The Vine: August 14, 2009
Sars,
Okay, I have a lost TV show from my youth that has been driving me bonkers for years:
It was a Saturday-morning show, I think.Live action.It followed the lives of a bunch of bugs (who were people dressed up in bug costumes).They lived in some magical forest or something.
The villain was either Carol Channing, or some woman who was remarkably similar to Carol Channing, and had a long fake Pinocchio-like nose. Sometimes she interacted with the protagonists, but mostly I remember a large image of her head hovering over them and yelling things.I remember a lot of glitter and/or sequins being involved.
My mom does not remember this show and thinks that I am crazy, but I’m not, I swear it!
I was born in 1978, so this would have been the early to mid-’80s.
Thanks so much,
Kerry
Dear Kerry,
Well, I kind of hope the readers can’t find it, because that sounds goddamn terrifying.It also sounds kind of like the detestable Pinwheel, the parts where those infernal marionette bugs tortured Ebenezer (and the viewers marooned in front of the show with strep throat, praying for a soap, ANY soap, to come on and save them from freakin’ “Hattytown”).
…Wow, I seem to have really loathed Pinwheel.Okay then. And I don’t think it’s even that show; nor do I think it’s Magic Garden, the only other possibility that comes to mind, because the forest isn’t so much “magical” as “cardboard,” and I don’t recall any live-action bugs, just hippie ladies singing songs and having pretty hair.
Anyway: readers?Bugs?Sequins?Carol Channing?Psilocybin? Some decaf for your friend Sars?
Tags: Ask The Readers Magic Garden popcult shut up Pinwheel
Bugaboos! Phyllis Diller!
Oh! I remember this one! …Shoot, hold on… Definetly a Sid & Marty Kroft creation. The Bugaloos! That was it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bugaloos Man, with all the horrible saturday morning TV we had as kids I’m suprised any of us made it out of childhood with our brains intact. Oh wait… never mind.
Except it’s the Bugaloos. And Martha Raye as Benita Bizzare. SHIT. Can I put in a request for a “delete your own stupid comment” feature?
I totally remember this show. I had thought it was a series starring the New Wave band The Buggles, but I can’t find anything online about the Buggles having a TV series, so I think my 5-year-old mind just assumed that the crazy bug creatures running around on morning TV and the band who wore bug-eyed glasses and sang “Video Killed the Radio Star” were the same. Now I am just as desperate as the writer to find out what this show was.
Sounds like The Bugaloos (from Sid and Marty Krofft), but it dates from 1970-1971, and you said you watched it in the early 80’s. Martha Raye was the witch character.
Oh, cripes. Now i’ve got the Pinwheel theme in my head. Thanks, Sars!
Oh great. Now I have the Bugaloos song stuck in my head. Thanks so much! heh.
OMG, how could anyone hate Pinwheel??? I miss that show so much.
“the bugaloos, the bugaloos, they’re in the air and everywhere”
Ladies and gents, the Bugaloos!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugaloos
Yet another hallucinogen we can thank the Kroffts for.
Sars, you just solved a long time mystery for me without even meaning to. I used to LOVE The Magic Garden, but I had no recollection of the name, only the hippie ladies sitting on the swings, and for years I’ve wondered if that whole show was a dream, or what.
I once killed a neighbor’s sunflower trying to get it to talk to me like the ones on the show. Good times.
Whoa, that was quick! Thanks guys! I can’t wait to tell my mom.
Incidentally, my mom brought me to see a live performance of “Magic Garden” when I was a kid. And it was awesome. Though I recall being disappointed that Sherlock the squirrel was not there.
@Danielle: Aw.
oh man, f’in pinwheel. i’ve got that awful song in my head now too! i remember the bugaloos, but not until i read the letter.
pinwheel, pinwheel, spinning around….argh.
I had a Bugaloos lunchbox! And that was in the early 1970s (yeah, I’m old) so the show was around for a while (or brought back for the 80s). The jingle pops into my head pretty often.
That, Josie & the Pussycats, and H.R. Puffnstuff were the mainstays of my childhood.
I love how quick we are to assume that we could have made these things up. I’ve done the same thing “Well, I can’t find it on Google.. maybe I dreamed it?”.
Phyllis Diller and the Bugaboos would be a great lounge act.
…then maybe I’d have one of their songs in my head instead of the damn Pinwheels theme.
That sounds like the worst acid trip ever.
The Bugaboos were on a rotating schedule of the other Kroft shows like Sigmund the Seamonster and Land of the Lost on a UHF channel at 4:00pm weekdays in the late 70’s, early 80’s. Oh. The. HORROR!!!!!
Is it on DVD? It sounds awesome and terrifying!
Pinwheel, man. It was creepy and unsettling, and to quote Oz, “Nobody deserves mime.” Yet there was Coco.
My husband is a big Adam Carolla fan, and there is a particularly hilarious episode of AC’s podcast when he just rants about how totally *awful* all of the Sid and Marty Krofft shows from the 70s and 80s were. My husband and I had to pull the car over because we were laughing so hard. I don’t listen to a ton of Carolla, but that one was priceless.
I do not remember this show, but I just…that wikipedia entry…so much awful….PHIL COLLINS auditioned for this??!! And you thought he should be put on a girl’s bike just because of “You’ll Be In My Heart.”
This makes me wish I were American. Or, you know, alive in the early eighties.
These shows sound like children’s books gone WILD.
The Kroft shows were just nuts. There was one called ‘Liddsville’ around the same time as Bugaloos in which the characters were giant hats, and Charles Nelson Reily was the villain. What, as kids, were we supposed to get out of this stuff? Be afraid…
Y’all, my theory is that this (and ALL the Sid and Marty Krofft shows) were an attempt to recruit preschoolers into the drug culture. I think my grandfather actually originated that theory, but I can’t think of a better explanation for those soul-destroyingly asstacular shows.
But Martha Raye’s dentures never slipped!
Hulu just made PufNStuff available again, I couldn’t resist watching it- SO BAD! Reminded me of a something my parent’s friend used used to say “That’s so stupid it’s beautiful!”
How in the hell did I miss all this shit? All I ever watched was reruns of the Brady Bunch. I guess I lived in a strange time/space warp that steered all of the Kroft output around my town. ( I do recall a couple episodes of Land of the Lost and being totally weirded out by the Sleestacks.) However, I also was the oversensitive weepy child who had to flee the room in terror whenever a Mr. Yuck commercial came on, so perhaps my parents were vetting the TV consumption to avoid meltdowns.
“What, as kids, were we supposed to get out of this stuff?”
I suppose it’s “Drugs are bad, mmmmmkay?” Sid and Marty Kroft are responsible for a *lot* of nightmares, quite frankly. I go back to H.R. Pufnstuf – that was some whacked-out tv.
I can’t believe I’m 30 years old and I can still remember the theme song to Pinwheel (and Reading Rainbow for that matter, which I loved). I’m certain there’s something better that could live in that space in my brain, but unfortunately most of it is filled with useless information.
Sid and Marty Kroft: totally TV to take drugs by, and still delivering advanced cases of heebie-jeebies after all these years!
Wow, this sounds like a truly terrible show.
Re: Bugaloos–I am dismayed to have recognized this show immediately by the OP’s description. I was also a young child in the 80s, so it must have been afternoon reruns.
Re: general Kroft nostalgia [Land of the Lost]: some hilarious sleestaks in the, er, stacks. If you ever watched the show, you’ll thank me (or Robot Chicken).
http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/66006/detail/
Oh now I’ve got the Collective Soul cover version of the Bugaloos’ theme song stuck in my head from the Saturday Morning CD (http://www.amazon.com/Saturday-Morning-Cartoons-Greatest-Hits/dp/B000002OYG) stuck in my head.
I don’t actually remember the Bugaloos, which is odd considering I loved the Banana Spilts and HR Pufnstuf.
I had these great memories of watching “Land of the Lost” at my grandparents house (they had cable!) as a kid, until they started airing them on SciFi or something right around the time the movie came out. And I watched one. Oy. I must have been really, really young. That is some horrible stuff, right there.
“Oh! The credits were the best part! ::pause:: Oh, wow, this is not what I remembered.” Siiiiigh. It was like watching a Thundercat rerun all over again. Another childhood memory killed.
@FloridaErin
The very same thing happened to me when they came on SciFi, down to “remembering” that the credits were the best part. Man. Upon rewatch, not so much. Another childhood memory killed, indeed. Not even watchable on a cheesy camp level.
I loooooved the Bugaloos as a kid. “flying high/flying low/flying free as a summer breeze!” Hee.
For a brief time, there was an indoor theme park in Atlanta called “The World of Sid & Marty Krofft.” The building that housed it was later purchased by Ted Turner and became the CNN headquarters. Make of that what you will!
ARRGGGH.
Can’t. Get. Pinwheel. Theme. OUT. OF. MY HEAD!!!!!
Thank you!
That theme song is such an earwig that, at one point, we were forbidden not only to sing it but to make reference to it in any way, including spelling it, or Mr. S would just sing it over and over uninterrupted for hours on end.
ETA: Man, the original is more annoying than I’d recalled. http://www.televisiontunes.com/Pinwheel.html
ARGHHH!!!! PINWHEEL THEME!
Oh, wait, I can totally use it to trump all the songs my co-worker plays when he’s trying to annoy me. Must make sure to have iPod up loud during the attack. Sweet.
‘How in the hell did I miss all this shit? All I ever watched was reruns of the Brady Bunch.’
Hey, me, too. Except the reason for us was that we lived in the middle of nowhere and there was no cable. Then, I’d get to go to my grandma’s house where she had cable and kid’s TV and FREAKING PINWHEEL WOULD COME ON!!
Yes, but do y’all remember The Kids from CAPER?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI0jjGZOAMc
Bugaloos! Martha Raye! Loved that show. The Disney Channel show Doodle Bops reminds me a lot of it.
Oh, Isis. You rascal, you. I had totally forgotten them. “We’ll race to your place on the case every time.” I had such a crush on Doc, back in the day.
I LOVED Pinwheel!!! …and The Magic Garden :)
Anyone remember Today’s Special with Muffy the mouse and Jeff the mannequin?
And Fred Newman of “Mouth Sounds” fame! Well: “fame.”
Holy Today’s Special! It’s been so long since I thought about it it’s like a dream to me…
No one has mentioned Electra Woman and Dyna girl yet! I loved that show, afraid to watch it again now. I actually went as Electra Woman one year for Halloween (I think my sis went as Wonder Woman that same year, if not, a different year for sure).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra_Woman_and_Dyna_Girl
It also played with Wonder Bug, Dr. Shrinker, and that one with Ruth Buzzi and Jim Neighbors as aliens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Krofft_Supershow
I don’t remember Bugaloos or Pinwheel at all. The sleestacks gave me nightmares.
Jeez. Jim Nabors, not what I wrote above. Usually I check my postings before hitting submit.
Aw. I loved Hattytown. They were British! And Today’s Special was awesome.