Dic Geeks

Once rejected into the "Lost media" pile on our watchlist, only to be saved by the neither-here-nor-there land that is Disney+, it's Genius (1999)! The first and only DCOM produced by Dic whilst they were still under Disney's wing, this one follows the story of a child prodigy who just LOVES hockey. I mean damn, he's got a hyperfixation on science, but that hockey though!! Sure, he just made international history by isolating and consequently manipualting the graviton BUT HOCKEY THOUGH!!!! Get your pucks at the ready folks cos this one is a real doozy of an episode.

Okay admittedly that was more of a hibernation than a hiatus, but it is with great pleasure that we can announce that Dic Geeks is finally back once and for all! This here is a little bonus episode to test out our remote recording setup (needs work, as you might be able to tell) and to get the ball rolling again. Listen in as Mark tests Avery's piss poor memory of the show.....and that's actually about it. Yeah, it's a short one, but merely the starter before the main course! 

We're back, kinda! We're still setting things back up, getting the motors running as it were.

A lot of stuff has changed whilst we've been gone! From me getting my own place to a pandemic, shit's been wild. You know what one constant has remained though? ShoutEngine being absolute dogshit.

Seriously. It's been 1 year and 4 months since we sent the email to them to set up a feed redirect, and it *STILL HASN'T HAPPENED*. So fuck it. We're taking this into our own hands now.

ALL NEW EPISODES WILL BE HERE ALONG WITH THE OLD ONES: https://anchor.fm/dic-geeks

THE NEW RSS FEED IS: https://anchor.fm/s/b353594/podcast/rss

APPLE PODCASTS IS ALREADY UPDATED WITH THIS BUT HERE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dic-geeks/id1188736114?uo=4

OLD SITE IS GONE, IN WITH THE NEW SITE. CONVENIENTLY, STILL HERE: https://mostlykobolds.com/ 

=== FUCK SHOUTENGINE ===

 In a very bizarre out of nowhere move in the late 80s, Dic made a kid's gameshow. Why? No one really knows, and for the most part, everyone's kind of forgotten about it. ...Mainly because, it's genuinely very forgettable, barring the celebrity specials. Taking the newlywed game and giving it a sibling-based twist, I'm Telling has two closely related children answer specific questions about each other, hoping that they'll both say the same thing in order to earn points and get access to the elusive Pick-A-Prize Arcade where they could win fantastic prizes. Sound familiar? Well yeah, it will do. It's a very generic concept for a show, much less one aimed at kids. As a direct result of this fact, we only spend half this episode actually talking about it, with the latter half dedicated to discussing far more interesting and unique gameshows from the UK. The most notable things we find about it are its creator and some of the young celebs that found their way onto the show back in the day...but who are they? Find out in this week's edition of Dic Geeks!

Child Stars! Y'know, those scrappy actors that start doing stuff from a young age and have prolonged popularity before inevitably fading into obscurity before suddenly coming back and doing interesting things. Take this trio today: Macauley Culkin, who now runs a satire site called Bunny Ears, and the Olsen Twins, who are now established (?) fashion designers; And indeed, most of their back catalogue of acting work can be looked back on as "Regrettable".

So with that regret in mind, lets look back at two of their most forgettable appearances. First we have Culkin's "Wish Kid", wherein he plays a kid who owns a baseball glove that was struck by a shooting star and gained the ability to grant time-limited wishes. And secondly, we have Mary-Kate and Ashley in Action! which has the twins play a pair of really quite pathetic secret agent types with a snarky constantly quipping robot dog with a pseudo-scottish accent. You get the idea they were trying too hard with that second one a bit?

Released in 2005 to widespread disinterest and bemusement, the Zizzle Iz was the new music toy created by the bloke who made Furbies. For the most part, it just kind of existed for a while before quietly petering out into obscurity, though if you're in the UK, you may know of it thanks to a McDonalds Happy Meal promotion where they included a far cheaper and almost feature-free version of the toy. Somehow, it ended up with a near hour long cartoon special by Dic which manages to almost completely fail at properly selling the toy to you by way of obscuring its actual functionality. And yet...it isn't so bad? Tune in to DICG FM to find out our full thoughts today!

Also yes, we finally fixed all of our audio problems with this episode. Turns out recording on an old "media PC" that's perpetually on a death knell isn't such a hot idea! Who knew?

Yes indeed, we're finally getting the other two Mario cartoons done and out of the way with this episode, as we take a look at two more Dic shows that were instrumental in the creation and perpetuation of the early Youtube Poop fad/movement of the mid to late 2000s. I uh....I don't exactly have much else to say other than that. It's more Mario shit! Yay...?

As a sidenote, to echo this statement a third time already: there will not be an episode coming out at the usual time in 2 weeks time! This time next week we will be attending EGX Rezzed, a fun indie-focused video game convention in London and as a direct result of that, we aren't going to have much time to record and edit another podcast. About...3 or 4 days worth and thats also going to be whilst battling travel anxieties and then post-con exhaustion thereafter. So unfortunately there wont be a new episode of Dic Geeks until either the 17th or 24th, with that latter date seeming as if its the most likely one. Thanks a bunch for your patience and for listening!!

Okay, so "Fun" might be somewhat of an inaccurate title for this here special episode of Dic Geeks, but we definitely deliver on bringing you 4 mini reviews of trash garbage cartoons this week! For the Appetizer, we have the mundane and mildly racist Super Dave: Daredevil For Hire (1992)...Meanwhile overin the Entree we have the noise polluted Stunt Dawgs (1992) with a side order of the hideously bland Speed Racer X (2002)...and finally for Dessert we have the least garbage-y of them all: Pole Position (1984), a cartoon that merely lifts the name off the classic video game and then goes off to be a weird kind of almost but not quite spy show?? I have no bloody clue, honestly. 

Basically put, we tried to do an episode of the latter two toons, failed and popped them on the backburner. Fast forward a few months and we end up in the exact same situation with Super Dave and Stunt Dawgs. So we figured we may as well just get all four of these beasts out of the way and done with rather than vaguely flounder about and try to fill a half hours worth of time trying to talk about some of the most genuinely boring and dull shows we've come across whilst doing this show. None of these are explicitly awful so to speak more just...meh. They're not exactly watchable, they're not really very fun or enjoyable and overall they're all ripe for being tossed into the bargain bin of life. So, sod it, let's bundle them up and make a quick buck! After all, it's 4-in-1, so that means it's better value for money by default!

Another episode, another duo of dull boring Dic shows. What do we have this week? A laser tag tie-in and yet another Fairy Tale Theater knockoff? Bahh surely these can't be any good. ...Wait, for serious? These two are genuinely really good? Well, hot damn, look at that! Photon brings us a quality bit of 80s Cheese, ripe for riffing MST3K style (if you can comprehend its plot) and ALF Tales is a wonderful bit of Fractured Fairy Tales style show combined with the fun poking writing sensibilities last seen in high ranker "Jingle Bell Rock". But what of our full thoughts? Why, dear listener, just have a cheeky peek for yourself. Come in, we have free tea and biscuits, sit down and enjoy yourself for once. Cos this episode is all positivity, baby.

*You may note the lack of a fucked audio warning! While we haven't fixed the problem, we were lucky enough for the issue to start occurring precisely as we started figuring out the ranking for these shows, thus allowing us to neatly cut and re-record that section albeit in a more brief manner. Enjoy the first smooth sailing episode in quite a while. You deserve it for sticking with us through these issues. <3

Another lightning round of mediocre Dic cartoons for you this week as we look at the excitable yet dull Pocket Dragon Adventures and the utter travesty that is Lady Lovely Locks. Mark's audio goes a bit funny as per usual at this point (to my dismay) but clears up not long after. So! The cartoons. One is inexplicably based off a series of ceramic knick knacks that were popular in the 90s so already the mere concept makes no sense since the thing it's based off isn't meant for young kids to play with. As for Lady Lovely Locks, she was, of course, based off a doll toy...and as per usual for a girls cartoon from the 80s, everything that happens is entirely nonconsequential and nothing bad ever truly happens to the cast, thus making the entire thing ultimately pointless. Hooray. 

Sigh. Yeah, we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel today, folks. Let's hope for a better pull next episode.