The Penny Men continue their Saturday morning cartoon programming war—and Ben unveils the full master plan behind his Alien Animal ‘90s Alternative Action Block! 🛸🐭🦈

Starting with a lineup of deep cuts and cult favorites like:

• Men in Black
• Rude Dog and the Dweebs
• Space Ghost
• Banana Splits
• Wildcats
• Sheep in the Big City
• Biker Mice from Mars
• And Wacky Races!

Ben doesn’t just program a single morning—he engineers a six-season broadcast strategy!

Shows rotate in and out as their runs end, bringing in replacements like:

• Eek the Cat
• Street Sharks
• Cowboys of Moo Mesa
• Time Squad
• Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?
• And the under-the-radar gem Mad Jack the Pirate!

Along the way, the guys dive into:

• The long legacy of Ninja Turtles-inspired animal action shows
• Why Biker Mice from Mars might secretly be a comedy
• Cartoon Network’s weirdly high-brow late Cartoon Cartoons
• The strange fate of Fox Kids shows during the Pokémon era
• And whether kids in the ‘90s had to make impossible choices between shows like Batman: The Animated Series, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Transformers!

Finally, the hosts start comparing their dream TV blocks head-to-head to determine the ultimate channel lineup!

Would you stick with Felix the Cat, flip to Masters of the Universe, or stay loyal to the Alien Animal ‘90s Alternative Action Block?

Grab your bowl of cereal and start channel surfing!

Welcome back to The Penny Men’s Saturday Morning Cartoon Programming War! 📺🥣

Last week Tom threw down the gauntlet with his dream cartoon lineup—but now Ben and Greg step up to the network executive desk to pitch their own blocks of animated glory!

Greg spins up “Gumby’s Wheel of Cartoons,” a four-hour journey through animation history hosted by Gumby and Pokey themselves! The wheel lands on everything from early theatrical classics like Out of the Inkwell to Jay Ward favorites, Hanna-Barbera mysteries, the bizarre Skatebirds, and a run of ‘90s cartoon brilliance!

Along the way the guys debate the philosophy of cartoon scheduling, the importance of wraparound hosts, and whether Sky Commanders can survive going head-to-head with X-Men!

Then Ben unveils his contender: The Alien & Animal ‘90s Alternative Action Block—a lineup packed with strange creatures, cult-favorite series, and the weird energy that made ‘90s action cartoons unforgettable!

Also in this episode:

• A deep dive into cereal lore (Golden Grahams vs. Trix vs. Captain Crunch) 🥣

• The surprising horror elements of The Real Ghostbusters 👻

• Why Tiny Toon Adventures might secretly be college-level comedy

• The strange world of live-action Saturday morning hosts like Banana Splits and Skatebirds!

Three hosts! Three networks! Only one Saturday morning survives!

Which block would YOU watch?

#Cartoons #SaturdayMorning #Animation #90sCartoons #Podcast

This week, Ben, Gregory, and Tom travel back to the golden age of cereal-fueled television to build their dream Saturday morning cartoon blocks!

Remember when cartoons only existed between 8 AM and noon? When you had to wake up early, guard the remote, and pray your show wasn’t up against something better on another channel?

Armed with the entire history of animation, the guys each draft eight cartoons to fill a four-hour block—from vintage classics to ‘90s powerhouses and beyond!

Strategy matters: you need the right show to wake kids up, the right show to keep them from flipping the channel, and a big closer before the inevitable noon-hour Looney Tunes takeover!

Along the way they reminisce about:

• TV blocks like One Saturday Morning, The Disney Afternoon, TGIF, Adult Swim, and Toonami
• Debate the chaos of pre-streaming TV scheduling
• And recall the true tragedy of childhood: waking up too late and missing the first cartoon!

Pour yourself a bowl of Waffle Crisp, sprint to the couch before the theme song starts, and decide for yourself:

Whose cartoon block wins the ratings war?

We made it! 120 episodes of The Penny People Podcast—and to celebrate, we immediately forget to do a retrospective and instead spiral into cartoon voices, deep-cut Hanna-Barbera lore, and whether any animated character has ever had an original voice!

Is Yogi Bear just doing Art Carney? Is Fred Flintstone just Jackie Gleason yelling at a rock TV? And how many characters are secretly just doing Bert Lahr?

From there, things escalate (as they do) into a passionate defense of Men in Black: The Series as one of the most unexpectedly dark and well-written cartoons of its era—standing shoulder to shoulder with X-Men: The Animated Series and Spider-Man: The Animated Series!

Also in this episode:

• The growing list of podcasts we keep saying we’ll do (and absolutely will… someday)
• A surprise deep dive into The Prisoner and why it might break Ben’s brain
• A detour into Matinee, William Castle, and the lost art of movie theater gimmicks
• Tom casually revealing he’s watched every Universal monster movie like it’s no big deal!

No structure! No plan! Just 120 episodes of momentum!

We wouldn’t trade it for a single penny!

Part two of The Penny People Explain the History of Comics somehow begins with Andy Griffith, detours through Rebecca, and ends up mapping the entire DNA of superhero archetypes!

Ben, Tom, and Greg set out to break down the Justice Society… and instead spiral into a loving, exhaustive taxonomy of comic book heroes:

• Alien strongmen
• Lab-made science guys
• Magic artifacts
• Ancient gods
• Spooky mystery men
• Robots
• Pulp vigilantes
• And everything in between!

Along the way:

• John Carter vs. Superman
• Green Lantern’s “is it magic though?” problem
• Hawkman’s eternal continuity nightmare
• Batman as a Shadow remix
• And why taking power pills maybe isn’t a great long-term plan!

If you’ve ever wondered where superheroes actually come from—or how POGs, radio dramas, and Golden Age comics all connect—this is your people, explaining everything, enthusiastically, and slightly off the rails!

It starts with a gripe! Ben doesn’t like variant covers—but connected covers? Those he can get behind!

That complaint spirals into a full-blown comics epic as Tom, Greg, and Ben crack open Justice League Spectacular #1 (1992), debate the morality of selling the same issue five times, and relive the excesses of foil covers, second printings, randomized posters, and peak-’90s X-Men nonsense!

From there, the conversation swerves into: Robins!

• Tim Drake vs. Dick Grayson
• Training with Lady Shiva
• Miniseries confusion
• Animated series betrayals
• Batman’s ever-expanding family
• Corporate mandates
• Warner Bros. trademarks
• Why Robin has to exist, who he’s really for, and whether Batman works better alone!

Strong opinions are expressed! Damien is politely rejected!

Then the scope widens—a lot! This is the Justice Society / Justice League / All-Star Squadron episode… but not the one you already heard!

The Penny Men dig deep into the Golden Age origins of superhero teams, tracing DC’s lineage back through:

• Pulps
• Radio dramas
• Dime novels
• Wartime paper shortages
• And the accidental invention of the shared universe!

They break down the original Justice Society lineup:

• Why some heroes were “honorary members”
• How multiple publishers shared characters before DC even existed
• And how kids writing letters helped shape comic book history!

Along the way:

• Why the Justice Society is the blueprint for all superhero teams
• How archetypes like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman emerged
• The evolution of comic book “Ages” (Golden, Silver, Bronze, Dark, Modern… whatever we’re calling this now)
• The rise and fall of genres like horror, romance, and Westerns
• The Comics Code Authority and how censorship reshaped the industry forever
• And why comics have always been “dying,” yet somehow keep surviving!

It’s a sprawling, funny, occasionally argumentative tour through comic book history—from cheap pulp paper to mythological superhero pantheons—told the only way The Penny Men know how: loosely structured, wildly informed, and powered entirely by love for the medium!

Connected covers optional! Deep lore mandatory!

The guys go full comic-shop mode and trace the tangled history of the Justice League—from the original core lineup to Detroit-era experiments, International weirdos, and the underrated 2006 'Justice League of America' run that finally nailed the balance between icons and cult favorites!

Along the way, they debate who really belongs on the A-list, defend B and C-listers like Vixen, Red Tornado, Black Lightning, and Speedy, and get lost in villain teams with confusingly similar names!

Expect:

• Deep cuts
• Forgotten mini-series
• Costume crimes
• Marvel knockoffs
• Super Friends obscurities

And the dangerous realization that reading “only 200 issues” is somehow reasonable!

Welcome to the only game show brave enough to be powered by an Excel spreadsheet!

Ben hosts Gregory and Tom in the DC Super Quiz of Light, Peace, and the Quickening, a hyper-competitive trivia showdown built around one bizarre discovery: the Justice Society, Justice League, and Super Friends each have exactly 23 pre-Crisis core members. Coincidence? Destiny? Spreadsheet magic?

The rules are simple and ruthless. Name a hero correctly and score points based on how exclusive they are:

• One team only? Big points.
• Two teams? Respectable.
• All three? Congratulations, you played yourself!

Along the way:

• Old quiz beefs resurface
• Face and heel turns are declared
• Detroit-era Justice League members get their due
• And deep-cut DC lore flies fast and loose!

Expect:

• Arguments over honorary vs reserve members
• Title-card technicalities
• And just how powerful Dr. Fate and the Spectre are allowed to be before the story breaks!

It’s brother vs brother! Threes vs ones!

What starts as a debate over Koopa Troopas quickly mutates into a full-blown Mario cosmology breakdown!

This episode includes:

• Whether Koopa Troopas are a species or Bowser’s first conquered army
• The reptile family tree linking Koopas, Troopas, and Yoshis
• Dinosaur canon confusion across the Mario timeline
• Bowser’s empire-building through propaganda and assimilation
• Mario Party’s Koopa Kid identity crisis
• Toy clones, magic creations, and generic species chaos
• The WarioWare cinematic universe invading Luigi’s downtime
• Nintendo crossovers and dimensional leaks everywhere!

…and then the real topic takes over:

• Stars as wish-granting cosmic beings
• Why invincibility is literally Mario’s wish power
• Star Road as the backbone of the universe
• Star Spirits, Star Rod, Geno, and celestial intervention
• Bowser weaponizing star magic like every villain before him!

By the end, the Penny Men accidentally uncover the truth!

Is Mario from Brooklyn… or from beyond reality itself?

This week, The Penny Men descend head-first into warp pipe cosmology as Tom unveils a unified theory that finally reconciles every layer of Mario canon — the cartoons, the arcade origins, Odyssey’s Metro Kingdom, Captain N, WarioWare, SimCity, and even Presidents shaking hands with plumbers!

Gregory, Tom, and Ben break Mario’s universe into three stacked planes of existence:

• Earth Reality (our world, where Mario is a video game)
• Earth Prime (the cartoon Brooklyn where Donkey Kong kidnaps Pauline and Bowser attacks cities)
• The Mushroom Dimension (a Narnia-like fantasy world accessed only through pipes)!

Along the way they uncover:

• Why Pauline barely remembers Mario in Odyssey
• How Diamond City and WarioWare fit into Mario’s real-world aftermath
• Bowser and Wario as corrupted reflections of royal lineage
• How Nintendo accidentally created a Kingdom Hearts-style multiverse
• Why Mario exists as legend, hero, and video game simultaneously!

This isn’t just lore speculation — it’s a full multiversal framework that turns decades of contradictions into one epic, coherent mythology!

The pipes don’t just connect worlds! They connect realities!