Pee Wee's Playhouse was THE Saturday morning kid show I wished I had worked on. It seemed like the perfect job for a guy who was going to art school and coming to grips with, "What the hell am I going to do with my life once I graduate?!" I was already familiar with Pee Wee from watching his 1981 HBO Special: The Pee Wee Herman Show, a groundbreaking show that absolutely blew my mind on so many levels, and then the cult film: Pee Wee's Big Adventure, which pretty much made me an uber fan. So naturally when I heard that he was going to be producing an 'Honest to God' Saturday morning kid show, I nearly shit myself with excitement.
The problem was the fact that it would be on SATURDAY MORNING...Saturday morning comes right after Friday night. It comes REAL fast. You can see where I'm going with this, right? Friday nights in Philadelphia during 1986 were usually filled with excessive drinking and more often than not, a punk show. Needless to say, waking up early on a Saturday morning with a wicked hangover and bruised body just to watch a KID'S SHOW was quite the undertaking. But the show was so damn good, that my girlfriend (now my wife) and I looked forward to it so much that we made it our Saturday morning ritual. Breakfast in bed, watch Pee Wee, then pass out until the late afternoon. Remember, these were the days before Tivo and DVR's so you couldn't schedule it to tape to watch later, and very few of us had a VCR to record the show even if we wanted to...starving art students, remember?
Anyway, I fell in love with the damn show always dreaming about working on a show like that one day. Well in 2007, I finally got my wish and saw myself involved in one of the most innovative children's shows that drew it's inspiration from Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Sid & Marty Krofft, The Banana Splits and you guessed it - Pee Wee's Playhouse. It was a blast.
But enough of that shit, the post is supposed to be about my Pee Wee Colorforms Set!
Yeah I was one of THOSE GUYS, I bought every damn Pee Wee toy that came out during a time when that sort of thing was done in secret like buying pornography. In the eighties you didn't buy toys to collect them, not like today where you buy multiples so you can keep one in the package and the other to take out and 'play with'...more about that in a later post.
Well I'm proud to say that I still own my Pee Wee's Colorforms Play Set in it's original package, complete...and that I PLAYED WITH IT! I loved this dopey thing so much that at one point I created a little scene using all the pieces and made a custom 'Pee Wee' frame, and hung it on my wall. My better half was not amused, but tolerated my silliness.
I love this damn set. I love the subject matter. I love the graphics. I love the feel. I love the smell.
And you know what? You're fucking jealous...and that makes me happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment