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In this very special Thanksgiving episode of the Dandy Fun House, I’m going to count down my TOP TEN FAMILY FUN FAVORITE GAME IDEAS FOR TURKEY DAY! And we’re gonna get to gobblin’ down on ’em… right now! Let’s step into the Fun House!

Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog! I’m your host Neil Dandy and this is where we always go for extra helpings of your favorite retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff! Today I’m going to count down the very best family fun game and activity ideas I’ve been able to find and I hope YOU’LL find them absolutely Dandy as well.

But before we go any further, I do want to extend a very big thank you to the legendary Count Drahoon for batflapping into the Dandy Fun House Studios here in beautiful Murfreesboro, Tennessee to co-host our annual Halloween episode last month. I have to say he’s the only guest this show has ever had that literally appeared from a cloud of smoke.

And speaking of smoke shows… I think it’s time to check out these smokin’ hot Dandy Fun House t-shirts. They’re super absorbent and perfect for soaking up all that giblet gravy dribbling down your chin at the dinner table this month. And not only are they super-stylish, but they also come with 4 holes in them. One to crawl your body into, one to stick your turkey neck out of and two to poke your wings through! Just head over to dandyfunhouse.com and get yours before the big bird thaws!

And while you’re there, you might as well pick up one of our infamous Coffee Badger t-shirts and / or coffee mugs and/or bags of dark french roast coffee! I’ll let you figure out what a coffee badger is for yourself. I’m tired of explaining it. Once again, head over to dandyfunhouse.com to visit the Dandy Fun Shop and see all the frivolities we have waiting for you!

Okay, without any further delay, I believe it is time to kick off our Turkey Day Top Ten Countdown of our favorite family fun game and activity ideas sure to make your Thanksgiving and absolute hoot! Ready? Let’s do it!

#10: Corn Shucking Race: This is obviously a competition best suited for the early birds helping with the meal prep. As the name implies, everyone competes to see who can shuck corn on the cob the fastest. I personally shuck corn on a weekly basis and I’m still terrible at it. I’m always digging out those corn silk strings with a fork. But I will tell you my secret to super quick corn on the cob! Leave the husk on, cut off the ends with a serrated knife so that not only is the husk completely unattached, but also so that you can stick your cob-holders in. Then microwave your corn cob with the holders stuck in and the husk still on for 2 minutes. When it’s done, simply hold it by one of the holders upright on a plate and use a fork to pull away the husk and silk threads. Voila! Two minute corn on the cob! I make it every week!

#9: Roll A Turkey Dice Game – This is a fun one. It involves game dice with arts and crafts. First you need to print out the game sheets with a turkey body on it along with the various parts of a turkey corresponding to the numbers on the dice. Secondly you need to print out sheets with all the turkey parts on them. Thirdly, you give everyone a pair of child-safe scissors so they can cut their various turkey parts out.

Basically, everyone takes turns rolling the die. If you roll a one, you’ll put eyes on the turky, two you’ll put the beak on your turkey, three the feet and so on and so forth. Of course if you roll something you already have, you do nothing and the next person gets their turn. Whomever succeeds at completley building their turkey first is THE WINNER, WINNER TURKEY DINNER!

You can find the game sheets ready to print at www.playpartyplan.com/roll-a-turkey/ I’ll leave a link in the episode posting for this show at dandyfunhouse.com if that’s too much to remember in your tryptophan fog!

#8: Thanksgiving Charades – If you’ve had enough of Thanksgiving parades, maybe it’s time to try THANKSGIVING CHARADES! TheSavvySparrow.com website calls this an easy, low-prep game that’s simple to understand and play. I like it already! Just like traditional charades except players act out Thanksgiving-themed words and phrases for others to guess.

All you need are the cards with the words and phrases which you can print out at www.thesavvysparrow.com/thanksgiving-charades (or you can just make your own, but these look amazing and they’re already done for you!). A one-minute timer (there’s one on your phone), a box or basket to jumble the cards in for blind-picking and cheap dollar store prizes to throw to or at the winners!

#7: Pumpkin Sweep – This is a great yard game and a great use of your decorative gourds! To play Pumpkin Sweep, you give each player a pumpkin and a broom and set up a finish line on the other end of the yard. The object is to maneuver your pumpkin using only the broom across the yard and over the finish line before your opponents! Losers could have their pumpkins smashed (that last part’s optional and reserved exclusively for Extreme Pumpkin Sweep).

#6: Turkey, Taters, & Terror, a Thanksgiving-Themed Murder Mystery Game

It’s Thanksgiving dinner, and you’ve been invited to the home of Marissa Baron, one of the most innovative television producers in the past 20 years. Marissa has produced almost every successful show on Cluster, the entertainment industry’s most popular network. She has expressed interest in collaborating with a member of her inner circle and has invited her closest friends and family to pitch ideas for a new show at her holiday dinner. You find yourself at her mansion of a cabin in northern Minnesota. Shockingly, just before dinner, Marissa is tragically found dead! It seems she was electrocuted by a short circuit in the electric whisk while masking her beloved pumpkin pie filling. Let’s say she decided to “mix things up” a bit too literally! As you investigate the faulty wiring, you and the rest of the guests begin to wonder: “Could someone have tried to ‘whisk’ away this successful television producer on Thanksgiving?” That will be up to you and 7 of your closest friends and family to find out when you play TURKEY, TATERS AND TERROR – A Thanksgiving-Themed Murder Mystery Game! Find it at www.vanbiermurdermysteries.com

See I told you this was going to be good! Just hang with me! Because now we’ve counted down to…

#5: The Game of TRAFFIC YAM!

#4: Chicken vs. Hot Dog – A Flip it and stick it party game!

#3: THANKSGIVING BINGO – This of course is a turkey-day rendition of the game of BINGO. I think this is great because it’s something everyone young and old can play after dinner and spend some quality time together playing. You can do a search online to find plenty of printable Thanksgiving-themed bingo cards which is great if you already own a bingo set. You can also purchase a wonderful Thanksgiving Bingo set over at www.bigdotofhappiness.com

#2: Turkey Bowling – The only reason this did NOT make #1 is because the true version of this sport is not something you’re likely to play with your family on the actual day of Thanksgiving.

Anyway, the true version of this game is with a frozen Turkey and ten 2-liter plastic bottles for bowling pins. The rest is pretty self-explanatory. Two strikes in a row is a gobbler, a 7-10 split is a wishbone, and a spare is a hen. If a turkey is too heavy to handle, a Cornish game hen is also acceptable.

But another actual practical version of turkey bowling also exists in the form of creating a set of turkeys out of plastic solo cups decorated with construction paper and googly eyes to resemble turkey bowling pins and rolling a whiffle ball or a small pumpkin at them on the living room floor.

I also found this amazing professionally-manufactured turkey bowling set at Oriental Trading Company that has plastic turkey legs as the pins and comes with two small bowling balls! What could possibly be more fun except…

#1: The Turkey Leg Wrap Game!

And speaking of places to put it, I think it’s time to put this Thanksgiving episode of the Dandy Fun House away, but not before I grovel for your spare change!

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Have a very happy Thanksgiving everyone and don’t forget to be extra Thankful for everything the good Lord has blessed you and yours with over this past year! Come on back real soon. Right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY!

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In this extra creepy Halloween 2024 edition of the Dandy Spook Shack, we’re gonna try the all-new Monster Cereal, Carmella Creeper. Also, we’re going to unbox, figure out how to play, and do a full review on the brand new extra creepy board game, Finders Creepers! Let’s step into the Spook Shack!

Hello and welcome to the Dandy Spook Shack! I’m your ghost with the most, your ghoul of cool, Neil Dandy. And welcome to my haunted studio!

Today, we’re going to dig into some Carmella Creeper cereal as well as review the board game Finders Creepers…

BUT FIRST! I want to tell you all about the brand new extra creepy Dandy Fun House t-shirts! They come with a front and a back so you don’t get cold and also four holes in them. One to crawl your body into, one to poke your hopefully not decapitated head out of, two to poke your arms through! How’s that? I couldn’t have done better with a pair of scissors! Go to dandyfunhouse.com and get yours today!

Oh and while you’re over at dandyfunhouse.com, check out the all new gear for the all new line of products, Coffee Badger. Why Coffee Badger? Well, a Coffee Badger is somebody who works remotely, but has to go into the office once in a while to make an appearance for absolutely no apparent reason, because their boss doesn’t want to feel like they wasted all that money buying the office space. So if you’re a coffee badger, you go in, you make your presence known, grab a cup of coffee, throw it down the old pipe, and then you badge out, wave adios and go back home to get all your real work done! Back to your own little haunted mansion, dungeon, whatever you’re doing. Maybe you live in a tree and hang outside down with all the bats. I don’t really know what you do. Hey, speaking of bats…

CARMELLA CREEPER MONSTER CEREAL

Before we dig into this box of Carmella Creeper, it might be a real good idea to call upon someone who knows their bats!

Hey, do you think if we try real hard, we can summon Count Dracula? Let’s try it.

Calling Count Dracula!

Calling Count Dracula!

(Smoke fills room and Neil starts coughing while a vampire who is not Count Dracula appears…)

Neil: Uhhh… You’re not Count Dracula…

Count Drahoon: No, no, I’m Count Drahoon. Sorry, Dracula couldn’t make it tonight. He’s actually on vacation right now, so they sent me.

Neil: Wait, wait, wait. Aren’t you the vampire that took over my show a couple of Halloween’s ago and reviewed all the monster cereals?

Count Drahoon: I sure am!

Neil: Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Count Drahoon!

(Audience goes wild with applause)

Neil: The powers that be must have seen that we were introducing the new monster cereal, Carmella creeper and thought that you might be the better fit.

Count Drahoon: Well, I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve actually ingested human food, but I’ll be happy to give it a try.

Neil: Well, that sounds great. I’ll try it with you. I’ve actually got two blood red bowls!

Count Drahoon: Oh, beautiful. No milk, though. We’re eating this depression era style.

Neil: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Of course.

I found this box of Carmella Creeper in the grocery store just last week. I was checking out the monster cereals. I was like, I have not seen this monster cereal before. Is it brand new? I don’t know. So I took it off the shelf and I learned a little bit about Carmella here. She’s a zombie.

Count Drahoon: Okay… Oh, so she is.

Neil: She’s Frankenberry’s long lost cousin and she’s a DJ and she likes to spin at parties at the haunted mansion. And apparently her flavor is caramel apple.

Count Drahoon: Okay. It sounds good on paper, but…

Neil: yeah… that’s pretty much what I was thinking there myself. All right. Are we ready?

Count Drahoon: I’m ready if you are.

Neil: Hey, you guys want to open this box of Carmella creeper???

Count Drahoon: Let’s do it. Let’s dive right into it!

Neil: Wait. We didn’t really look at the box too closely.

Count Drahoon: Let’s examine.So we have the Carmella Creeper. She looks pretty hip, I’d say. Yeah. Yeah. This is what the kids are into.

Neil: Yeah. She’s got kind of a Latina vibe going on.

Count Drahoon: Yeah, I could see that. Especially with the name like Carmella. Maybe we’re saying it wrong. Maybe it’s not Carmella creeper. It’s kind of a creepe. But that’s like if you’re eating crepes. Maybe she can have like a French alter ego when they do like a crepe flavored cereal.

Neil: Looks like she’s holding a swirly bat.

Count Drahoon: Yeah. It’s really green though. And I’m a little concerned about that because sometimes this color green, it could be really hit or miss. Maybe some of your spooks and spookettes know better than me. I’m old, but this is kind of like standard club lighting, isn’t it? Like this kind of green or just more like a traffic light.

Neil: I don’t know. I’m more worried about what sort of chemicals they put in there.

Count Drahoon: Oh, no, for definitely!

Neil: I mean, you being being what? Three thousand years old…

Count Drahoon: Well, not quite. More like a thousand.

Neil: I don’t know if it would preserve you longer than you’d like to be preserved. I mean, formaldehyde, I don’t know.

Count Drahoon:It might preserve me less.

Neil: It looks like we have some skulls in there, a swirly bat. I mean, she’s even got a little snake friend up there.

Count Drahoon: And he and the snake friend’s got stitches, too. So it’s like zombies. Yeah, a zombie snake or a franken snake. However, you want to spice that.

Neil: What’s on the rest of the box? I think she’s holding up a certain finger on one of the sides I’m looking at.

Count Drahoon: Oh, I didn’t even see that. Oh, yeah. She’s pointing up.

Neil: It’s more of a more of a number one. Not the other finger.

Neil: She does. And another zombie snake friend.

Count Drahoon: So, yeah. And the fingernails, it’s like, is this a fashion statement or is this her corpse? You know, because they could be rotting fingernails. Maybe both. I don’t know.

Neil: They don’t look like they’re falling off her hands.

Count Drahoon: No. So they probably are manicured that way. So that’s that’s a good sign. Yeah. We got a franken snake down here and and it’s with frightful friends, marshmallows. Oh, yeah.

Count Drahoon: I kind of like the back. So it’s like different rooms in the house and each of these pets are doing different things. So you’ve got the snake. He’s doing a little the DJ scratch as it were. And then see, there’s an Igor, Count Chocula, fearless guard spider who’s fiercely loyal. Can you find his teddy bear? So it’s like a little scavenger hunt on the back of the cereal box. So that can keep you preoccupied for a couple of minutes.

Neil: I like it. I like it. So this is the haunted mansion where she throws all her DJ parties. She’s got the Frankenberry and Count Chocula and Boo Berry and a little kitty cat.

Count Drahoon: Yes. Meowberry. Oh, I like puns. I appreciate. I appreciate a good pun from time to time.

Neil: All right. Well, let’s let’s try Carmella’s cereal!

Count Drahoon: It’s very, very bright green. That’s just really not right.

Neil: I remember the last monster cereals we had. They tasted like styrofoam covered with sugar.

(Neil and Count Drahoon taste the cereal)

Count Drahoon: That’s not bad. I’m really not getting the caramel apple thing though.

Neil: I’m not either. It’s sugary.

Count Drahoon: There’s a very slight hint of the caramel apple towards the end. It’s more like an aftertaste, but it’s basically like fruit striped gum. It’s here and there.

Neil: I’m going to try one of these marshmallow bats.

Count Drahoon: It’s more like a shriveled dried up corpse of a marshmallow.

Neil: Mine’s seen by the days as well. I tend to be getting more of the caramel apple thing off the marshmallow, but still not much. It’s more. I feel like we’ve been taken in by another gimmick.

Count Drahoon: No, I think you’re right. It’s funny because I don’t taste the caramel apple with the shriveled up bat. Let me try the shriveled up… There’s also a shriveled up jack-o’-lantern??? Kind of looks like a really deformed bear.

Neil: Actually, that’s not a jack-o’-lantern.

Count Drahoon: It’s not? What is that?

Neil: That’s Frankenberry. Oh. She’s Frankenberry’s long lost cousin.

Count Drahoon: That’s right. Well, Frankenberry looks like he’s seen better days.

Neil: Yes. I think they all have.

Count Drahoon: But I’m not getting I’m not getting the caramel apple and the marshmallows. It just tastes like straight sugar marshmallow to me.

Neil: This is indeed General Mills’ very first female cereal monster.

Count Drahoon: Stunning and brave.

Neil: That’s what I was going to say. That’s what we have to say by law.

She was introduced in 2023, but I did not see her.

Count Drahoon: I completely missed that.

Neil: I didn’t see her on the shelf until this year, so I don’t know where they were keeping her.

Count Drahoon: In the dungeon…

Neil: What what are we rating this cereal?

Count Drahoon: So… not as good as Count Chocula. Count Chocula is just the best. You can’t beat it.

Neil: Well, I wouldn’t know because you ate the whole box.

Count Drahoon: I did eat the whole box. I’m sorry. I owe you a box of Count Chocula. But Count Chocula is by far the best. I think I said that Frankenberry was a close second. Frankenberry was decent. But then once you get into Boo Berry and then oh, what was the other one? The fruit… It was the fruit one with the werewolf on the cover of it.

Neil: Frute Brute!

Count Drahoon: Oh yes! They tasted eerily similar. I will put Carmella Creeper above Frute Brute.

Neil: Yeah, I would too.

Count Drahoon: There is some semblance of a caramel apple flavor to it, but it’s very, very faint. So I would rate it better than Frute Brute but not quite as good as Boo Berry.

Neil: Not quite as good as the classics!

Count Drahoon: That’s right! Exactly.

Neil: OK, well, then there you’ve got a Carmella Creeper, everybody. And I believe we’re going to continue snacking on Carmella Creeper while we check out the game of…

FINDERS CREEPERS AUGMENTED REALITY BOARD GAME REVIEW!

Neil: Let’s look at the box…

Count Drahoon: That looks kind of fancy.

Neil: Look at the packaging. They have a little thing here. You move it around and find things on the box by moving this little viewfinder around.

It’s by Micro Games of America, MGA. It’s an app-vanced game. Now, what that means is that it uses augmented reality with your phone. And in addition to finding monsters in the game, you also find monsters out in the real world. You basically hunt digital monsters with your phone.

Count Drahoon: So we’re giving kids more of an excuse to use their phone!

Neil: That’s pretty much the idea.

Count Drahoon: Wow.

Neil: Now, normally on this show I shy away from board games in particular and anything that doesn’t have a tangible object that does something interesting. But since this is the Halloween episode, I figured this had an interesting box and you’re going to be able to find animated ghouls and spooky things in here with your phones. I figured it might make for an interesting episode.

Count Drahoon:I think so.

Neil: Or we might find out that this is a complete piece of garbage.

Count Drahoon: A complete dud. Just like the Carmella Creeper.

CHECKING OUT THE BOX

Neil: So here we’ve got the Finders Creepers box. I really like the way they’ve done this.

Count Drahoon: It’s pretty eye catching.

Neil: That’s what caught my eye was the eye catchiness of it. So you’ve got the front of it here where you can kind of use this viewfinder kind of thing to move around and discover things on the box. I think it’s just a piece of white cardboard behind it that makes stuff show up a little better. But still good packaging.

Have a look at the sides here. They are pretty much all the same. Good graphics though. And then on the back you have a shot of the board itself.

Count Drahoon: Uh, how you would use your phone?

Neil: Looking at the board… Apparently you see the monsters jumping out of the board at you. That’s how you find them.

Count Drahoon: And you’re supposed to hunt monsters?

Neil: I believe you capture three of them to win. And then apparently the monsters can also appear around the room.

Count Drahoon: This is already starting to feel like a Black Mirror episode.

Neil: What is the black mirror?

Count Drahoon: It’s this show that’s kind of like the modern Twilight Zone minus a host, but it’s like cautionary sci-fi and horror tales in an anthology format. And I just feel like the idea that you’re playing with monsters that come out of your phone just strikes me as a Black Mirror episode.

Neil: By the way, you have just flown back from Hollywood.

Count Drahoon: I did.

Neil: And your bat wings must be very, very tired.

Count Drahoon: That’s why I said I had a really long flight getting here.

Neil: Ok, I’m here trying to open this box of Finders Creepers and I’m not having much luck with it. I cannot figure out how they’ve got this thing sealed up. I don’t see any tape on it.

Count Drahoon: It must be packed in really tight. Oh, I think you got it. Yeah, you got a little bit of it.

Neil: Ahhh… here it is! There’s a flap on the end with two pieces of tape. But that also means I have to find a sharp object to cut the tape. Sing a song. I’ll be back with something sharp.

Count Drahoon: Um, how about a poem instead?

Once upon the midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary over a many-acquainted and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I nodded nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping as if someone gently rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor, I muttered, only this and nothing more. Ah, yes, I remember it was the bleak December and every dying ember wrought its course upon my books, sir cease of sorrow for the lost Lenore. (Edgar Allen Poe)

Neil: (back with a knife) All right, let’s slice it open and see what we’ve got!

Count Drahoon: Slasher rules applied.

Neil: There we go. Time to open the coffin lid. Oh, it magnetizes closed! They’ve really gone all out on the presentation here.

Count Drahoon: Wow.

Neil: (opens box) Look! It’s an entire graveyard!

Count Drahoon: That’s beautiful artwork, actually.

Neil: (reading the text over the graveyard) It was the fateful night the relentless members of Invisible Inc. had been waiting for. The paranormal hunters tracked down the tombs. 12 of the most horrible monsters you could imagine. Was it a mistake to open their graves and release them onto the world? Let’s not quibble about that now. There are monsters to be caught! Each member wants to prove they are the best and find and catch these creepers inside the horrible haunted house. Get ready to join the mission!

(Looking at the graveyard) Now, this is kind of like an advent calendar.

Count Drahoon: It does kind of look a little bit like it.

Neil: You want to do the honors?

Count Drahoon: Sure. So you peel open the first flap and you find Abby Stabby! Battery included is what the first gravestone says. You get this little number, this little chip right here (holds up an Abby Stabby game token). And let me tell you, she is she is a beaut, just an absolute beaut.

Neil: Now, she one of the monsters?

Count Drahoon: Yes! Next we have Papa Poppets. He’s a little like a professional wrestler from the 90’s named Papa Shango, who was like sort of like a voodoo guy. And that’s kind of what he reminds me of a little bit. Some of these characters however don’t they don’t feel entirely original.

Neil: I will say they’re not flimsy!

Count Drahoon: Next we have Curse the Cat.

Neil: I see they’re they are on cardboard, but they’re on nice, thick cardboard. I’ve reviewed some games where it’s just like little cheap flimsy floppy things and this seems to have much better quality.

This Curse the Cat character appears to be just a scary black cat. And I like that.

Neil: Cats don’t really get scary on their own. I think cruel humans make them scary.

Count Drahoon: Right. Especially when you’re walled up with one like in the movie The Black Cat! Next up, we have Harper the Hag. Is it a boy?

Neil: I think a hag is usually reserved for a female.

Count Drahoon: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

Neil: Like the sea hag from Popeye.

Count Drahoon: But I guess nowadays a hag can be gender neutral.

Neil: Well, you know, once you visit the Vanderbilt Clinic, anything goes!

Count Drahoon: Next we have Sir Henry Chestershire. It’s like a werewolf cat.

Neil: A werewolf cat?

Count Drahoon: That’s what it looks like to me.

Neil: Nah, that’s just a werewolf.

Count Drahoon: That’s a werewolf. But but but Chester, that’s kind of very cat name.

Neil: Yeah, it’s a very cat name, but it’s kind of British. So, you know, the whole werewolf of London kind of thing.

Count Drahoon: Our next monster is Slimm Grimm. This is more of a more of a ghoul kind of. It looks like Bat Boy all grown up and working as an accountant.

Neil: (lifting out the cardboard graveyard and finding a large booklet) Well, I guess these are the instructions. The rule book. Now, I DID take the liberty of going online and watching a video on how to play. The video was 12 minutes long and there were five million rules to this things. And it was just the most convoluted, complicated thing I’d ever seen in my life.

You know, I kind of just want to pull out the board game, flash my phone at it and look at the cool monsters. And you know, it should just be obvious how you play it. But from what I saw, it’s very involved.

Now, I’m hoping once we actually get in and play this thing that everything will become real obvious. But first you have to download the app and I have already done that. And I’m going to launch it now.

Count Drahoon: That’s a neat looking app I must say!

(APP INTRODUCTION VOICE)

Welcome members of Invisible Inc. The premier paranormal investigation organization. I’m your assistant, Boogle.

Count Drahoon: Run!

(App continues) your guide through your mission.

Neil: You’ve got a tutorial here and it is 12 minutes long. We’re not going to do that today.

Count Drahoon: What? A 12 minute tutorial?

Neil: I’ll skip and scan through some of this.

(App continues) 12 monster tombstone tiles, eight run special action chips and eight gear special action chips. You can pause. I’ll wait…

Separate out the six haunted objects and four holy object tiles. Set four of the haunted object tiles aside. Shuffle the upside down gear tiles and make 12 stacks of three tiles. Now shuffle up the remaining six gear tiles, two haunted object and four holy object tiles and randomly deal one to the bottom of each of the piles.

Neil: Be sure to hold your left earlobe while standing on your right leg…

Count Drahoon: and be sure to scratch there. Sniff that.

(App continues) Haley, Ruth or Diego.

Count Drahoon: Who are these people?

Neil: They’re the monster hunters.

(App continues) If No one has spotted a spirit, The oldest player goes first.

Count Drahoon: Well THAT’S discriminatory!

(App continues) Place your hunter figurine at the enter gate. Now let’s use the app to set up a mission. One player must be the host and the other players will join their mission.

Neil: So you would have to download the app and then join my mission with your phone.

(App tutorial continues despite Neil desperately trying to stop it)

Neil: I’m trying to stop this thing.

Count Drahoon: You can’t. It doesn’t stop. It never ends.

(App continues) Once everyone is done, it’s time to start the mission.

Okay, there’s a bunch of cards here and I guess you have to punch them all out.

Count Drahoon: Okay. Oh, it’s like demonic Beauty and the Beast.

Neil: Fire extinguisher. You’ve got the Necronomicon.

Count Drahoon:vYeah, this is a lot to break down.

Neil: There are nets, Ghostbusters cannons and these are all the things you use to catch the ghost when then you’ve got a blowtorch and some kind of spike.

Count Drahoon: So you so everyone gets these or do you get to choose?

Neil: I’m not really sure and it would take you so long to learn what you have to do, I’m not quite sure I want to sit through all that. I will say they’ve gone all out on the graphics.

Count Drahoon: They really have.

Neil: I’m sure maybe once you spend some time with this and really get into it, you’ll understand what’s going on. Here’s the instructions on how to play. Several pages! (turning pages) We’re still going here. Still going… Still going… And do you really want to read all that?

Count Drahoon: Out of curiosity how how long do most instruction manuals last for your basic board game?

Neil: Most games that I review are usually just a one sheet thing and at the most it’s maybe two pages. You know what I haven’t found yet?

Count Drahoon: What’s that?

Neil: The board. The game board. Where’s the actual game board itself?

Count Drahoon: Is it under that white cardboard flap?

Neil: OH There’s a slot in the bottom of the box where it just slides in!

Count Drahoon: That’s kind of neat.

Neil: I was about to rip this whole thing apart.

Count Drahoon: Wow.

Neil: You want to give instructions? That’s what you should give the instructions on! I’ll tell you what. I absolutely refuse to read all these instructions in a game review. It’s just not going to happen. We’re just going to open the board and have whatever kind of fun we can have with this thing and leave it up to our audience to decide if you want to explore further.

But wow! Look at the size of this game board!

Count Drahoon: That’s a beautiful board. That’s amazing.

Neil: Here is our game board. And I’m going to host the game. You can choose a high intensity or a low intensity version with the app. I’m going to choose high intensity.

(Game asks for age verification for the high intensity mode)

Count Drahoon: Nosey question. And it’s showing some interesting graphics here. I’ve never done anything like this.

Neil: I haven’t either.

Count Drahoon: So apparently you choose which hunter you want. I’m feeling Diego.

(App starts game play) Get ready. Game is starting. Scan the board first… The monsters are out!

Neil: OK, so you can see the monsters on the board with your phone.

Count Drahoon: That’s that’s kind of neat.

Neil: I think you’re supposed to memorize what rooms they’re all in.

Count Drahoon: It’s my turn. I’ll try to catch a monster.

(app instructs player to touch a room to search for monsters)

Count Drahoon: Sure. I’ll touch a room and search for Numbskull the Clown monster. (zombie comes out and eats the player) Oh, what? What? What just happened? A zombie came out and ate me!

Neil: So basically, I think the bottom line to Finders Creepers here is that this takes some time and attention.

Count Drahoon: Yes. You have to be willing to get into it, get into the instructions, get into the game, learn the different nuances of it and really spend some time.

Neil: And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Count Drahoon: No, it’s not. This is probably a game for somebody that has like intermediate gaming experience, both online and with board games. So if you’re good at both of those or if you have intermediate expertise with board gaming, I think this could be a good game for you. But for somebody that just maybe plays Monopoly casually, you’re probably going to need to make room in your schedule to sort of sit down and really learn how to do this because it does seem a bit complicated. I think it would probably be worth it, though, because it’s really neat how the whole game is set up. It really integrates AI very well. The designs for everything are really top notch. This is a high quality game. But yeah, it does seem a bit complicated.

Neil: I agree. This game is more for the board game enthusiast. Somebody who wants to roll up their sleeves and dig into something. And it’s something that I don’t think they’ll get bored with it quickly because there seems to be a lot of things going on. And if you really want to sink your teeth into it, there’s a lot here to get into and sink your teeth into.

I was personally ready to give this a bad review. And the reason I was ready to give it a bad review is because while I was preparing for this show, I was watching the video on how to play it. And it just got so involved that my eyes just glazed over. I was like, you know, drool black drool started coming from the corners of my mouth.

Count Drahoon: Oh, that’s where it came from…

Neil: Yes, yes. And, and I was just like, Oh, this is horrible. This is a train wreck. Who wants to do all this? But now that I’ve opened it, and I’ve looked at the quality that they’ve actually put into this game and how interesting they’ve gone into making the packaging and the development of the app. I mean, not only do you see ghouls and goblins and things in the haunted house jumping out at you through your phone, but there are parts in it where you’re going to be able to go around the room and see them actually where you’re hanging out. And for that reason, I’ve changed my mind, I’m gonna say they’ve knocked it out of the park with this thing. It’s not for me. But it wasn’t made for me.

Count Drahoon: No, I agree. This is this is a hardcore game enthusiast game. So on that end, if you’re grading it on that curve, this gets high marks, definitely.

Neil: FINDERS CREEPERS! Find it wherever you creep!

CATCHING UP WITH COUNT DRAHOON

Neil: Count Drahoon, you left us here in Murfreesboro all by ourselves for a while. And I believe you went and spent some time in Hollywood, California?

Count Drahoon: I did.

Neil: So what were you doing out there? And I understand that you’re now back in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. So tell us about that.

Count Drahoon: Yes. So, California, I was out there just trying to sort of expand the web as it were for, you know, all things Count Drahoon. I think I did to an extent. I hosted horror films out of LA for a while. But I got homesick and I decided it was time to come back to Tennessee, because I think things are really happening out here. And I think this is the place to be. So I wanted to come back home to Tennesseevania and I’ve really started hitting the ground running and it’s almost as if I never skipped a beat! And I’m doing all kinds of stuff out here in in Murfreesboro!

Neil: I noticed you’re doing Monday night classic horror films at Hop Springs Brewery.

Count Drahoon: Yes.

Neil: It doesn’t mean a whole lot to any of you who are not in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. But it means a lot to us. So you’re hosting classic horror movie nights there. What else are you doing around?

Count Drahoon: That’s mostly what I’m doing right now. So Monday nights, I’ve dubbed it the Monster Movie Mondays over at Hop Springs. I’m doing double features every Monday for October and one Wednesday.

And then I’m also doing a few other shows around town. We just had one last night from where we’re recording at Cedar Glade Brews. Went very well. I did that with my friend Scufflemoss Treeman, who’s a forest troll. Murfreesboro is a very strange town. We did a live riff track of the Beast of Yucca Flats, which is one of the worst movies ever made. But it’s a lot of fun.

Neil: So for the people who are not in Murfreesboro who want to dig into the world of Count Drahoon, where do they go?

Count Drahoon: Yeah, so I do have a YouTube channel. It’s called Count Drahoon Presents. And I do movie reviews of horror films, but I’ve branched out a little bit. So I do like top 10 countdowns of my favorite movies of the year. And I do include non horror titles in there.

Neil: So basically YouTube is where you find Count Drahoon these days.

Neil: All right. And where you find the Dandy Fun House is of course at www.dandyfunhouse.com, where you can support the show!

SUPPORTERS get access to exclusive bonus features

PODCAST LISTENERS often will have a little button with the dollar sign in your listening app of choice and you can donate to the show that way if you found any value at all.

And if nothing else, FIVE STAR REVIEWS anywhere you can leave them get our undead gratitude!

Count Drahoon, thank you for stopping by.

Count Drahoon: Thank you for having me.

Neil: Right here at the Dandy Spook Shack where everything is always FUN AND DANDY!

So what do you do now? You just disappear in a puff of smoke?

Count Drahoon: You’re kicking me out.

Neil: The show’s over.

Count Drahoon: I thought we could hang out for a while. Maybe dig into this Carmella Creeper cereal. I mean, that’s a lot of it…

Virl and Tom Osmond

The Dapper Dans

Tommy Walker, Disneyland Director of Entertainment

Donny Osmond

Marie Osmond

Jimmy Osmond

George Osmond Sr.

Mike Curb

Rick Hall

Muscle Shoals Sound Studio

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Ten-year-old Cooper Dean of Valrico, Florida entered into a Young Inventors contest and caught the attention of an international toy and game company with her idea to bring a farmland pastime to kitchen tables everywhere! In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, we’re going to shovel in to the game of… Chicken Poo Bingo! Let’s step into the Fun House!

Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House! This is your home of retro pop culture, toys and games, and all the fun stuff. I’m your host, Neil Dandy, and in this episode, we’re going to shovel up something amazing with the game of Chicken Poo Bingo! And I’ll tell you more about that in just a few minutes, but first, I want to show you these awesome Dandy Fun House T-shirts!

They look great! I designed them myself so you know they’re awesome, and they come with four holes in them! One to crawl your body into, one to stick your head out of, and two to poke your arms through! That’s how we do it here at the Dandy Fun House. It’s got a front and a back so you don’t get cold. Head over to http://www.dandyfunhouse.com today and see what’s shaking!

Oh, and while you’re there, don’t forget about our brand new shirt, Coffee Badger. Are you a coffee badger? Do you know what a coffee badger is? Badge in, caffeinate, badge out. That’s how the coffee badger does it. Okay, back to the show!

Cooper Dean, a 10-year-old girl from Valrico, Florida, was on a camping trip with her parents, and she noticed a game that they were playing at the campground, with chickens pooping on a board with a bunch of squares in it, and it was called Chicken Poop Bingo. It’s pretty obvious how it plays, the chicken eats chicken feed, then it walks around on this game board in an enclosed pen, and it poops on different squares, and that’s just like the bingo caller calling out the letter and number until somebody shouts, “Chicken Poop Bingo!” and they’re the winners.

She took this idea and worked on it at home using a toy wind-up chicken that pooped little pellets out, (you’ve seen those things, the little kind that you get at the little dollar store), and she worked up a game that you could play at home that didn’t require real poop, and she called it Chicken Poo Bingo!

She then took her new game, which she and her friends had a blast playing, and entered the People of Play Young Inventor Challenge, which allowed young inventors to present their ideas to big name companies!

Well, one of these big name companies was Goliath Games, and if you haven’t heard of Goliath Games, well you should have, because you go back a couple of episodes here at the Dandy Fun House when we were talking about the game of Greedy Granny, and I brought you the love story of Adi and Margrethe Golad. It’s amazing, you got to go see it. Go back a couple episodes, check it out here.

But anyway, back to this. Goliath Games took notice of this game, and they said that’s brilliant, it’s amazing, we’ve got to work with this awesome girl, and so they did! They had zoom calls and conferences, and they cut a deal, and the result is Chicken Poo Bingo, which you can find on shelves all over the world now!

Alright, without further ado, I’m going to unbox this thing, assemble it, and we’re going to figure out how to play it. It’s just like Bingo, you already know the deal here, but I have no idea what to expect when I start cracking into this box. I made it an intentional decision to not look at it too much, because I wanted my initial reaction to this game to be exactly what appears on camera. So let’s crack into Chicken Poo Bingo!

OUTER PACKAGING

So as you can see, here’s the box, and it’s got great graphics. You never know where the chicken will go! They always do it great at Goliath Games, I’ve gotta tell you, it’s an amazing company. They didn’t do anything special on the sides, they just kind of put the same graphic on every side, but it’s an awesome graphic. They  just kind of repurposed the front of the box.

On the back of course, same as you always have with these types of things, you’ve got the kids playing on the back, as well as a picture of Cooper Dean in the corner, who invented the home version of this game!

“This silly chicken has to go, so you can get Bingo. So, in this fun farm themed game, a chicken is in charge of which cute and colorful squares are chosen each round of Bingo. Just wind it up and watch it go. That’s right, the Chicken Poo tells you what to match on your Bingo card. Crazy cows, fluffy pigs, and more are waiting to be chosen every game. Match five in a row and shout Chicken Poo Bingo! to win and bring a blast of laughs to your family!”

And I did pick this up at Bass Pro Shops. The reason I picked it up at Bass Pro Shops is because it was the only store local to me that actually had it on the shelf, and I was running a little late on time. I just overhauled my whole studio here, and I didn’t have time to order it online and wait for it to come. So, hit Bass Pro Shops I did, and I paid about eight extra dollars than I would have had I ordered it online, but you know that’s the price that I pay to bring you Chicken Poo!

All right, let’s open this thing and see what we got here. And since the chicken is wind up, that was a question I had. I was concerned that I was going to have to get batteries, but Goliath Games came through once again and made it mechanical and not battery powered, and they’re really good about that stuff. So, another big shout out kudos to Goliath Games! Let’s open the box and get our first impressions here!

UNBOXING

There’s not much to see in that box, is there? It looks like a pretty empty box. It looks like I got ripped off! There’s nothing in there! Look at that! Look at this! It’s not empty, however…

Just got to do a little creative digging here. We’ve got cardboard. Let’s lose that.

Here we have an entire sheet of Poo tokens!

Oh, and here’s different game pieces. This is kind of interesting here. Various game pieces with different patterns on them. Good branding on it all.

What else we got? We have our instructions here.(…) We have a funnel…

and little nuggets of poop. Yay! Poop funnel!

And we have a chicken here. The star of the show, our chicken… and our chicken isn’t too bright. Chicken stuck its head in a plastic bag, which is not really advisable because there’s really no air holes in there for the chicken to breathe.

And then we have the game board. I like this already, and you know why I like it? Because usually when you see a game board that it’s this small, it’s usually like you’ve got half of it in one piece, and then you’ve got a half-cut part, and then it flops open into a bigger board, and I hate that little quarter cut. I like it when you just open it and there it is.

Now let’s turn it around and see what we got. All right, that’s colorful. You have a start square, and then I guess you just match up the different animals and farm features, I guess.

These have got to be the bingo cards that you hand out, and they must be because they all have different configurations.

Well, the first thing… We’ve got to fill up our chicken. And what you do is you grab it down here, probably not by the feet because the feet are motorized. So you want to grab it by the body and then just rip the head of the chicken off. And that’s pretty much how you kill a chicken anyway when you’re getting ready to pluck it for dinner. Then the poop pellets, obviously, go into this little hole right here, and I guess that’s where the funnel comes into play. You don’t really need the funnel, but I guess it just makes it easier to load your poop pellets into. I’m having trouble getting all these in here, so okay, I guess we’re not going to load them all in here for now. In our chicken head, there’s a tab to the side, and there’s a notch in the top of the chicken’s body. You want to line those up and just snap the chicken head back on.

INSTRUCTIONS

Object: Be the first to get five poo tokens horizontally vertically or diagonally and shout chicken poo bingo!

Playing the game: The youngest player goes first. On their turn, players wind up the chicken about eight rotations or until the gear feels taut and set it on the start space in the center of the bingo game. Players may choose to place the chicken facing any direction. As the chicken wobbles along, watch for those poo nuggets as the chicken poo lands on the colorful squares. Players should match them to their bingo cards and place a poo token on that square on their own card.

You never know when you might get a chicken poo bingo! If no one has a chicken poo bingo after everyone has finished checking their cards, that round ends and play passes to the left. The next player starts the next round by gathering the poo nuggets and refilling the chicken and winding it up and placing it on the start space facing any direction. Players take turns refilling and placing the chicken on the bingo game board and checking their cards each round until one player has five poo tokens in a row on their bingo card.

Okay, so you just keep it going. You keep putting poo tokens on your game card and you don’t take them off after each round. You just keep it going until someone gets bingo it like you would if you were actually playing regular bingo somewhere without poop involved. You know what… this is the second fecal themed game that I’ve reviewed this year!

HISTORY OF POOP BINGO

But while I’m popping out poop tokens here, I’m going to tell you kind of how the whole concept of poop bingo started. It actually started as cow poop bingo (for lack of a more family friendly term) out on farms. They’d make a great big grid pattern on the ground in the cow pen and the cow would walk around and do what cows do and people would mark off their bingo cards until somebody got the bingo. Everybody would pay a few dollars to play and the money would either go to support the farm or a local charity.

Well, there was a musician who was playing at a bar who had experienced this game happening out on farms and he presented the idea to his clients, the bar owners, of bringing in this game to their establishment but adapting it instead of cows (because cows can’t go to bars), chickens, which you could actually bring indoors if you needed to. The owners loved the idea and it brought in some additional revenue.

And so that’s where our young inventor came up with the idea. Not that she’s going out bar hopping with her parents, you know what I mean? She saw it at a campsite, not at a bar that let in 10 year olds.uhh… yeah. All right, now we’re ready to play some chicken poo bingo!

LET’S PLAY CHICKEN POO BINGO!

I’m going to shuffle these cards so I don’t know which one I’m going to get here. I’ll pull one from the middle. Okay, that’s going to be my card right here. Youngest player goes first. Well, that would be me! So eight turns on the chicken… Okay, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, or until taut. I think it’s tight enough now. I don’t want to screw up the winding mechanism.

So we’ll just kind of put it here in the center start space. Now, my big question is, is this thing going to walk in a straight line or is it going to, you know, meander around in circles, which I would think it would probably be better for it to do. You know, it should be a little unpredictable…

So here we go… It dropped one in the start space on the border between the start space and on a line. I’m not going to count that one.

All right. Got eggs, tractor. Oh, I see! The poop pellets roll around and they could land pretty much anywhere as long as you’re on a level surface.

Okay. So the chicken has dropped on the tractor and the eggs. So do I have a tractor and do I have eggs? I have a tractor. I think everything’s on each card. They’re just in different formations… and I have eggs! Let’s, let’s wind up some more. I’m just going to leave the chicken right where it’s at.

Oh wait. And we, and we got one on the dog. Where’s the dog? Right there! Okay.

Then start it from right where it stopped.

We’ve already got our cards marked. So we don’t really need to leave poop pellets sitting around on the board because that could get in the way of the chicken walking around. So rip the chicken’s head off again for our funnel here. You know, chickens actually will continue to run around after you pull their heads off in real life. Don’t ask me how I know that.

They gave way more pellets than there’s room for inside the chicken. And I think that’s probably because they’re expecting you to lose some of them. Okay. Let’s, let’s go back to the start here and I am going to actually face the chicken the opposite direction this time. Go until the spring is taut. Instructions said eight turns, it probably meant eight full turns.

Okay. Looks like I’ve got a bunny. Barn. Donkey. Cow. Another one on the barn. And I think that it’s gonna be tough to get the edge of the board because the poop rolls off the edge. The crease in the middle of the board can also play a role in this because the pellets fall into that groove.

piggy…

(…)

Tractor…

(…)

I think a better idea would be to start the chicken in different positions on the board or just from wherever it stops. I think Starting the chicken in the middle start square is a losing proposition because the the chicken’s not going to walk much further than that and you’re gonna really miss the opportunity of getting droppings into the corner spaces. With this in mind, maybe we’ll start this chicken on the hay bales over here in the corner and it seems that wherever you start It’s a pretty safe bet that it’s probably gonna drop one there. But let’s ee what happens…

(…)

We got the lamb…

(…)

And of course we get the chicken…

(…)

And a cow!

(…)

Cow and chicken! I love that cartoon! I think I’m getting really close to a chicken poo bingo here… it’s kind of tedious having to rip the chicken’s head off every time I wish there was a better way to load this thing and I wish that it would you could just load it with all of the poop and not have to do this after every single winding. And it’s really easy to lose all these little pieces. I’ll talk about that more in the wrap-up.

We’ve got boots…

(…)

Bunny… kitty, I’m getting really close here on my game card. Oh Oh

CHICKEN POO BINGO!

And that’s how you play Chicken Poo Bingo!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Alright, that was a lot of fun. I like the fact that it doesn’t use batteries. Goliath games is really good about keeping a lot of their games battery-free and that’s a great thing!

This chicken… the fact that you have to pull it apart after every round to refill it with just 5 pellets and you can kind of feel plastic cracking under your fingers and along the seams and things.. I feel this translates to an early demise for this bird. I just don’t see it holding up over the long term.

I think the tedious nature of having to refill this thing so much is going to be such a pain that kids aren’t going to stick with it very long. It’s like those little wind-up toys you get in your Easter basket. They’re fun for a few minutes. Then you get sick of it and it breaks quickly too.

I could be wrong Kids could have a blast with it and the chicken could keep going for years. It just doesn’t feel like it to me. But also you’ve got these little tiny poo pellets. Is that a choking hazard? I don’t know. It’s so small. You know bigger kids are going be playing around smaller kids. Are they going find them all and put them away? Magic 8-ball says not likely. I think there’s just too much little stuff that’s going to get lost. Paper thin tokens and game cards too. It’s a great way to bring the fun of poop bingo whether it be cow or chicken to your dining room table, I just wish they made this more durable, with more poo capacity and a border around the game board so the pellets don’t roll off the side would be the only other thing on my wish list for this game. I

FINAL RANKING

So how am I gonna rate Chicken Poo Bingo here? Okay on a scale from one to ten chicken droppings…

I’m giving it a SEVEN because I love the concept. I love the back story too. I think it’s awesome! Do I regret buying this? No, not at all This actually was fun and I’m going donate this to the youth room in my church and see what reaction it gets.Especially since we just had a flood in the church. So maybe some of the games I had up there might be ruined when I go in on Sunday morning and this will be a nice new one.

SUPPORT THE DANDY FUN HOUSE!

If you’d like to help keep this show out of the poop house, please consider becoming a Dandy Fun House Supporter by visiting https://www.dandyfunhouse.com and look for the patronage page in the menu. You can donate in a variety of ways: Buy Me A Coffee, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, whatever you want to do!

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Super Supporters get those same bonus features PLUS I will mail you something poopy from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios IF you provide your mailing address!

Podcast Listeners can usually donate via a little button in your podcast app. There’s usually a little dollar sign button and that gives me cryptocurrency. I take cryptocurrency, bus tokens, belly button lint… DON’T SEND ME BELLY BUTTON LINT!

And if you don’t have anything to donate but still wish to support,  please leave a five-star review anywhere you can. That would be really really appreciated because it helps the show grow!

Alright, that’s gonna be about it. I’m gonna get the poop on out of here! You guys come back soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY!

Bob Casale

Bob MothersbaughAlan Lewis

Funneling his anger into artistic expression, this historical event would ultimately become the inspiration for the official coming together of this group of musicians to form a band with the underlying theme highlighting the regression of mankind. In 1973, they made it official with Gerald Casale recruiting his brother Bob and Mark Mothersbaugh with HIS brother Bob while also adding in Alan Myers, Rod Reisman and Fred Weber to round out the group. Thus SEXTET DEVO (as they were originally called) was born. Exactly when the name was shortened to simply “DEVO” is up for debate but from all the information I’ve been able to gather, it happened rather quickly during the formative years of the band.

Director, Chuck Statler

Alan Meyers

David Kendrick

Bob Casale

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Do you have a fat, stingy grandma? Have you ever wanted one? Well today’s your lucky day because on this episode of the Dandy Fun House we’re going to unbox, assemble and play none other than the game of GREEDY GRANNY! Let’s step into the Fun House!

Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House video show, podcast and blog! This is where we hoard all the retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff we can find!

But first I want to show you these awesome DANDY FUN HOUSE T-SHIRTS! They come with a front AND a back so you don’t get cold and we even cut 4 holes in them! One to crawl your body into, one to stick your head out of and two to poke your arms through! Find them at our website https://www.dandyfunhouse.com !

And while you’re there, check out our brand new NO ROBOTS! T-Shirt and tell Cyberdyne where to stick it!

HISTORY OF GOLIATH GAMES

The history of Goliath Games is actually a love story about two people named Adi and Margreeth Golad who fell head over heels for each other over a game of Rummikub while visiting the Israeli desert. We don’t know if it was the moon or the Manischevitz but in addition to their passion for one-another, they also found a burning passion for the game of Rummikub.

Margreeth soon returned home to the Netherlands where she shared this game with her family who also became consumed with an unquenchable passion for the game of Rummikub.

Margreeth and Adi soon connected back up and decided to not only join together to pursue a business desire to bring Rummikub to the world but also join together in holy matrimony and in 1980 founded GOLIATH GAMES.

Adi left his mechanical engineering career and traded in his car for 500 games of Rummikub which he sold on the streets of the Netherlands, obviously not out of the trunk of his car. I guess he set them out on a blanket and probably started a lot of conversations with “Psst buddy!”

There were challenges along the way, but when they were hungry, Rummikub kept them alive (Hey, I think that’s and Eagles song!). Nonetheless, Adi and Margreeth persisted on their all-out Rummikub rampage and proceeded to build the game into the iconic, multi-generational classic that it is today. In fact, the game eventually became so popular that it set the world record as the most number of games played per capita in a single year. Goliath Games and Rummikub still hold this record to this day!

Together, Adi and Margreeth built the foundation of Goliath Games and nurtured it into a leading global manufacturer of toys and games in over a dozen countries around the world. Their slogan? “Clever Together.”

Adi and Margreeth Golad, The Dandy Fun House video show, podcast and blog salutes you!

Now let’s get into this game of GREEDY GRANNY!

For a game that’s been around since 2018, I found surprisingly little information on the backstory or origins of this game while researching for this episode. I was unable to find who invented it, what the inspiration was or anything more than simply reviews on how to play it which I avoided looking at because I wanted my initial reactions to this game to indeed be my initial reactions.

Pretty much all I know is that this is a TWAG (toy with a game), Granny sits sleeping in a chair with a tray of treats and the players take turns stealing treats until Granny abruptly wakes up and spits her teeth at you which means that not only do you lose the game, but you’re in for a round of butt whipping with a wooden spoon! (At least that’s what my grandmother, Alma used to do to me. And in full disclosure, I deserved it every single time.)

Ok, enough lollygagging! Let’s get into this game of GREEDY GRANNY!

Here we have our game of Greedy Granny! I’llupt it here on the table and let’s look over the box here…

Great graphics on the front. You’ve got Greedy Granny jumping out of her chair. It looks like she’s spitting one of those Grandma cookies, you know the kind without much flavor in them but they’ve got this weird red dot in the middle of them? Yeah, one of those! I’m sure somewhere she’s got a bowl of little hard candies nobody likes but we eat them when we’re at grandma’s house because there’s nothing else to grab (at least until dinnertime.)

Oh wait! There’s her dentures right there! Okay, so she’s spitting out her dentures and a cookie and there’s a little hand coming in here grabbing a pretzel And over here you’ve got one of those unfrosted flavorless cookies and a tiny little picture of what the game actually looks like down here in the corner. All well and good.

So let’s have a look at the back!

We’ve got kids playing the game as usually it is with these games. They’re showing the spinner, a close-up of the game, how it sets up and then Granny jumping out of her chair.

UBOXING

Without further ado… Let’s crack Granny open!

Looking in the box looks interesting lots of different colors going on here. Usually I pull one thing out at a time, but in this case, I think I’m just going to dump the box .

Here’s the instructions and you know what we do with instructions, right? We toss them! And we try to figure it out without them. We will refer to them if we need to so

And we’re going to start with the spinner. The spinner is well protected in its packaging and I like that. It shows that it was actually made by people who care or maybe by people who didn’t want to deal with returns. It’s cardboard, kind of thin, kind of warpy, kind of cheapy, but does it work? Not so much. Oh, okay The the back of it kind of popped out so it did it needs to be sat down on a table so it pops up correctly and then and then you can spin it. You might want to tape it into place.

We’ve got frowny faces a no-go 1x 2x 3x on the board with various arrows. And it looks like some of these arrows indicate if you land on them to get a treat. I think the green means lose a turn and the purple means proceed and tells you how many treats you take and how many treats you give back I don’t know. It looks like I’m gonna have to refer to the instructions so that I know what the heck to tell you guys to do. But now let’s have a look at these various parts

And uh, I’m starting to get a dark feeling about this game from some of the stuff I see here

Here’s Granny’s Dentures!

We’ve got three nasty biscuit cookies

Got three weird grandma red cookie things

Three pretzels (that’s what I’d be going for!)

And we got some other types of nasty rectangular biscuits that nobody wants and

Ready for this… two severed arms!

Apparently she caught one of the kids! Actually the the arms are kind of uh bony and uh… These are old lady arms actually. So obviously these are Granny’s arms and we’re gonna have to build her like a robot.

And speaking of which… Hopefully this is mechanical and we don’t need batteries. I do not see a battery compartment… That would be really cool if we didn’t need batteries for this thing and it appears we do not! I like it when it’s made just to work out of the box!

We’ve got granny’s chair with her torso has been severed apparently… And there’s her treat tray. And I guess you push the button for how many times you are required to do so. She’s got her legs sticking out.

Something tells me I’m gonna like this game! I’m not really sure what to do here but I am very very happy that I don’t see any battery compartment.

Let’s break out Granny!

Now, for her dentures… And let’s go ahead and put in her arms.You know, we want Granny to have some hands here because she needs to make dinner at some point tonight.and talk to you for an hour on your way to the car!

And then you lean her back in her chair and it makes her go to sleep. Night night Granny.

I’m going to put a bunch of treats on her tray…and refer to the instructions here to see what we’re supposed to do!

INSTRUCTIONS

Greedy Granny is a mischievously fun game that is perfect for the whole family Your mission is to swipe a treat from Granny’s tray as carefully and quietly as you can. One wrong move will wake her up and send her teeth flying! Will you risk it for a biscuit?

The youngest player goes first. Well, that would be me!

If the spinner lands on purple the player must put a treat back if they have one and press the button the number of times indicated on the spinner Okay, I have three x so i’ve got to press this button three times one two three

And I lose!

And if you land on green, that tells you how many treats you take and how many times you push the button. The aim of the game is to collect one of each treat. If granny wakes up, the player who woke her must place all of their treats back on her tray. Once the player’s treats have returned reset granny and the game continues!

And that’s how you play GREEDY GRANNY!

FINAL RANKING:

On a scale of one to ten false teeth. I’m gonna give her… I don’t know. Let’s say eight and a half dentures!

SUPPORT THE DANDY FUN HOUSE

And before we spit our own dentures, I would like to ask that if you have found any value at all in this episode to please supporting production of future episodes by visiting the patronage page at our website https://www.dandyfunhouse.com

Supporters gain access to exclusive bonus features

Podcast listeners can support through their listening app of choice if the app supports it (look for a button with a little dollar sign on it)

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I’d love to stay and chew the Freedent with you longer, but now it’s time to get gone! Come back soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY!

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Hey there! It’s me, your old pal Obnoxio the Clown. I know it’s been a while but I couldn’t help but crawl out of my clown hole once I heard what the Dandy Fun House had planned for this episode of their show! Not only that, but they also made the incredibly bad decision to ask ME, your old pal Obnoxio to host!They would have asked the Nebbish, but he doesn’t really talk so much. Ok, by now I have to imagine about two of you are really excited but most of you are really confused, so let me bring you up to speed. I used to be the mascot for CRAZY Magazine and I’m here to tell you the story of this wacky little rag that had a pretty good run back in the 70’s and 80’s! So without further ado, Let’s step into the Fart House! What? Oh the Fun House! Yeah that’s it!

Hello and welcome to the Dandy Flop House, Fun House or whatever they call it! Video Show, Podcast and Blog! I’m your old long-lost pal, Obnoxio the Clown and I’m here to tell you the story of an obnoxious humor magazine that existed from 1973 to 1983 which yours truly was honored to be the mascot for during it’s final few years.

But first, let me show you these crazy new t-shirts from the Dandy Fun House (did I say it right this time?) now available in the Dandy Fun SHOP! It’s got a front AND a back so you don’t get too cold and comes with 4 holes in it. One to crawl your body into, one to stick your head out of and two to poke yer arms through! You can find it at the Dandy Fun House website at http://www.dandyfunhouse.com or go directly to the store at http://www.dandyfunshop.com . Now back to this glorious freaking episode!

Ok, CRAZY MAGAZINE! We were published by Marvel Comics believe it or not and were sort of in the vein of Mad Magazine, Cracked, Sick Magazine and National Lampoon.

In the beginning back in 1953, Marvel Comics was actually called Atlas Comics and they decided to try their hand at competing with the behemoth of all novelty mags, MAD Magazine. So they published 7 issues of a comic book called CRAZY! Which skewered pop culture and included gags galore. It was a nice trial balloon, but didn’t exactly take the world by storm so they shelved the idea of publishing a satire for the next TWENTY YEARS until 1973 when it was revived for the purpose of republishing some of Marvel’s more wacky bits from their late-60’s comic called “Not Brand Echh.” What the heck kind of a name is “NOT BRAND ECHH!?”

STAN LEE

MARV WOLFMAN

For some reason they decided to give the old CRAZY Magazine another crack at success and kept things rolling under the guiding hand of the Marvel man, myth and legend himself… Stan Lee along with Co-Editor Marv Wolfman. Lee wanted to go for a straight up Mad Magazine and Cracked Magazine vibe while Wolfman wanted something more along the lines of National Lampoon. They came to an agreement somewhere in the middle and this gave CRAZY its own unique flavor. Kind of like sardine ala mode!

It was decided that CRAZY needed a mascot, and so kicked around ideas until they came up with a small, buggy looking guy in a floppy hat and some sort of black cape-looking trench coat thing and they called this guy “The Nebbish.” Later they gave him the more proper name of “Irving Nebbish.” This Nebbish guy served as the mascot for CRAZY Magazine for seven solid years and he did a fine job I must say. I mean, I eventually STOLE his job but no hard feelings Nebby! That’s show biz!

STEVE GERBER

Wolfman wasn’t the only editor Crazy Magazine had. A man named Steve Gerber took over editing for issues #11-14 with a desire to set the magazine apart from its competition and try to convince the readers that the creators themselves were crazy. Gerber’s run as editor came to an abrupt end however when he published a very dark feature called “… And the Birds Hummed Dirges” which featured high schoolers engaged in a suicide pact. I think Mr. Gerber went back to making baby food after that!

LARRY HAMA

AL MILGROM

ALAN KUPPERBERG

CRAZY Mag did alright for a while. At least good enough to keep getting published but by 1979, sales were slumping so they brought on a new editor named Larry Hama who tried something really obnoxious and created me, Obnoxio the Clown to be CRAZY Magazine’s new mascot starting with issue #63 in June 1980! Larry wanted a mascot for the mag that would be more proactive and in your face than the other humor rags, so there I was! They modeled my face after some schmuck named Al Milgrom and I was mostly drawn by artist Alan Kupperberg. Back then I had hair. Today not so much. Too many Nair pies to the head’ll do that to ya! And let me tell you, we had the best features during my run as mascot and those days were a blast!

Some of my personal favorite features were:

The Kinetic Kids where you would flip two pages back and forth to give the illusion of animation and bring gross and violent pictures to life

Howard The Duck!

The Nebbish! My old pal! No hard feelings Nebby!

The Obnoxio The Clown Fun Pages where I would bring you stupid puzzles and parodies! It’s what I do!

Page-O-Stuff – This is where they stuck all their random ideas that didn’t work anywhere else!

Comic Book Parodies – Sendups of famous comics like Kaspar the Dead Baby, Ritchie Retch and stuff like that!

Believe it Or Else!

The Eleventh Hour Special with Behemoth Jack – Where we would parody song lyrics long before Weird Al was a thing! My favorite was our sendup of Paul McFartney and the Things!

Fantasy vs. Reality, Aunty Nuke, Gross Encounters and so much more! Ahh! Those were the days baby!

A couple decades later we even made it into an episode of the Simpsons! (ok, it was a glancing mention, but still!). Come to think of it, that Crusty the Clown’s act seems awful familiar! Get my lawyer on the phone!

I had a great time corrupting the world’s youth, but like the bright burning star that I am, I got white hot and burned fast. That’s right, even your old pal Obnoxio couldn’t save the publication from all the modern distractions the world was offering. People just didn’t have time for good old fashioned gross humor anymore.  CRAZY Magazine closed its covers and printed its final issue in April 1983 and I had to go back to twisting balloon animals in the old folks homes. We did have a reunion in 2019 for a one-off issue featuring new material and bringing back some of the best blasts from the past but that pretty much stuck a fork in us!

And now you know pretty much all there is to know about the brief but disgusting run of CRAZY MAGAZINE! We had a good run I suppose! Whaddaya want from me!? I come out of retirement to do a guest-host spot on this no-name production and I can’t even get a bottle of seltzer water in my trailer! I used to be a star! I used to be in command of million-dollar machines! I come back home and I can’t even get a job as a dishwasher! Say what? Oh yeah, you’re right. Sorry I Rambo sometimes.

Hey! You! Yeah I’m talking to you! If you have found any sort of redeeming value to this production at all, the producers of the Dandy Fun House would like to encourage you to show your support and help them afford seltzer water for the guest host trailer by visiting the Patronage Page at the Dandy Fun House Website www.dandyfunhouse.com

Supporters gain access to exclusive bonus features not available to the general public. I might even show off a few highly worn-out issues of Crazy Magazine.

And…

Super Supporters get access to the exact same bonus features as the cheapskates get PLUS we’ll mail you something special from right here at the Dandy Fun House Studios IF you provide your mailing address!Maybe a Nair Pie! Ohhhh! Nair Pie!

Podcast Listeners can donate directly from the podcast app of choice IF the app supports it (look for a button with a dollar sign on it usually)

And 5 star reviews wherever you can leave them get my undying gratitude!

THERE! Have I shilled enough for you leeches!? Give me my 20 bucks and let me go home now!

Thanks for hanging out and come back soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… FUN AND DANDY!

Is it just me or does the Nebbish bear a striking resemblance to the Hamburglar?

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If there’s one thing in this world I am a sucker for it’s snouts, fat bellies and squiggly little tails! It’s great in real life, but it’s even better when it comes in the form of a TWAG! What’s a TWAG you ask? It means Toy With A Game… TWAG!

In this episode number 40 of the Dandy Fun House we’re gonna make pigs fly! And we’re not just gonna make ’em fly, we’re gonna make ’em bounce too as I review the TWAG known as PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES! Let’s step into the Fun House!

Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog where we use our delicate snouts to sniff out the very best in retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff!

I’m your host Neil Dandy and before we begin I want to acknowledge a milestone! Since this is just a monthly show (other than the fact that I do post daily snippets online), there are some that have expressed to me that if this show were to reach 40 episodes… then pigs will have flown!

Well, not only has the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog Officially reached 40 episodes as of the episode you’re currently consuming, but we’re going to celebrate by making pigs fly or at least bounce because I’m gonna unbox, assemble, play and review an awesome looking game from PlayMonster called PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES!

But first I want to let you know that the brand new DANDY FUN SHOP online merchandise store has officially launched!

You can find it on the Dandy Fun House website at dandyfunhouse.com and just click on “SHOP.” You may also visit it directly at dandyfunshop.com .

As of now you’ll find the all-new awesome looking DANDY FUN HOUSE t-shirt with both a front and a back (because we don’t Want you to get cold) which I’m real proud of! I think it came out looking great. You’ll also find some other novelty designs I’ve created not necessarily Connected to the show just some crazy designs I like to make when I’m not cranking out these episodes.

I’m hoping that as the shop grows, it will help promote this show and this show will help promote the shop in what we in the Industry refer to as cross promotion.

But enough about me! Let’s learn a little bit more about the company behind PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES, PlayMonster!

PLAYMONSTER

Now I don’t really recall hearing of this company before, but with a game called PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES bouncing out at me from the Walmart shelf, how could I not get this game and learn more about this company?

So I log on to their website at playmonster.com and before I can even see or do anything I’m instantly disrupted by this horrible pop-up right in my face asking for my name and email address so they can add me to their mailing list before I even don’t anything about them! It’s like an over eager first date and I’m in my nice prom dress. (You know what I’m talking about).

I don’t know who at PlayMonster marketing needs to hear this but PlayMonster we need to talk. Come here…

(soft music plays)

Where was I? Oh, yes, if things go well maybe we can hang out at my place and watch the Hallmark Channel together and maybe… MAYBE then I’ll let you hold my hand and well… you’re making me blush PlayMonster! There goes my heart again!

PlayMonster are you hearing me? I hope so! I’m just not that kind of toy and game reviewer! I have morals and values and boundaries which need to be respected!

Okay…

So I click the annoying pop-up away and start checking out their featured image showing their most featured products and I’m having a gander over what they wish to put out front and center for their company which remains on the screen for exactly five seconds. (Yes I timed it) before the image changes to yeah, you guessed it… ANOTHER SOLICITATION TO SIGN UP FOR THEIR EMAIL LIST! PlayMonster! We just talked about this! Didn’t we just talk about this!?

At this point, I’m not just annoyed, I’m downright ticked off! I feel violated and cheap! My mascara is running and I think I tore my dress. PlayMonster! Let me out of the car! Just let me out!

This company is literally doing everything it can to make me run screaming but I decide that I must persist, put my big-girl pants back on (don’t ask) and proceed forward for the sake of you, my audience.

Upon further exploration I see something familiar; the TOTY (Toy Of The Year) award-winning game, Yeti In My Spaghetti which I actually had the pleasure to give a favorable review to just about a year and a half ago! (episode 22 if you’re playing along at home).

I’m also reminded that PlayMonster is currently the purveyor of the classic toy brands Spirograph, Playskool, Koosh, Fashion Plates and Colorforms along with a good handful of others I’ll admit I’m not familiar with, but look interesting. So I actually HAVE encountered the “handsy” PlayMonster before! I must have just blocked it out like that creepy balloon twister from my fifth birthday party.

Diving in further, I learned from their ABOUT US page (which thankfully does not bludgeon me to sign up for their spam list) that this company began in 1985 by a pair of brothers named Ryan and Bryce Patch under the name PATCH PRODUCTS. They started with kids puzzles before expanding to toys and games and eventually acquiring other brands and growing their offerings henceforth targeting both youth and adult demographics.

In the year 2014, Patch Products were themselves acquired and in 2016 changed the name to PlayMonster. They are based right here in the good old US of A in Beloit, Wisconsin and are distributed all over the world. They support the charitable foundation the TOY BANK FOUNDATION distributing joy and happiness to children in need wherever they may be! Well, there you go! Good PlayMonster! Awesome! See… I DID find something nice to say about PlayMonster after all!

Okay onto this awesome looking game…

PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES!

THE BOX

Here we are! PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES and let’s have a look over the box. I just love the graphics they did on it and it’s got like a soft look to the whole thing. It’s set out in the middle of a green field and you’ve got pigs bouncing on trampolines and landing in the mud puddles and they just they did a bang-up job on this!

You’ve got different pigs on different sides of the box which is great because what most companies do is they just mail it in and put the exact same graphic on every side of the box.

On the back you’ve got the obligatory kids actually playing the game Which everybody does, but then you need to do that because you have to see what the actual product looks like and not just the marketing graphic.

The product looks great on the box. “Yippee jump for joy with Pigs on Trampolines! Use the trampolines to bounce your pigs into the pigpen and try to land in the mud puddle. Every pig you land in the puddle earns you a mud pie! Keep bouncing your pigs until all the mud pies are gone. The muddiest piggy wins!

UNBOXING

Sounds good to me. Well, let’s open it! Without further ado… (THIS is the part I love!)

Whoosh

Here we have color instructions! The instructions are awesome-looking. They show you how to put it all together and it appears to be in very plain English and very simple gameplay. I think we get the idea. You try to get them into the middle of the mud puddle and you collect mud pies.

we have three trampolines right here and they make great little tom-toms! And The legs are all different different lengths so that the trampoline can sit at an angle to bounce the piggies the proper direction.

You’ve got the mud puddle platform trunks(which hold up the mud puddle platform) which just snap together. It’s a durable plastic. I don’t think there’s a great risk of breaking it. Not like that brittle plastic you get in some games.

We have the cardboard graphical platform for the mud puddle which fit into slots in the top of the platform. You have the mud puddle itself which is just a brown plastic cup that fits into the middle of the platform and the object is you want to try and launch your pigs into that cup.

THE PIGS

And last but not least we have our piggies! I’m a little disappointed that PlayMonster didn’t give our piggies names or any sort of fun bio. I think that would have added a real special touch. So I supposed we’ll have to give them our own names!

We have:

THE MASKED PIG!

BALLERINA PIG!

BICYCLE PIGGY!

SUPER PIGGY!

TROLL PIG!

and…

DAREDEVIL PIG!

These are your beloved PIGGY BOUNCERS! GIVE ‘EM A HAND!

MUD PIES AND HOW TO PLAY!

What you win if you actually get your pig into the middle of the mud puddle are mud pies! They look like little brown plastic splats. And you get seven of them so there is no chance for a tie game. You can also play an easier version for small children where a mud pie is awarded for simply bouncing the pig onto the platform or if an adult is playing with a small child, to make it fair the adult would have to make it into the cup and the child just has to get it onto the platform. The secret which they reveal in the instructions is to bounce the pigs on their tails. I had more than a few frustrating go-rounds before I finally discovered this pointer along with aiming the angle of the trampoline correctly.

Out of the six piggies, I landed two in the center cup and won two mud pies! Yay for me!

FINAL RANKING!

PIGS ON TRAMPOLINES! More fun than a bucket of mud!

PATHETIC GROVELING FOR MONEY

And speaking of buckets… I could really use a bucket of begonias about now to help pay for all this dandiness as well as all the behind the scenes stuff I do and encourage you, dear audience that if you have found any value at all in this program to please support future productions by becoming a DANDY FUN HOUSE SUPPORTER! Just visit the patronage page at dandyfunhouse.com where you can also visit the newly launched Dandy Fun Shop, which I’m currently filling with wacky stuff, t-shirt designs (including the all-new Dandy Fun House t-shirt, which I just know you’ll love!)

SUPPORTERS receive access to exclusive bonus features not available to the general public

PODCAST LISTENERS can donate via a button which appears on most podcast apps (you’ll see a little dollar sign on it) and sends me cryptocurrency.

And FIVE STAR REVIEWS, LIKES and SUBSCRIBES wherever you enjoy this show (including all the major social networks) always receive my undying gratitude!

Okay, well it is time for me to bounce like a winged sow! Come back soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always… Fun and Dandy!

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The humble toaster pastry. It’s been our molten, tongue burning sweet little friend since the 60s. It’s a quick little pick me up when we need a tasty treat. Sometimes it’s breakfast on the run and in all the world, one little toaster named Milton reigns supreme with his empire of handheld, sugary rectangles known as Pop-Tarts. In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, we’re going to give three off-brand toaster pastry underdogs a chance to dethrone the mighty Milton and claim the title TOASTER PASTRY CHAMPION OF THE WORLD! For this is the Strawberry Toaster Pastry Showdown! Let’s step into the Fun House!

Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog! This is where we cook up the very tastiest in retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff. I’m your host, Neil Dandy, and by pop-tartular demand, this episode is going to cook!

And yes, I’m coming to you straight from the Dandy Fun House Studios Kitchens, where today we’re going to have the showdown of the century! I have here before me the four most popular toaster pastries in America… Alright, they’re the only four different types of toaster pastries I could find after visiting four different grocery stores, but you get the idea, right? OK, here we go!

Upon conducting my search, scouring grocery store shelves for toaster pastries to pit against one another, I discovered that strawberry is apparently the most common flavor amongst all toaster pastries. So that’s the flavor we’re going to test today.

Here we have Millville Toaster Tarts, which is the Aldi brand. We have Toaster Treats, which is the Kroger brand. We have Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastries by Great Value, which is the Walmart brand. And last but certainly not least, we have the reigning toaster pastry champion of the world, Pop Tarts.

I want to be really careful to not rip off Matt Mitchell’s Bless Your Rank, which I absolutely love. So instead of lining up these four contenders to the strawberry toaster pastry throne, I’m instead going to conduct this contest like a boxing match with an undercard and a main event, after which I will pit the winner of the undercard against the winner of the main event to give the underdog a shot at the title!

I will be judging on packaging, the look of the pastry and of course how they taste both untoasted and toasted.

I will not actually be swallowing any of these toxic treats. I’ll instead be taking a bite from the best corner of the pastry, chewing it, allowing it to roll around my palate for a moment, and then spitting it out while swishing my mouth with water between bites. I feel this is the most fair method of conducting this contest, and you deserve no less than the best!

I think we can all agree that Pop Tarts is the 900 pound gorilla in the room as far as worldwide popularity, followed most likely by Great Value, the Walmart brand. And that’s going to leave Millville Toaster Tarts and Kroger’s Frosted Toaster Treats as our undercard.

You guys ready? Come on, LET’S GET READY TO CRUMBLE!

Okay, here before me, we have our undercard match. We have Millville Toaster Tarts from Aldi, and we have Frosted Toaster Treats from Kroger.

Looking at the packaging… they both have pretty good packaging, I must say. I’m not crazy about the Millville logo. It doesn’t sound very appetizing, but then again, neither does Kroger to me. So I’m going to give it a tie on the packaging. Let’s crack ‘em open and see what we’ve got!

Here’s Millville Toaster Tarts. Foil, very basic foil.

And the frosting, you can see there’s a lot of edge exposed, but you might have to have that edge exposed. It seems to be rather thick, so that’s a good sign. The other pastry in the package has even less frosting on it, so I’m going to take the best one here and take an uncooked bite!

Not bad, not exactly bursting with flavor. The look of the coloring, it’s not bright red like I would expect. I’m going to go ahead and put this other whole pastry in my toaster here.

(Spit out and swish)

Now let’s look at Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats. Wait a minute… The foil design is absolutely identical! Is the toaster pastry going to be identical as well? I’m starting to get suspicious here.

They look almost exactly identical, except the Kroger brand has some blue greenish sprinkles on it, which the Millville Aldi brand does not.

I taste absolutely no difference between the two, but while I swish my mouth around, let’s go ahead and toast these babies. I’ve got my toaster set at about almost up to three, which is like the 10 o’clock position, which is normally where I like my toaster pastries. Let’s go ahead and get it cranking here.

Time for a little history about the brave little toaster! The first electric toaster was introduced in 1893 and was called the Eclipse. It was made by Crompton and Company out of Chelmsford Essex. It had iron bare wires toasting the bread. But the Eclipse had a serious problem. The technology wasn’t really there to have the wires last, at least not any length of time. And the wires would burn up really fast and the toaster would be junk in a very short amount of time.

The problem of the heating elements was solved in 1905 by a man named Albert Marsh who was an engineer and came up with an alloy of nickel and chromium or… “nichrome.”

The first automatic pop-up toaster was patented in 1921 by a man named Charles Streit. The Waters-Genter Company refined the design and proceeded to release the model 1A1 Toastmaster, the first automatic pop-up household toaster that could toast bread on both sides simultaneously, set itself on a timer and eject when finished.

(toaster ejects pastries)

And here we go!

Now I tasted Millville first and Kroger second so let’s be fair here and try the Kroger toasted first. I’ll grab it with some foil so I don’t burn myself. Woo woo woo woo woo woo woo woo! Hot! Hot! Hot!

(Neil takes a bite)…

Yummy! Once again, not exactly bursting with flavor but when it’s toasted it’s nice. It’s real nice.

Alright Millville Toaster Tarts. Let’s see if I can do this without any foil on my hand since it’s had a second to cool. Bite the side with the most frosting…

I gotta tell you, this is really really close… They are identical on their inner packaging. I’d be willing to bet that they’re made by the exact same company but the Kroger brand has an extra color of sprinkles on it and I kinda think that I got a little more flavor off the Kroger brand. So even though it’s very very close folks, I’m gonna have to give the undercard match to Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats!

WHICH BRINGS US TO OUR MAIN EVENT! 

POP TARTS vs. GREAT VALUE TOASTER PASTRIES!

The champion! The reigning supreme heavyweight in all the world without a question, without a doubt… Pop Tarts!

And the competitor who wants Pop Tarts Crown is Great Value Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastries!

First let’s look at the packaging. I mean,(…) come on guys. They put almost no thought and no design whatsoever into the Great Value brand. There’s no question that Pop Tarts has the better branding and better packaging. Advantage Pop Tarts.

Let’s look at the inner foil: Pop Tarts has some design, the Pop Tarts logo on there and it’s blue.

Whereas the inner foil for the Great Value brand has the exact same foil design as both competitors from our undercard.

So generic is as generic does. I wouldn’t be surprised if this tasted absolutely no different than any of our undercard competitors, but we’re gonna give it a shot.

So I’m going to start here with the untoasted test with Great Value. And opening up the foil, I’m seeing some weird brown stuff in the grooves and I’m a little disturbed by that. It looks like it got burnt a little bit on the assembly line.

The front looks exactly the same as the Kroger brand. Same sprinkles, same everything, but it’s kinda mushed up. It looks like something happened to it. Yeah, same here with the 2nd pastry in the package. Something weird happened to the frosting here. But let’s give it a taste.

It looks and tastes absolutely no different than any of our undercard competitors.

Now, what about Pop-Tarts? Can Pop-Tarts live up to its legend?

Well… the Pop-Tarts brand looks exactly the same as the generic undercards. Maybe a little difference. The Pop-Tarts brand seems to have more holes. It’s not as thick on the edges, but it’s got the exact same kind of sprinkles and it seems to be frosted really terribly. There’s like almost no quality control on that frosting. It’s all the way to the edge on one part and definitely over the edge on another part. I mean, come on, come on Kellogg’s!

I’ll say the inside filling is red.The others were kind of like a dingy red. This is more a bright red, but honestly, that’s probably from some kind of weird chemical that you really shouldn’t be ingesting. You really shouldn’t be ingesting any of this and I’m not. I’m swishing my mouth between bites and spitting all of this out

I seem to be tasting a slight, very slight bit more sweetness from the Pop-Tart and it’s very slight, almost indistinguishable. So for the untoasted, I got to give it to Pop-Tarts.

Let’s try toasting them!

HISTORY OF POP TARTS!

I can’t really give you a lot of history on the Great Value brand because it’s a generic brand. So all I can really talk about here is Pop-Tarts. In the early 1960s, Post-cereals invented a process for dehydrating food and enclosing it in foil. The process was originally designed for packaging dog food, but they adapted it to produce the first toaster pastry in the world. It was called Country Squares. Post’s biggest competitor, Kellogg’s wasted no time jumping on this toaster pastry bandwagon and introduced their own called Fruit Scones that very same year. The name was soon changed to Pop-Tarts as a nod to the Pop-Art craze of the time. Pop-Tarts became so popular that the initial run sold out in just two weeks and Kellogg’s had to run apologetic advertising for the empty store shelves and this only increased the Pop-Tart fever across the nation. Of course Post cereals was left with their jaws on the floor and warehouses full of Country Squares wondering what the heck just happened!

“Frosted” Pop-Tarts didn’t debut until 1967.

Milton the Toaster, the brand’s mascot, debuted in 1971 and was voiced by an actor named William Shallert who was best known as the Dad on the Patty Duke show. Milton the Toaster was one of the few cartoon jobs that Shallert had. His main talent was the ability to time his voice overs perfectly and work quickly to save time and money in the production room.

As of 2024, there are over 20 Pop-Tart flavors including Hot Fudge, Sundae, S’mores, Raspberry, and Grape.

DANDY FUN FACT! Did you know that if you leave a strawberry Pop-Tart in your toaster for too long, it can burst into flames and it can go up to a foot and a half high? That’s right… fire! Fire!

This very situation happened in 1992 when Kellogg’s was sued for damages after a guy’s Pop-Tart got stuck in the toaster and caught on fire. Since then Pop-Tarts carry a warning on every box. It’s in tiny type on the back and barely noticeable. But it’s there. And it reads: If pastry is overheated, frosting filling can become extremely hot and could cause burns.(…) Due to possible risk of fire, never leave appliance unattended when in use.

Oh look, four ways to try Pop Tarts! Right from the foil, which we have tried. Toasted, which we’re about to try. Stacked, which means I guess you put two of them together. And frozen! I have never eaten a frozen toaster pastry before. If you have, please let me know!

(toaster ejects)

And here we go!

I think we should give the Great Value Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastry first shot since it is the least known of the two!

Hmm… Not exactly bursting with flavor…I’d have to say that’s even less flavorful than either of our undercard competitors.

Let’s try the Pop-Tart… It kind of toasted up all funky. Really weird, it’s got, it’s all burned up on the side. I’m not impressed, Pop-Tarts, not impressed. Like that filling oozing out of the holes, it seems kind of thin. Seems to have a tiny bit more flavor than the Great Value brand.

And the look of the pastry… the Pop-Tart looks like a train wreck happened to it. Like someone ran over it with a something. I’d say the Great Value looks a little better, but that’s about all it’s got going on.

Hardly any difference in taste. The packaging for Pop-Tarts is much better. I’ve got to give the nod to Pop-Tarts. OUR MAIN EVENT WINNER IS POP TARTS!

FINAL SHOWDOWN!

And that brings us to our final showdown, which is going to be Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats against the mighty Pop-Tarts for Toaster Pastry Champion of the World!

Okay, back to basics. Packaging: Both of them are pretty darn good on the front. The back of the Kroger is pretty much the same as the front, almost. The back of Pop-Tarts, they put a little more effort into it. Gave you some fun stuff to look at, some fun things to ponder.

Pop-Tarts has the better packaging. There’s no doubt about that.

This Kroger Toaster Treat looks like it got ran over. The taste is still the same as before.

Okay, let’s try Pop-Tarts. Better inside packaging. We’ve already determined that. So advantage on the packaging overall goes to Pop-Tarts.

Do these look any better than before? No, it doesn’t look good. It just doesn’t. These Pop Tarts look worked over! They look like somebody’s already chewed these things up and spit them out and I didn’t really mention it before but they’re noticeably thinner than the generic brands! Awful! Just awful! They really look like somebody ran over these things with a truck!

Time to try it. Not nearly as much filling as the Kroger brand and really not much taste. I’m going to give advantage of Kroger brand on the amount of filling, the quality of the appearance and the thickness of the product in the cold stage. So right now, we’re kind of one-to-one.

Now let’s toast them up!

Who will it be? This is for all the toast! Will it be the world champion Pop-Tarts or the scrappy underdog Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats? It can only be one, folks!

(toaster ejects) Oh, a little smoke came up there!

All right. Two toasted toaster pastries. They both want to be world champion, but it can only be one. Ow! Ow! I’ve had my fingers burned by both. Let’s give it a second here. Okay.

I’ll taste the Pop-Tart…

Now the Kroger Frosted Toaster Treat…

The filling on the Kroger brand is bright red and very attractive, actually. Hmm. I guess it can vary from package to package.

The Kroger Frosted Toaster Treat, it’s good. It’s not exactly bursting with flavor, though.

Time to try the Pop Tart! This filling looks exactly the same color on the inside. Nicely toasted but overall It looks horrible. It doesn’t look appetizing, but I’m going to try it anyway.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner…

And it’s not Pop-Tarts.

Our winner of the Toaster Pastry Championship of the World is none other than KROGER FROSTED TOASTER TREATS!

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 watch the video below!

listen to the podcast below!

Two Canadian brothers born in the early 1900s, sons of a clock salesman, they found a mutual love for puppeteering which led them on an amazing journey of a lifetime through the Land of the Lost, Sea Monsters, Bugaloos, Pufnstuf, Banana Splits and much much more. In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, I proudly bring you the story of the Yolas brothers, but you might remember them better as… Sid and Marty Krofft! Let’s step into the Fun House!

Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House, video show, podcast and blog! This is where we get lost in the land of retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff. I’m your host, Neil Dandy and in today’s episode, this is one I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but I sort of got held up wrapping up the year 2023. Now that that’s all behind us, I figured I’d kick off 2024 with a bang and bring you the story of the amazing creators of some of the most timeless kids shows of the 70s and 80s, Sid and Marty Krofft!

If you don’t know who Sid and Marty Krofft are, (I being in my mid-50’s find this almost unfathomable, but there might be some younger viewers, listeners and readers who have never heard of them and I want to be welcoming if you might fit this description.) these guys created iconic TV shows like Land of the Lost, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, The Bugaloos, H.R. Pufnstuf, The Banana Splits and a whole lot more.

A lot of their work was kinda like Muppets before the Muppets were a thing, but more fantasy type. I hope that made sense. Together, the Krofft Brothers’ resume boasts a whopping 26 television series and 21 specials! But to really get an idea of who these guys were, I think we need to start back farther…MUCH FARTHER!!!!!!!!!

Two Canadian brothers, Sid and Marty Yolas of Greek and Hungarian descent were born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1929 and 1937. Sons of a clock salesman, Peter Yolas, their family emigrated to the US in the early 1940s, landing in Rhode Island but eventually settling in New York City, assuming the more American last name of Krofft.

The father, Peter, in addition to his profession of clock salesmanship, also enjoyed the theatre and producing plays. Sid discovered a love for puppeteering and he performed some of his earliest work debuting in one of his dad’s stage plays, an adaptation of Snow White. From there, Sid had the puppet bug and went into the world of vaudeville as a teenager before running away with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, which billed him as the world’s youngest puppeteer!

This allowed Sid to take his one-man show called The Unusual Artistry of Sid Krofft International and parlayed his newfound circus notoriety into being the opening act for iconic performers like Judy Garland and Liberace.

Meanwhile back in New York, Sid’s younger brother Marty started putting his older brother’s second-hand puppets to work, earning some money with local stage performances and honing his own set of skills and more importantly, business acumen.

His business smarts attracted the attention of older brother Sid, who eventually asked him to team up in an effort to bring his visions for bigger, better and more spectacular productions to life.

In 1957 they did just that, developing their first show together, a mature audience production entitled Les Poupees de Paris. They ran this production for several years, earning acclaim worldwide, performing for over 9 million people collectively while also providing more family themed productions for Six Flags amusement parks.

But it wasn’t until 1965 that they eventually found themselves making their television debut after being invited onto the Dean Martin show! By this time, they had built a renowned puppet costume and set building facility in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California and were approached by Hanna-Barbera to create set designs and walk around costumes for The Banana Splits, which went on to become a cult classic which is still enjoyed to this day.

In 1969 they struck a deal with NBC to produce their own TV series, HR PufnStuf, which featured colorful sets, lots of puppetry, life-size soft, Muppet-like characters and lots of rudimentary special effects. HR PufnStuf was a hit, a huge hit and it led to a movie with Universal Pictures.

DANDY FUN FACT!

The Krofft brothers found their forte with Fantasy Adventure, mostly aimed at the Saturday morning kids audience, which they dominated. Throughout the 70s, Sid and Marty Krofft were a non-stop hit factory with shows like The Bugaloos, which kind of took the Banana Splits story model of a rock band made of animal characters and placed it into the insect world.

Sigmund and the Sea Monsters! I’m actually wearing my poor attempt at a sea monster hat right now. I think the kelp turned out alright, but the googly eyes and uni tooth turned out really bad so I had to take them off. Our rescue dog Carly has a fixation on googly eyes so I have to hide them or she’ll chew them all up because they’re the size and texture of a squeak toy.

These guys produced Land of the Lost and also the somewhat forgettable late 70s series, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, a low budget Wonder Woman meets Batman and Robin, and also Wonderbug, which was a low budget Herbie the Love Bug that looked more like Speed Buggy. In fact, almost everything they produced was low budget and extremely campy, which was also a large part of the charm and brilliant from a business standpoint! Money not spent is money in the pocket, isn’t it?

The Krofft brothers became so popular that at one point they entered a deal in 1976 with a developer to launch their own amusement park, the World of Sid and Marty Krofft in Atlanta Georgia, which unfortunately didn’t do real well, suffered poor attendance, and closed only six months after their grand opening.

DANDY FUN FACT!

As they progressed into the 1980s they found themselves putting their names on less successful shows such as Pryor’s Place with Richard Pryor, DC Follies which was a puppet show that skewered modern politics and also oversaw reboots of their classic shows like HR Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost, and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.

Nonetheless their San Fernando Valley Factory stayed cranking, with touring stages for bands like Earth, Wind and Fire and anyone else who wanted that Krofft Brothers touch in their shows!

In the year 2000, Sid and Marty Krofft kicked off the millennium by dazzling the American Music Awards with giant 25 foot high puppets for the performance of the boy band N’SYNC.

In 2015 they teamed up with Nick Jr. on a show called Mutt N’ Stuff which followed the adventures of Calvin Milan, son of Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan, and Calvin’s dog, Stuff. It lasted two years.

In 2018 the Krofft Brothers get honored at the Daytime Emmy Awards with a Lifetime Achievement Award!

Sid was asked on the red carpet what his secret to success was and he replied, “Get Marty for a partner.” When Marty was asked who his favorite character was Marty replied, “My favorite character has got to be Sid.” Brothers to the end.

And in 2020 they received their long overdue star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 2022 Krofft Kon was launched, which is a convention around all things Sid and Marty Krofft. Both brothers attended the inaugural year and the annual event to this day continues to feature stars of their various productions throughout the years which you can meet in person if you attend Krofft Kon.

MARTY KROFFT

Sadly the world lost Marty Krofft in 2023 to kidney failure at 86 years of age.

SID KROFFT

Sid still goes to conventions and loves meeting fans old and new and he’d love to meet you!

And ain’t that a how do ya do? There’s the story of Sid and Marty Krofft, the campiest, kookiest, cheesiest, craziest couple of brothers you ever heard of! Their works will live on in infamy for many a millennia to come!

And you know what else lives on? The overhead costs of producing this show! Therefore I beseech you dear viewers, listeners and readers to please consider supporting future productions of the Dandy Fun House by visiting the website at http://www.dandyfunhouse.com and clicking on the Patronage page where you can donate some cashola, moolah, begonias and share some cheddah with yours truly!

Supporters will receive access to exclusive bonus features not available to the general public!

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And five star reviews wherever you can leave them always receive my undying gratitude!

And that’s gonna do it for this episode of the Dandy Fun House. Time for me to puff my stuff right on outta here! I really appreciate you stopping by. Come back real soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always Fun and Dandy! Sea Monster Ya Later!