Archive for January, 2009

Updates

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

I want to apologize for the lack of updates here in our inaugural month.  I’ve been on the road (or rather, in a plane) and away from home most of January.  Such will be true for February as well, but I promise updates are coming…particularly an article, with video, of the Nickelodeon Studios Opening Day Celebration from 1990.  I’ve gotten email after email asking for it, and yes, it’s coming.  Thanks to everyone who has expressed so much interest in seeing this…it makes selecting stuff to talk about easy.

Chase as always has some things brewing as well.  FwankTV will also be updated asap.  I’m working on setting up some fun stuff that’ll tie in to my travels.  Until then, stay tuned, tell a friend and know that your support is appreciated.

Until then…

Chase[IM] (9:00:50 PM): i got the american idol karaoke game for xbox 360.
Chase[IM] (9:00:52 PM): and i won it.
Chase[IM] (9:00:57 PM): i’m not sure how to feel.

Josh

Closed captioning

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Closed captioning’s been one of my many… and I do mean many… weird interests since I was a kid. I would actually got my mom quite mad at me when she caught me watching shows with captions on. Reasoning still escapes me.

I had often wished there was a way for me to write out captions for the many videotapes and VCR recordings I had made of shows that hadn’t had captions put in.

So, the other day, while tinkering with YouTube, I learned that there was now, indeed, a way for me to code up some captions for use with our FwankTV videos.  I tested out our Golden Grahams video with the captions on my personal account, and I was thoroughly pleased with the results!

To that end, I’m proud to say that I am now working on putting closed captions on the YouTube versions of the videos we post to FwankTV, with the intention of offering them anytime we provide videos with spoken words. It’s both a way to quench my geeky thirsts, and also to make our site more accessible to all.

Vintage ‘09

Monday, January 5th, 2009

It seemed that 2008 gave us a bum-ton of vintage product promotions and the return of many games, toys and shows from our childhood.

Off the top of my head, I can tell you that Moon Shoes, Nickelodeon Slime, and handheld electronic versions of Press Your Luck and Password made it to store shelves last year. The small, two-tone LCD games came back in style, with Connect 4, Hangman, and other Milton Bradley classics given the treatment.

Also, it was a pleasant surprise to see some of the General Mills line of cereals re-issue some classic packaging to the delight of nostalgia enthuiasts such as moi. It made for some nice, memorable moments, and gave me the excuse to write up a sketch where I got to throw raw meat around in my kitchen. (Go to FwankTV now if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

Anyway. Here’s the problem. So much stuff got revived in 2008 that I can’t possibly remember it all. This is where I’m going to use this blog as a tool. Here’s the rules, hopefully Josh and I can abide by them.. Anytime we come across a “new” revival or vintage-style product, we’re gonna do a quick little blurb about it here on the blog. We’ll categorize it as ‘Vintage ‘09′ and at the end of the year, we’ll compile the definitive list of all the revivals and vintage promotions we’ve come across in 2009.

It should be fun to see if this year brings us back any more fond memories than 2008 did. To start off with, let me tell you about some neat vintage-style Pepsi bottles I came across at Walmart * .. You’ll notice that I like to be as verbally correct as possible. Their new logo is one word and has an asterisk-style logo that can be easily typed. I shall do that whenever I mention Walmart * . But I digress.

Pepsi bottles. They’re actually this new aluminum bottle thing manufacturers have been keen on implementing this past year. It looks like a glass bottle with plastic shrinkwrap labelling, but its actually a very sleek aluminum can. That in itself its impressive, but for these Pepsi bottles, they rolled out four vintage-style designs! Two are from the original Pepsi-Cola era. The third looks like the 80s-era white label with logo near the top–it even advertises the Pepsi Challenge–remember that? The last goes back even further, to the 60s style ‘Have a Pepsi’ promotion.