Penny Men

The Penny Men continue their Saturday morning cartoon programming war—and Ben unveils the full master plan behind his Alien Animal ‘90s Alternative Action Block! 🛸🐭🦈 Starting with a lineup of deep cuts and cult favorites like: Men in Black Rude Dog and the Dweebs Space Ghost Banana Splits Wildcats Sheep in the Big City Biker Mice from Mars And Wacky Races! Ben doesn’t just program a single morn...

Welcome back to The Penny Men’s Saturday Morning Cartoon Programming War! 📺🥣 Last week Tom threw down the gauntlet with his dream cartoon lineup—but now Ben and Greg step up to the network executive desk to pitch their own blocks of animated glory! Greg spins up “Gumby’s Wheel of Cartoons,” a four-hour journey through animation history hosted by Gumby and Pokey themselves! The wheel lands on eve...

This week, Ben, Gregory, and Tom travel back to the golden age of cereal-fueled television to build their dream Saturday morning cartoon blocks! Remember when cartoons only existed between 8 AM and noon? When you had to wake up early, guard the remote, and pray your show wasn’t up against something better on another channel? Armed with the entire history of animation, the guys each draft eight car...

We made it! 120 episodes of The Penny People Podcast—and to celebrate, we immediately forget to do a retrospective and instead spiral into cartoon voices, deep-cut Hanna-Barbera lore, and whether any animated character has ever had an original voice! Is Yogi Bear just doing Art Carney? Is Fred Flintstone just Jackie Gleason yelling at a rock TV? And how many characters are secretly just doing Bert...

Part two of The Penny People Explain the History of Comics somehow begins with Andy Griffith, detours through Rebecca , and ends up mapping the entire DNA of superhero archetypes! Ben, Tom, and Greg set out to break down the Justice Society… and instead spiral into a loving, exhaustive taxonomy of comic book heroes: Alien strongmen Lab-made science guys Magic artifacts Ancient gods Spooky mystery...

It starts with a gripe! Ben doesn’t like variant covers—but connected covers? Those he can get behind! That complaint spirals into a full-blown comics epic as Tom, Greg, and Ben crack open Justice League Spectacular #1 (1992), debate the morality of selling the same issue five times, and relive the excesses of foil covers, second printings, randomized posters, and peak-’90s X-Men nonsense! From th...

The guys go full comic-shop mode and trace the tangled history of the Justice League—from the original core lineup to Detroit-era experiments, International weirdos, and the underrated 2006 ' Justice League of America' run that finally nailed the balance between icons and cult favorites! Along the way, they debate who really belongs on the A-list, defend B and C-listers like Vixen, Red Tor...

Welcome to the only game show brave enough to be powered by an Excel spreadsheet! Ben hosts Gregory and Tom in the DC Super Quiz of Light, Peace, and the Quickening, a hyper-competitive trivia showdown built around one bizarre discovery: the Justice Society, Justice League, and Super Friends each have exactly 23 pre-Crisis core members. Coincidence? Destiny? Spreadsheet magic? The rules are simple...

What starts as a debate over Koopa Troopas quickly mutates into a full-blown Mario cosmology breakdown! This episode includes: Whether Koopa Troopas are a species or Bowser’s first conquered army The reptile family tree linking Koopas, Troopas, and Yoshis Dinosaur canon confusion across the Mario timeline Bowser’s empire-building through propaganda and assimilation Mario Party’s Koopa Kid identity...

Is Mario from Brooklyn… or from beyond reality itself? This week, The Penny Men descend head-first into warp pipe cosmology as Tom unveils a unified theory that finally reconciles every layer of Mario canon — the cartoons, the arcade origins, Odyssey’s Metro Kingdom, Captain N, WarioWare, SimCity, and even Presidents shaking hands with plumbers! Gregory, Tom, and Ben break Mario’s universe into th...

Hour five of "The Life and Times" is where the Penny Men stop politely theorizing and just start building a Mario cosmology with power tools! Ben, Greg, and Tom lock in the multi-era, master timeline, stretch it all the way to 1996, and finally explain why Mario ends up living in a house instead of a castle! This is the episode where everything snaps into place! ERA THREE: The Rebellion...

Hour four of "The Life and Times " is where things officially get unhinged! The Penny Men pick up exactly where they left off and begin reinforcing the Mario timeline with fresh cartilage, connective tissue, and possibly forbidden star magic! Using Tom’s original 12-issue framework as the skeleton, Ben arrives with a week’s worth of lore research to rebuild Mario history by eras, not jus...

The Penny Men continue their increasingly unhinged attempt to construct a unified Mario canon! Picking up right where we left off, Tom unveils Issue #9 of his 12-issue “Life and Times of Mario” epic, covering: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show era The plumbing years The celebrity years And the strange liminal period where Mario and Luigi are hanging out with wrestlers, sad-eyed orphans, and Rip Van...

The Penny Men attempt to responsibly outline a 12-issue prestige comic chronicling the entire life of Mario! Instead, they unleash a multiversal lore spiral involving: Star Children Brooklyn Italians Yoshi adoption laws Frank Zappa as a Mario brother (locked in) Koopa royal politics Arranged turtle marriages Fry Guys via lava exposure And a plumber who vanished into legend! Along the way: Baby mur...

This week, the Penny Men attempt the impossible: a unified, chronological Mario canon! From Yoshi’s Island to Brooklyn, instruction manuals to cartoons, manga to coloring books, and time travel rules that mostly make sense, Tom unveils his long-gestating “Life and Times of Mario” project! Ben interrogates the rules of reality, Gregory plays referee, and everyone agrees Bowser is a single dad of ei...

The Penny Men return to the Hall of Justice for part two of their Super Friends deep dive! Ben, Gregory, and Tom break down the Challenge of the Super Friends era, including the debut of the Legion of Doom, the rotating Hanna-Barbera formats, and the legal headaches that led to Black Vulcan, Samurai, and Apache Chief replacing familiar DC heroes! From there, the conversation jumps from the cartoon...

The Penny Men dive headfirst into the wobulous, Hanna-Barbera-fueled world of Super Friends , where cosmic legends fight injustice, censorship fights punches, and Wonder Dog somehow outranks Krypto! The Penny Men lead you through a surprisingly dense exploration of Super Friends lore—covering the cartoons, the comics, the junior Justice League, the Super Foes, and why Batman keeps letting children...

Holy draft board, Penny People! The full Penny Men ensemble assembles — Ben, Gregory, Tom, Michal, and even Kit Kat (Jar Jar emphatically not invited) — for a batarang-loaded Batman Classics Fantasy Draft! With the Phantom Jar looming and George Lucas apparently letting himself into the studio, the boys lay out this episode’s rules… and immediately start breaking them! Each host builds the ultimat...

Cousins Ben and Michael finally unite East and West in this long-awaited crossover: The Pennymen meet The Pennymen West Coast for the sacred, years-teased mission — the Batman Episode! They trace their Bat-origins from one-inch metal figurines, McDonald’s tie-ins, and grocery-store spinner racks to the defining after-school ritual of Batman: The Animated Series! They talk back-issue archaeology, 3...

This week on The Penny Men, we accidentally record 20 minutes of Muppet calendars, Beatles bootlegs, and obscure Marvel villains before remembering we were supposed to talk about Flash Gordon. So naturally, we kept all of it! Cold Open Highlights (aka: Things No One Asked For But You Got Anyway): The Muppets calendar that reprogrammed Greg’s brain permanently Beatles parodies including the immorta...

This week on The Penny Men, Tom, Greg, and Ben broadcast live from the newly-renamed Artist Formerly Known as Ben’s Apartment (formerly Skywalker Ranch II: Special Edition, formerly Ben’s Apartment)! The boys nod politely, kiss a baby, and immediately fall apart! What follows is a heroic attempt to explain Flash Gordon that derails into: A crash course in newspaper comics A heated debate about whe...

Grab your cereal, kids, because we’re taking a nostalgia-powered plunge into the chaotic, colorful world of Saturday morning cartoons! In this episode, Ben, Tom, and Gregory dissect, debate, and reminisce about the shows that defined a generation—both the hits and the weird, slightly forgotten ones! Here's what’s on the docket! The Big Three: Doug, Recess, Pepper Ann—who really deserved the cr...

Welcome to the Ultimate Donkey Kong Fan Cast… sorta! This week, we’ve traded barrels for backpacks and explored the magical, chaotic, totally legitimate world of Disney’s One Saturday Morning! Join Ben, Greg, and Tom as they take you on a nostalgia-fueled ride through: How much stuff can an elephant crush? (Spoiler: a lot!) Mrs. Munger’s Class – the original animated yearbook chaos! Centerville –...

It’s the 100th episode spectacular! Ben, Gregory, Tom, and West Coast cousin Michael gather at last — the four heads of the Penny Men Mount Rushmore — for a centennial celebration of nonsense, nostalgia, and nerdom! The guys attempt to recall anything they’ve ever said across 99 episodes, but mostly end up reading lists, assigning points that don’t matter, and starting a 100-question quiz they’ll...

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve done it 98 times—and we’re doing it one more time! The Penny People are back in the galaxy far, far away for The Clone Wars , the animated fever dream where every Jedi gets a haircut and every clone gets feelings! Ben, Gregory, and Tom take the long way ‘round hyperspace, stopping to ponder the big question: what is Star Wars, anyway? Along the way, we meet: Compassiona...