the early nineties,
we're eating it up. But thenwe got this series, this animated
series. It lasted basically a seasonand a half, the live action series,
(18:36):
which was awful. Is it becausethose two things just sort of sullied
the reputation, and maybe Bogus Journeysort of left a bad taste in people's
mouth. What do you think Ithink part of the problem was. And
I feel like I feed into thisas well, because this is part of
the reason why I didn't have areally you know, I didn't have that
(19:00):
strong grab to it is a propertythat you guys do the movie. Would
you say that you felt the moviewas geared more towards like teens tweens both?
What do you think? I thinkmore teens than tweens, just because
(19:22):
of some of the more adult humorin it. But you know, I
was a tween that came out andI loved it, So maybe maybe the
whole gamut. I'm not sure theoriginal movie had a PG rating, but
this is a late eighties PG rating, and a late eighties PG rating is
you both know, was much morebroad and online compassing than it is nowadays.
(19:48):
And so I see a couple ofthings. The movie skewed older into
more of a teen category. Theanimated because it's animated, that seems to
come younger for more like adolescence andtweens. But there's a chance that not
(20:11):
all adolescence and tweens you know,have seen the movie. Maybe they're older
brothers or sisters did, but theydidn't see it, And they're older brothers
and sisters are not necessarily sitting downand watching cartoons. And like you said,
the live action just wasn't good.So I'm going to leave the live
(20:34):
action series encapsulated by itself because ifit just clearly had quality issues, and
that speaks for itself. Right,Yeah, I think I think this was
a problem of they're trying to catchan age group that didn't necessarily see the
(20:55):
first movie. I think that's fair. That's fair. Yeah, Corey,
what say you think it goes ontosomething in regards to the cartoon. Yes,
I think they're trying to bring ina younger audience to maybe get them
interested in the property and then goback and watch the movies themselves. But
as far as the overall appeal tothe Bill and Ted franchise, I think
(21:21):
it was just a flash of thetime, and I think probably had had
Keanu and Alex been interested and continuing, something more may have been able to
be done with it. But Ithink both of them were pretty much done
when two was over. Yeah,I don't know that Bill and Ted really
(21:44):
appeals or could have as much ofthe nonsense in these days and times.
I think with the with the eightiesand early nineties, they were able to
get away with a lot of thenonsense of it and wrap it up easily.
But I'm not sure that it couldhave carried on. I think you're
onto something there. I think,and I've always thought that it was simultaneously
(22:08):
behind and ahead of its time.You know, it was filmed in eighty
seven, so if it had comeout in eighty seven, I think the
reception would have been a lot different. Right, and and again by the
time ninety one, when it BogisJourney comes out in ninety one, you
know, grunge is already hit.So their style of you know there there,
you know, these these Southern Californiarockers, that that style had sort
(22:33):
of gone away, and people justweren't listening to the music that much anymore,
that that type of music. AndI feel like, yeah, I
feel like if it had come outin eighty seven, the audience was there
for it, whereas in eighty nine, we're kind of in a transitional period.
You know, Hollywood had changed alittle bit. In eighty nine,
that's a year we had Batman,Last Crusade, Ghostbusters to Will be huge
(22:57):
summer. You know that that waswhen the real blockbuster like the bloodbuster franchises
were really starting to take hold.I feel like, you know, Indiana
Jones and Star Wars aside. Yeah, so I've always kind of thought that
it was, yeah, simultaneously aheadof and behind its time. I think
had it come out a little laterin the nineties, with maybe a different
(23:18):
vibe to it, it might havedone much better. Or again, had
it come out in eighty seven whenit was meant to, I think it
would have felt like it was morevery much of its time, whereas in
eighty nine it's sort of a filmwithout a home. I couldn't see that.
Yeah, And keeping in mind too, I mean this time period of
(23:41):
late eighties early nineties, there wasno shortage of cartoons, whether that was
Saturday Saturday mornings or after you know, daily after school syndication, whatever,
there was plenty to watch. Yes, there was. Yeah, so it
(24:03):
had. It was entering the markettoo, at a time that there was
already a fair bit of I wouldsay, really established competition. Agree.
I agreed. Okay, so there'sour discussion to Bill and Ted as a
franchise. Let's now talk about thecartoon and again. It started in nineteen
ninety. It follows the protagonists whoare visited by rufus, man from the
(24:26):
future who needs him to graduate fromhigh school, start a rock band,
and inspires people in the future.They traveled to various time periods, making
sure that history happens as it should, more or less. As I said,
the first season was animated and producedby Hannah Barbera entered out on CBS,
and it actually had Keana Reeves,Alex Winter, George Carlin, and
Bernie Casey were reprising their film roles. And I didn't realize that until I
started watching. I was like,this sounds exactly like Keanu Reeves and Alex
(24:48):
Winter, and that is definitely GeorgeCarlin, and the woman who played missy
Elson pressed her. I think itwas pretty much everybody that was in the
cast. I did it. Yeah, second season except the father, Yeah
he did. He sounded like hewas in his eighties. But the second
season. In nineteen ninety one,they switched production companies to Deck and was
(25:11):
airing on Fox Kids, and Foxwas also planning the live action series with
the same name. The casts replaced. They were now voiced by Evan Richards
and Christopher Kennedy, who would goon to play Bill and Ted in the
live action series, and the Rufuswas voiced by Rick Overton, who played
(25:32):
Rufus on the TV series as well. I have not ever seen an episode
of the television series. I thinkit lasted about eight episodes as well.
Either of you have any experience withthat at all? I cannot remember it.
No, I can't either. I'venever heard anything good about it.
It seemed it always just seemed likethey kind of missed the point of the
(25:55):
of the movie. Because the factof the matter is with the movies,
Bill and Ted they're not necessarily dumb. They figure things out. They just
do it in their own time andin their own way. That's what it
always always, that's what always madesense to me at least, and at
the end of the day, they'reboth really sweet kids, you know,
And I think that's that's why itworks. And I think that comes through
(26:15):
at least in the first season.Now you can find several episodes on YouTube
with the first season, I wasnot able to find any of the second
season episodes on YouTube. Did eitherone of you come across any at any
point? I didn't see any either. They're not in its entirety. There
were a lot of there's there's alot of clips, I would say,
(26:37):
between one and four minutes, butnot a full complete episode. Okay,
yeah, same for me, andI did. I did see some clips.
I was watching a video about thehistory of it on another channel.
It was a twelve minute video andabout seven minutes was actually about the show.
The first three minutes were talking aboutthe channel, and the last four
(27:00):
minutes were asking you to subscribe tothe channel. So yeah, typically you
two, yeah, yeah, SoI did see a bit there. The
only thing I noticed there is inseason one. I thought it was odd
that Bill's eyes he had, youknow, white white eyes and black pupils,
and Ted just had the black pupils. I loved it. But but
(27:22):
in in the in the second seasonhe there their eyes match. So Corey,
you liked that idea, Okay,So so tell me what why did
that work for you? It wasthat art style in the first season was
very much as if you were agetting your caricature done at a carnival.
Yeah, I can see that.Yeah, And so Ted was his eyes
(27:44):
much like Keanu's, were very small, and so they did the bad eyes.
And Alex Winter's face is much moreexpressive, so they definitely enhanced that.
Yeah, yep, okay, AndI you put it that way,
it doesn't bother me as much.It bothered me when I was watching the
show because it just seemed seemed whatsure, I'm looking for, inconsistent?
(28:10):
Okay, okay, But but theway Corey explained it, you turned me
around on it, So I'm goodwith it now. I'm completely good with
it. And I love that Rufushad his shoulder pads on his on his
suit were ridiculous basically look like awalking triangle, which like I said,
when you look at Rufus's face,it was very much a caricature of him.
(28:32):
So yeah, very much so,very much so. And again I
think phil like the use of thefilm actors, at least in the first
season, makes it feel a littlebit more legitimate. And I thought that
Bill's dad sounds like he's much olderthan Missy, which I guess is kind
of the point, right, Yeah, because Missy's supposed to be around their
age. So I did watch thefirst episode in a little bit of another
episode. The episode I watched wasthe very first episode. The intro to
(28:56):
the show contains all of our exposition. But I did think the theme song
was pretty lame for a song aboutBill and Ted. Who are you know,
really into like rock and roll?Did you guys get that as well?
M It didn't bother me that much. I wouldn't say it bothered me.
At the same time, I don'tfeel like it was as memorable as
or as catchy as other shows we'vecovered. Yeah, just kind of generic.
(29:21):
And the second season I did.I did watch the credit sequence for
the second season, which is muchmore streamlined. We do still get some
expedition, but it's less expository,but the theme song is different but equally
lame. But I did think,and Olivia, I'll be interested to hear
what you think. I thought thatfor the second season. I thought the
voice actors were decent sound alikes.It didn't didn't completely disrupt me or take
(29:45):
me out of it, but youcould definitely tell that there was a difference.
But I thought they worked. Didyou kind of feel the same way
when in the clips that you saw, Yeah, I didn't have. I
purposely made sure that I watched theactually, the full episode that I watched
was from the second season, okay, and then the yeah yeah, second
(30:11):
season, so the I purposely madesure I found clips of first season so
that I could hear the voice difference, and well, yeah, it was
different. I didn't find it offputting. Yeah, no, I thought
it worked. I thought it worked, Okay, yeah, yeah, So
you can definitely see why they wouldget these guys cast in the live action,
(30:33):
live action series. Although anytime Isee photos of them in the show
or anything like that, they don'tboth just look dead eyed and and and
just dumb. And I think Billand Ted are dense, but they're not
dumb. And I think that's whatmaybe what didn't work for me. But
in watching Corey, how many episodeswere you able to get through? I
(30:56):
watched the first two, okay,and so so tell me your take on
it. I'll tell you my takereal quick. I thought that the the
vibe of everything I thought worked,but the pacing I thought was better than
a lot of the shows of thisera. Still a little bit slow,
but not awful, but it reallyfelt like a show from maybe like the
(31:18):
mid nineties rather than the early nineties. What did you think about it?
Yeah, I think it was fine. I think it matched the tone,
the playfulness and kind of dropping alittle bit of knowledge about where they're going
and the people. I enjoyed thecampingess of it. I thought pacing was
fine for a thirty minute show,but I think it's it's a It's a
(31:41):
good accompaniment to the movies, especiallyif you were wanting something kind of bite
size. I think it was.It was a lot of fun. I
did too. I really was pleasantlysurprised because I remembered watching this when it
first aired and thinking this is kindof what I was expecting when I watched
it back in the in the earlynineties. But but I I really did
get a lot more out of itthis time around. Olivia. What about
(32:01):
you, what did you think ofthe episode that you were able to watch?
I mean, in general, Iagree with all of that. I
don't feel like the pacing was asbad as some of its counterparts at that
time. The arts dial didn't botherme. They weren't really great transfers though,
(32:24):
so I was giving the benefit ofthe doubt on that just because you
know, it's a it's an it'san eighties whatever the format was that they
were pulling from, whether that waslike you know, Mima recording on a
blank VHS or it's whatever. ButI chalk that up to just the the
(32:52):
recording format and how it got uploaded. But like the art visually didn't bother
me, And I actually found oftenBill and Ted's them, specifically their dialogue
to be like clever quippy, right. Yeah, That's one thing that I
(33:14):
notice is there there's a lot ofthe humor is very much that sort of
nineties sarcasm with a little bit ofsnark, with also a lot of pop
culture references, some of which theintended audience probably wouldn't get. Like in
the first episode, they have toget they go to medieval China or yeah,
not medieval but ancient China, andthey get they find a story called
(33:36):
the Thousand Vases of Doctor Lao.I knew you would, Corey. Yeah,
stuff like that, and they hadto build the Great Wall in this
one. They do the whole thingin two days, but then it falls
over like dominoes. So I thoughtthat, yeah, some snark and some
pop culture references that even the popculture references, I don't think they have
necessarily aged poorly because some of themwere kind of day did as it already,
(34:00):
like the Thousand Bases of Doctor Lao. And I have to wonder if
a lot of this was just thewriting crew just amusing themselves knowing that most
kids are not going to get thesejokes. That or the parent that passed
through what the kid was watching theshow. Yeah, true, true,
Yeah, But I'm just thinking,like even the episode titles, like episode
(34:21):
three is called the Most Excellent RomanHoliday. The more hainous they are,
the harder they fall. Birds ofa feather, stick to the roof of
your mouth. That's that would correct. Pocket Watchful of Miracles, Babe brute
this Babe Ruth babe is a dude. Dude and never the Twain shall meet,
so that because of course they haveto go meet Mark Twain. Yea,
(34:44):
and yeah, a grim story ofan overdue book. That's all season
one and then season two. Myfavorite one from season two is now I'm
museum. Now you don't because youknow, guys know I'm a big fan
of puns. Yep, I'm awarewe do. Yeah, And they have
one Leave It to Bill and Ted, where they have to go into a
TV show called Leave It to Badgerto try to I guess the show was
(35:06):
going to get canceled. They don'twant to get canceled or something like that.
I think so. And there's alsowell there's anothering called this a Bogus
Day in the Neighborhood where, uh, there's a their favorite show, mister
Radish's Condominium is being canceled because theythe television executives think that kids don't want
nice on TV anymore, right,And then yeah, I just, like
I said, I feel like someof it may have been the crew amusing
(35:30):
themselves and like Corey said, giventhem, you know, given them something
for the parents. But for themost part, you know, we watched
a lot of these shows and thejokes just don't land. A lot of
jokes landed on this one for me, and jokes landed for me as well.
I think it was really funny.Yeah, I was. I was
pleasantly surprised to how will this sulltiment? Sounds like both of you are as
well. You can get some ofthe episodes on DVD, and it's I
(35:54):
think it's out of print, butAmazon does have I don't even think it's
the best of You can't even buythe whole series, but it's got it's
got several it's got like I thinkit's got eight episodes from season one and
the entirety of season to all theepisodes of season two, so it's got
Yeah, basically the first eight episodesof each season are on there. But
(36:16):
yeah, it's it's it's out ofprint, so it's not really uh,
not really available. It's it's likeeighty nine ninety five if you want to
buy it now. But if yeah, but but you could, like I
said, you can watch some onYouTube. I would I would recommend everybody
going check this out, especially ifyou're a Bill and Ted fan, aolutely
corey. Uh, you said youwatched the first two episodes. Did was
(36:38):
there one that you liked more thanthe other? I liked the first one.
I think the pilot, as itwere, was a really good one.
Sweet and sour Chinese Adventure to Go. Yeah, that was fun because
they had they end up inadvertently,uh inventing Chinese takeout the Polo, Mister
(37:00):
the Polo. Yes, Mark,Yeah, mister mister the Polo and Polo.
That was right, because they thoughthis first name was just yeah,
Marco Polo. Yeah, mister Opolo, that's what it was, Yeah,
Marco Polo. The one problem Ihave with it is that the fortune cookies
that they got from the restaurant isnot accurate because fortune cookies are an American
invention, so so be it,I know. And it's just the part
(37:22):
of me that's thinking as an adult, if they're supposed to be teaching,
if this is supposed to be sortof educational, it's a little bit of
a stretch. I would have preferredthat they make stuff like that a little
more obvious. But again, also, the King's dog was named Spaghetti,
and he's like, what am Igonna call these noodles? Hey, I
gotta figure out something. Come on, we're not a good point, and
(37:46):
this time period was not known forit's razor sharp accuracy and cultural representation,
So what's a good point. Yeah, yeah, they do trade in a
lot of stereotypes here, never tome, never mean spiritedly, right,
(38:08):
But it's it's something that you know, you may want to have a discussion
if you're gonna watch it with yourkids about and the second score. You
said you watched the second episode whichis the Birth of rock and Roll or
two Hip for the womb Ye wherethey meet both Mozart and little Richard,
Yes, and William Tell. Iguess I need to. I need to
because it was actually a little Richarddoing of the voice, right, I
(38:30):
think so? Yeah, yeah,so I'm pretty sure us obviously wasn't Wolf
ganging Amadeus Mozart doing that voice orWilliam Tell. But I believe that they
did get a little Richard for thatfor some reason. Hannah Barbera had a
little bit of juice and they couldget you know, some of these the
bigger names. But yeah, Ithought the show did a good job of
using the time travel concept to teachkids about history, and I feel like
(38:51):
the sense of humor from the movieis still intact without some of the more
off color jokes and references that wewe can't really talk talk about because this
is a family show. But Iwould like to note that there is a
toy line, a Bill and Tedtoy line, and it's based on the
look of this cartoon, specifically seasonone. Right. We talked about it
(39:12):
on Talking Toys with Taylor and Jeffseveral months back, so if you want
to listen to our thoughts on that, you can go. It was actually
a really cool toy line, I'mfrom, really cool toys that they had.
So again, this is one ofthose one of those franchises like they've
they've done a lot with it,but it just never seems like they did
enough with it to me. Maybeit's just because that I realize as I
get older that I have more ofa soft spot for this franchise than I
(39:37):
realized. And maybe it is becauseas I get older, I appreciate it
in different ways. Could be maybeI don't know. So yeah, Olivia,
first off, I'll ask do youguys have any final thoughts on it?
And then I'll say, Olivia,do you would you recommend people seeking
it out? I I would sayif I had to kind of put it
(40:00):
all in a nutshell, I thinkit was better. I think the animated
series was better than a lot ofIt's It's cohorts at the time. I
think part of the problem was kindof like with the first movie, timing
and the age that it was thatwas part of their their core target audience,
(40:28):
and again, kind of like thefirst movie, just it seems like
it just it suffered from some littlelike kind of mismanagement issues that possibly could
have made it hit the right audienceat the right time a whole lot better,
(40:49):
right, agreed? Agreed? UhSo, Yeah, I guess that,
and I would I would recommend peopletaking a peek at it, especially
if you're a fan of the moviefranchise and like you know, like us,
you're eighties nineties babies and and lovea good bit of nostalgia with an
(41:15):
animated show that I think holds upa lot better than It's It's counterparts at
that time. I agree, Iagree with it. Yeah, Cory,
what about you? Any final thoughtsand would you recommend final thoughts? Yeah,
just go see it. I thinkit's a really fun representation of the
time of the franchise. I'm gladthat the original actors were able to play
(41:37):
their parts. It is a littlestilted at times with the voice acting,
but I don't think either one ofthese guys have ever done any voice acting
before, but all the people aroundthem made up for the lacks, and
I think it's it's definitely worth theshop, Okay, And yeah, I
would agree again. I was pleasantlysurprised. I was planning to go into
this and expecting to be a littlelet down because of, you know,
(42:00):
our past experiences with shows like this, But man, this, yeah,
this show. I think I thinkthe crew got it. I think the
writing team and those that were workingbehind the scenes got it. They understood
the concept, they understood the materialand the property, and I think were
they to redo it today, Ithink it would be hilarious and I think
(42:23):
it would be awesome because they wouldbe able to aim it at an adult
audience. And I think I kindof hope somebody will think about it,
because I think there I think there'sstill a lot of material to be mined
from it. But I also kindof just wanted to leave it alone now
because the way it ended was waspretty good. So I would definitely recommend
(42:45):
this. If you have access tothe DVDs, check it out, otherwise
hunt them down on YouTube. Itreally is a lot of fun. I'm
actually going to go watch some moreof these, which is not something I
normally do, but I just hadsuch a good time with it that Yeah,
I'm really looking forward to it.So, folks, we'd love to
hear your thoughts on us. Weheaded to the Facebook page and let us
know what you think about Bill andtad uh And until next time for the
(43:07):
Saturday Morning Supercast, I'm Jeff,I'm Corey, and I'm Olivia and remember,
be excellent to each other. I'mParty Party on dudes, totally.
Thank you for listening, and don'tforget to follow the show on Facebook It's
Saturday Morning Supercast and follow at MarvinDog Media on Twitter. M
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