Win One for the Twipper is the final VHS release in this series and the episode that it contains, "Win One for the Twipper" is another filler type episode. There really isn't much to the episode at all even though it was connected to everything going on with Tweeg and L.B. during this arc of the series. Mainly because the majority of the episode was taken up by a Grungeball game. If you're wondering what Grungeball is, it's just Baseball if Baseball was invented by the Surf Grunges. I say that, because until episode 46 "Teddy Ruxpin's Birthday" you don't see any of the Grunges from the Jungle with No Name playing Grungeball, just the Surf Grunges, who are way more prominent in the TV series than they are in the book and tape series.
This is another tape that I didn't own when I was a kid, but still had the episode that is on this tape on VHS. My dad taped "Win One for the Twipper" off the TV when I was really little and I always watched it with "Teddy and the Mudblups" because this episode picks up where that one left off, so I always saw them as the same story. I don't know how many times I watched it, but it was probably a lot. Not as often as all the episodes that were on the first tape that was made for me though, since that tape contained episodes 2 through 6 as well as episode 64 "L.B.'s Wedding". The tape that "Teddy and the Mudblups" and "Win One for the Twipper" were on also contained episode 31 "The Mushroom Forest" and episode 54 "Wooly and the Giant Snowzos".
I've always thought it was odd that Tweeg would use Gimmick's appearance as the basis for his inventor's disguise that he uses in this episode. I mean, I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised since Gimmick is the only inventor that Tweeg knows, since he's probably the only inventor in Grundo outside of King Nogburt's Castle, but still, wouldn't that be a little too obvious? Oh right, this is an '80s cartoon so naturally none of the good guys can see through Tweeg's disguises, even though L.B. is always with him, and his mother is here too in this episode.
So I can't believe I've never picked this up before, but during the Grungeball song during the montage of Gimmick coming up with the Grungeball equipment, two more Grundo sports are mentioned but not elaborated on. One of them is Grundo Golf, which is pretty self-explanatory. However, the other one is Bounder Bowling. Um, what? What is Bounder Bowling? Do they use Bounders for bowling balls or something? Because I can't see the Bounders going bowling, since they face the same problem they face with anything else, they don't have any hands! Like I said, this is never elaborated on and is never mentioned anywhere in the Teddy Ruxpin franchise outside of this song. I just thought it was peculiar, especially since these things were mentioned by a Surf Grunge during the song.
Also, I was wrong. At the end of this tape, after the DIC and Atkinson-Films logos at the end of the tape, but before the Hi-Tops Video logo appears again, there's another preview for Come Dream with Me Tonight. This time Teddy is singing "Sleeping Time" which is the third song that he sings on both the VHS tape and the original book and tape set "Teddy Ruxpin Lullabies". So there are three tapes in total which have previews for the VHS tape, and each preview is a different song. Which is nice, because the 1992 releases of the Barney & The Backyard Gang VHS tapes all have one of two of the same previews at the end as do the 1990 re-releases of the early Disney Sing-Along Songs tapes.
With that we come to the end of my Teddy Ruxpin VHS Reviews series. I've had so much fun getting these reviews out to you on a weekly basis. There were no interruptions, no breaks, and I didn't give up halfway through. Unlike on Wordpress, on Blogger I can see the view numbers on each post and these reviews did just as well as any of my other posts, with a couple of the early installments actually doing better than any of my other reviews. So that's awesome! Especially since Teddy Ruxpin is such a niche fandom that can be hard to appreciate if you didn't grow up with it or have children or grandchildren who grew up with it.
Thank you again to Vincent Conroy of the Grundo Gazette fansite for providing me with digitized copies of the tapes and for the VHS covers, which have been invaluable to me during this series. I appreciate you taking the time to digitize all twelve tapes and sending them my way. He got so excited when I told him my plan for this series, which is actually something I've been thinking about doing for a few years now, even while I was still on Wordpress. So thank you Vince for everything you did to make this review series possible. And thank you to everyone who reads my blog, even if you don't comment on it. I'm doing this for you as much as I'm doing it for myself.
I'm going to take a break from the VHS reviews for a couple of weeks before I get started on the Disney Sing-Along Songs VHS reviews. But when when I start on that series, I'll be using the original VHS release covers for all of the tapes, and I'll be going in the original release order with Disney Sing-Along Songs: Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah kicking it off as that was the first tape to come out in the series, even though it was switched with Heigh-Ho when they were re-released in 1990. So join me for that on August 10th. In the meantime though I've got lots of reviews coming your way this week, so stay tuned for those. I'll be back with a blog update post in a little while. Later.
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