The Flopcast

Our game show-themed FlopFight concludes next week, but first, let's take a quick intermission! Go hit the lobby and grab some unreasonably priced Junior Mints! And for your entertainment while we're waiting for the carnage to resume, this week we have: Cider Monday (a holiday for bizarre apple people); Kornflake's latest (and most ridiculous) lobster trap tree visit; Letters to Cleo and Gigolo Au...

Kornflake is back! And Ed, the other half of the Sponge Awareness Foundation, is back too! Because Ed thought we should have a game show-themed FlopFight, and it's not like we had anything better to do! So here we go with another ridiculous tournament, and this time the players are the hosts of classic game shows like Jeopardy and Tic Tac Dough, as well as related game show characters. (Could a Pr...

It's the quick fill-in episode to end all quick fill-in episodes! With Kornflake still unavailable (busy at a lobster-and-British-comedy convention, we assume), there's nobody left in the studio except Kevin and a few stray rubber chickens. So we just have a bunch of podcast recommendations for you, because somebody out there must have more going on than us. There are the other fine shows of the E...

For our big milestone 600th episode, we're doing... well, not much of anything. It's just Kevin and the Mayor of Chickentown goofing around while we await the triumphant return of Kornflake. Topics include: A correction from last week's show about mall sticker girls! (Oh yes, we heard from the mall sticker girls... they were most displeased...) Weird stuff you could order from the ads in Action Co...

Let's go to the mall! But one specific mall that isn't there anymore! (Well, it's sort of still there, but not really.) We're joined by Gleaming the Tube's Kevin Cafferty to look back on the Lincoln Mall in Lincoln, Rhode Island (frighteningly close to Woonsocket). It wasn't the biggest mall, it wasn't the best mall, but it was our mall. And our Lincoln Mall memories include: Waldenbooks, our prim...

It's Halloween season, so we have another terrifying Flopcast for you, starting with some follow-up from last week's Monster Cereals Taste Test. We received a LOT of feedback (from BOTH of our listeners) on Carmella Creeper, since we were wondering if Carmella is indeed the first female cereal mascot. (This somehow leads to our learning way too much about Wheaties. Sorry.) We also just discovered...

Longtime listeners may vaguely recall our legendary Monster Cereals Taste Test, which happened ten years ago this month! And now it's time to do it again, because there's a new monster cereal in town. Frankenberry, Count Chocula, and Boo Berry have been joined by Carmella Creeper! Carmella is a zombie, a DJ, and a girl! (Finally!) And apparently she is Frankenberry's long lost cousin! (Weird!) So...

Hang onto your milk money, because we're celebrating National School Lunch Week with a Kornflake Cafeteria Quiz. (Would she eat a Tater Tot? We're still not sure...) Then it's time to dive into another issue of Dynamite, the magazine for weird kids of the 70s and 80s. And we're looking at a Dynamite from 1978 that was provided by our pal Chris from Sci-Fi Explosion! Alfred E. Neuman is on the cove...

With our Dragon Con coverage finally out of the way (more or less), it's time to focus on what really matters: National Microwave Oven Day. Get ready to party, kids. We also have concert reviews on a couple of music legends: Bruce Springsteen (who never made a music video with dancing turkeys) and Peter Gabriel (who totally did). Plus: Yetis, ALF lunch boxes, and Chickens in the News! Did ancient...

Okay, let's wrap up our coverage of Dragon Con 2023! (Because come on, if this recap goes on much longer, we'll have to include Dragon Con 2024...) Kevin and the Mayor of Chickentown (reporting from Maine in the middle of a hurricane) are here to run through every crazy thing that happened over the last two days of the convention. Including: Bionic fun with Lindsay Wagner and Lee Majors, the Battl...

Our Dragon Con recap continues, and this time we're just covering Saturday. While everyone else in Atlanta was out on the street for the big Dragon Con parade, Kevin was hiding in the American Sci-Fi Classics Track room for the ESO Network's celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Super Friends. (Were any Wonder Twin powers activated? Perhaps...) The Mayor of Chickentown (our resident Barbie ex...

We have apparently survived Dragon Con 2023, and it's gonna take THREE episodes to review everything that happened at our favorite annual gathering of 70,000 nerds and/or geeks. This week we're just covering Wednesday through Friday, including: The amazing costumes of Brandon the Shapeshifter, the muscovy ducks of Piedmont Park, the Dragon Con Newbie Walking Tours, Kate from Strange Animals Podcas...

It's Dragon Con week! Alas, Kornflake cannot join us at Dragon Con, but let's just pretend that she can! Kevin has prepared a hypothetical weekend of silly events for Kornflake, based on the actual Dragon Con schedule. Including: robot battles, coloring books and coffee, burlesque, the old Krofft theme park, a tea party for puppets, and more. Plus: It's National Star Trek Day! (Hey, maybe we can j...

It's time for Dragon Con, so round up all your local weirdos and stick them on a bus to Atlanta! Kevin and the Mayor of Chickentown will be there, and we're sharing our whole schedule with you. Come see the Mayor talk about Rocky Horror, Schmigadoon, and Barbie! (Did you know our Mayor is a Barbie expert? There's a lot going on here. It's not just chickens.) Meanwhile Kevin's nonstop schedule of s...

As we frantically prepare for Dragon Con 2023, we're wrapping up our 10-episode look back at the 1980s with a visit to Dragon Con 1989! We weren't actually there (probably too busy watching Batman for the nineteenth time), but we did scrape up some information about the third ever installment of Atlanta's legendary nerdfest. It was held on a different weekend back then (in October instead of Labor...

The vacationing Kornflake is flopped on a hammock somewhere, but the Mayor of Chickentown is here to celebrate the year 1988. After a quick look at some of the year's least popular movies (Kevin and the Mayor each saw just one of them), we turn to music. Specifically we're looking at the 1988 concert schedule at Great Woods, a beloved outdoor venue that dominated southern New England's summer conc...

Go away, soft weak humans! It's time for our annual robot-themed Top 4 1/2 List! And it's also time for our 1987-themed show! So once again we've turned to our pal Chris from Sci-Fi Explosion, because we knew Chris could come up with a magnificent list of 1987 robots. And yikes, he sure did. We have some all-time favorites (a certain Star Trek android debuted that year), some lesser known oddities...

Welcome back to 1986! (We need you for Hands Across America. Please go stand in the middle of Iowa for nine hours.) Kornflake has a goofy 1986 commercial in which the voice of God screams at you about drain cleaners. Then Kevin has a concert report on one of our favorite singers, who made her solo debut in 1986: Belinda Carlisle! You know we'll see Belinda whenever we can, because go go go go go....

As we cross the halfway point in our ten-part exploration of the 1980s, we're randomly recasting the movies of 1985, and hopefully making them weirder. We might extract Chevy Chase from Fletch, for example, and drop him into the Kelly LeBrock role in Weird Science. That would free up Kelly to star in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Stallone can replace Cher as the mom in Mask, and so on. Chances of th...

Our ten-episode trip through the 1980s continues, and we're looking at some very short-lived sitcoms from 1984. Including: The Duck Factory (starring Jim Carrey and Dippy Duck), Dreams (with John Stamos, Jami Gertz, and breakdancing), E/R (not the medical drama with George Clooney, but the medical sitcom with George Clooney), It's Your Move (with Jason Bateman and the Dregs of Humanity), and a bun...

This week we're back in 1983! Kornflake shares a goofy 1983 commercial for Dial soap, while Kevin takes an absurdly quick look at the pop music of 1983. It was the year new wave conquered the Top 40, and we approved. (For more complete coverage of 1983 music, we refer you to recent episodes of White Rocket Entertainment and Modern Musicology. While the Flopcast covers Kajagoogoo, they take care of...

It's 1982 (in our hearts, at least), so we're looking at the Mad magazines of 1982. (Historians agree that for a truly accurate account of the past, you should just read Mad. Plus you get to do the Fold-In.) That year Mad's TV and movie parodies included Raiders of the Lost Ark, Archie Bunker's Place, Family Feud, For Your Eyes Only, The Greatest American Hero, The Fall Guy, M*A*S*H, The Facts of...

Continuing our ten week celebration of the 1980s, we have some silly artifacts to examine from 1981. First Kornflake brings us a couple of Dr Pepper commercials featuring David Naughton (from "Makin' It"), Mickey Rooney (from "One of the Boys"), and the classic two-person horse costume (from our dreams). Kevin's 1981 pick is a Superman comic book produced by Radio Shack to introduce the children t...

Episode 580 means we're kicking off another ten weeks of episodes dedicated to each year of the 1980s. (So yes, everybody will be forced to Wang Chung this summer.) We're starting with 1980, and we're looking at some of our favorite albums from that year. There's some new wave (Devo, The Buggles, The Cars), some Top 40 (Air Supply, Billy Joel, REO Speedwagon), some crucial soundtracks (Flash Gordo...

We start with a little follow-up from our recent Maids v. Butlers FlopFight. It's the "honorable mention" list of maids and butlers we couldn't fit in the tournament, including characters from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Hazel, I Married Dora, and more. (Rest assured, we did not forget about We Got It Made. If only we could...) Then Kevin has a concert report, because beloved 80s pop princess Deb...