King Koopa's Kool Kartoons: Difference between revisions

<nowiki>*</nowiki>sigh* I don’t know why I get up in the morning... Hey, if you grew up in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, you may remember a television show called King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons. It was a live show involving a grown man in a detailed King Koopa outfit with believable reptilian features introducing public domain cartoons and the Muppet Babies to an unsuspecting audience... When I was young, I was a cast member on that show. By that, I mean I was one of the kids on the program who wore the Koopa Troopa t-shirt and hat. Don’t bother searching for it—you won’t find much of anything, other than confirmation that the program existed. Otherwise, other than the intro and outro, all you’ll find is one brief clip of King Koopa with his pet dog Ratso, disrupting a Thanksgiving dinner that Koopa had festively prepared for who even knows. After all, he was King Koopa—it wasn’t like he had any friends. I kinda felt bad for him. Then again, it was just a guy in a suit.

This probably doesn’t surprise you, but the show didn’t last very long. Not just because it was bad (which it was) but because of what happened in the final episode. The second King Koopa—the first one had previously quit due to an unspecified illness—actuallyillness—he actually threatened a child on the program. I’m not kidding you. King Koopa literally threatened the life of a child, and it was enough to get the show cancelled! He read the kid's letter, which called him a bad guy in desperate need of liposuction and rhinoplasty. He responded with his trademark gravely voice, but this time he seemed legitimately angry… like, it wasn’t even the actor anymore, but as if it was the actual King Koopa, or perhaps it was the actual actor’s legitimate anger. So what happened? In that episode he yelled at the kid and said “I know where you live”. It was uncharacteristic of King Koopa. His angry jokes usually involved, like, popping balloons or badmouthing the Mario Brothers who he claimed to be ever so happy to no longer have to deal with. But the gimmick was supposed to be that he was actually a nice guy underneath it all. I mean, ask Nintendo themselves: they revealed recently that the real reason he kidnaps the princess all the time is because he’s lonely, and he has a crush on her. Kinda makes sense, given he never did anything with her, or showed an active interest in acquiring political power to rule over the Mushroom Kingdom. He was kind of a weird guy, but he was just lonely.

The kids all looked sad, but that wasn’t even the worst part. As the camera panned over them, they looked… bony? As if they hadn’t eaten for days? This made me nauseous. The joke was that Koopa only had the appearance of being bad—he didn’t… he didn’t starve children. He handed out prizes, like Nintendo Power Gloves and 8-bit NES cartridges, and administered ‘KoopaKoopa Quizzes’Quizzes to the kids! That’s what he was supposed to do. That’s what he did in the television program. He didn’t… he didn’t starve children...