Day 13 - Favorite childhood showOhhh, how easy this one is for me. Now, I was a HUGE Nickelodeon child. As a child who went to a $20,000 a year Catholic school, you wouldn't think I would be the only kid in my class to get that channel, but this was the 80's, after all. And I loved everything that came on that channel, from Pinwheel to Laugh-In.
But my all-time favorite show was Today's Special. It took place in a department store, after hours, and involved the lady who worked in the children's department, Jodie, and a mannequin named Jeff who comes to life when you say the magic words. But if you took his hat off, he returned to mannequin state.
The magic words are in the title. Are they spelled right? Pffft.
There was also a security guard named Sam. I think if you'd asked me back when I originally watched this, I would not have been able to tell you that Sam was a puppet. Which makes me look back at my Sesame Street love a whole lot differently, as well. Did I think Big Bird was a real bird?
And Muffy, the mouse. I remember she had a high squeaky voice, and a gorgeous pink room with lots of lace.
At one point, there was a VHS tape in my house full of episodes of this show. I watched it well after Nickelodeon stopped airing it. My dad eventually taped over it, and I don't believe I've ever forgiven him for that.
The one episode I'll always remember is when Jeff was trying to find a home. I even remember two lines of the song, which were, "A home of my own, a place I can live in..." And then I can hum the next part. But that's about it. I remember him trying to live in an igloo, with a bowl of frozen soup. And at the end of the episode, they got him this HUGENORMOUS cardboard box, which they decorated and made into a home for him.
As a child who lived for refrigerator boxes (the best house I ever made was from the box from our trash compactor), this made such complete sense to me.
I loved this show, and dammit, they need to put it out on DVD. There's no reason not to have all of the old Nickelodeon shows out on DVD, especially this and You Can't Do This on Television. It's infuriating.
I think, keyword think, that it isn't Nick that's the hold-up but TVO (TV Ontario) which was the original distributor of the show. TVO is notorious for not releasing all their classic 70s and 80s shows on DVD, like Today's Special. I think there was some sort of issue involving educational TV being classified differently than normal TV regarding wages and unions or something, and re-releasing them would lead to some sort of copyright/wages thingie. It's a real shame, too, because they had some AMAZING shows that actually would be terrific to use in classrooms today. They need to iron that out.
ReplyDeleteI also actually remember the Jeff gets a house episode now that you mention it, along with the one where Muffy was ticked off she had to play a sheep in the play they were doing. Her only line was "baa baaa baa," as I recall.
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ReplyDeleteAre you afraid of the dark
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