Post by Guzma on Apr 17, 2022 19:55:46 GMT
Hi everyone. I had a really weird experience back in 2008 with a Cartoon Network bumper. I have been searching for it since the moment I saw it 14 years ago when I was 10. I don’t even know if it was real or not, because of how nonsensical it was and how personal it was to me. I will tell the whole story. I’m basing this off a post I made on Reddit back in 2016, to both the tipofmytongue and glitchinthematrix subreddits. I really started thinking about this again yesterday after hearing about a similar search for the “cat news” Cartoon Network bumper.
I have a lot to say about how it connects to me personally and why it was surreal for me, so I will simply place the description about the bumper in bold text if that’s all you want to read.
I remember it was the end of February 2008, and it was a Friday night. I remember because it was just before my birthday and it was during February break. Looking at the calendar for that year it must’ve been 22 February 2008. It was around 7-9 PM (EST) and I think I was watching Chowder. At the time they had a block running on Friday nights called Fried Dynamite and on Saturday mornings called Dynamite Action Squad. So anyway, this bumper/animated short comes on. The animation style was with crudely drawn but recognizable characters. The backgrounds were all just plain white. It reminded me of 12 Oz Mouse in that way, but the art was of slightly higher quality, and there were more set pieces.
A couple seconds in to the bumper, there was a dog on an iceberg with a fire hydrant. I remember that the dog looked just like Weed from the anime Ginga Densetsu Weed.
The dog was looking at the fire hydrant. He seemed distressed for a second but then jumped off screen.
Then, a transition card came up with a voice narrating that said "Meanwhile in Iceland..." then it showed the dog on an iceberg with a Viking. A conversation was held between them.
>Dog: “Who are you?”
>Viking: “I come from the polar ice cap”
>Dog: “The polar ice cap? That's thousands of miles away from Iceland. How did you get here?”
Then a rock fell on the Viking. Another title card came up and the narrator said "always remember to brush your teeth" then a card came up advertising for Dynamite Action Squad and that was it.
A strange part: I never remembered the beginning of the commercial. Even after first watching it I remember I could never remember the beginning. That does support the idea that it wasn't real but it could've also been because I wasn't paying attention.
I realize this isn't something incredible to others. But it has been for me. It has bothered and intrigued me for 10 years. From mere minutes after seeing the commercial to now, I have searched everywhere online I could think of, but I have not been able to find any evidence of it.
I also realize that not all commercials are on the internet or have evidence of them happening. But this one stuck out because of how personal it was to my interests. The reason why it is so weird and I don’t know if it was a hallucination or real - is because of how personal everything in the ad was to me at the time:
-I was a fan of Ginga Densetsu Weed (a note: GDW has never received an official English dub or translation, but I had heard rumors around that time that Adult Swim was considering picking it up due to its success in Scandinavia and their precious success with broadcasting a similar anime, Wolf’s Rain. Not sure if it’s relevant but it’s one more connective piece.)
-I was always interested in learning about the Arctic/Subarctic and Antarctic/subantarctic countries including Iceland, and that interest had recently peaked.
-As for the quote "the polar ice cap? that's miles away from Iceland! How did you get here?" - I was really into Club Penguin back then, and they'd just released a new mission in the game. In that mission, there was an incredibly similar quote; the only difference being it was "Club Penguin" in place of the word "Iceland"
Does anyone else have any evidence of this happening, or have seen it too? I know for sure it wasn't a false memory because I recording myself talking about it on an audiocassette right after it happened (I used to do that all the time where I would record myself talking about random stuff). I guess it could have been sleep paralysis, because it was at night (like 8:30), and because of how personal the commercial was to me, but I have doubts; I was sitting at the kitchen table so it wasn't easy for me to fall asleep unless I was really tired, and I don't remember falling asleep, and after the commercial everything on TV continued like normal. I was sick often that year, and I had just recovered early that month from a pretty terrible illness, so I could've been on meds and/or had some sort of mild postviral encephalitis that caused a vivid hallucination, but I don't think that’s likely since I had no other side effects/symptoms. It’s worth noting I did post a comment on a YouTube video about 9 years ago asking if anyone remembered it, and one person said they did. But obviously they could be just remembering wrong or lying.
I don't know what to think about it anymore. I’m not the type to believe in Mandala effect or “glitch in the matrix” theories, and I know the world is full of coincidence, and our brains are far from perfect and sometimes malfunction at random. It’s just strange how much stuff was in that bumper that was relevant to me, it feels like it was made for me. Sorry this is so long, but I’ve been thinking about and looking this bumper for 14 years, and I’ve had a lot to say about it and how personal it was to me.
EDIT: Solved!! User nhjm449 finally found my white whale after 14 years! Thank you so much!!!! I can’t believe it was real, I’m completely speechless. I’d nearly given up after all this time. There are a lot of inconsistencies with the commercial and my recollection but this is definitely it.
The bumper in question is the first segment on this video vimeo.com/342626400 and it’s called Dental Viking.