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When you were a kid, you might have been passing the time, staying out of trouble, or just getting through boredom by watching Spongebob or WonderPets or Courage the Cowardly Dog.
For me, I was out of time a bit, keeping my kid media diet retro to the 60s and 70s up through the early ’00s. For my first retro kid media review, let’s remember Kidd Video.
This was a cartoon that aired on Saturday mornings from 1984 to 1985. Watching the theme kind of explains what the show is about. Basically, his show was about a band from the live-action world, or our world, who go to the cartoon world, The Flipside. This cartoon world is mostly controlled by Master Blaster. He takes bands from our world in an effort to make The Copy Cats popular so he can take over The Flipside. The Copy Cats are made up of three cats; She Lion, Cool Kitty, and Fat Cat.
Because of the captured bands, each episode has a 30 second to a 1-minute clip of a popular music video. Some popular songs can be heard in the background of certain scenes, most of them are weird. Just imagine sitting on the living room floor chomping on fruit loops drowned in tye-died milk from the marshmallow bleed out while watching a creatively weird cartoon; this show is basically what you’d be watching on Saturday morning. I mean this show has a fairy who gets really strong when she sneezes. Her name is Glitter, she was the fairy who saved the band. Adding to what the characters do; Carla says one phrase in Spanish in every episode. Whiz, during season 1, complains about wanting to go home. Ash writes songs where “the lyrics need a little work.”
The band: Kidd- lead singer, Carla- drummer, Whiz- Guitar, Ash- Synthesizer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBQS1cgsEdU
Make sure you have a good sense of humor about the 80s ness of this
So the band is stuck on the Flipside; they have no idea how to get back home. They actively try to get home, but have all the fun they can have while they’re still on the Flipside. The band was made specifically for the show. Yes, they were a real band. At the end of each episode is a music video from the band. If this show was as popular in the U.S. as other countries we would have gotten an album and a concert tour from the band as well as another season I’m sure.
This show wasn’t popular in the U.S., but it was very popular in Israel. That’s where they did their tour. Kidd Video also released their album there as well; it was available on vinyl and cassette. Including the theme song, there are 11 songs on the album. One of them was written by one of the band members. Bryan Scott, Kidd, wrote the song Time. It’s a song about how you shouldn’t wait too long for love; love me soon or I’ll move on to someone else. This is the kind of song that you listen to and the chorus haunts you. “Tiiiiiimme never waits for love, baby.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmvtRkmUGm4
Although CDs came out just a few years later, the album was never released on CD and the show itself was never released on DVD. So we can only watch this show on Youtube. Why is this a problem? Not only are the videos old and lack in quality, but they are VHS recordings from when the show aired. I am a person who likes to watch old commercials, but the popular music videos were changed to newer ones. So we don’t know what music videos originally aired with the episodes.
Here is a playlist of all the episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqS70PCC_SYryDPjJJtmpLqLAZkGHH8fz
This show was very creative with its story and the way it brought pop music into it. It makes sense how weird things are going to be on The Flipside. It’s a whole new world…
