As promised, I wanted to talk about a few Halloween episodes from some of the Nickelodeon shows I grew up with.
Rugrats: Candy Bar Creep Show
I had to look through the wiki for a refresher. The only thing I really remembered was Angelica telling the babies about the Reptar candy bars and how they turn your tongue green.
There's a haunted house at the Pickles house and the trick or treaters are being taken through there. The babies think that screaming will get them Reptar bars and decide they need to go inside the haunted house to do so. When they do, they get into the decorations and wind up scaring the group of kids Angelica is with. And they are able to get Reptar bars because the kids are scared so badly they drop their bags of candy.
Doug's Halloween Adventure
YouTube had this posted and it was fun getting to see this one again. I think I'd only seen it a handful of times.
The episode begins with a commerical promoting the new ride in Funky Town- Bloodstone Manor. Doug and Skeeter both get tickets to go to it on opening night. But after hearing about the story it was based on, Doug chickens out. He instead suggests to Skeeter they go trick or treating.
Skeeter is dressed as a spaceship from the Space Munks video game (the same one from "Doug's Lost Weekend") and when he pushes a button, it comes apart- the pieces are attached by springs.
Doug is Race Canyon, which is a character based off Indiana Jones.
I also find it a little strange that his Race Canyon persona gets to sit at the round table in the Christmas episode with Smash Adams and Quailman... but he's only appeared this one time. (It's all part of a daydream sequence where Doug talks with his alter egos to figure out how to save Porkchop).
Eventually Doug and Skeeter get to Funky Town, but they just miss the cut-off to get inside before the park closes.
But they decide to go in anyway. Roger is there as well. Despite his prior attempts to scare them, he's the one who's the most afraid of the ride. They have to first cross the threshold of death, which looks like a floor opening to a bottomless pit. But it turns out to be an illusion- it's all glass.
Then they get into a cart and run through various scary attractions. But then the ride stops midway through because the park closes at 10 o'clock. Despite Roger's insistences, they get out of the cart and try to find someone that'll help them leave.
Then Roger disappears out of nowhere... Doug and Skeeter run into the spooky host of the place and he orders them to leave. But Doug decides that they can't leave without Roger or he'd never be able to live with himself. He'd played chicken one time too many that night already.
So the guy shows them his control room downstairs... and they find out that Roger tricked them in an effort to scare them. But they get him back big time. Thanks to the host's special effects, they masquerade as ghosts and frighten him into leaving the park.
Hey Arnold's Halloween
Two stories are going on simultaneously: Helga, Harold and a bunch of the kids coordinate their costumes and decide to dress up as aliens for Halloween.
Meanwhile, Arnold and Gerald are fully aware of this fact and decide to do a "War of the Worlds" broadcast to coincide with this. Unfortunately, they make their narrative a little too convincing... one thing that helped their cause was that the anchor of a local alien conspiracy channel picks it up and broacasts it to a wider audience. (He's memorable in my head because he sounds exactly like The Brain from Pinky & The Brain from Animaniacs- Maurice LaMarche is the voice actor's name...clearly I'm a huge nerd cuz I knew that and I also spelled his name perfectly without having to try)
To top it all off, Harold had the bright idea to use permanent paint for their costumes. I forget the exact quote, but it's something like: "yeah, the paint I got had something called 'permanent' because I thought we'd be out all night."
And Helga's dad is one of those types that isn't afraid of aliens and actually takes matters into his own hands to "exterminate" them.
Stinky is also in the broadcast prank. He'd rigged the watertower with lights so it would look like a spaceship. When he crosses paths with the other kids, he makes a comment about Arnold's idea.
Helga is [obviously] not pleased.
"ARNOLD!!"
...
Arnold: Did you hear something just now?
Gerald: Nope...
...
Things escalate so much that the climax happens at the watertower and Big Bob Pataki is about to strangle Helga to death... then the watertower bursts when someone throws a projectile at it to attack the "aliens" and the water washes the makeup off, prompting him to stop.
Yikes...
A brilliant prank for sure, but not one Arnold wants to repeat in the future.
Hey Arnold!: The Headless Cabbie
Arnold is hosting a sleepover with Gerald, Harold, Stinky and Sid. They swap scary stories before bedtime and Arnold tells one he heard from Grandpa.
The story goes that a woman goes to the park, looking for her lost Scottie dog, and she gets a ride from a horse and carriage. As the ride progresses, she gets more and more manic, urging the cabbie to go after the dog she sees ahead of them. But he's so caught up in the action, he's unaware of the low branch of a nearby tree. His scarf wraps around it and the force is so strong that he winds up decapitated.
And legend has it you'll go through the park at night and still hear the barking Scottie dog and the manic laugh of the lady.
It's still early in the evening and the guys all agree to get ice cream. But Harold is still freaked out about the story and doesn't want them to take the shortcut through the park. A series of concidences makes him edgier. This includes what sounds like carriage wheels against cobblestones, but it turns out to be Eugene who is clogging... clogging in the middle of the night in the park... yeah, I don't get it either. And they also come across a Scottie dog and Stinky decides they should take it with them.
All of this leads up to them coming across a carriage that looks like it's being driven by a headless cabbie and there's someone laughing manically next to him. Everyone starts to run away, but then the driver calls after them.
"Hey, wait, it's me, Ernie!"
Yeah, Ernie Potts is driving carriages for a little extra cash. And the creepy laugh wound up being Mr. Hyunh.
But then at the end, after the kids and Ernie part ways, he picks up another customer.
A lady that's looking for her Scottie dog. And she hands Ernie a scarf before they go into the park.
... yeah, it just ends there... and we never find out whether the story winds up happening for real or not.
***
Rocko's Modern Life: Sugar Frosted Frights
I haven't talked about Rocko yet, but that'll be coming soon enough.
I kinda forgot this episode existed until I got the season 3 DVD set for Christmas last year.
Rocko is dressed as Really Really Big Man and Heffer just has a glow-in-the-dark Jack-o-Lantern pattern on his stomach. They go over to Filbert's house to find it decked out with toilet paper and dozens of "No Trespassing" signs.
They go inside to get him to come out of his shell... literally. And he tells them about why he's afraid of Halloween. When he was a kid, his parents alway went to parties on Halloween and left him with his Crazy Aunt Gretchen. (Supposedly she was born in an aquarium and never wanted to leave so she literally lives inside of a life-sized fish tank with only her legs sticking out of it).
But her story was that candy is poison and if you touch a single piece, you'll die.
Filbert, who is pretty much afraid of everything, takes this to heart and just never knew any better.
Ultimately, he goes with Rocko and Heffer to go trick or treating. He eats his first piece of candy and goes completely mental. Not quite as bad as Beavis turning into Cornholio when he overdoses on sugar and caffeine, but he does kinda terrorize the neighborhood for a few minutes of the segment. There's even a scene that parodies "Night on Bald Mountain" where he towers over the town and munches on all of the candy he can get his hands on.
In the background, there's also the legend of the Hopping Hessian. The trio, during their gallivanting, wind up in a part of town associated with him. There's a bridge and "the old photo booth". They come face to face with the Hopping Hessian and it looks like he'd caught up to them.
The episode then fast-forwards to next year's Halloween. Filbert comes over to Rocko's and finds the ghost, Gordon the foot, and Heffer all viewing a slideshow of photos from the previous Halloween. And they're all hanging out like they're best friends... yeah, random and weird.
Then at the end, Filbert says, "wait just a gosh darn minute... who took all of those photos?"
...because there's a photo with all of them in it.
Ed's Dead: A Thriller
Part two of the same episode.
Rocko notices that his neighbors, the Bigheads, had been arguing more than usual.
The next thing he knows, he overhears a terrifying skuffle where Mr. Bighead is begging for mercy. The next morning, it's eerily quiet nextdoor. Mr. Bighead is nowhere to be found and Mrs. Bighead is doing some things that look suspicious. Like burying something in an Ed-shaped hole in the ground. And the hedges she'd clipped the other day read "Kill Ed" when lighning flashes.
As it turns out, she'd been doing a meat sculpture of his likeness for art class. And Ed was missing because he'd gone to the hospital to get a wart removed.
But for a while, it was looking like another Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Fortune Cookie
This isn't Halloween-related, but it's close enough... it has to do with bad luck.
Filbert gets chosen to be the next Mr. Lucky for this show, Mega-Spin. Where he will spin a wheel and have a chance at winning a new trailer home.
Before that, though, he goes to a Chinese restaurant with Rocko and Heffer. At the end of the meal, they all have fortune cookies.
Filbert's reads: Bad luck and misfortune will haunt your pathetic soul for all eternity
The next thing he knows, he runs into every unlucky thing you can imagine. A bunch of black cats start following him. He goes under ladders. Mirrors break. And Really Really Big Man's attempt to talk an irate pigeon off a ledge goes completely array.
Filbert tells Rocko what happens and Rocko tries his best to convince him that it's all in his head. The trio goes back to the Chinese restaurant and get more fortune cookies. For some reason, Filbert keeps getting the same fortune over and over and over and over again...
But then another brilliant idea comes to light: there happens to be a gift shop full of good luck charms. So when Filbert goes on Mega-Spin, he is decked out on all of the good luck stuff he could fit on his person. The wheel goes off its hinges and causes untold havoc. But in the end, it falls back into position and it lands on the one lucky space on the entire wheel.
Rocko's such a great series. Can't wait to talk about that one too. But this last episode, it's always been one of the most memorable for me.
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