Hey guys! I know I said I'd be back on Friday for my review of Savage Garden's debut album, but I came across something on YouTube last night that I just had to talk to you guys about. Have you ever watched something on VHS when you were a kid, but you didn't know what the tape was and then you see it years later and as you're watching it, you realize it's the tape you saw when you were a kid? That's what happened to me last night. I was looking up some stuff on the 80s Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon on YouTube and I discovered this video. Being curious about it, I started watching it, and as it was playing, I realized that I'd seen it way back in the 90s. Where did I see it? Well, let's get into it and find out shall we?
Alvin and the Chipmunks was one of my favourite cartoons when I was growing up. And of course "Witch Doctor" is one of their most famous songs. But I thought the show did a really good job of integrating music into it, before The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin did four years later. However, twenty-two years before Alvin and the Chipmunks started airing, there was a series simply called The Alvin Show that ran from 1961 to 1962. Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing-Alongs: Ragtime Cowboy Joe is a VHS release that uses footage from The Alvin Show and compiles it into a Sing-Along Songs style format, much like the Disney Sing-Along Songs releases that ran from the late 80s through to the mid 2000s.
So I saw this tape sometime in the summer of 1994 during one of my stays in the hospital. I don't remember why I was in the hospital that time, as it was somewhere between May and September of 1994, as September was when I started at Greely Elementary School. It could've been because of an asthma attack or something like that because I don't think it was for any major surgery and it definitely wasn't for a major illness because I was free to go to the playroom and visit my hospital friends in other rooms. And I know it was the summer of 1994 because the tape came out in 1994, in April, and the first season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was still airing on TV.
To be honest, at this point in my life, I was still spending quite a bit of time in the hospital and each stay kinda just blended into one another, so I don't remember why I was there this particular time. What I do remember is that I was free to roam around the unit and play with other kids. In fact, I don't even think I was hooked up to an IV at this point. So I was in my wheelchair and I went to see one of the kids that I'd become friends with during my stay, and one of the Child Life workers put the tape on for us. I enjoyed it, because it was a sing along, in the vein of the Disney ones, right down to using Alvin's head as the bouncing ball for some of the songs. They also just had a blue bouncing ball minus the Mickey Mouse ears for the other songs. Which is pretty cool.
What's even more interesting about this tape is that it was released by Buena Vista Home Video, owned by the Walt Disney Company because DIC Entertainment, which held the license for the 1983 cartoon at the time, was owned by Disney at that time, which means that the original English dub of Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon, known simply as Sailor Moon here in North America, is a Disney show. So, because this tape was put out by Buena Vista Home Video, there's a preview for Fraggle Rock and for Muppets Sing-Alongs: Billy Bunny's Animal Songs, a Muppets sing-along songs VHS release, which I never saw when I was a kid. No other Disney VHS previews or anything, just the two Jim Henson ones. Which doesn't surprise me because Buena Vista Home Video acted as a separate entity from Walt Disney Home Video, and they tended to release things that didn't fall under the Disney banner.
The songs on this tape are your standard songs that the Chipmunks sang in the 50s and 60s. However, there are two that stand out. "Witch Doctor" obviously because I feel like that aside from "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)", "Witch Doctor" is probably their most iconic song. I know I heard it on the radio before I watched this tape back in the day. The other song that stood out on this tape is "Polly Wolly Doodle". Yeah, they're old songs, but they're good ones and this was my first time hearing "Polly Wolly Doodle" that I can remember. I probably heard it when I was a really little kid, but I don't remember it.
That's it for today. Just something that will hopefully make people smile today after the insanity of the last few hours. Like I said at the end of my post about the Star Trek: The Next Generation toyline from Playmates Toys, this is the kind of thing that I want to be doing on this blog. Talking about VHS, books, comics, TV shows, movies, and video games and having fun with it. I mean I've had alot of fun writing this post and I had fun writing the TNG toys post too. And that's what I'm here to do. Have fun writing about the stuff I enjoy. So join me on Friday as I talk about Savage Garden's 1997, self-titled, debut album and then next week for more nostalgic goodness. So until then have a good evening, stay safe out there, and I will talk to you on Friday. Take care.
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