Afro-Squad Magazine

Most Gen-Xers don’t realize that they owe many of their Christmas memories to the FCC. During the early ’80s, parents became concerned by the kinds of things their kids were seeing on TV, so they asked for new rules regulating advertisements shown during kids’ shows. Bowing to pressure from the White House and from toy makers, the FCC responded to these concerns by pretty much deregulating children’s television altogether. Kids’ shows quickly became half-hour commercials for toy lines, which parents began buying at unbelievable rates.

What is strange is that, given the chance to create simple stories and background information on their products, toy makers instead took the characters’ mythology to bizarre, dark places.

It’s hard to overstate how big of a deal the Cabbage Patch Kids were in the ’80s. Riots over the latest Christmas toy are all too familiar today, but back in 1982 when Cabbage Patch Kids hit the scene, it was almost unheard of. Determined to be ready for the demands of Christmas ’84, toy makers released storybooks, cassettes and an animated Christmas special describing the adventures of the Cabbage Patch Kids. What they unveiled was a world of sheer madness.

Via Wikimedia Commons
Stare deep into the eyes of your dark fate, my children.

First of all, “Cabbage Patch Kids” is not a cute nickname — they grow from actual cabbages. Which is fine — we understand the makers of a toy line about babies don’t want to have to begin their show with a woman screaming from labor pains. But it just keeps getting weirder from there — the magical cabbages are pollinated by mutated creatures called bunnybees, who drop crystals on them.

Hybrids that scientifically must result from a rabbit s#xing a bee.

The kids thus emerge into a world with no parents, and are basically left to fend for themselves until they’re “adopted” (that is, until their doll is bought by some lucky kid whose own parents are willing to face down a stampede to get one). And these kids really need to be adopted quick, because unfortunately their little cabbage patch is in very close proximity to a gold mine owned by the evil Lavender McDade. Lavender is an entrepreneur with a brilliant business plan: kidnap the Cabbage Patch Kids and — get this — turn them into slaves.

To mine the gold, obviously.

Lavender describes her plan in a sassy song from the album:

“I’ve got to stop those Cabbage Kids from finding parents of their own
I’m going to need some henchmen I can’t do it all alone
‘Cause there’s gold here in the valley and the kids cannot go free
I need their little fingers to dig the gold for me.”

Buy some Cabbage Patch Kids, OR THEY WILL FEEL THE WHIP!

Sometime in 1984, there was a conversation over at Tonka Toys that went something like this:

“Hey, I have an idea — let’s import some of those robots from Japan that turn into cars.”

“Well, sir, Hasbro’s already doing that. They’re going to call them ‘Transformers.’”

“Oh … well, what the hell, let’s do it anyway.”

“Good idea, sir.”

Via Wikipedia
And the GoBots were born!

GoBots never gained as much mainstream popularity as the Transformers. For one thing, the toys just weren’t as cool. Even the kids in the GoBots commercials couldn’t seem to summon the enthusiasm needed to promote them.

Sure, buy this shit. Whatever.

But, like the Transformers, the GoBots had their own animated series (Challenge of the GoBots), and the creators knew that to compete for the imaginations of young children, they had to crank that shit to 11.

The show tells us that the GoBots are from Gobotron, a planet that was once home to a race of humanoids, the GoBings. Thousands of years ago, a terrorist group known as the Renegades started a war with a group of peaceful people called the Guardians, which ultimately ruined their planet. OK, that sounds a lot like the Transformers’ back story so far. But here’s where shit gets weird.

Facing extinction, the survivors sought out a man known only as the Last Engineer. Not because he was the most brilliant scientist or because he had a way to fix the planet. No, they needed him because for years, he had been slowly transforming himself into a cyborg by cutting off parts of his own body and replacing them with machinery.

For fun.

The GoBings decided to allow the Engineer to transplant their brains into robot bodies, allowing them to survive as GoBots. He provided these transplants indiscriminately to both sides, Renegade and Guardian alike, until they had all been assimilated.

Via MySpace
“Um, Mr. Engineer … did I do something to offend you?”

When his work was done, the Engineer disappeared and left the two factions to continue fighting. Challenge of the GoBots is set in modern times, which means that the GoBots have been at war for thousands of years. Which is to say, this toy line is about human minds, trapped in metal bodies, trying to destroy each other. Forever.

The Hugga Bunch were a group of cute little plush dolls meant for, of course, hugging!

Awwwww.

In 1985, fans of the dolls tuned in to watch a TV special centered around the Hugga Bunch … and came away needing therapy.

The story centers around Bridget, who is distraught over her parents’ decision to send her beloved grandmother to a nursing home. She is also rather frightened that whenever she hugs her toys, an eerie giggling sound comes from her closet. The mystery is solved when, alone in her room, Bridget is confronted by a terrifying creature emerging from her mirror.

GAH!

The creature is, of course, Huggins from the Hugga Bunch. “We’ve been watching you through the mirror for a long time,” she tells Bridget. Oh, we’re sure you have, Hugga.

The Hugga convinces Bridget to travel through the mirror into Huggaland to find a solution to her problem. There she meets the whole Hugga Bunch, who bring Bridget to the Bookworm for advice about her grandmother. This is where things go from Alice in Wonderland with creepy sentient Peeping Tom dolls to FUBAR.

The Bookworm suggests collecting some youngberries and feeding them to poor grandma. You know, so she’ll be young again and her family won’t force her to go to a nursing home. There’s just one catch: The youngberry tree is protected by an evil sorceress. To get to her, they will have jump down an endless hole to the Land of the Shrubs.

Read: Hell.

There they must travel beyond the River of Glass, defeat the hairy behemoth (aka the scariest creature in the Bible) and steal the youngberries from the evil queen, all without letting the berries touch the ground. The friends jump down the unending pit and make their way to the castle, guarded by the behemoth.

The plan: Hug it, of course! The behemoth transforms from a horrifying monster who’s trying to kill them to, well, just a horrifying monster.

1. Monster. 2. Hug. 3. Elephant.

The creature, now an unsettling blue elephant thing, joins them on their journey into the queen’s castle, where they find the youngberry tree encased in glass. They meet the queen, who is enraged that they wish to take her precious berries (note: they’re the only thing keeping her alive).

Things seem hopeless when the queen imprisons the Hugga Bunch and freezes Bridget in place for all eternity (fortunately, a hug saves her). When the queen is distracted by her own youthful beauty, the gang steals her berries and runs away. The queen, who needs the berries to remain young, shrivels into old age and dies horribly.

Seriously. But hey, at least they got the berries, right?

Score!

Armed with the youngberries, Bridget returns through the mirror to restore her grandmother’s youth. Unfortunately, the berries spill out and disappear, making the whole adventure totally pointless.

Finding herself as the star in what is apparently a goddamned Shakespearean tragedy, Bridget decides to take the only course remaining to her and threatens never to speak to her brother again unless he starts showing some affection. Moved by this tirade, her brother proclaims that he doesn’t want poor grandma to leave, even if she is old and useless. Their father suddenly sees the error of his ways and grandma gets to stay in their home to die the same horrible, inevitable death we just watched the queen die, but in slow motion. Bridget, presumably, returns to her room to smash her mirror into tiny pieces.

Believe it or not, we haven’t yet mentioned the most horrifying thing about this tale of a young lady on a one-way track to the local asylum: The Hugga Bunch won an Emmy.

Via NoFactZone.net
Solidifying the fact that Emmys don’t mean a goddamn thing.

Whether we like to admit it or not, a whole bunch of us only watch car races in hopes of seeing a spectacular crash. Likewise, we follow other sports like reality television, never happier than when some big star goes apeshit on national TV. In other words, many people only become sports fans when things go horribly wrong.

This article is for them.

Ahh, bees. Mother Nature’s way of telling us “I love you guys, but seriously — screw you sideways for Chernobyl and plastic bags.”

Bees are a big problem for backyard barbecues and honey thieves, but as far as we can tell, they’ve never substantially altered the course of a professional baseball game. That all changed on March 25, 2005. After five innings, the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks were forced off the field by hundreds of angry bees.

Via MLB
Sergio Santos exhales bees onto the field, Green Mile style.

Darren Oliver, pitcher for the Rockies, was the first player targeted. The swarm apparently smelled his coconut hair gel and decided his head was the perfect place for a giant bee feast/orgy. The Diamondbacks tried to take the field in the sixth, but “by then the bees had spread over the entire field.” The shortstop was chased into the far end of center field and, after a brief discussion, the humans elected to flee Tucson stadium.

Via ESPN
Darren Oliver runs from a bee, screaming like a 12-year-old girl.

This sounds like the sinister prelude to a bloody worldwide invasion, but so far the bees have held back their awful wrath, and incredibly, no one in the crowd of 8,029 reported any stings. The Invasion of Tucson was simply a show of force from the Mother Hive. People of Arizona: You live or die at the pleasure of the All-Queen!

Via Science Daily
“Sleeeeeep!”

When someone mentions the “dangers of soccer,” getting hit in the face with a ball, or possibly getting gouged with some cleats comes to mind. But it isn’t a contact sport like football or rugby or s#x-jousting, so there really isn’t much to worry about. Unless, of course, you’ve pissed off Zeus, which at some point soccer apparently has.

What we’re trying to say is that soccer games seem to be absolute magnets for lightning. Even when it’s not storming.

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They’re making evil in there.

On May 3, 2009, a bolt of lightning struck a soccer field in southern Germany and wounded 26 teenagers. One even died on scene, but was later resuscitated and is now (presumably) some manner of supernatural crime-fighter. More recently, this April, a lightning bolt injured seven more young soccer players.

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With sick, extreme fisheye-lens wrath.

The details vary in each strike. In Germany, the players reported no stormy weather or warning whatsoever. Meanwhile, at a soccer game in Michigan, 10 players were struck by lightning as they huddled underneath the same tree for cover. Which we’re fairly certain is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do in a lightning storm, second only to perhaps climbing said tree and waving a 9-iron in the air.

Photos
Lightning, preying on trees — and everything else within 100 yards of it.

But both of these disasters pale in comparison to a 1998 soccer game between two Congolese teams. They were tied in a thrilling (well, as far as soccer goes) 1-1 game when a storm began to brew overhead. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning streaked out of the sky and hit the visiting team — killing all 11 players instantly. The home team was left unharmed, leading to immediate suspicions of witchcraft.

We actually don’t have a convincing argument to counter that claim.

Professional tennis seems like it gets a raw deal in America. You’ve got athletes serving up balls at more than 130 miles-per-hour directly at each other, yet it seems like we only give celebrity status to about one player per generation. We’re honestly astounded that human beings exist with the reflexes and visual acuity to actually play this game. Which just makes it all that much more hilarious when something goes ridiculously wrong.

Via Sports Shooter
Nope, we’re not above laughing at that.

This is precisely what happened during a Toronto doubles match involving the Aussie Mark Philippoussis and his partner, Croation pro Goran Ivanisevic, who already had a history of unlikely game-ending injuries. For example, Ivanisevic once broke multiple fingers after accidentally closing a door on his hand.

The trouble started when both men went after the same shot. Ivanisevic tried to head it over the net, while Philippoussis attempted to play it with his racquet.

Via AutoBlog.com
Known in the sports world as an “oh shit” moment.

The Aussie and the Croat were so focused on making the play that they both missed it entirely. Philippoussis and Ivanisevic collided head-to-head in mid-air, Three Stooges-style. Ivanisevic ended up requiring stitches, while his partner staggered away with a concussion. The two never partnered again, which is probably better off for everyone who doesn’t make a living as a comedy writer.

Via TheSharkGuys.com
Not that we’re complaining — look at it!

Ivanisevic’s battle with spatial awareness came to a head in 2003, when he was forced to withdraw from a tournament after stepping on a seashell at the beach and injuring his foot. For subsequent matches, we assume Ivanisevic was issued a football helmet, thick mittens and galoshes.

Not everybody has the money for ads and billboards, which means they have to get creative when it comes time to promote their cause or business. And by creative, we mean insane and absurdly dangerous.

This was even more true back in the old days, when even those with money had limited options for advertising and the law was a lot more lax when it came to risking everyone’s lives. That’s how we wound up with …

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In 1896, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway needed to attract more customers, especially in Texas. Railroad executive William Crush was put in charge of finding a solution to this little dilemma. After finding no place in Texas that non-Texans would want to visit, and tired of waiting for the Dallas Cowboys to be invented, he said to his bosses, “How about we create a temporary city and have two trains go full speed in a head-on collision for all to watch?!”

What else were you going to do in 1896?

Obviously they greenlighted the plan. A new town, named Crush, sprung up in Texas for the sole purpose of having a place for people to go to watch the crash happen. Tents were put up. A grandstand was built. And two trains were procured, painted and sent around Texas to advertise the crash.

Finally, on the day of the Crush crash, the railroad made the event free and gave reduced rates to everyone traveling by train. The “city” of Crush now had over 40,000 people gathered there, making it the second-largest city in Texas for a day.

Petticoats and Pistols
“Free Bird!”

Despite the safety measures taken, such as building a special track for the event and having the police hold the crowd back from the oncoming collision, things didn’t go according to plan. Both trains were set on “full speed ahead” mode and were abandoned by the crew. The railroad was expecting just a crash; they were not counting on the boilers to explode. Yes, children, there is the potential for danger even in something as innocuous as a massive intentional train crash.

Petticoats and Pistols
“Nothing bad can come of this.”

The trains collided at 45 miles per hour, with the force erupting the boilers. Debris flew everywhere, including into the crowd. Three people were killed, and many more injured, like that guy who took those photos who lost an eye from a flying bolt.

“People will still want to ride our trains, right?”

After the mayhem, William Crush was fired. But there was almost no negative publicity of the event. Crush, sensing an opportunity, made a plea to his old company that this could be turned around to be a piece about railroad safety, and he was rehired the next day.

Petticoats and Pistols
“Eh, we can’t stay mad at you!”

The town was torn down after the day of the crash. The railroad gave casualties of the collision something every victim would want: free passes on the same railroad that almost killed them.

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The 1920s had a lot of fads that look weird today, like flapper girls and Prohibition. And then there was pole-sitting.

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Above: the “lolcat” of its day.

You’re probably wondering what “pole-sitting” is slang for. We’re going to ruin it by telling you that in fact it was just sitting on poles. People would climb a flagpole or other similar pole and sit on top for days on end. And the man who popularized it was Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly.

You Remember That
The top of that pole is lodged so deep he had difficulty swallowing.

Where’d he get the nickname? Why, he survived the Titanic, of course! Or so he claimed.

For 13 hours in 1924 in Los Angeles, Kelly sat on a pole to advertise a movie. But it grew from there. Using the ol’ “sit on top of a flagpole and promote something” gag, by 1928 he was making over $100 a day, which is something like $1.7 trillion an hour in 2011 money if our math is right (and it’s not). He even broke a pole-sitting world record in 1929 by sitting for 49 days on a flagpole in Atlantic City. But then, like all fads, pole-sitting was replaced by new fads such as zoot suits and crushing poverty. With the Depression raging, Kelly needed new publicity stunts. And fast.

Bad Fads
“How about standing on top of a flagpole?”

Instead of getting a real job, he started doing non-flagpole-related activities for publicity stunts. In 1934, for example, he attempted to jump off the George Washington Bridge in New York and was stopped by police at the last minute. But then in 1939, a doughnut company started National Doughnut Dunking Week and needed someone to do something to get people to notice. Their go-to guy? Shipwreck Kelly, who ended up doing this:

Hoff/News

That’s Kelly eating 13 doughnuts upside-down on a wooden plank protruding from the top of a 54-story building in the middle of Manhattan. And if that wasn’t enough, he did it on October 13, which fell on a Friday that year. One wrong shift in weight and doughnuts would never be seen in the same way again. In case you were wondering, he didn’t fall, but his career as an odd-job stuntman never picked back up again.

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You have hopefully heard of the 1925 Scopes monkey trial (if not, don’t get your hopes up that they actually put a monkey on trial — we would have made the whole article about that if they did). For many of you, the story was framed as a landmark case in the teaching of evolution in public schools. In reality, it was all an orchestrated publicity stunt. And kind of a silly one at that.

Smithsonian
“Let’s all sit around in the heat and listen to old people argue!”

Which is to say it all began not as a court case, but as a ploy for the city of Dayton, Tenn., to bring in tourists and money.

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“Visit lovely Dayton, home of … eh, never mind.”

After the Butler Act was passed, making it illegal to teach evolution, the ACLU put ads in every newspaper in Tennessee in the hopes that some city would take up a legal challenge. After Dayton business leaders read it, they decided that a trial would not only bring thousands of people to their small town, but also that it should be broadcast worldwide.

“It’s either this or polio to keep me entertained.”

Now they just needed somebody to get arrested. The head of the group asked his friend John Scopes, a football coach and substitute biology teacher, to go into class and start teaching up some evolution. Scopes did so, turning himself in and even telling his students to testify against him.

Back then, you could dress like this and no one would bat an eye.

After the ACLU joined up, the trial of John Scopes quickly grew out of control. The people arguing the case were selected almost entirely based on how famous they were. In defense of Scopes would be famed attorney Clarence Darrow (who had made headlines as the defense in the Leopold and Loeb murder trial — the O.J. Simpson trial of its day), and they tried to get H.G. Wells, the famed British author, to join the team.

The prosecution, led by a Christian fundamentalist organization, was not to be outdone, and got the three-time former Democratic nominee for president William Jennings Bryan to be their lawyer. (This would be like having evolution proponent Richard Dawkins fight a legal case against Al Gore.) For the city of Dayton, the stunt was working beautifully.

Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan were so old they
probably could have testified about evolution from firsthand experience.

In the end, Dayton’s push for a huge media circus and worldwide attention on their small town worked. Complete with colorful reporting (one journalist dubbed the whole affair “the monkey trial”), the resulting trial made money for many local businesses, and still brings in people today to the courthouse and museum dedicated to the only thing mildly interesting ever to happen in Dayton. In 1960, a movie was even made about the case.

Featuring the most adorable nerd-monkey ever caught on film.

The trial didn’t resolve shit, by the way. After eight days, Scopes was found guilty and ordered to pay $100, with teaching evolution in Tennessee continuing to be illegal until 1967. But hey, it worked out well for Dayton.