Three German Goofy Comics

I can't remember where I got this comic book from. It was either an antique store or one of those brown bag grab bag things. Either way, it was a huge waste of money (although I'm pretty sure it was at most a dollar) considering I don't read German.

Thankfully, through advances in technology and not through just learning another language, I can now read and present this comic. Starting with the cover, this is the first issue of the third volume which came out in 1983. I don't know if the guy Goofy is obsessing over is supposed to be someone we (Germans) recognize or just generic nice hair that Goofy doesn't have. But he's trying and he's happy. That's really all that matters.

The first story is Ein Hungerbauch, or A Hungry Belly. Goofy is wandering around town looking for employment and winds up at a circus who just so happens to have a job opening. The ringmaster(?) or circus owner, who looks very shady and has resting tied-a-woman-to-train-tracks face, offers Goofy Karl's job. Karl's job was to eat. A lot.

Goofy: "Do you have a job for me?"

Ringmaster: "Depends. Do you like to eat?"

All Goofy has to do is eat six pounds of spaghetti, 57 meatballs, and ten scoops of raspberry ice cream every hour. Goofy is thrilled and is excited to tell is friends, Mickey, Minnie, and Clarabelle. The three of them are also excited to support their friend.

Goofy: "Hello, there you all are! I have something to tell you!
Listen!"

Mickey, Minnie, and Clarabelle arrive at the circus to watch Goofy. This is his sixth performance of the day but Goofy happily scarfs the food down. I'm a huge Goofy fan but I don't recall one of his things being able to eat a lot. Not like Jughead or Shaggy.

I don't think I need to translate this panel.

Goofy finishes his performance, gets a round of applause. Goofy then meets up with his friends and they begin leaving the circus. The ringmaster stops Goofy, saying that he has another show in an hour. Goofy shouts back that he's going to lunch with his friends. The end.

Ringmaster: "Hey, Wait a moment! Where are you going? The next
show is in an hour!"

The next story is Ein Echter Huttrick, or A Real Hat Trick. Goofy is going to perform magic at the Police Ball and he's showing Mickey and Officer O'Hara (I'm assuming that's his name. I've seen him before and think that's his name. I'm not looking it up.) his trick of cracking an egg into his hat, saying "Abracadabra" and watching it turn into a chick.

Goofy: "I'll show you my trick for the police ball again."

At the ball, Goofy starts to get stage fright as he watches the juggler perform. Mickey assures him that he'll do just fine. Elsewhere, a thief is being bold and robbing the cloakroom being used by the police officers. When someone catches him, the thief runs away and hides under Goofy's magic table. Goofy wheels his table out on stage to perform his trick. He cracks the egg into the hat which startles the thief (so that's how they do it).

Goofy: "Abracadabra, three times a black cat! An egg in two in with it.
What comes next?"

Now covered in egg, the thief exposes himself as being under the table and is quickly arrested. Unfortunately, Goofy was unable to finish his trick. Mickey, hearing applause, drags Goofy back on stage. The cops loved the trick because magic was used to apprehend a criminal. Hooray, brave Goofy! The end.

Stage Worker: "That's him! The pickpocket from the wardrobe! Hold
tight! Well done!"

The last, and longest story, is Die Schlafmütze, or The Sleepyhead. Mickey and Goofy are at some old house on a coastal cliff--it's explained they are cleaning it so it can be sold but whatever. As Mickey goes to sleep, Goofy decides to stay up and watch a talk show. Meanwhile, some shady sailors are making their way to the house. Back at the house, the talk show Goofy is watching has on a hypnotist. I bet you can all figure out where we're going from here.

I'm not translating that stupid narration box.
Mickey: "Oh man, I'm dead tired. I think I'm going to lie down, Goofy."

Goofy: "Do that! I'm going to finish watching the talk show."

The hypnotist on TV winds up hypnotizing Goofy into falling asleep whenever he hears the word...goofy. The shady sailors arrive at the house which wakes Mickey up. He wakes Goofy up and they go to the basement to see what the commotion is. Remember, Goofy falls asleep whenever he hears his name. Down in the basement, the pirates have a device that can dissolve stone, concrete, steel, whatever so they can get to a hidden submarine. Their plan is to travel underwater and use the dissolving gun to enter ships and rob them. It makes sense except for the part of them being underwater.

Pirate Captain: "Here! The sound waves simply dissolve stone, 
concrete and steel, and..."

Pirate sidekick: "There is a hole in the stone! Great thing, that!"

Mickey wants to go get some help but accidentally puts Goofy to sleep. Mickey is then captured by the pirates, Goofy wakes up, Goofy falls asleep again, Goofy wakes back up, and is tossed the dissolver gun. He uses it to trap the other two pirates in a hole and then falls asleep again. The pirates steal the dissolving gun and make their getaway in the sub. Mickey knocks some rocks into the water, trapping the pirates. Goofy realizes he must be hypnotized and Mickey starts calling Goofy Donald so he doesn't fall asleep anymore. Goofy, I guess, is cursed with this affliction now. The end.

Mickey: "Well, as the poet says, Good duck, all good, Donald!"

Goofy: "Donald? Listen, Mickey, I think my parents somehow baptized me
differently when I was little."

Fluppy Dogs

In 1984, Michael Eisner was brought into the Walt Disney Company to revitalize a brand that was showing its age. Eisner was brought in to revive Disney and one of the first things he decided to get his hands into was television. He got a team together and gave them the idea that Disney should be the name in animation. Aside from released thousands of animated shorts that had been locked away for decades, Eisner pushed for original animation. First pitched was Mickey and the Space Pirates but Eisner wanted to save Mickey, the face of the company for something big. The next show they pitched was The Wuzzles which premiered in September 1985. Another show, that premiered along with The Wuzzles, was The Adventure of the Gummi Bears. While The Wuzzles would be canceled after 13 episodes, Gummi Bears would last until 1990 and have 67 episodes. Despite this slight success, Eisner was still reluctant to use known Disney characters. The next show in development was Fluppy Dogs. Fluppy Dogs were about these dogs that weren't dogs. They talked and dressed like people and used jewels to travel through doors to other dimensions. The hour-long pilot, intended to serve as the first couple of episodes, premiered November 27, 1986--Thanksgiving--and was a ratings bomb. Disney immediately canceled the project and moved onto their next pitch about a duck test pilot named Launchpad McQuack. That show would become DuckTales. I recorded Fluppy Dogs during what I believe is a rerun before the 1987-1988 television season started. I know this because there is an ad for "Full House coming this fall" and a show called Once a Hero in the commercial breaks. Fluppy Dogs was one of my favorite things to watch when I was younger. There's potential but there is probably a reason Disney released the pilot on Thanksgiving.

Fluppy Dogs was written by Haskell Barkin (The Love Boat, Jabberjaw) and Bruce Talkington (DuckTales, New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Bonkers) and directed by Fred Wolf (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

Five fluppy dogs are slowly making their way around a mountain in a stormy and desolate world trying to find a portal to open with a key. Fluppy dogs are adventurous canine-like creatures who use a key to open inter-dimensional doorways to other worlds. After landing in a prehistoric-like world, they find a door to our world and land in a grocery store. Chaos, as it does, ensues, and the fluppies cause a mess. While trying to escape, Stanley, the blue fluppy, talks and catches the attention of J.J. Wagstaff, a wealthy jerk of a businessman, who wants the fluppies for his collection of exotic animals. The fluppies are captured by animal control and placed in the pound. Luckily, they are only there a short time as Stanley is quickly adopted by Mrs. Bingham for her son, Jamie.

oh a dog great

Jamie isn't so sure about Stanley because he wanted a big dog. I'm confused why people keep thinking these are normal dogs when they are a bright pastel blue, pink, yellow, red, and green color. Those aren't normal colors, right?! While Jamie is walking Stanley, Stanley escapes his collar and runs away. Jamie runs after him into a construction site where Jamie climbs a ladder for some reason and winds up hanging from a steel beam making weird moaning sounds as he dangles. I don't know why the producers made the voice actor do that or kept it in when he did it but there it is: A 10-year-old boy moaning "oh, oh" for ten seconds.

Stanley recuses Jamie and explains his deal. Jamie offers to use his birthday money to break Stanley's friends out of the pound. Unfortunately, Jamie only has enough for one so they adopt Tippi, the pink fluppy. Also unfortunately, Mrs. Bingham refuses to let Jamie keep Tippi so he gives her to his next door neighbor, Claire, because your neighbor loves it when you bring them random pets.

Claire and Tippi. Why this 10-year-old hangs out with what is presumably
an 18-year-old, I have no idea.

At bedtime, Stanley explains that he enjoys adventure but gets too excited and he and his friends always wind up in trouble. At least he's self-aware. As Jamie falls asleep, he's scratching Stanley's head which causes the bed to lift into the air and fly away into the sky. They gain control of the bed and take Tippi from Claire, begging her not to tell anybody.

Jamie and the fluppies arrive at the pound to bust out Ozzie, Bink, and Dink but J.J. Wagstaff is there to also take the fluppies. The fluppies escape and all return home, safe and sound. The end.

A boy and his dog.

No. Wait. The fluppies need to find their way back home. The fluppies show up at Jamie's school saying that they've found a door but it's in the sewer so down they go. Despite having a fluppy that uses his nose to find where the doors are, Jamie thinks they are going to get lost and follows them. Whatever. We also learn that the key gets weaker with each use and the door gets a little harder to open. This door, sadly, doesn't lead anywhere but unleashes a torrent of water that floods the sewer.

While drying out in the basement, Ozzie smells another door. This door gives up a beautiful land of grass and flowers and also strange hippo creatures that charge right into the door. They call the thing a fulumpus and the thing can't return home because other fulumpuses are at the door probably wondering where it came from.

I'll admit. This is the dumbest of plot contrivances.

The fulumpus causes havoc and chaos inside Jamie's home and practically destroys it. Working together, they all clean up the house before Mrs. Bingham gets home but Jamie stills gets his butt chewed out because the school calls and snitches on him for skipping school. Meanwhile, J.J. Wagstaff puts out a $5000 reward for a fluppy dog. Ozzie, Bink, and Dink go out on their own and find the door to their world in front of the library. How convenient!

They rush to return to Stanley and Tippi but Wagstaff is on their tail and he is able to capture Ozzie. With Jamie acting strange, Mrs. Bingham chews his ass a bit more asking why he's become a terrible little boy in the last...checks watch...24 hours. "Ever since you got that dog..." The fluppies enlist Claire to help them but Jamie sees them drive away so Jamie uses the fulumpus to race after them to the Wagstaff mansion.

Wagstaff sees the fluppies approach and prepares to capture them too using Ozzie as bait. Stanley and Tippi are captured but Jamie and the fulumpus arrive and, you probably guessed it, destroy the crap out of Wagstaff's mansion. Wagstaff blackmails Jamie and Claire but Stanley has an idea. Jamie and Claire start scratching the fluppies' heads and that room of the mansion suddenly rises into the air. They crash land the room at the library but the key is malfunctioning. It reveals the door and the fluppies' world. The fluppies, the fulumpus, Wagstaff, and his minion Hamish, all wind up going through the door. I can only think they put Wagstaff into some sort of labor camp or something.

I don't know what Jamie told his mom when she learned that Jamie lost his first dog after only 36 hours.

A few months later, it's now winter, and Stanley and the others are back! And they've brought some friends with them. Hundreds of thousands of fluppies are pouring out of the door presumably to kill us all after learning what a terrible person J.J. Wagstaff was. I, for one, welcome our fluppy overlords. They will be the cutest dictators ever.

The end times are here.

The voice cast is interesting but unremarkable. Stanley is voiced by Marshall Efron who voiced characters in The Smurfs. Tippi and Bink were voiced by Susan Blu (DuckTales, The Magic School Bus). Ozzie was voiced by Lorenzo Music (Garfield and Friends, The Real Ghostbusters). Dink was voiced by Hal Smith (The Andy Griffith Show, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh). Claire was voiced by Jessica Pennington who now does things behind the scenes. J.J. Wagstaff was voiced by Michael Rye (Super Friends, Flintstone Kids). Jamie was voiced by Carl Steven, who was 12 when he recorded the voice for Fluppy Dogs. Steven is probably best known for voicing Fred in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo but he also appeared in TV shows such as Punky Brewster and Growing Pains. His last acting role was in 1996 as Matthew in Weird Science. He was arrested and sentenced to prison for armed robbery in 2010. He died of a heroin overdose in 2013 while in prison.

If you would like to support my writing or research while I am out of work due to COVID-19, you can buy me a cup of coffee over on Ko-fi.

Until next time, I remain...
~Brian

POB #9: TaleSpin from Tiger Electronics

One of my favorite TV shows growing up was Disney's TaleSpin which aired on The Disney Afternoon from 1990 until 1994 and lasted 65 episodes. It starred Baloo from The Jungle Book as a cargo pilot. I wanted to get everything TaleSpin growing up and I did pretty good. The one thing I was disappointed in was the Nintendo game. I could never get past the third stage and overall the whole game was frustrating. I still own it but it's one that I would never play even if my Nintendo was still hooked up.

This screen is my nightmare.

In something a little different, here is a video of a TaleSpin game I can actually beat. The TaleSpin Tiger Electronics Handheld Game. During the 1990s, Tiger Electronics made possibly hundreds of handheld games that basically worked like a calculator. They had static images that lit up at certain times to simulate movement. Some were better configured than others and I do think TaleSpin falls into that category.

You can only move up and down in order to dodge the Air Pirates, mountains, and lightening. If you start running out of gas or obtain too much damage, you can hit a button to refuel or repair. There are four stages that take about 8 minutes to complete. You can continue playing but who would want to?

Please pardon the guerrilla-like recording and I would recommend turning off the sound after you get a little taste of it because it is repetitive and very annoying.