Creepy Crawlers - Attack Of the Fifty Foot Googengrime

Episode 1-Night of the Creepy Crawlers
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I had to pull out this show again for several reasons, but the main reason was that I noticed that since there's only like four episodes online in a language I can understand (because hell no, I'm not watching something off of Rutube and then try to make any coherent sense out of it), this would be the easiest series to write about all of the available goop-filled, creepy crawly, nonsensical episodes.

I sometimes entertain the notion that I'll have this blog ten years from now and will one day review and overanalyze, say, every single available episode of Darkwing Duck or The Mask: The Animated Series, but another part of me knows that will never ever happen because I'm just one person and my interest in ducks or strange green-faced shapeshifters can only go so far.

But come on, only four existing episodes of a cracktastic series? That'd be cake.

Part of me still has trouble believing this actually exists.

I went with this episode first as opposed to, say, one closer in order (which involves giant zombie bees and important character introductions) because, to be frank, this begged to be written. I built my entire blog just so I can write about craziness like this. It's got a little bit of everything, but mostly, I have to point at the title and tell you that this seriously exists, that the writers seriously thought that this was a good idea and they had people draw storyboards for this.

In short, the 90's! Because if you want to see a jade green skeleton dance around while wearing a monocle, bugs imitate Beavis and Butthead, and a five story wizard with the chin the size of Kuwait yell about Goopmandos and little dips, then there's going to be a cartoon to accommodate for your strange, strange needs.

But really, nothing more needs to be said other than the title at this point. No, really. I can't even warn you for the unbridled insanity that cold, heartless merchandising inflicted on small children in the early 90's other than mentioning that this is...

Attack Of the Fifty Foot Googengrime

Creepy Crawlers - The Night of the Creepy Crawlers

Now that I've talked about a show that everyone should remember, now let's cover something that no one should be aware of. A show that doesn't define the 90's the way Darkwing Duck did, but instead slithers so far under the radar that not many people are even aware of its existence and even less people actually watched it. And it not just slithers, it oozes, crawls, slimes, and goops, because we're dealing with one of those shows born from the period of the 90's where gross and ugly toys was considered cool.

But first, let me talk about the toy that inspired this show; Creepy Crawlers.

Basically what Easy Bake Ovens were for girls, Creepy Crawlers were to boys. Instead of baking cute little brownies or wee little cupcakes, boys baked plastic or edible centipedes and cockroaches and beetles depending on what type of Plastigoop they used. Basically, they were unleaded awesome and one of the great toys of the 90's. They don't exist anymore because the children of today just plain don't deserve them.

Considering I'm a girl (watch as everyone disregards everything I say once I reveal this small factoid), I never owned a Creepy Crawler oven. I had an Easy Bake Oven, one that nearly burned one of my fingers off because that light bulb can turn nuclear if you allow it to. It is now one of my biggest regrets that I never owned one of these things and made my own bugs, because now they don't exist anymore and the day I buy a Creepy Crawlers toy set off of eBay is the day I lose my dignity.

This will set you back 50 dollars, not including shipping.

Now that I've talked about the toy, let's talk about the animated adaptation. In the 90's, toys and cartoons would go hand-in-hand. Cartoons popular enough spawned toys, and toys popular enough spawned cartoons. It was a great commercial circle of life, back when people wouldn't whine on the Internet about how cartoons are now soulless products of merchandise. Seriously, cartoon merchandising today had nothing on the 90's. Cartoon merchandise in the 90's was almost an art form.

In Creepy Crawler's case, the toy spawned a cartoon and the cartoon later spawned toys, basically forming an advertiser's wet dream.

And then the toys spawned another cartoon and THAT
cartoon spawned toys...

With that, I bring you, Creepy Crawlers: The Animated Series!

Unfortunately, this show ran into some problems. Despite a toy line and a brand name, it lasted only two seasons and 23 episodes in total. Judging by how the last episode was not a series finale by any means and the toy line promised future toys, it was probably cancelled due to lack of interest.

And now, it is one of the most obscure shows I've ever run into. Now, quite a few animated TV shows don't have the luxury of DVD releases and require someone who had previously recorded the show to post the episodes online for all to see. Usually, a combined number of people with videotapes will add up to all the episodes, but sometimes, you'll end up with shows that have "missing episodes", episodes that no one has recorded yet and are now considered hotly in demand.

Creepy Crawlers suffers especially badly from this. Out of 23 possible episodes, EIGHT are available online, and only FOUR are in English. That's right, 50% of the show that's available online and it's in Russian. This probably won't change either, because I doubt some network will show episodes of a cartoon that's basically a 30 minute advertisement of something that doesn't even exist anymore (the toyline supposedly died in 2001) and I doubt the creators will make a DVD set on account like 20 people worldwide remember this show.

Did Creepy Crawlers deserve such a distinction? Does Creepy Crawlers deserve to live forever forgotten on the shelves of the 90's? Let's find out.

The Night Of The Creepy Crawlers