Car JoeMeZ Hot Cartoon Ladies Tournament!

In the spirit of March Madness, we’ve put together the most important tournament that has ever existed. Ever. Officially.

We told you to head to our Twitter and vote on what you wanted us to run a bracket of and – shockingly – we had a tie! Cartoons tied with 90s Girls so we decided to mash those up and present:

The Car JoeMeZ Hot Cartoon Ladies Tournament!

Print out your bracket, fill it out and get in on the action. Each character matches up to a team in the NCAA Tournament so choose wisely! We’ll also be posting all the matchups on Twitter for you to vote on so we can see a fan consensus!

Stay tuned to the upcoming episodes of The Car JoeMeZ Podcast to hear our expert analysis and all the twists, turns, upsets and heartbreak that come along!

Daily Cartoon! Josie & The Pussycats: E.5: “Midas Mix-Up”

Welcome to another edition of the Daily Cartoon on Car JoeMez! Many thank yous to everybody who has been coming by and checking these out as our web traffic here has been really good so it’s nice to know that there’s people sticking around to read these.

As always, remember to check out the weekly show, The Car JoeMez Podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud or wherever you get your podcasts. Even if you don’t listen, just stop by, leave a review, like a track. But you should listen. We have a good time and you will too.

Today’s cartoon is Josie And The Pussycats which was produced by Hanna-Barbera and had a run of 16 episodes before they repackaged the show as Josie And The Pussycats In Outer Space. Outer space will have to wait for another day, because today we’re focused on the original.

I really didn’t (and still don’t) know too much about this show other than it was a chick rock band and I think they solved crimes between gigs kind of like the Scooby-Doo crew. I don’t ever remember watching this as a kid, but I do recall little snaps of Josie and the Pussycats performing their song about themselves after – now that I think about it – episodes of Scooby Doo. If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me.

So, obviously, I did a little research about this show and found out that this came into existence because of the success my double main-man, Lou Scheimer, and his crew at Filmation had with The Archie Show. That was a huge hit and even led to some big record sales, so Hanna-Barbera wanted in on that. Josie was another property of Archie Comics so Hanna-Barbera snatched up the rights and tried to set the stage for a huge animation showdown. Or maybe not. They just really hoped it would be as successful as Archie and lead to good merchandising opportunities with music and such.

It’s probably safe to say that never happened, but it did inspire a live-action Josie movie released in 2001 that starred Rosario Dawson, Tara Reid and the uber-lovely Rachael Leigh Cook who I used to have a huge crush on. I’m sure she reads this blog so that will be embarrassing for me when she sees it. I’m actually a fan of the movie. I like it a lot. I own it on DVD. Shut up, it’s fun.

Let’s watch a cartoon.

Josie And The Pussycats: E.5: “Midas Mix-Up”

Originally Aired: October 10, 1970

Plot:

Let’s start with just introducing our cast of characters since even I’m unfamiliar with them.

Josie – The lead singer and guitar player. Romantically linked to Alan, their roadie

Valerie – Tambourine player and mechanical wizard

Melody – Drummer and airhead

Alan – Roadie and basically Fred from Scooby-Doo

Alexander – He’s kind of the manager/agent of the band also basically Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. He – like Shaggy – is voiced by Casey Kasem so they don’t even try to hide the resemblance.

Alexandra – Twin sister of Alexander, she is insanely jealous of Josie because she feels like she’s the real talent even though she’s not even in the band and she also wants to get down with Alan because, I suppose, chicks dig kerchiefs.

Sebastian – Alexandra’s cat who can be mean, but also helpful.

OK, so now that we know everybody, we open with the entire crew arriving to a ski lodge in a van. The Pussycats are going to be playing here, but will certainly have time to relax and get some skiing in.

There’s a golden castle shown on the top of the mountain and, inside, we’re introduced to Midas. He’s a horrible human being and is hellbent on making all of the world’s gold disappear with his super-spray he’s developed. Why he would want to do this is – as of this point – unclear.

The girls play a quick show on what appears to be a frozen pond and then goes skiing. Alexandra sabotages the crew because she wants to show up Josie and impress Alan and the entire team ends up crashing and landing on a cable-car that takes them to Midas’s castle. Even though they just made a mistake, Midas deals with them as intruders and describes his evil plan. They ask him what good making all the gold disappear will do him, which is a terrific question, and he states that the world will give him half of all they gold or else he’ll make it all disappear. Well…OK, then.

They get slammed in a prison where the floor is opening beneath them. Luckily, Sebastian the cat distracts the guards and frees them all. Look, what happens next is literally a Scooby episode with different characters. It’s not fun, it’s not creative.I mean, literally, you have two characters who are really just Fred and Shaggy under different names trying to save the day from a weird villain and his evil plans.

Hell, the Midas guy even refers to them as “those meddling kids”.

At some point, we get a ski chase to give us time to play a song in the background to hopefully sell some Josie records, but it’s just too long and too stupid.

Spoiler alert, they stop Midas and save the day.

Final Thoughts:

Look, I completely get what they’re going for here and I love the whole idea of a female rock ‘n roll group. But the execution of this is so piss-poor. It literally is just Scooby-Doo with small pieces of the band playing or having a song in the background to justify the whole “them being a band” thing.

I understand there’s a significant amount of time between the two, but this show needed to be more Jem & The Holograms. That show did a female music group right. With Josie, there’s just no depth to the story, characters or writing and it’s a complete issue of laziness to give you what amounts to Diet-Scooby. Garbage.

If you’re interested, I’m sure there’s a Hanna-Barbera Classics DVD collection of this somewhere out there. I, however, found a bunch of these episodes on YouTube in good quality. By all means, go check it out and if you disagree with my opinion, I’d love to hear why. Let’s talk it over. Otherwise, thanks for coming back today.

❤ Joe

Daily Cartoon! The Flintstone Kids: S.1,E.20: “Betty’s Big Break”

Welcome to today’s edition of the Daily Cartoon! Before we get started, you should know that we released a new episode of the Car JoeMez Podcast today where we talk about the hit movie, Lego Batman! A simple search on iTunes, Soundcloud or wherever you get your podcasts is all it takes so give it a listen, share it with your friends and leave a comment or review because you love us and we’ll love you back!

Today’s selection was a reader request and I was all too happy to revisit this series. The Flintstone Kids ran for two seasons and 32 episodes between 1986-1988 and follows the Bedrock gang that we know and love as childhood friends and their dealings with the big school bully, Rocky Ratrock and his gang.

If you want to be a stickler about shit, this contradicts the continuity of the original series which had an episode showing that Fred and Barney didn’t meet Wilma and Betty until they were older, but we don’t allow sticklers here, so can it, pal. In this story, everybody knew each other as kids and grew up knowing they were destined to be married and give us a wonderful look into their adult lives through the magic of animated television.

I’ve always been a fan of The Flintstones so it’s with no surprise that I enjoyed this show as a kid. I’m not going to sit here and tell you it was my favorite thing ever, but it was something I looked forward to on Saturday mornings and – since you know how I am by now – that enjoyment was only enhanced by a cool, little toyline!

We definitely had some of these in my house growing up, but I want to say it was my brother who was the bigger fan. He was a couple of years younger than me which was good because he had his own things that I could still play with.

The show had a distinct moral message whether it was anti-bullying, or staying in school and – without looking this up, so don’t butcher me if I’m wrong – I want to say they even did a primetime special about saying no to drugs since that kind of thing was everywhere at the time.

I don’t really know too many people who are huge fans of this show, but it seems to be fondly remembered if you bring it up. Like one of those, “Holy shit! I forgot all about that! Yeah, that was great!” type of things. I used to like it and was an especially big fan of the segments that featured Captain Caveman. I fucking loved me some goddamn Captain Caveman!

 

So, with all that intro let’s get to this show and see how it holds up.

The Flintstone Kids: S.1, E.20: “Betty’s Big Break”

Originally Aired: March 14, 1987

Plot:

We open with a shot of Bedrock Elementary School which has a big banner advertising the school play, “The Lizard of Oz”. Wilma is playing the Good Witch, but wishes Betty had a bigger part since she’s just a flower. Fortunately for Betty, however, Dreamchip Gemstone, who is playing Dorothy comes down with laryngitis and Betty is forced to assume the starring role.

The curtain lifts and we go into a dream sequence with Betty auditioning for talent agents Fred and Wilma who end up hiring her to – at first – replace Dreamchip as their star, but then to be her assistant since you don’t just get rid of your star.

We meet Nate Slate who’s a big TV producer and will be coming to Bedrock to find a new show to put on his network. It’s between “The Lizard of Oz” and Rocky Ratrock’s Wrestling Show. Whichever he likes best will get the big push.

Rocky’s show impresses Slate and to try to cement the deal, Rocky pours lemon juice in Dreamchip’s throat spray thinking that, with her out of the picture, his show will easily win. Betty takes over the lead role and absolutely slays as Dorothy and Mr. Slate is all too happy to make her and the show stars.

We come out of the dream sequence and Betty is finishing her final song at the school play where, just as envisioned, she kills it and everybody is ecstatic over a play well done.

I forgot that this show will break into segments so as that first part concludes, we move into a buffer with Dino called “Dino’s Dillemas”. We get a quick bit about him being bullied by a bigger bulldog named Spike who takes his bone, but Dino quickly comes up with a way to outsmart him, exact revenge and get his bone back. Nothing big here, but a quick way to break up stories.

But now I’m excited because, to close the show, we get a goddamn CAPTAIN CAVEMAN & Son segment! You think you’re excited? Feel these fucking nipples!

The villainous Mr. Bad uses his secret weapon – the Backwards Beam – to turn all of Bedrock…backwards, duh. Cops are in jail, criminals are in charge, cats are chasing dogs and – most importantly – Captain Caveman and Cavey, Jr. are the number one fugitives in town!

Because of the way this show is split into segments, these stories aren’t very long, but they don’t need to be. Eventually, Captain Caveman and son figure out a way to outsmart Mr. Bad, get control of the Backwards Beam and return everything in Bedrock to normal.

We get a shot of all the Flintstone kids at home watching Captain Caveman on TV and they celebrate at the outcome and they can’t wait for next week. Admittedly, neither can I.

Final Thoughts:

The biggest takeaway here is that this would be very difficult to get sick of because of how the segments are broken down. I love the characters, obviously, so by keeping them to small, fun bits that aren’t too long, you’re basically protecting things from getting dragged out. It leads to a nice, innocent burst of fun that has you wanting more.

The Captain Caveman stuff is just wonderful. I don’t know why, but I just love the ever-living shit out of him. It’s silly, over-the-top and crazy because it doesn’t have to make sense. It just is. And I’m perfectly OK with that. Unga Bunga like a motherfucker.

All in all, this was a fun thing to check out today. I’m not exactly going to start hunting down episodes so I can watch the whole series or anything, but it was nice to watch this, reminisce a bit and leave with a smile on my face. Good times for me and you. Thanks for reading.

❤ Joe

Ep. 17: Universal Monsters & The Monster Squad

Welcome back! Episode 17 was a lot of fun as we talk about old Universal Monster movies (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man & Creature From The Black Lagoon) and then follow it up with The Monster Squad. It’s a fun look at some of the most iconic characters ever and we’ll think you’ll really enjoy this one!