Dic Geeks

Content Warning - Mention of a cop shooting early on in the episode; Mentioned as part of the discussion about World of Wonder's downfall starting at around 3:21 and ending at about 5:33.

Oh, also Mark's microphone starts getting a case of the ol' crackles & distortion around 21 minutes in - it ends completely at 26:05 but note you'll miss the ranking by skipping to that timestamp. We apologise for this unexpected occurrence and, once again, are looking into the cause of this. We're reasonably sure its down to the aged media PC we use to record on, rather than the microphones themselves. Also Avery needs to start using a pop filter if theyre going to be sitting that close to the mic from now on.

Regular episode synopsis is as follows: It's time for yet another product-placement special this week on Dic Geeks and today we're taking a looksee at World Of Wonder's last vaguely notable product: Julie. Julie was basically like an ultra Teddy Ruxpin in doll form; she could speak (sans audio tapes, this time) and move her mouth whilst doing so and had rudimentary forms of speech recognition to allow for further interactions between the child and the toy. Whilst it's this fascinating bit of 80s tech, it's also completely and utterly cursed. So, perfect material for an overly long special that's incredibly light on the plot, then. Great...

Dic Geeks returns for the third year running to tackle the still-pretty-bloody-large remainder of the dic catalogue! This week we cruise it easy with two half hour toons; a failed pilot for a superhero show loosely based off POGs and a McDonalds special based loosely off Treasure Island. Come, bask with us under the cool shade of cynical 90s garbage designed to sell worthless gubbins and fast food.

Dic Geeks returns for the third year running to tackle the still-pretty-bloody-large remainder of the dic catalogue! This week we cruise it easy with two half hour toons; a failed pilot for a superhero show loosely based off POGs and a McDonalds special based loosely off Treasure Island. Come, bask with us under the cool shade of cynical 90s garbage designed to sell worthless gubbins and fast food.

Christmas special time yaaay. A Christmas Carol (1997) is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the Dickens classic with awkwardly bodged musical numbers scattered throughout; meanwhile "Xmas Marks The Spot" being the ending to the first season of The Real Ghostbusters whilst doubling up as a Christmas special. But how do we fully feel about these things? Is this entire episode mostly mailed in because we wanted to get it out of the way and enjoy a nice break from watching this trash? Listen in and find out.

Mark and Avery finally tackle Dic's big movie McGuffin, Inspector Gadget (1999) starring Matthew Broderick. How does one describe Inspector Gadget the movie? Well, first take about 3 or 4 vague character traits from the cartoon along with their names, hire actors that have a vague passing resemblance to their cartoon counterparts and then consequently ignore everything else the source material has to offer. Then proceed to create an hour long movie that constantly throws cartoon antics at you in a vague attempt to keep you engaged to the film whilst it blasts bizarre product placement at you. That should just about do it. Put simply, it's bloody awful. And it's time to give it its just desserts.

Now the eagle eyed of you might have noticed that this episode is an entire week late. We acknowledged this as being a possibility in the original recording itself due to the length of it nearly clocking in at 2 hours along with also getting a new computer (which theoretically means more efficient editing), but then new life issues suddenly reared its ugly head in right as things were seemingly starting to settle down. Oh, and the microphone gave us the gift of corrupted audio again. Yay. So, yeah, this episode is not only late but its not in the best of condition either. There's an audio warning before Avery's microphone gets REAL bad along with a timestamp so you can skip that part of the episode; you'll miss some of the discussion, but at the same time you'll also save your ears from quite the grating experience. The episode intended to come out this week will be coming out shortly after this one as compensation, and then we'll try to resume our regular schedule. Ta for putting up with us!

Music at the end by ghostwerk: https://ghostwerk.bandcamp.com

What happens when you cobble together dusty old stereotypes, a second hand vhs of sailor moon and a half-arsed stab in the dark at pandering to kids? You get Groove Squad, DiC's only Sunday Movie Toon not to be based on either an existing property or public domain literature. And what a toon it is; this early 2000s relic attempts to mimic what Totally Spies and Kim Possible did so well and ultimately fails on so, so many counts. On a more positive note, we got a new microphone cable and (touch wood) so far, so good!

When Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolf Man are indicted by the monster council for not being scary enough, hijinks ensue. Which is basically another way of saying 'Generic Cartoon Antics'. In this slightly late Halloween Special we examine this forgotten Halloween classic, and then almost immediately forget it ourselves. It's all very forgettable. I think there was a version of Jason made out of spaghetti? Anyway, we counted about three genuinely decent jokes throughout this entire feature-length cartoon, and for one of those three, it trod on its own toes and ruined the joke. There's only two words that can perfectly sum up this special: Wasted. Potential. Well, as wasted as you can get for a cartoon whose entire base concept is "What if we turned the Monster Mash into a cartoon?"

Note; This episode was 100% intended to be out before Halloween but due to awkward scheduling circumstances and general mental health issues, Avery has only just now been able to properly sit down to edit it. Apologies for the delay!

A show that is far too much to watch for more than 5 minutes and a show that has a fantastic theme song and immediately plunges downhill thereafter. Oh joy. 

Well, we've already covered Bump in the Night before on our Christmas special episode last year, with the dreaded 60 minute long "T'was the Night Before Bumpy" but now we're paying our dues and actually looking at the show as it should be and yeeeeah no it really isn't improved in its shorter form. Mummies Alive! fares a little better but not by much - apart from the kickass theme tune created by the same dude who composed the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers theme tune, it's a bit bland and has a lack of any real substance past tired cliche tropes and cartoon antics. 

This episode is a little bit on the naff side since Avery was falling asleep in real time and honestly couldn't put up with either of these shows for very long. Sorry about that. We'll be back next episode with Monster Mash.

As we were at a gaming con last week (which we probably should have mentioned beforehand, whoops) we decided that the only way to make up for last week's missing episode was with time travel. Sadly we don't have access to a Delorean, so instead we had to do with watching Time Kid. This clunker was one of DiC's series of Sunday Movie Toons, and was based on H.G. Wells' 'The Time Machine', a novel we haven't read but are pretty sure has something to do with eugenics. Thanks to us coming down with con crud this one is a little shorter than usual, but quite frankly there's not much to say about 'DiC tries to make a Victorian novel cool and fails'.

History has always been a ripe subject for fiction, and so it was inevitable that in our dives through the DiC Archives we'd find ourselves a matching pair of shows with very different approaches to historical accuracy. THE MYSTERIOUS CITIES OF GOLD is a pseudo-historical romp through South America inspired by turn-of-the-century conspiratorial ramblings about lost continents and ancient technologically advanced empires, whilst LIBERTY'S KIDS is an extremely detailed look into the American War of Independence made in an effort to try and get children to learn something for once.

But can slow-paced French anime from the early 80s keep Avery's attention? Will Mark gain an appreciation for American History? Should Aaron Carter be allowed to rap patriotically over scenes of a brutal 18th Century conflict? All these questions will be answered and more!