[The following is the article I would have written for the lost media wiki if it weren't for the fact that this version was officially released before the wiki existed]
Monsters Inc is the 4th movie released as part of the deal between Disney and Pixar. Initially released on November 2nd 2001, the movie follows James "Sully" Sullivan and Michael "Mike" Wazowski as they work for Monsters Incorporated where they harness the power of child screams as their primary energy source, only to be confronted with the challenge of a child "Boo" wandering into their world, and now they have to get her back to the human world. Along the way they have to deal with a rival scarer Randal and their boss Mr Waterman since harboring a child is considered very dangerous and could get them in serious trouble. The credits were initially a simple illustrations of monsters similar to the opening title credits while John Goodman (Sully) and Billy Crystal (Mike) singing the original song "if I didn't have you."
Outtakes Revision
About 2 weeks after the initial release, commercials started advertising that starting December 7th there would now be end of credits outtakes in the same tradition of A Bugs Life and Toy Story 2. In these outtakes the characters would be seen making mistakes such as tripping during the scarers entering the scare floor or Mike correcting Sully's pig Latin at the restaurant. These would be played alongside the credits and were part of all future movie screenings and the VHS and DVD home media release, leaving the original outtakeless version unavailable.
Original Credits Release
For the next 8 years, the only widely available version of the movie was with the credits. That is until November 10th 2009 when for the blu-ray release the original outtakeless credits sequence was restored with the outtakes existing as a stand-alone bonus feature. This version became the release version for both bluray and streaming, leaving the outtakes version for the VHS and DVD release.
Disclaimer, this is a joke based on an error on Amazon's listed rating.
Hey everyone, I was searching through Amazon to find some movies to watch while I do my busy work on Monday and I came across this little oddity. Back in the early 2000s it was not uncommon for would be children's movies to be extra edgy; Josie and the Pussycats was originally PG-13, and Scooby Doo was originally going to be R, Inspector Gadget has scenes that had to be cut, and similar. Well little did we know, Agent Cody Banks was also originally rated R but was edited down to get a PG rating. It was unknown in fact until it quietly surfaced on Amazon Prime Video. When I saw that they had the R-rated version, I knew I had to see it and compare it to the original. I wouldn't say that I was "a major Cody Banks" fan, but I rented it a number of times and would say that I know it pretty well. OK, so let's dive into what this movie has to offer for an edgy R-rated spy comedy. When looking at the content description that pops up, it says so for sensuality and flashing lights, so let's see what kind of sensual content this bad boy has.
So in the first 5 or so minutes the younger brother is roasting Cody about how he's had more dates than him. Cody says "playing in the treehouse doesn't count," and the brother says "it does when you're playing doctor." Oh man, that's a highly suggestive joke right there, what kind of "doctor" are they doing?
Second, before Cody's training is activated, his team mates are making fun of him in the locker room. His handler/partner walks in wearing a skin tight jump suit while "hot in here" plays, that's a pretty explicit song that's all about getting naked. Then when a team mate is hitting on her she pulls off his towel exposing him, and then another kid says "if you're pulling towels, how about you pull mine." That's some pretty sexually charged stuff right there.
Then when Cody is getting his gear he gets glasses with low level x-ray vision, that he then uses to look at his partner. That's a sex joke right there. And later in the movie he uses his x-ray glasses to look at his classmate's underwear. Very explicit.
"How to talk to a girl" is where it's really heavy. There's a hologram woman that hits on Cody and he can't talk to her. That's some kind of explicit fantasy. There's also a scientist that's showing off an anatomical manakin of a woman and he's waving around the breast muscles of the manakin talking about how they'll make you go wild. Oh man, that's something right there.
It's not just this though, there's also the driving instructor telling Cody his job is to weed out the drug using teenagers, and then before Cody cuts the instructor break line he says "damn." That's some serious stuff right there. There's also at the end when the villain gets killed by the nanobots eating him from the inside, and we see it happen.
Oh man, this is quite the explicit edition right there. No wonder this was edited down to get a PG rating. The changes are really subtle, almost indistinguishable from the theatrical cut, but it's right there on the listing. I also can't believe that no one on the lost media wiki ever documented this version that has gone unnoticed, or that people like RebelTaxi never talked about this edition. Well, here I am spreading the word that amazon prime video has the unknown R-rated cut of Agent Cody Banks, right there.
Hello and welcome to the search for lost media. It's been quite a while since I did one of these, but I recently found myself as part of a search for a spongebob promo that I want to tell my story about and bring some attention to. It all started with an LSuperSonicQ video where he discussed lost media that remains unidentified where the video covered a spongebob promo where a rock/punk/emo band sang the spongebob theme song and a pear was somehow involved.
Being a Nickelodeon kid who watched the channel constantly, this sounded very similar to a promo I saw every night. I vividly remember a band playing the spongebob theme song on the cartoon that lead into the airing at 8PM. I remember it was 8PM because it was right before my bedtime and the last thing I'd watch before going to bed was a live action band playing the spongebob theme song in a kind of rock and roll style during the credits of the show before saying "coming up next." I wasn't quite sure about "pears being involved," but I knew this promo had multiple variations so maybe a pear was involved.
Since I hadn't signed up for the LMW forum and needed to share my details, I started a thread on the LMW discord giving all the details I remembered. I remembered "the band was not super hard core" (so it wouldn't scare parents), and that it played every night at 8PM during the credits. Once I got accepted into the LMW forum I posted my details and the leads from another discord user to the forum thread. As it would turn out, this was actually a completely different promo set from like 5 years prior. I'll cover the search for pear promo thus far (since it's still open at the time of writing), but first I'll cover my search for "the Hawaiian Shirt band sings the theme song during the credits of the show before 8PM."
First, after giving all my memories, LSuperSonicQ showed a screen shot from this promo, SpongeBob SquarePants Weeknights (Nickelodeon Promo) 2001 (HD). This was the "hawaiian shirt spongebob promo" that is hard to search because this is the only upload and doesn't include any data about the guys who where singing or that they were wearing Hawaiian Shirts. Because I was a kid, I had a bad perspective on "what was hard core" and what wasn't, and I remember them going harder than this, but whatever. The problem with this though, is that there were other variants of this band singing the Spongebob Squarepants theme song, specifically playing it in full that played at 7:59 PM on weeknights during the credits of the previous show. And as far as I know, those variants were still lost.
I brought this up on the forum and some other users were able to help me find the other variations over on discord. First, there was someone who found the DVD version of "the Hawaiian shirt band" singing the theme song in full (from the DVD "Nautical Nonsense and Sponge Buddies"). What was helpful here is that it gave me a band name, The Violent Femmes from "Violent Femmes Sing Spongebob." It was "the promo I remembered" but it wasn't "the exact promo" I remember. This version ended with "on Nickelodeon" instead of "coming us next."
At this point I'm like "OK cool, it's almost all found, but there's still one variant that is still not found," and that is the "coming up next" variant that played during the credits of the cartoon that aired before Spongebob at 8PM. Well, then we got a hero from the discord that found "Nickelodeon Split Screen Credits (September 28, 2001)," which was the credits for Rugrats that aired at 7:30 PM before Spongebob at 8PM that had the "coming up next" variant. Now as far as I know, all the "spongebob weeknights at 8PM" promos with the Violent Femmes/Hawaiian Shirt band have been found.
So what made this minor search so hard and why is it an example of why this continued search for "the pear band" is going to be so hard? Well look at the titles and descriptions of the videos. The first "2001 promo" is just "Sponge Bob Week Nights promo" without any description. Nothing about "theme song variant" or "violent femmes" or "spongebob at 8PM." If LSSQ didn't put the screen shot of the upload in his video I would be saying "this is the pear thing." Then with the other variants, that required someone to know "this is the violent femmes," and then search through random archive videos until finding "Nickelodeon split screen credits" that did say "violent femmes" in the description but not all the details like "Hawaiian shirt." Then as the search went on there was a little tangent about "screamo heavy metal" covers which prompted me to tell a story about how in highschool a friend played a death metal cover of the spongebob theme on his ipod that started out normal until the captain faded with "oooooohhhhhh" with what I think was "spongebob squarepants" sounding like "wait for it" until it transitioned back into spongebob playing the nose piccolo. A forum user f/ound this but it wasn't the version I remember. The search isn't for this cover (my guess is this was "just one of many death metal covers released to youtube and/or myspace back in 2010" and not necessarily worth searching for), but it just is to say just how hard the search will be.
It seems to have been from sometime in 2006 to 2012
It was not a segment on Truth or Square (mainly the P!nk "we got scurvy" song)
It might have been Big Time Rush or Naked Brothers Band since they were "the nickelodeon bands" (though that seems to have been thoroughly searched and nothing)
Might have been a segment in "nick extra"
There was like a painting of a pear in it (or somehow a pear was involved)
Something about plaid being a major element
The band probably wasn't My Chemical Romance but the band was similar
Possible cross over with "the movie band" from the 2009 Nickelodeon movie "Spectacular!" (particularly "Spectacular presents the president's day marathon").
Possible band "Less Than Jake," but the band confirmed it wasn't them
It maybe aired on MTV (another viacom network that sometimes aired spongebob).
Doesn't seem to be "MTV video mods" (definitely not "Spongebob Sings All the Small Things" from video mods)
There was a pear collaboration with spongebob at one point, so it probably exists
The strongest lead now is the emo band "Honor Society;" they had a partnership with USA Pears and played for the Kids Choice Awards in 2009. The wiki is looking into trying to contact someone in the band, and that's where we stand now. If anyone has more details or leads, please add them to the forum or discord. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and pip pip cheerio sianara goodbye.
OK, small update on a development. One of the leads was a band called The Evaporators, they worked with Nickelodeon making music for Catelyn's Way, had an album with pear theming, and have a style that would lend itself to "strange covers of a cartoon theme song." One of the band members has an active online presence under the alias nardwuar and has a website straight out of the 90s. This is the email I sent him through his contact page.
Dear Nardwuar of The Evaporators,
My name is pokematic, I'm a contributor to the lost media wiki and your band The Evaporators has come up as a potential lead for a lost television bumper of "a live action band singing the spongebob squarepants theme song that for some reason has a picture of a pear on screen." Here's our full forum thread for reference. https://forums.lostmediawiki.com/thread/14410/spongebob-intro-pear-live-action Did The Evaporators by chance do a promo for nickelodeon singing the spongebob squarepants theme song against a green screen? If so, do you have any information on where we might be able to find it?
Thank-you for your time.
Sincerely, Pokematic.
PS, I love the fact that your website is still "90s HTML aesthetic." I feel like a kid again exploring the early internet.
This was the reply I got.
Hullo Pokematic !
Thanks for the note and asking !
Appreciate the interest !
No, never did that.
Thanks again !
Doot doola doot doo ...
Nardwuar
ps. Nardwuar.com has been going since, gulp, 1996 !
I don't know the nardwuar persona at all, but I'm guessing he responded in character and within a couple hours. Nardwuar, you're an internet treasure. Also, in the forum this old Burger King ad came up as a dead lead, but oh man was this a trip down memory lane for a very weird time.
If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why Pokematic "hi."
I might be a little late to the "year of Pinocchio" hype since that was late 2022 with the Disney remake, Guillermo del Toro version, and some mockbuster riding the wave of these movies, and it's now early 2023 and may not be relevant, but this is when I looked into it and found everything. Onto the story. So every now and then I try to find vague memories from my childhood, because I have a fair amount of mostly forgotten media from my childhood, and something that's been in-and-out of my search is the not-Disney Pinocchio tapes from my childhood. When I was little the version of Pinocchio I would watch was based on who's house I was at; my paternal grandparents had the Disney version, my maternal grandparents had a not-Disney version, and my parents had yet another not-Disney version. 5-6 years ago I decided to see if I could find them, because how many different versions of Pinocchio could there possibly be? Well, turns out there are a lot of them, and none of them on wikipedia were what I remembered. I did manage to find this video on like the 4th page of results for "not-disney Pinocchio VHS," which is the one my parents had, but I lost the clip shortly after finding it.
Last year I made a post to r/tipofmytongue looking for the marionette pirate movie I watched when I was little, and that worked out (which was Davy Jones' Locker - Bil Baird's Marionettes by the way), so tonight January 12th 2023 I decided to ask r/tipofmytongue to see if they could help me find the Pinocchio tapes.
Here are the memories I was going to post in r/tipofmytongue:
It opens with a night sky or snow drift with Pinocchio singing "I have a dream of wishes."
Geppetto is in his shop and hears a voice coming from a piece of wood. He starts to carve a head in the wood and that frees Pinocchio and he starts singing his name "pin-o-cchio, pin-o-cchio."
Pinocchio is at a carnival and falls into the orchestra, breaking the conductor's baton. When the conductor is angry at him he says "I'm very sorry mister, but now you have two."
Pinocchio befriends a clown with a pointed hat that plays the guitar.
Pinocchio is being chased by a dog and runs up a tree to get away from it, and then starts chanting "na-na-na-na-na-nah" (I remember this because I got in trouble for repeating it once).
Pinocchio tells the clown to start playing Geppetto's song and he scare's off the dog or whatever as he comes up the hill.
The "dream of wishes" was from my grandparent's tape and the "carves a head" bit was from my parent's tape, and I thought the rest were on my grandparent's tape. So I was going to say "I looked through the wikipedia article for Pinocchio and the section of non-Disney adaptations and none of these were it," but that was true 5-6 years ago and the thing about wikipedia is it's constantly changing, so I clicked through them to say "it may sound like this, but it isn't" (which is what I was about to say with this adaptation, The Adventures of Pinocchio 1978 since it seems like the "carve a head" description but it isn't).
Well as I was clicking through to say "this isn't it," I ended up actually finding one, the "I have a dream of wishes" one from my grandparents. It turns out it was the Golden Films/Goodtimes Entertainment version.
OK, so that's that. Here's where things got confusing. I could have sworn everything but the "carves a head" thing was in this one. I vividly remember watching those things on my grandparent's couch on their console TV, not my parent's house, but they were nowhere to be found in this movie. Maybe I was mixing it up with some other version or cartoon my grandparents had (they had some "1 hour of classic cartoons" VHS tapes, so maybe it was a cartoon on there). I also remembered nothing from this version except the opening song, which was weird because I thought I watched this version all the time, but whatever, I found the maternal grandparent's version.
I still was at a loss for the not-Disney Pinocchio tape my parents had though. Sure, I found the first 10 minutes years ago, but I probably wasn't searching logged into youtube (and I remember finding it on the 3rd or 4th page of bing), but hail marry I went to my watch history and typed in "Pinocchio," and there it was. I thought "this is great, I can link the clip to see if anyone knows more about this mysterious 'not-Disney' Pinocchio," but low and behold the uploader had information in the description of the video; "United American Video release of an English-dubbed edition of a Russian Pinocchio adaptation titled Priklyucheniya Buratino." I decided to google "Priklyucheniya Buratino" and the full version was uploaded by the same user.
I skimmed through it and it seemed to be the version that had all the other memories (notably the clown that plays guitar), but something was off. It didn't have the baton clip or the dog chase or the "Geppetto to the rescue over the hill." Like, this is exactly the art style and lip sync I remember (which I remember not being the best, and given it's a dub of a Russian cartoon that was probably done rather cheaply, that makes sense), so it had to be it, but it doesn't have the things that stuck with me for 25 years.
So that thing about dubs, apparently this was an edited version (48 minutes compared to 62), and the very little information I could find on this says there were multiple releases of this dub (or attempts at dubbing), so this might have been a different release. Here's the original Russian version.
At 18:46 is the baton breaking bit and at 49:11 is the dog chase bit. Not sure about the Geppetto thing, that could have just been a false memory (like how I thought a relative was on the ship with the kid in Davey Jones Locker but wasn't). I was still "on the tip of my tongue" though, since there was some alternate/uncut dub out there and it seemed to be hard to find (I'm searching "the adventures of Pinocchio" and there are multiple movies with that title, and while there was a wikipedia and IMDB page for it, they weren't giving much to go off of). One of the commenters of the video said "this is a weird cut version, this is the one I remember" but the link went to a deleted video. I seemed to be stuck.
Well, then I remembered that archive.org is a thing, and they sometimes archive full youtube videos with the youtube page, and I had the link. This was a REALLY low odds shot, because while archive.org does a pretty good job of copying the internet it's not perfect and is going to miss a lot that isn't "high enough profile," so this obscure Pinocchio adaptation is probably not popular enough to get archived, right?
That was it, I had found the video from my parents. This seems like such an odd thing to archive, but I'm glad I found it. Given that I lived with my parents and not my grandparents I guess it is to be expected that I watched my parent's Pinocchio more often so the memories would be stronger with that one. This was some wild ride, and I'm glad I now have access to the not-Disney Pinocchio movies I had as a kid. Maybe I'll review them, but for now this is just my adventure finding them.
I originally wrote this for lost media wiki (cashed website), but because there was no information on it, the article was deleted after being live for 7 months. I'm uploading it here because it'd be ironic if media about lost media was lost. Also, hopefully someone remembers this.
The FixerUppers (lost elementary school video series; 2000)
The Fixer Uppers (name unconfirmed) was a series of live-action mystery videos for elementary schools, released around 2000. In these videos, a group of kids called "the fixer-uppers" worked together to solve a mystery and set-up a clubhouse in an abandoned storage closet under the apartment staircase. The kids would be aided by "the girl's" (name unknown) stuffed animals, and faxes from the students who were viewing these videos. Each tape ended on a cliffhanger and it was up to the kids to send in faxes of what they thought the answer to the cliffhanger was (answered in the next tape), with select faxes being shown in the video. The purpose of this series of tapes was to teach children problem-solving in a fun and interactive way.
Plot
The story follows the adventures of this girl and her 2 friends as they solve various mysteries in their apartment building. In the first tape, the kids are curious as to who the mysterious lady is down the hall, as well as finding a fax machine they name "faxy." In the second tape, "the girl" discovers a closet under the stairs that is wallpapered over, and the group of friends wants to turn it into their clubhouse. In one tape, the ending is on water coming out from under a door, and the audience is left to ask "what is causing it?" In another tape, the kids want to paint the new clubhouse, and the fax prompt was "how can we stay clean while painting?" During the series, three of the girl's stuffed animals would help the kids solve each mystery; with them helping in secret for the first half of the series, and coming out as alive in the second half. During the release, there was one "filler" episode where it was just 2 of the 3 stuffed animals trying to figure out what various items were super up close, only for it to zoom out to reveal what the object was.
Release
Every month, a tape was sent to participating schools for use in the classroom during the year 2000. Episodes were assumed to be made on a month by month basis (due to the inclusion of faxes sent from students). Tapes were only released to participating schools and were not released elsewhere. There is very little information on this series of classroom videos as no one seems to remember it.
Article Comments
(User is underlined, main comments separated by double space, replies separated by single space).
Pokematic:Author here. I saw these back in 2nd grade and my memories are very faded. I tried finding information on this series of tapes, but what I remember the name being (the fixeruppers) results in the HGTV show "fixerupper." Hopefully someone else remembers this, because this is all I remember from it.
Ryanskii: Would you put in Lost TV or Lost Films in as a category
ApolloJustice: I'd say leave it in Misc since it never aired on TV and it wasn't made as a general audience movie, it was only made for educational classroom use.
Anon: If anybody remembers seeing this then you should try to contact your old school to see if they still have this
Pokematic: I just emailed the library of my old elementary school asking if they still had any of these tapes. I offered to make digital copies of any of their other tapes with a 1 for 1 exchange for the fixeruppers (and if they don't have any, I'll do 1 of their tapes as a thank-you for checking). I REALLY hope they still have a tape or 10 (I want to say there were 10 tapes, but that's just a guess) just lying around in the media backlog.
Anonymous User #1: I Think I Know These. I was In Like Kinder When My Teacher Showed Us This I Think. I Might Be Wrong. Anyway I Saw One These Well after 2000. Maybe she had a copy from the years before? I doubt i can contact her. Its been years since i was in kinder.
Since this was in like 2006 or 2007 ish, We didnt send in anything. We just wrote what happened.
I think we saw a video about a dog or something. Again i might be wrong.
Pokematic: Was the dog a puppet? There were 3 puppets, and the only one I remember vaguely is this one that kind of looked like a cross between Gonzo and Big Bird (because it was so weird).
It's a long shot, but you could email your old teacher if she still works there. I emailed the librarian, and while she wasn't there when I was, it's still worth a shot (no reply yet BTW).
Anonymous User #2: omg ive watched this before in 5th grade! it was long after 2000s too! what i remember is that there was a girl with a ponytail wearing a red shirt, and it was about math
Anonymous User #2: it took place in a treehouse
Pokematic: Cool. It doesn't sound like what I remember (I don't think they ever left their building), but I wouldn't be surprised if they made a sequel series using the same concept.
Anonymous User #3: i love how a article for a series called "the fixeruppers" is under the needing work category
Anonymous User #4:Wow not even one pic this is very lost
Shooterboss: I do remember something similar to this in elementary school. Except mine took place in a treehouse and was about space. It started with a girl as the doorkeeper who would ask newcomers "what's the password?" before letting them in. Then some annoying kid came in anyway, and I distinctly remember her saying "so much for the password" in response.
They kids were recording a broadcast in a newsroom format that they would broadcast via satellite dish into space for alien civilizations to watch. They basically talked about space. At one point, they brought up a dog that died in space, and one of the girls cried while reading it. It ends with the annoying kid telling a series of lame jokes while the rest of the cast groans silently to each one. Then the screen cuts to a "___ years later" card before showing an alien (a guy in a costume) watching the broadcast on his TV and saying something like "look honey, the Fixer Uppers show is on. Come and watch."
Or I could be remembering the wrong thing. Just my two cents.
In this series of videos, I'm going to be talking about various pieces of lost media that had a wide release at a time. Hopefully together, we can find some of it.
Episode 1: Teamo Supremo
Episode 2: The Fixer Uppers
Episode 3: Cousin Skeeter
Episode 4: Out of Jimmy's Head
Episode 5: Puzzle Place
Episode 6: JBVO
Episode 7: SpongeBob Blimp at KCA 2005
Episode 8: The Noddy Shop
Episode 9: Astrology with Squidward
Episode 10: The Book of Pooh
Episode 11: All That
Episode 12: Leader Dog
Episode 13: Tortellini Western
Episode 14: Butt Ugly Martians (Found)
Creator's note: I recorded this episode before checking the wiki, and it turns out the series has been completely found. This is why it's important to check back frequently. I'm uploading because A) at the time of recording I thought this was still partially lost, and B) it'd be extremely ironic if a series about lost media had a lost episode.
Episode 15: Jimmy Neutron Interruptions
Episode 16: Attack of the Show
Episode 17: Cartoon Planet 2012
Episode 17-2: Cartoon Network City
Producer's note: yes, this shares the same episode number as the Cartoon Planet episode. I realized this when I was editing. Just consider this as an apology for doing a video on the found Butt Ugly Martians.
