Uncanny

Some Toy Finds

Beetle Bailey's workplace harassment instrument

Huck is open wide for you.

                                                             

                                                   Post-Hippy Fred with keyring deformity

    

                                                 Melon headed fred with cranium full of brain juice

                                                            

                                                Extra find

 

The General Audience's obsession with purposeful mediocrity

Why are people nowadays so obsessed with art that's supposed to be ugly, bad, and unappealing? What is this modern obsession with being untalented on purpose, and why has it become so popular?

Do people seriously think any of this stuff looks good? 

Is this considered visually appealing now?

People always seem to like making art more and more bland and simplified than before.

It seems like everyone has become a perfectionist in the worst way possible, now.

Nowadays, the big trend with general audiences is generative AI, which allows people to be even more mediocre without even making anything themself, and this is seen as hip and cool.

This idea of mediocrity being the new hip trend has bled into every aspect of design and the Hollywood production pipeline; it's cool to bad, and being good is seen as pretentious to most people now.

Anything with actual effort or talent put into it is seen as an insult to these people.

Is Felix The Pinnacle of Cartoon Design?

What makes a good character design? What is it about certain cartoon characters that are so endearing? Is there such a thing as the perfect cartoon?

The Missing Link of the Animation Industry.

Is this creature the peak of artistic expression?

Glorius Platinum-Age Felix Art

Otto Mesmer's famous pussy should be plastered on everything, like he used to be.

Conservative, silver-age Felix, more reserved, but still appealing illustrations

Fabulous, off-model memorabilia. Felix could be proof of intelligent design

Incredibly Wonky, Uncanny Treasures

Bazooka Joe's Slow, Painful Decline into Cultural Homogenization

What happened to Bazooka Joe? He used to be so cool; now he's just a mediocre bore with no personality, just like everyone else. 

Look at this badass homunculus child! All good cartoon characters have bulbous, infant craniums. 

                                                           

"Give us your paper waste, and Joe will personally send you a mini bloodied head on a rope." What a charmer.

Easily appealing drawings in each panel, perfect use of limited color

That was over thirty years ago, and Joe has been on a slippery slope ever since they stopped letting Tijuana Bible artists do the illustrations for children's foodstuff comics.

hip and trendy calarts Joe

here's some of the miserable trash that current-day America considers a "fun prize for children"

Lifeless drawings, too many colors.

Why is douchey modern Bazooka Joe yucking it up about "Ball Sports"? 

Cartoon-loving American children don't wanna see these Filmation rejects.

Ugly, bland, no appeal.

Around 2012, Bazooka tried to be hip and cutting-edge by getting rid of all their appeal.

This isn't even a comic; what a sick joke.

Unfortunately, the same can be said about poor CrackerJack, too.

Confined to corporate, conservative blandness.

A sticker with a QR code for a cellphone game—what a great prize! 

Truly, this is what the American Dream is all about.

And they're not even that visually interesting, either.

At least it's something; you can't even put free stickers in breakfast cereal anymore; 

some douche will try to choke on it so he can sue the manufacturer.

This is what CrackerJack used to give you for free:

What have we learned? Nothing good is allowed to be for free anymore; you always have to pay extra or settle for a single corporate stock art QR code-embedded sticker.

Is this really the best corporations have to offer? Granted, even when I was a kid, things weren't as good as what my parents had growing up, but corporations still had the courage to give us a free color-changing spoon or a CD-Rom premium

America was once a place where people would construct monuments to the Greek Gods of animation; programing websites worth of flash games just to promote breakfast cereals, junk food, and hard candy. 

Now corporate Hollywood companies can't even be bothered to give kids a sheet of Glow-In-The-Dark stickers; what happened?