Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids

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[00:00:13] Enjoy the episode.

[00:00:14] What's the worst that can happen in half an hour? Your child can call Babestation or

[00:00:19] they can get eaten by trolls. a different welcome to thoughts FM 93.8 how we feeling this week good done my little job actually a little job I have an even little job because I got a PGTA position so I got paid to go to a lecture

[00:01:41] great Laura always gives us a slightly more in-depth up personal update of my for this podcast that I do. I don't know if you've heard of it. No, it's a cool thing. So I do a podcast about children's TV from the past. It's cool. Yeah, I do. It's called Fox TV. I do it with my two housemates. That's a creative name. You write, yeah. Your housemates. Yes, I do. Oh, I don't. Oh, you don't like your housemates?

[00:03:00] What did they do?

[00:03:02] Oh, I can't go into it.

[00:03:03] Okay, it's too long.

[00:03:05] Okay.

[00:03:05] So we've not really spoken about this show You are welcome to Grizzly Tales for gruesome kids. A series of cautionary tales for lovers of Squeen.

[00:04:20] I'm sorry.

[00:04:21] As I think the word.

[00:04:23] Yeah, so I don't remember any of the individual stories, but I do remember the door and there was a rat standing on the wall looking at her. Face to face. Face to face. Not even on the ground, face to face. I thought it was a person. She's cried. Sorry to interrupt. No, that's all right. So the TV show was based on a series of books called Grizzly Tales for Grizzome Kids. It was written by Jamie Ricks.

[00:05:41] That's R-I-X.

[00:05:43] So he wrote that smelled of like baking. Oh, okay. And he took children away, they didn't eat their food. And like after that, his kid always ate his dinner. And the spaghetti man was an episode of the show and a book. So it's essentially like a series of morality tales.

[00:07:02] It's like modern Grimm's fairy tales.

[00:07:04] I was looking at the comments for some of the episodes we watched and all like most

[00:07:07] of the comments are, I love the moral of this. like, metered out by sort of a remaining woman. Yes, a different one every time. But yes. Once upon a new year, a time when old is discarded for new the sun because he's about to be arrested for stealing the sun, he is killed by the sun. A similar thing happens in Despicable Me. But the moon, but it's the moon. Yes, it doesn't get killed by the moon. No, he doesn't watch. No, the whole world almost gets killed by the moon because it's increasing back to its normal size.

[00:09:41] Yeah, but there's a difference between being killed

[00:09:44] and not's nice. I say, champs, wait for me, I can't keep up. Gosh, where's my little sis, Ginger Gasp suddenly. I hope she hasn't fallen off her tric and broken her neck. I vote, restop, said Sam, who as the biggest was also the most sensible.

[00:11:01] Um, so he and Jamie Ricks set show has some stop motion. It's a, yeah, so it begins with dear, no! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha in a jar and burns it and we think that this is horribly inappropriate. Sorry, do you want the spider to give birth in your home? No, but what did you think? I really enjoyed it. I really liked it. Yeah, I thought it was weird. I really enjoyed it. I expected to not like it. I like kidshows with a dark streak.

[00:15:02] And this is really tough.

[00:15:03] Yeah, I thought the animation was so janky.

[00:15:07] It was Adobe Flash. happens, like it's a supernatural element, like the always is. And his parents, well, his family are moving house and he doesn't want to go with them. So he barricades himself in his room relatable and his mum and dad are like, oh, well, we're going to leave you

[00:16:20] here then. And he's like, Oh, super like her. So an hour? You go back and he's barricaded himself in his room, there's like a big chest up against it, blah blah blah blah blah. star. You've tricked me and now we're going to Devon.

[00:19:02] Thrones! What do you want?

[00:19:04] They knew home. enjoyed that aspect of it. I have split the episodes into three categories. So the first category is where the kid has an annoying vice and some supernatural entity or something. No being funny. Yes. Will basically entrap them in a kind of horrific, like I'm never getting out of this altered state, kind of.

[00:21:30] degree is I did see a couple of episodes where like, so nothing really bad happens. And I'll give you an example.

[00:21:33] So there was one set in a, what appeared to be quite a posh private girls school with

[00:21:39] all French teachers.

[00:21:40] And a girl has not revised her history exam.

[00:21:43] So she's in the exam hall and she's visited by a, what the girl failed to consider is that some ghosts are just stupid. And when you die? I think all of the ones I watched were... Oh no, actually, sorry. My... All the ones I watched at least one child died. Yeah, I had only death consequences.

[00:24:20] Oh, you did.

[00:24:21] Okay.

[00:24:22] Oh, the crystal eye.

[00:24:24] That's what I was going to talk about.

[00:24:26] Okay, he's not...

[00:24:26] Yeah, he isn't actually dead.

[00:24:27] He's just in trap forever.

[00:24:29] Yeah. with the parents putting him in a Tupperware box and then into the cupboard. And I just find like with the crystal eye one where he's trapped in the mirror, there's like a shot at the end of him like watching his family through the mirror and he'll never be reunited with them. And just like to me, the idea that your parents don't even know you're there, like it was so unsettling for me.

[00:25:41] It was really, I was nervous to watch it was like, just don't look. Wow. I still don't like the infinite reflecting. I really don't like it. I think that's natural as a human though because it's you much that what i asked i you know something in her who was me. Right so cuz you we were asking you know i was like oh you could do something like this and i don't know if you guys had. We're not super pay attention to me i was a and i whipped around and you both jumped and i was like.

[00:29:21] Yeah, we did. Yeah.

[00:29:22] Terry.

[00:29:23] Terry lives there.

[00:29:24] Terry lives there.

[00:29:25] He's not around as much as he used to be.

[00:29:26] I don't think...

[00:29:29] Well, I don't actually remember if there were loads of...

[00:29:34] Or if I thought there were loads of noises when we moved here, I just thought Terry was

[00:29:37] funny.

[00:29:38] Yeah.

[00:29:39] Well, we live next to quite a main road.

[00:29:43] Yeah.

[00:29:44] And it's like an old, clunky sort of flat.

[00:29:47] There's gonna be...

[00:29:48] Yeah. and see if it was a person. And I said, well, because if there's a person robbing us, I'd rather just go back to bed, not end up in an altercation with this person, take what you like, we've got contents insurance, it's fine. And then I don't get attacked in any way. And Laura's very much get a weapon, go check it.

[00:31:01] But do you see my logic as well?

[00:31:03] I 100% see your logic, I get it,

[00:31:05] but I wouldn't be able to And sometimes I'm behind one of you and I don't know the best way to announce myself because I know you've not heard me and whatever I do will scare you. I had this either day where I'd gone downstairs at my boyfriend's house. I always make his

[00:32:22] mum jump by, well, sometimes I'm nervous. Don't be afraid. Every dose scream. Everything is going to be fine. Can we talk about the episode called the something, something, Scrump for Apples or the jolly Scrumping Club? What's it called, Meg? It's the, like, the cunning club Scrump for Apples.

[00:33:44] I wrote it down.

[00:33:45] There's something chums, I don't know.

[00:33:47] The Chipper Chums for the express purpose of having adventures and drinking ginger beer. There was Buntie and there was Ginger stinker. Yeah. And somehow the narrator hates these private school cons, doesn't he? He, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's playing all their voices. I don't think they're summering in Kentville places. So the story- We don't go summering in Bradford, do you?

[00:36:21] The posh school.

[00:36:24] These summering in Glasgow.

[00:36:26] These posh school cons go summering in France. Yeah, okay. I didn't realize it was specifically stealing apples. I thought it was just picking apples. I think it is when you're like kind of trespassing for apples. That's extremely, extremely British. There's a word specifically for stealing apples. And they're doing this and the farmer catches them and he's holding a shotgun on British children's telly

[00:37:40] and he fucking shoots their dog dead.

[00:37:42] Yeah.

[00:37:43] But just as the Chipper Chums finished eating their apples, that how shall we reach these apples and there's not a shot but a frame of a Ladder and next to the ladder is like this toxic waste barrel Crossbones the international sign for poison like can I point out that there are some additions to these frames That absolutely do not need to be there like in the this is still I

[00:40:03] It's the way that, so it's quite janky animation in a charming, funny kind of way. And when they had like the famous five animated like this, it was so funny.

[00:40:08] And then obviously they die at the end and like it goes back to the narrator,

[00:40:15] the guy that owns the cinema.

[00:40:17] And he's saying with like actual glee, he's talking about alcohol on a kids show.

[00:40:22] He's like, if you, at least for me. There's a list of episodes on the Wikipedia and there's a column about the changes that were made from the book to the TV series.

[00:41:45] And I want to it being disturbing. Oh my god. In the book, Herbert is addicted to cola, but the episode doesn't mention it. Oh, it's addicted to cola, is he? Oh, there is actually another episode where a guy is... All he does all day is like bunk off school and make prank calls.

[00:43:02] And the narrator says, thing is, he was having withdrawals.

[00:43:06] He needed to get his daily fix of prank calls. BAFTA. Yeah. And Grizzly Tails won a bunch of awards as well. It was nominated for a bunch of awards. Not the animation awards. I think it might have been. I actually think it might have been because it's like early days computer animation. We did the best with what we had. Yeah, 2000. Pretty good. And the stop motion is really nice. Yes, I really Like very scary. Yeah. But because they put so much time and effort into this interim, it does make me wonder whether they made that and then went, no, we'll do the rest of it another way. I really think that, I mean, obviously I'm not super up to date on everything that's on Kids TV these days, but fire my cousins. Nothing they watch, nothing they ever talk about

[00:45:44] is this dark. And I actually think, I mean, no, anywhere. Well, I would because it looks like you ripped him off.

[00:47:01] That's quite impressive.

[00:47:02] Yeah, because I read it back and an illustrator, and he wrote a lot of children's books, but he didn't particularly, he had no fondness for children. Yeah. And his, sorry, his personal life was very much a mystery deliberately. I love that. In fact, the first thing on his personal life section of

[00:48:21] Wikipedia is that he loved the New York Ballet, and he attended the Christmas production every and they're quite stern in the first one and not so much in the second one. And then throughout the pictures, they're sort of collapsing into bits of laughter together. It's so sweet because you never see Victorians like that. Because you alphabet book oh yeah, and each Letter of the alphabet has an illustration of a child Dying of something That's the bunny suicide book, but for children right and but the children are like drawn very tiny like they're dwarfed by the frame and

[00:52:05] Well, it's because the tagline at the time was released the goo, I think, or something like that.

[00:52:06] Yeah.

[00:52:07] And it's also the what was it?

[00:52:08] I'm sorry.

[00:52:09] It's the other day that was like, it is the worst time of year, six months since cream

[00:52:13] eggs, six months till three meg.

[00:52:15] What?

[00:52:16] Now.

[00:52:17] The thing is, cream eggs will start appearing as soon as Christmas stuff is cleared out.

[00:52:23] Yeah.

[00:52:24] So the Gashley Crumb't wait to get stuck into this. It took me weeks to finish that book because I was scared of it. And I,

[00:54:50] Because there's less explicit scariest, like in the later ones it's like monsters and the occasional explosion. The first one, like you've got that scene where Harry and Draco are on detention and they have to go into the Forbidden Forest

[00:54:58] and they sort of wander off the path the later ones are not like that. They're more like political dramas, all those. There's a bit like less of us. Obviously there's a pretty good self-contained thing in most of the movies, but it's like, as you get on, it's the overall plot

[00:56:20] that it's focusing on more.

[00:56:21] Yeah, and yeah, the first ones are like

[00:56:23] children solving mysteries.

[00:56:25] And the later ones. It does feel a bit get to the, well, I think feels a bit get to the next bit of the story. Name one significant thing that happens in half of Prince other than Snape dying. No, yeah, for sure. Yeah. No, Dumbledore dying. Sorry, Dumbledore dying in the next one. I haven't read the books. I think the third one is the best directed film by some of the stuff that happens isn't really apparent until you're older and you're like, Oh shit, they just got made into the cider. I don't know. I was pretty upset by that. The thing is this sorry to interrupt the cider one is because of the accent. Yeah. Of the guy who's narrating is like quite Essex Kent area. So he's got that like affect of his accent. Well, we all do it as well where you pronounce a TH as an F. So what's their actual name? Because one of them is definitely called thick.

[01:00:20] But it's the other one called thin or thin.

[01:00:22] So the evil one that gets trapped in the mirror at the end,

[01:00:25] which is the thing that kind of upset me for my whole life Half a game pod, half a puppy. No! All right, not half a puppy, but half a mutant tortoise. Half a book. When I get to the end of my half, can I borrow yours to find out how the story ends? No! It's mine by your own, skin flint.

[01:01:41] And half a war. we call Babesation? Can you still call Babesation? Probably, yeah. Probably, yeah. I did once when I was little. What? What? Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully. Why did you mention this in the other episode where Babesation came up? Or like the years that you have known us? Why are you mentioning this? So good.

[01:03:00] Tell the story. I was just I was watching Telly and you know how

[01:03:04] in the UK, if you go backwards, you're on the adult channels.

[01:04:01] Well, he's in the next room. He is in the next.

[01:04:01] Would you already go and ask him?

[01:04:03] Please.

[01:04:03] All right.

[01:04:06] So Laura's dad didn't know that that had happened.

[01:04:08] He barked with surprise laughter.

[01:04:11] So what was the consequences?

[01:04:13] What was the consequences?

[01:04:14] Who answered?

[01:04:16] A babe.

[01:04:16] Right.

[01:04:17] And then what was the conversation like?

[01:04:19] Well, they were like, how old are you?

[01:04:21] Oh, why are you calling?

[01:04:26] Did she say that?

[01:04:27] Yeah.

[01:04:27] Did she hang up? 60s to be fair. The top of the seventh. So either those babysitter downstairs or they were just at a neighbor's house, so they were near enough that they didn't get child care. What's the worst that can happen in half an hour? Your child can call Babestation or they can get eaten by trolls. We used to, I mean, this might not be a story for today, but we'll see.

[01:05:41] Magnus Butler, sort of, I've told you me and my brother were awful for

[01:05:45] babysitters.

[01:05:46] We used to play this game called Lockout.

[01:06:41] call it, it will have happened. You won't be the only person ever who's done that.

[01:06:45] So our email is,

[01:06:47] oh, because I was gonna tell a story about Lockout.

[01:06:49] No, I'm saying that I want people

[01:06:51] to let us know if they've done that.

[01:06:52] Oh yes, please do.

[01:06:53] I really actually would love to.

[01:06:55] Anyway, Lockout, tell us about Lockout,

[01:06:57] you horrible kids.

[01:06:59] So I wonder where this is going.

[01:07:01] So a lot of our babysitters were like older people's kids,

[01:07:05] like 16 year olds from around where we lived, right?

[01:07:08] So sometimes they were fun like lock out and she went to kick in a sort of a shed window. And what happened was the window pane above it fell down on her foot and very, very nearly cut off her foot. She's got like 80% of the way around. Fuck around and find out. Yeah. Wow. See, these are perfect grizzly tails.

[01:08:22] Laura lived it.

[01:08:23] Laura lived.

[01:08:24] She needs to watch it.

[01:08:25] She lived it.

[01:08:26] I've really enjoyed this. wasn't in the mini episode because this one needed it. This was so much, so much better than. Yeah. All the ones we did last time, especially Spooks. Oh, well, yeah. Since the last one has gone up, which was today, yeah, everyone has been saying today that they loved Billion Mandy. Yeah. Grim Adventures of Billion Mandy. Everyone's really excited about that.

[01:09:41] Great show.

[01:09:42] Oh, big news.

[01:09:44] We have a TikTok now.

[01:09:46] Oh, shit.

[01:09:47] Another thing we've got to announce. old tweet saying, oh, I've listened. I'm in the middle of it. Great work. So Tony Gardner, thank you so much. I have the needle make in that episode, but you know. Yeah. That's true. Fuck off. It's eating you up inside, isn't it? What? I'm not in the episode that Tony Garner's taken interest in. Yeah. Fuck's sake. You are in the Raven episode.

[01:11:01] What I really want is once again. We love the