In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 170: Freddy Krueger Turns 40, 1970s Educational Children's Shows, 1990s Movie Soundtracks(11-13-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 170

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The 40th Birthday of the man of your dreams Freddy Krueger. Get a refresher course with some classic 1970s educational children's television shows. What were the top-selling movie soundtracks of the 1990s?
Episode 170 gets you warm and fuzzy with nostalgia as the weather gets cooler.
It begins with the 40th anniversary of Wes Craven's A Nightmare On Elm Street. From its roots based in reality, to how it forever changed the horror genre we take a deep look at the franchise and its leading man Freddy Krueger
Seventies kids rejoice! We go way Back In the Day to rediscover some classic 1970s educational children's television shows. Some of these transcended the decade while others definitely seem dated when looking back. We'll cover all of that ground.
This week it will be a Top 10 instead of a Top 5. We're going to look at the top-selling 1990s movie soundtracks. Many of these were likely on heavy rotation in your Sony Discman but how many of the movies themselves were big hits?
Over the decades thousands upon thousands of stunts have taken place in motion pictures. There had to be a first though. A new This Week In History and Time Capsule are centered around the first big movie stunt.
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Speaker 00:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 170. Nightmare on Elm Street We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at some classic 1970s educational children's shows. Did you watch any of these? There'll be a brand new top five. These are the top five best-selling 1990s movie soundtracks. How many of these were playing on your Sony Discman? And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule centered around the first ever movie stunt. All of that is coming up right now on episode 170 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So what are we going to talk about this week? We're dipping back into spooky season, even though I left it behind a few weeks ago. It's never truly gone. It's literally like a horror movie villain. As we're getting closer toward Thanksgiving and as the weather is changing, getting cooler, the foliage here is pretty much gone. I hope wherever you are, you are having the best day, week possible. Thank you all so much for tuning in to my podcast, for sharing it. Getting the word out to others is the best way to support me because I have so much content that I put out, so much. and I will promote it the best I can, but it means even more when those who aren't me share it and tell others, oh, you gotta check this guy out, his podcast, videos, etc. My biggest thanks, as always, go to my Patreon supporters, Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Marguerite, Leo, Neglectoid, and my newest Patreon, Crystal. Thank you all so much for... actually putting your money where your mouth is and supporting me and my content in the way you do. It's only $5 a month and it gets you access to bonus podcast episodes, one that went up a few weeks ago, the brand new monthly episodes, lots of early access to YouTube videos. I'm also trying to do a lot more on the free tier on Patreon so that people can come and sample and then decide if they want to actually become a paying member. That includes the long, short story that I wrote called What I Learned in My 40s So Far. It's a lot of just me looking back at the last seven years now that my birthday just recently passed. It was definitely very cathartic for someone that is now middle-aged to kind of look back and see if there's any wisdom I learned as I get old and my hair gets more gray. One of those things that I've learned here in getting into my late 40s is at this age now, I feel like I have to work twice as hard to get half as far. And that mainly is speaking to my diet and fitness regimen, which has slacked off somewhat over the last six months, I'd say. But in the last week, two weeks, since my birthday hit, I've been really buckling down as far as what I eat and hitting the gym more than I had been. I'm making exceptions for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Otherwise, yeesh, it's not fun. It's like a barren wasteland of food. I'm trying my best to sound as foolish and jolly as I normally do. But if at times it sounds like I'm a bit bitter, it's because the diet has taken effect. But let's get this party started. We'll go from the nightmare of having to change up my health and my lifestyle... To the nightmare on Elm Street, there's a pretty good segue. As we kick off episode 170 of the podcast with the 40th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and more specifically, its leading man, the man of your dreams, Freddy Krueger. Way back in episode 36 of the podcast, I did a segment about movies that gave me nightmares as a child. In that segment, I tell the story of going to my friend Brian's house and watching A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2, Freddy's Revenge, and being so scared that I needed to go home. My mother needed to walk down the street, probably at 10, 1030 at night, and come and retrieve me. Granted, it was only five or six houses down the street. We lived in a very nice semi-rural neighborhood, very safe in the mid-1980s. But her eight-year-old son was terrified of Freddy Krueger, partially thanks to my friend Brian kind of drilling into my head that once we went to sleep, Freddy was going to come and get me. And I was like, okay, well, if he's going to come and kill me, I might as well be in my own bed. 40 years ago this week, on November 16th, 1984, the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street was released, and Freddy Krueger, the horror movie villain, was released into the zeitgeist of American pop culture. The movie itself is 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and it emerged as a defining moment in horror cinema. The movie was directed by Wes Craven, who was somewhat known in the film industry at the time. He had directed horror classics like Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes. So he was known, but nowhere like now if you talk about Wes Craven. He is definitely revered as one of the greatest directors, at least of the horror genre. His film blended psychological terror with supernatural elements, and it offered a unique, nightmarish experience that reshaped horror storytelling. As I said, Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 was the first one I saw, and the movie gave me nightmares, ironically. But it wasn't until I got older that I realized that the idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street was actually based in real-life reports. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, West Craven read news reports of Southeast Asian refugees who had mysteriously died in their sleep. Many of these individuals reportedly suffered from severe recurring nightmares, with some of them refusing to sleep, fearing that their dreams would lead to their death. Kraven took inspiration from these chilling stories and weaved them into a fictional story that would explore the power of the subconscious and the idea of being killed in one's sleep by a malevolent figure. It's an interesting dichotomy. I've always said when I go, I'd much rather go to sleep and just not wake up. But if you think about the story of Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy Krueger, who's to say that you fall asleep but you get murdered in your dream by some whack job in a green and red sweater? Is that truly better than falling out of a tree? I just picked that one at random. That'll be how I go now because I willed it into existence. For A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven also wanted to address the vulnerability of youth and the idea of rebellion against authority. With Freddy Krueger, the main antagonist, he created a villain whose very existence defied logic, who haunted the minds and dreams of teenagers. Looking back on the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, it would be hard to imagine that Wes Craven was initially unable to sell this idea. and was rejected numerous times. It was a small film production house, New Line Cinema, that took a chance on A Nightmare on Elm Street. And when it became a huge success, New Line Cinema earned the nickname The House That Freddy Built. Horror aficionados kind of know the deal here, but for those that aren't really horror movie fans, before A Nightmare on Elm Street, there was a thing, the slasher genre. And that was dominated by films like Halloween, Friday the 13th, which focused mainly on unseen or masked killers stalking their victims in real life. A Nightmare on Elm Street changed the rules. Freddy Krueger was not a typical masked murderer. He was a killer who existed in the dream realm. And it was a supernatural twist that allowed Wes Craven to experiment with surreal, otherworldly visuals. And Freddy was also different because unlike a lot of these horror movie killers, he would actually speak and taunt you, which I don't know what would be scarier. A hulking brute of a killer with a mask that doesn't say anything or another killer that could be anywhere in your dream and is going to tell you that they're going to kill you. During its initial box office run, A Nightmare on Elm Street made $57 million. or about $173 million when adjusted for inflation to 2024. It was a huge success, and that success came from the unique blend of horror subgenres. Psychological, supernatural, and slasher, all mixed into one. There were amazing practical effects in A Nightmare on Elm Street. I keep going back to Tina's death, where she's basically being dragged up the wall and the ceiling, and it was actually a rotating room. to create that effect. Obviously, the true success of A Nightmare on Elm Street is the Freddy Krueger character, who became a horror icon and pop culture legend. The character of Freddy Krueger was portrayed by Robert Englund. The character was unique not just for his backstory as a child murderer, but also for his disfigured, burned face, the iconic red and green sweater, and his razor-sharp glove that had the finger knives on it. His powers as a dream-stalking killer made him particularly unsettling because he could reach his victims in their most vulnerable state, in sleep. That ability to speak, that dark sense of humor, it added a terrifying yet oddly charismatic layer to his character. In the original Nightmare on Elm Street, he's really not funny. He's actually quite terrifying. But as the sequels go on, there's more and more jokes mixed in with the murders. where the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise became less terrifying and more kind of dark comedy. Sure, the kills would be graphic sometimes, very unique for being in the dream world, but Freddy's one-liners, I guess, seem to make it less scary. And for those of you that have seen all the movies in the franchise, if I start naming off the classic kills, you're going to get a vision of them in your head. Obviously, Johnny Depp in the original, getting sucked into his bed with just this fountain of blood coming out after. There's another one in part four where Joey gets sucked down into his waterbed. Or the girl that's working out and she ends up turning into a cockroach. That one's really gross. That terrified me and I was probably 10 years old when I saw that. I noticed it in particular probably after the success of the third film, which is really good, Dream Warriors. that Freddy Krueger started to become more of a pop culture icon, appearing on merchandise, comic books, video games. He even had a TV series called Freddy's Nightmares. It ran for two seasons and 44 episodes from 1988 to 1990. It was a horror anthology series, although Freddy Krueger would actually be in the show. He'd actually be in some of the stories. Unlike the Friday the 13th anthology show that had nothing to do with Jason Voorhees. For those of you that have seen the movie The Wedding Singer, Adam Sandler movie, his nephews in that in 1985, one of them is dressed as Freddy Krueger with the hat, the mask, and the glove. When I first saw that movie, I saw that kid and I said, he is me. I was that age and I had that costume for Halloween. Although growing up with a couple of dogs, I think my razor glove that was plastic, I think the dogs chewed on the fingers. They weren't whole anymore. They had teeth marks all over them. During the initial run of the franchise, there were six Nightmare on Elm Street films with Freddy's Dead, the final nightmare coming out in 1991. I actually saw that in the theater and it had 3D capabilities at the end of the movie. It made it easier for me to see how much the movie stunk. It wasn't that good, I'll tell you that. Sorry to any of you that love that one best out of the franchise. But then the franchise got another classic with Wes Craven's New Nightmare, where Freddy Krueger, the character, crosses over into real life. In 2003, there was the awesome Freddy vs. Jason monster mashup movie. We will not speak about the 2010 reboot, which was just awful. Yes, I've seen it once, and that's enough. There are always calls for a new Nightmare on Elm Street film, hopefully one way better than the reboot. If that does come to pass, though, sadly Robert Englund won't be playing Freddy anymore. He'll be turning 78 next June, and he has said recently in interviews that his body just can't do what will be asked of him. Because remember, Freddy is not some hulking brute like Jason or Michael Myers that just walks. He's way more of a stuntman type killer. For those of us that grew up in the 1980s though, when the Nightmare on Elm Street films were fresh, there was nothing like a new Freddy movie talking about the kills, his classic one-liners. Sure, it didn't make the movies as scary. But they were great talking points for us kids in fourth, fifth, sixth grade out on the field at recess. The original, though, the original Nightmare on Elm Street, it did more than create a terrifying figure in Freddy Krueger. It explored the depths of fear, youth rebellion, the darker sides of human consciousness. With A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven proved that horror could be more than just blood and jump scares. It could be a psychological exploration of the things we hide within ourselves. That series really created Wes Craven as the icon of Hollywood film, and it was only cemented when he then created Scream in the 1990s. Some of you that are a little younger than me... probably have that same reverence for Wes Craven based on his Scream franchise that I do for him based on the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Today, Freddy Krueger is not just a horror character, but he's a symbol of the slasher genre's golden age. His legacy endures as new generations discover the chilling nightmare that began on Elm Street 40 years ago this week, where no one is safe, not even in their dreams.

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Speaker 00:

This week in history, we are going back 114 years ago to November 12th, 1910, and the completion of what is widely recognized to be the first ever movie stunt. In short, this stunt was performed by a man named Frederick Roman Law, known for his fearless stunts at the time, and he jumped from a burning hot air balloon into the Hudson River. Stunt work has long been a fundamental part of cinema. It thrills audiences with feats of daring, danger, and creativity. But for all of the thousands and thousands of stunts that have been performed in film, there had to be a first. Interestingly, despite this stunt by Frederick Roman Law, jumping from this hot air balloon, being widely recognized as the first movie stunt, very little is known about the film itself. All that can be said for sure is it's a silent movie, but it appears like many silent films of the day that it's been lost to history. I was doing my research and I could not anywhere find the name of the movie that this stunt was in, just the fact that this stunt was done. Laws jump from that hot air balloon, while primitive by today's standards, It introduced the concept of using real live-action stunts to heighten cinematic tension and attract audiences. Although Frederick Roman Law is probably not really remembered, and I bet most of you hearing his name would be like me, like, okay, I don't know who that is. His stunts paved the way for a few more silent film era stuntmen that you may have heard of, and those are Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. As silent films grew in popularity, so did the need for increasingly impressive stunts. Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd were comic actors, but they became known for performing their own stunts. If you've never heard of either of them, go on YouTube and just type in Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton stunt work and look at the compilations of things that they did in the 1920s, where all there was was practical effects. Buster Keaton's most famous stunt and maybe one of the most famous stunts in the history of cinema was in his 1928 movie Steamboat Bill Jr. This is a scene where Buster Keaton is standing on the ground and a whole facade of a house falls around him. And he only survives because where the window was goes over his body. He had to stand on the perfect spot while they literally dropped the side of a house around him. If it had gone wrong, it would have killed him. Harold Lloyd's most famous stunt is probably from his film Safety Last in 1923. And he's climbed a building and he's hanging from the hands of a clock far above the street. It wasn't until the golden age of Hollywood, 1930s and 40s, where stunt doubles became more common. Because as great as the stunts were, you couldn't have your star getting hurt or maybe even killed in a stunt. A lot of these stuntmen and women, many of them had backgrounds in sports, circus performance, rodeo. Jakob McKennett, a former rodeo star, was one of the first famous stuntmen. His work can be seen in the 1939 film Stagecoach, including a daring leap from a horse onto a moving stagecoach. In the last 30 years, with the rise of CGI and digital effects, stunt people always aren't needed as much. Sure, the practical effects are still there, but you're just as likely to have a stunt performed via CGI. Back a hundred years ago, though, there was no such thing as stunt doubles. From Frederick Roman Law's jump to the insane stunts of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. This is a way different world back then. And that first widely recognized movie stunt, jumping out of a burning hot air balloon into the Hudson River, occurred 114 years ago this week in history. got that music playing. It's time for a time capsule. I do not need a stuntman for this. I will do my own stunts of reading these words to you. We're going to go back 46 years ago to November 14th, 1978. Let's find out what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was MacArthur Park by Donna Summer. This was off of Donna Summer's album Live and More, and it spent three weeks at number one, and it earned her her first Grammy nomination for female pop vocal. Donna Summer is widely recognized as the queen of disco, with so many famous hit songs, Last Dance, Hot Stuff, Bad Girls, and MacArthur Park was just one of four number one hit songs that Donna Summer had. The number one movie was The Lord of the Rings, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $2.34. No, I did not mess up my timeline. I was just as confused as some of you might be. The Lord of the Rings is actually an animated film from 1978. This animated film combines what would be the first two of the three Lord of the Rings trilogy that came out in the 21st century. The only famous voice I could find in this film was Anthony Daniels, who you might know as C-3PO from the Star Wars films. It was a financial success, making about $33 million on a budget of $4 million. But there was no sequel made, which is actually pretty surprising. The number one TV show was Laverne and Shirley. The show ran for eight seasons and 178 episodes from 1976 to 1983. Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams play Laverne and Shirley as friends who work as bottle cappers at Schatz Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the late 1950s. In its first four seasons, Laverne and Shirley was a runaway hit, finishing no lower than number three in the ratings for the season. And if you were around back then, November 14th, 1978, maybe it's your 21st birthday and you want to go out and have a drink. Well, the most popular cocktail of the year 1978, at least based on the research I could find, was the Midori Sour. You mix Midori with vodka, lemon juice, lime juice, club soda. Perhaps if you were on Cape Cod at the time, you could order one of these drinks at one of the popular restaurants Bars or clubs like the Mill Hill Club, Compass Lounge, On the Rocks, Sandy Pond Club. Fun fact, I chose this date because it's my mother's 21st birthday. And I said, oh, 21, you could legally drink. Until I looked up and it was the drinking age in Massachusetts was still 18 at the time. Although some states were starting to turn it to 21. So I thought about switching the time capsule to her 18th birthday, but it was too late. I had my song and movie and TV show all picked out. So there you go. It was meant to be a special date, 21st birthday, but oh well. That'll wrap up another time capsule, another This Week in History. But we got a brand new top five doubling as a top ten. as we look at the best-selling movie soundtracks of the 1990s coming up right now. Sometimes a movie soundtrack can be every bit as iconic as that movie itself. And on this brand new Top 5, we're going to look at the best-selling 1990s movie soundtracks. And I'll be straight up, this is one of those that's different than a normal Top 5. Usually I say those are top fives, honorable mentions, in no particular order. Well, all that is scrapped here. This is going to be top ten, but I'm not changing the music for the intro to the segment. Obviously, every now and then I do change-ups to the top five. I do occasional top tens. I do occasional me versus AI top fives. So you should be used to me changing up the formula. An interesting fact that I found while doing research for this segment is that a great soundtrack, a top-selling soundtrack, doesn't necessarily translate to movie success. Of these top 10 soundtracks here, only 4 of the 10 films were in the top 10 highest-grossing movies of the 90s. Let's get right into this, though. 90s Kids Rejoice. We'll start off the countdown with number 10. Armageddon. This soundtrack sold 5.4 million copies. The movie came out in 1998. It's about the asteroid hurtling towards Earth and the group of astronauts that go up to divert it, blow it up. It stars Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler. The song that made the soundtrack is I Don't Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith. It was Aerosmith's only number one song ever. And it's the song that hardcore Aerosmith fans probably hate the most, but yet it went to number one. It reminds me of the Grateful Dead song Touch of Grey that was their big mainstream crossover hit. And there are a lot of hardcore deadheads that hate that song. There were several Aerosmith songs on this soundtrack, I think because Steven Tyler's daughter Liv was one of the stars. But there were also songs by ZZ Top, Bob Seger... And this movie was in the top 10 highest grossing films of the 90s. I will let you know as we go. See if it's what you think. Number nine is Pretty Woman with the soundtrack selling 5.6 million copies. The movie came out in 1990. It stars Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Julia Roberts is a prostitute that is hired by Richard Gere. They end up actually really liking each other. This movie had a lot of great songs in it. Oh Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison, that's the main one, that's what the title of the film comes from. There are other classic songs though. Show Me Your Soul by Red Hot Chili Peppers. It Must Have Been Love by Roxette. A revised version of Fame by David Bowie. There's also the one-hit wonder King of Wishful Thinking by Go West. And a fun fact about Go West is that when I was a kid, the song came out, I was 12, 13. I thought the lead singer was Peter Cetera, who used to be in Chicago. It is not him. But if you go listen to that song now and think Peter Cetera, you're probably going to hear it like I did. Or maybe I'm crazy or both. Number eight was Romeo and Juliet. This soundtrack sold 5.8 million copies. The movie came out in 1996. It starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, and it's based on the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet. The soundtrack's biggest hit is probably Love Fool by the Cardigans, but there are also songs by alternative staples like Garbage, Everclear, Radiohead, Butthole Surfers. I just wanted to say their name. There was also a volume two to the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack, but that was more the orchestral music and it did not sell as well as the main soundtrack. Number seven is Space Jam. This movie soundtrack sold 6.8 million copies. This movie came out in 1996. It is the basketball cartoon crossover with the Looney Tunes characters and Michael Jordan. Sadly now, the most famous song from this soundtrack is I Believe I Can Fly from that scumbag R. Kelly. So it taints it a little bit. But you have some big time 90s artists on this soundtrack like Seal, Coolio, All For One. Space Jam was a big hit. It was not in the top 10 of the 90s. But for a lot of 90s kids, this was their introduction to Looney Tunes. It's not a critical hit. The original Space Jam is 44% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, but it is much better received than the LeBron James Space Jam 2 from 2021. That's 25% fresh, just in case you wanted to compare. Number six is Pulp Fiction. That soundtrack sold 6.8 million copies. This is the classic Quentin Tarantino movie from 1994, starring John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. If it was me, I would say the most well-known song from this soundtrack is Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon by Urge Overkill. But that's my 90s mind. That's the song I first think of. There's also songs by Kool and the Gang, Dusty Springfield, Al Green, and some clips from the movie. So if you really wanted the audio of the Royale with Cheese segment from the movie, you could have it. Number five is Forrest Gump. And this soundtrack sold 8.1 million copies. Forrest Gump is in the top 10 highest grossing films of the 90s. So that's the second of four. This is one of my favorite movies. It's from 1994. Tom Hanks' Forrest Gump as the slightly slow-witted man who grows up in the South in the 50s and he ends up being involved in all these famous events. For me, the Forrest Gump soundtrack was like a greatest hits mix of the previous generation's music, my parents' music. You had all the heavy hitters like Elvis Presley, The Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel. I mean, it's a double album. It'll be forever. It would take me to name all of them, but you get the point. I'd say for me, the song that stuck out most based around its scenes in the film was Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater and it's Forrest Gump in Vietnam walking through the jungles. That kind of sticks out to me. Number four is Waiting to Exhale, and this soundtrack sold 12 million copies. This movie came out in 1995. The soundtrack's sales are based highly around star Whitney Houston. Its most well-known song is the song Exhale by Whitney Houston. That song debuted at number one, and it was Whitney Houston's 11th and final number one song. But the album, it's a collection of all the best of female R&B in the 1990s. Besides Whitney Houston, there's Toni Braxton, Mary J. Blige, Brandy. You've even got Aretha Franklin, TLC, SWV, any other rhyming acronyms I could come up with. So that album was a massive hit because of Whitney Houston. The next one was a massive hit because of another artist. We go to number three. The Lion King. This soundtrack sold 14.5 million copies. This movie came out in 1994. It's an animated film about young lion Simba, who is the heir to the throne of his father, Mufasa. This film is one of the top 10 highest grossing films of the 90s. But this soundtrack is made by all of the great songs by Elton John. Circle of Life and Can You Feel the Love Tonight. I mean, those are classics of early to mid 90s pop music. So as we've gone through this top 10 list so far, you can see the increasing number of sales. They've been kind of bunched together. Armageddon was 5.4 million up to Lion King at number three is 14.5. We've got two more left, and I'm figuring those of you that grew up in the 90s can see where this is going. These are the two big heavy hitters. So we go from 14.5 million sales of The Lion King to 30 million sales with number two, Titanic. This is the number one highest grossing film of the 90s, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, about the ill-fated ocean liner's journey to Those of you that know this movie can probably already hear Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On song, or at least the music to it in your head. The crazy thing is that's really the only song on this soundtrack. All the rest is orchestral and ambient music from the film. It just goes to show you the power of that movie, the power of Celine Dion's song. Because you're basically spending, whatever, $17.99 on a CD back in 1997 for one song. Granted, I was a sucker, and at times in the late 90s, early 2000s, I would go to the Spinnaker record store in Hyannis near me and buy some sort of import CD of Nirvana, spend $18 for one song I'd never heard. So I'm not immune from foolish spending. But that leads us to number one. 90s kids, you know what it is. 45 million sales for number one, The Bodyguard. It's Whitney Houston. It's I Will Always Love You. This came out in 1992. And this soundtrack, the movie, it's all based around Whitney Houston. This was her peak as a star. 45 million albums sold. And although this movie was a big hit, it grossed over $110 million. It ends up being the number 26 highest grossing film of the 90s. But there you have it, the top 10 best-selling 1990s movie soundtracks. I had to do a lot of research to get accurate numbers. There were some sites that had different movies, so I had to keep cross-checking. It was like being a reporter and having to have two separate sources with the same info. But we're going to go from 1990s movies to 1970s educational children's shows. So get ready to learn while you're wearing your bell-bottoms and platform shoes. The 70s really were the dawning of the golden age of educational children's television. This is where a lot of classic shows, ones that were popular beyond the 70s, came into be. These shows were meant to be entertaining and engaging for children while also teaching math, science, basic social skills, reading. What I did here is I collected eight from the 1970s, Some that you will definitely remember if you grew up then, but then a few others that I think you might not remember. So it'll be fun. It's like an educational segment. You'll learn some new shows to go watch. In episode 145, I did a segment on 1980s educational children's shows. That is where you will hear me talk about Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Just putting that out there because I know they were big in the 70s as well. But because I first saw them in the 80s, I like to put them there as part of my childhood. A few of these shows were still in syndication and reruns when I was little, so I have minimal memories of them. There were two I immediately thought of as far as educational kids shows in the 70s. The first one is Electric Company.

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Hey you guys! Coming down!

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The show was on PBS from 1971 to 1977. 780 total episodes. It's got that theme song that kids in the 70s remember. The original cast for The Electric Company included Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman. The show was targeted for slightly older kids, ages 6 through 10, roughly. This taught basic reading and grammar. There were recurring sketches and songs. This show was hugely popular, but one problem was that, unlike Sesame Street, it didn't have the standout characters. Basically meaning the show was just the show. It didn't have anything that it could market out as far as toys or games. There was an attempted reboot in the late 2000s, but that seems to have only lasted a couple of seasons. Because you know, most reboots are not anywhere as good as the original. The other show I thought of immediately when putting together a list of educational kids shows from the 70s was Schoolhouse Rock.

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As your body grows bigger, your mind must flower. It's great to learn, cause knowledge is power. That

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is Schoolhouse Rock with an exclamation point to remember the excitement of the show. The show originally ran on ABC from 1973 to 1985. Interestingly, despite it being on for that long, there were only 65 episodes in the original run of Schoolhouse Rock. This Saturday morning show included the normal math, reading, and grammar, but it was also economics, history, civics. There were famous songs like Conjunction Junction or The Bill Song. Schoolhouse Rock is so known for its songs that in 1996, a four CD set of music from the show was released. It's got all your favorite songs from the show. Those of you that grew up watching it would remember. Three is a Magic Number, Elementary My Dear, and these songs were mainly all performed by jazz musician Bob Dorough. The next one you might not remember as much, and it was a show called Zoom. I got a little confused here because there was a Zoom show that came out in the late 1990s. And that show was on for seven seasons. I can remember my nieces, Kaylee and Emma, watching that show and that theme song. No, this is not that show. The original Zoom came out in 1972 on WGBH. Well, that was our PBS station. That's what it is here in eastern New England, eastern Massachusetts. The show had 155 episodes across six seasons from 1972 to 78. The show was inspired by Sesame Street and The Electric Company, but it was meant to have the focus be mainly on kids with no adults on screen, and it was mostly unscripted, which that could have been a recipe for disaster. The cast of kids were known as Zoomers. They had games, plays, jokes, recipes, all kid stuff like that. This is the show that introduced its own language. They call it the Ubby Dubby language, where the syllable U-B was added to most words. You're going to make me do it, aren't you? It sounds like this. There, I did it for you. What's interesting is the next one I'm going to talk about, Fat Albert has the character Mushmouth that talks kind of like that anyway. I didn't put those back-to-back intentionally, and now I'm like, wow, that was no coincidences.

Speaker 02:

Hey, hey, hey, it's Fat Albert, and I want to sing a song for you.

Speaker 00:

The full name of this show was The Adventures of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. The show was on for eight seasons, starting in 1972. The show was known for its music. It was known for main character Fat Albert with his big red sweater and his trademark, hey, hey, hey. Are you getting all the voices just in this segment? There were cartoon segments. There were live action segments with Bill Cosby. There was always some sort of educational lesson with each show. That lesson would usually feature all the characters of the show in a junkyard playing their instruments and singing about whatever the lesson was. My first introduction to Fat Albert was in the Big Brothers and Big Sisters PSA that featured... A kid that knows Fat Albert waiting for his big brother and Fat Albert saying he never knew he had a big brother. The next one I want to get into, some of you might not know of. Maybe you will. Do you remember Jabberwocky?

Speaker 02:

This

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show was on from 1974 to 78. This show was interesting because it started as a local show in Boston and then went national. There were real people and puppets. The show was geared towards kids age 5 to 10. It has a bit of a trippy animated intro, and there's a puppet filthy Frank. I think I have memories of this show because growing up where I did, even long after this show was canceled, it would have remained in syndication in Boston into my youth. Because I remember this show as a kid, mainly because the name Jabberwocky was fun to say. Another one that's got a name that's fun to say but I had never heard of was Hodgepodge Lodge. This was another PBS show. It was on from 1970 to 1977. and it really centered around nature. It was hosted by Miss Jean Worthley. And like I said, she would teach you about nature, trees, wild animals, all in this calm setting around the namesake Hodgepodge Lodge. A crazy fact about this show is that originally there were 760 episodes of Hodgepodge Lodge. And because of saving money, The Maryland Broadcasting Company that originally ran HodgePodge Lodge, they taped over almost all of the shows. So out of over 760 episodes, only 30 of them remain. We go from a forgotten childhood classic of the 70s to one that was popular for decades, and that was Captain Kangaroo.

Speaker 02:

Good morning, Captain, won't you come on out and

Speaker 00:

play? Actor Bob Keeshan was the Captain Kangaroo character. The show was on for 29 seasons from 1955 to 1984. Keishin based the show on the warm relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, and that's kind of the vibe he wanted to give off. Captain Kangaroo lived in the treasure house, and that's where most of the stories took place. There were guests and stories and colorful characters, puppets. This show had things like picture pages that Bill Cosby did. Captain Kangaroo reading stories, which is how a lot of kids got introduced to Curious George, the curious little monkey. Characters like Mr. Green Jeans. And on the first of every month, Captain Kangaroo would have a birthday cake dedicated to all the kids that had birthdays that month. The last one I wanted to talk about, it's a... slight bit of a cheat in that it's not a full children's show, but it was a segment during Saturday morning cartoons that a lot of you probably remember, or if you don't remember, when I play this music here, you might remember.

Speaker 01:

In the News

Speaker 00:

was a two-minute long segment that was on from 1971 to 1986. It would summarize news stories for kids and preteens. These ran on CBS, and they'd be considered something like a micro-series I've seen as a possible name for it. CBS News journalists Christopher Glenn, Doug Poling, and Gary Shepard, they narrated the segments. The logo was either a spinning sphere within the news written or a non-spinning one, depending on when you first remember seeing these. Finding these again came through my enjoyment of watching old commercial compilations on YouTube. That music played at the beginning of the brief segment, I said, wait, that kind of sounds familiar. It's like it unlocked memories from my childhood. Any of you have that, where you hear a noise, a song, and it just opens up memories from the past? That's what In The News did. 70s kids, do you remember any of those children's shows, educational children's shows? Like I said, I'm a child of the 80s, so I do remember briefly fleeting moments of Electric Company, Schoolhouse Rock, In the News, Jabberwocky because it was a Boston show. In the future, I'll do a 90s children's shows one, maybe 60s, but that's about it. There you go. Check out any of these shows. and relearn stuff you forgot from when you were a kid. But until next time, that will wrap up episode 170 of the podcast. It's amazing as I add numbers to this show. When I first thought about making a podcast over four years ago, I think I was hopeful that I would just have time to record five or six of them, let alone getting up closer to 200 episodes. Thank you again so much to all of you who tune in. I know I've got a lot of listeners from New England. It kind of makes sense. But I've got tons of people from the Northeast, New York, all across this country, the United States. And even though when I check my numbers, 92% of my downloads are from the United States. That means that 8% are not. That means 8% of the people listening are from other countries, which is mind blowing. Because my show really started off as Cape Cod, New England centric. Granted, now it's more Gen X nostalgia, which appeals to a broader base. But some of you found me before when I was talking about Cape Cod road trips and history. So thank you for being here. Share the podcast. Share the YouTube video. Subscribe on YouTube if you haven't. If you want to become a subscriber on Patreon, $5 a month gets you access to all the bonus stuff I talked about at the beginning of the show. You can buy me a coffee if you want. That's single-time stuff, not recurring like Patreon. Go and watch the webcam weekly wrap-up podcast that I do. They're video shows. I typically record them right after I do this podcast. I'm pretty wiped out by the end of them. I'm kind of punch drunk. Those are just based around my week that was. I've always got something interesting going on. Whether it's foolishness from my life or actual interesting stuff. Next week is episode 171. The week after there will be no live podcast because that's the week of Thanksgiving. So I'm going to stuff you full the week before, filled with nostalgia. And if you've got any left over, you can shove it in a Tupperware container. So we'll talk all about the rise and fall and potential saving grace of Tupperware. That's a big part of my life in the 80s and 90s. I wanted to take a moment here at the end. As this podcast goes live, tomorrow will be my mother's birthday. I do have several friends and family that are big supporters of the podcast, my work, but there's no one who's a bigger supporter than my mother. You know, it's funny. Here I am, 47 years old, and I'm still, anytime anything good happens in my life, I always want to make sure I tell my mother first. Because I know there's no one in the world it will matter to more. Well, maybe to me, if it's happening to me. Happy birthday to my mom. I love you very much. By this time, you will probably have gotten your birthday present. I'm looking at it right now. There's a tease. Although, actually, you might listen to this on the day it comes out, which would mean you wouldn't have it yet. Uh-oh. You won't be able to be as big a supporter as my mom is to me, but if you want to check out any of my nine books, visit my website, ChristopherSatterlund.com. I do have copies of several books. If you're looking for holiday gifts, you can find me all over social media. Shoot me a message. I do Venmo for my books. I didn't do Venmo until I did an event earlier this year at a retirement home. And one of the residents at a retirement home said, why don't you do Venmo? It's like, what is happening here? It was like, I'm supposed to tell you that about technology. And wherever you are listening from, if the weather is good today, Get out there and enjoy it. The vitamin D, especially now as we up here in the northern hemisphere are going to be heading into winter. You need all that vitamin D you can get. And some of you that listen in the southern states of the U.S., it's never cold for you. Well, not compared to the northeast, but enjoy it. Make us in the northeast jealous with the nice weather. But this is my favorite time of year, so I trade the hot weather for cooler weather as long as I can celebrate birthdays and holidays. But you don't have to wait for birthdays or holidays to celebrate. You can celebrate every day, any day. And remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life. Because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all again for tuning in to episode 170. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. Talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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