I've got two (that I consider creepy in a good way as well)...
Get Out Of My House and Waking the Witch, both by Kate Bush (one of my favorite singers). While Kate is well known for her surreal and unique music, those two tracks take it up to eleven. There is a distinct claustrophobic feel to Get Out Of My House (a song inspired by Stephen King's The Shining) which culminates in the singer's voice morphing into the bray of a mule (?!). Waking the Witch is part of Kate's concept song set The Ninth Wave, about a drowning woman hallucinating that an inquisitor with a nightmarish deep voice is accusing her of being a witch.
I'm not an expert by any means but from what you describe this sounds like it would be a fairly easy fix involving opening up the VHS plastic shell and reattaching the magnetic tape to the reel. This tutorial video I found explains how to do that:
That's basically all I can remember, but I can see it visually in my mind. I may draw a rendition of how the scene looked and post it. The lighting was pretty dark.
There are old talk shows and variety shows (particularly from 1960s and 1970s before VCRS were widely available) that still exist in archives but are only available to professional production companies who want to license parts of them for projects like documentaries. For instance, this place has a tantalizing amount of music shows that are presently considered lost, but they won't offer them to the general public.
It sounds like it could be Wee Sing in the Big Rock Candy Mountains (one of my childhood favorites that I had on VHS). There are adults in animal costumes and an opening sequence with a slide as you describe.
Last Edit: Sept 11, 2020 8:54:04 GMT by Tudor Rose
I actually used to record this show a lot, and have found some of it while digitizing tapes recently. I'll have to check to see if the video files are still on my computer. If not, I can try to find them again. However, my VCR has been giving me trouble lately so that would have to be sorted out before I could digitize the videos over.
This project is very interesting! I have quite a few Nickelodeon recordings I can send, some from the early 1990s and others from around 2001-2004. Some are already digitized and others still need to be, but definitely I'll do my best to get them to you. Is there any particular address where I can send them?
I wrote to Captain B. Zarre and he says he does have some promos for the contest and the winner's cartoon, but doesn't think anyone actually recorded it. That does make sense as probably no one but the family of the winner would have had an interest in doing so. It looks like the animated short itself is indeed a presently lost piece of Cartoon Network history.
UPDATE: I found it! It was called "Get Tooned" from 1998. This article says the cartoon itself would have aired on June 6th of that year. I wonder if anyone out there has a tape recording of it?
‘Get Tooned’
Creators of Cartoon Network’s ‘Get Tooned’ promotion scored a winning image campaign designed to ‘get people tooned in as many ways as possible,’ according to Craig McAnsh, senior VP of marketing. Yet, it was the promotion’s grand prize that made kids most animated: the chance to star in an original Cartoon Network toon to air during prime time, along with a trip to Hollywood. While adults and kids were eligible, the promotion winner was 11-year-old girl Kristina Odumes, with round glasses and frizzy brown hair. ‘She was fun to turn into a cartoon,’ concedes McAnsh. Runners-up received animated cels with their image painted in by animators. Kraft Kids brands offered another way for kids to ‘get tooned,’ with packaging and commercial spots bolstering the channel’s on-air promos to extend the offer’s reach. Considering the competition surrounding the coveted Kraft partnership, McAnsh notes that ‘Get Tooned’ fit Kraft’s key criteria of ‘an idea that wins [Kraft] over.’ Post Cereals were also won over, producing three 15-second commercial spots that aired on a plethora of broadcast outlets. (from kidscreen.com/1998/11/01/23507-19981101/)
Yeah, it surprises me that I haven't been able to find any evidence of this contest, but I clearly remember it. I think I even entered it. The closest thing I've come across so far is this November 1999 article from the Wisconsin State Journal about a 15-year-old girl winning a Cartoon Network room makeover.
I'm trying to remember what the contest was called. It may have been some variation of "Get Animated", and it seems like one of the girl's friends was also in the resulting cartoon. I could be wrong on that, though.
There was an old Cartoon Network sweepstakes during the late 1990s which had a grand prize of having a cartoon character based on you. It seems to me that it may have been a tie-in with Kraft Foods and you could get entry forms in the grocery store. A winner was announced later on and I recall seeing the resulting cartoon version of an African-American girl on TV. I'm pretty sure it was not part of any of the shows of the time period, but more like a one-time brief segment that aired. I've tried searching for any information about the contest but have found nothing so far. Does anyone else remember this?
My memories of this are so vague that for a while I thought there was probably no point in posting about it, but then I figured I might as well put it out there. Sometime in the mid to late 1990s I saw a brief segment of a television program which featured claymation figures on what appeared to be a long, twisting conveyor belt. As I recall, the figures were incredibly basic, just humanoid in shape and lacking any features whatsoever. Kind of like these:
I think they were dark pink in color though. I don't know why they were on the conveyor belt. One thing I am almost certain of is that it aired on PBS, and it was during the evening and didn't seem like a kids show. There was music playing and I don't think there was any talking.