In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 177: 1995 Year In Music Pt. 1, What Was The Noid?, 1980s FOX TV Show Fails, Debut of Apple iTunes(1-8-2025)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 177

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A look back at 1995 the year in music. What in the world was The Noid? Some of the early fails of the FOX television network.
Episode 177 helps light a fire of nostalgia during the dark days of winter.
The show kicks off with a killer guitar riff and thumping bass line as we look at 1995 the year in music. This is the first of two parts. It covers January - June 1995. The rest of the year will be covered in July.
The 1980s were filled with unique and sometimes downright weird product mascots. Perhaps none exemplified those descriptions like The Noid. A creation of Domino's Pizza the Noid was meant to shine a positive light on the pizza chain's quality and delivery service. Did it work? We'll do a deep dive.
Although it seems like forever the FOX television network has been around for less than four decades. Those initial years of the late 1980s were filled with growing pains. This week's Top 5 takes a look at some of the biggest show failures of the FOX network in the 1980s. Married with Children and The Simpsons are NOT on this list.
There is also a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule focused on the groundbreaking creation of Apple's iTunes.
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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 177. The holidays are officially over. It's now the dog days of winter, but I've got the cure for the winter blues, and that is a heaping dose of nostalgia. We're going to kick it off by going back 30 years and looking at 1995, the year in music, part one, January through June. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at just what in the world was the Noid, the Domino's mascot from the 80s. There'll be a brand new Top 5. These are the Top 5 1980s Fox Network TV show fails when that network was just starting out. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time capsule going way back to the beginning of this century and the debut of Apple's iTunes. All of that is coming up right now on episode 177 of the In My Footsteps podcast. No New Year's, no holiday celebrations, no nothing. It's just dog days of winter. But hey, you're here with me. I'm going to take the next almost hour to try to warm you up with some fun nostalgia. It's always a weird bit of a letdown for me. As you know, my favorite time of year, it's basically from Labor Day through the end of the year. And here we are, the furthest we can get from that favorite time of year again. How many of you out there have already fallen off with your New Year's resolutions? Like I said last week, don't worry if you have. You can start over fresh the next day or just not tell people that you fell off. Just pretend you did. It's a new year, but I can't start off this podcast without how I typically start it off, and that's thanking my Patreon subscribers, Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Marguerite, Leo, Neglectoid, Crystal. I hope all of you are having the best new year as possible. Thank you for being my backers on Patreon, helping me in my quest to be a totally self-employed, self-sufficient... content creator. If you want to help me out on my journey, if you enjoy my work, $5 a month on Patreon gets you access to bonus podcast episodes, early access to YouTube videos. I'm constantly trying to come up with new things that I can put on Patreon, whether behind the paywall or for the free tier, including the Chris Unfiltered AI TV show that's based around Old initial impressions blogs that I did from 2010 to 2012. I've been picking the most random ones out and feeding the text into ChatGPT and asking it to make a TV show based on the blog with me as the main character. I just put the second episode up, I think last week. The title they came up with for episode two of Chris Unfiltered was Snowball Fights and Stale Vomit. I mean, if that's not a teaser to get you to go read it, I don't know what is. Don't you want to know what stale vomit is? I've got more housekeeping stuff to get into at the end of the podcast, but I want to deliver on what I promised, and that's a heaping dose of nostalgia. For the podcast, now as I'm entering my fifth year of doing it, I've been going back 30 years and doing the year in music. Because I was a child of the 80s, teenager of the 90s, so 90s music, that sticks out to me more than the 80s did. And what we're going to do is we're going to run through the first six months of 1995 and look at the Year in Music Part 1 coming up right now on episode 177 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Oh man, my childhood gets further and further away as every day passes. I mean, I love nostalgia. It's a way to reconnect with my youth, but it also reinforces the fact that I am not young anymore and that each day I get older. All this sad prologue here is leading up to what should be fun, and it will be fun, looking at 1995 The Year in Music Part 1. There's no way that I could fit the entire year in one segment. It would be way too long, and it's more fun to split it in half, do the part two in July, and dive a little bit deeper. I will say, there is a lot to get into in the first six months of 1995. If you need to know, I was a junior in high school in 1995. Grunge music was technically not dead. I mean, when Kurt Cobain died in 1994, that was kind of the beginning of the end. There was something kind of, they called post-grunge. Me, I was still all into the alternative music. Torn jeans, flannel shirts. Still listening to tons of Nirvana, but also holding tight to the other alternative bands that I loved as you never knew who was going to be the next band to break up or have a member pass away. Man, that's way more depressing than I thought it would be. So let's dive into this before it gets like into a therapy session. We're going to kick off 1995 on January 24th. This was the release of Van Halen's album Balance. This was the band's 10th studio album and their fourth and final album with second lead singer Sammy Hagar. It included the hit song I Can't Stop Loving You, there's another great song Not Enough that I really enjoy. In total, the album has sold around 4 million copies since its release. Also on January 24th, Billy Joel ended his River of Dreams tour. This tour lasted about two years and had about 135 shows, supporting his River of Dreams album from 1993. It was also a sad chapter in Billy Joel's life as right before the tour began, he and his wife Christy Brinkley separated and their divorce was finalized before this tour ended. 1995 began with Boyz II Men's song On Bended Knee at number one. It would be number one for six non-consecutive weeks. It was finally knocked from the number one spot on January 28th by TLC's song Creep, which would spend four weeks at number one and would definitely not be their biggest hit of 1995. On February the 15th, rapper and singer Megan Thee Stallion was born. She has come of age as a musician in a time where album sales aren't as impressive as they were 20, 30 years ago. You have to look more at streams. I won't get deep into the numbers, but she's got right around 30 million monthly listeners on Spotify. I'd kill for 1% of that. On February the 17th, Blink-182 released their debut album Cheshire Cats. Since then, the pop-punk band has gone on to sell well over 50 million albums. On February 18th, Pearl Jam kicked off their Vitology tour, which was in support of their third album, Vitology. This was the last of their albums to be more mainstream alternative, as they drifted away from that a bit until 2006's self-titled album. Also on that day, the hit song I Believe by Blessed Union of Souls was released. On February 19th, there was a famous slash infamous union as Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee married Baywatch actress Pam Anderson. I remember being quite jealous as I was a huge fan of Pamela Anderson, including having a calendar of her on my wall. I'm pretty sure I was not the only teenager in the mid-90s to have a crush on Pamela Anderson, so I'm not that special. On February the 25th, Madonna's song Take a Bow went to number one, where it would stay for seven weeks. This was off of her sixth studio album Bedtime Stories. On February 27th, Alternative band Better Than Ezra released their album Deluxe, which had the rock hit song Good. Fun fact, my friend Barry and I saw Better Than Ezra at Pufferbelly's nightclub in Hyannis in 2000. I don't remember much about that night except it being very crowded and remembering when they played the song Good, which I think was near the end. Like they wanted to make sure you stayed around for the whole set. They didn't lead with the song and then have half the crowd leave. On February the 28th, Jewel released her debut album Pieces of You. This had the hit songs Who Will Save Your Soul, Foolish Games, and You Were Meant for Me. Also on February 28th, R&B group All For One released their song I Can Love You Like That. We move into March. March the 1st was the Grammy Awards, including Sheryl Crow winning Best New Artist. She also won Record of the Year for All I Wanna Do. Album of the Year went to Tony Bennett for his MTV Unplugged. Bruce Springsteen was the biggest winner of the night, taking home four Grammys, including Song of the Year. On March 13th, Radiohead released their second album, The Benz. This was the album where you could tell they were not a typical rock band because they were compared to U2 at the beginning with their song Creep. Little did we know a few years later when OK Computer came out, which was a major departure from their usual sound. On March the 14th, rapper Tupac released his album Me Against the World. This album would have a unique distinction between as the album would end up going to number one while Tupac was in prison, making him the first musician to have a number one album while in jail. Also on March 14th, the Goo Goo Dolls released their album A Boy Named Goo, and Collective Soul released their self-titled album. On March 21st, Stevie Wonder released his album Conversation Piece. which was his first full-length non-soundtrack album in eight years. It had the hit song For Your Love. On March the 26th, former NWA member and rapper Eazy-E died of complications from AIDS, which that's one, it's unbelievable. Thinking of all these things that are 30 years old, I can't believe Eazy-E died 30 years ago. On March the 27th, Silver Chair, the alternative band, released their first album Frog Stomp. This had the hit song Tomorrow. I really liked Silver Chair because all the members of the band were younger than me, which made me think that I was able to become a member of an alt-rock band while in high school. On March the 31st, Selena Quintanilla Perez, known basically just as Selena, the queen of Tejano music, was murdered by the president of her fan club. I think I had just heard of who Selena was maybe a week or two before she was murdered because she had started promoting her first total English language album. That's another one. It's unbelievable that it's 30 years ago. We move into April, April the 7th. R&B singer Monica released her single Don't Take It Personal, which is probably an anthem of a lot of girls that I went to high school with, and my junior year history teacher, I think it was history teacher, who used to always say don't take it personal when he would kind of insult people in the class. On April the 11th, White Zombie released their final album Astro Creep 2000. This had the song More Human Than Human with lead singer Rob Zombie going on to have his own solo career and career in film as a director. On April 14th, beloved singer Burl Ives died. He was 85 years old, but he's known a lot for the Christmas songs that he did in the 1960s. On April the 15th, R&B singer Montel Jordan's song This Is How We Do It went to number one, where it would stay for seven weeks. This song has been a staple of school dances, nightclubs, ever since then. On April 22nd, British rock band Oasis ended their Definitely Maybe tour. This was in support of their debut album. definitely maybe, which had the song Live Forever. And I don't know for sure, but I think it was the only tour they ever had where the brothers didn't beat the hell out of each other. By the way, what's the over-under on how many shows Oasis gets through in their 2025 reunion tour before Liam and Noel Gallagher decide they hate each other again? Also on April 22nd, Janet Jackson ended her Janet tour. There were 125 shows on the tour and her Janet album has sold almost 15 million copies worldwide since its release in 1993. We move into May. May the 2nd, singer-songwriter Jill Sobule released her song I Kissed a Girl. Thirteen years later, in 2008, singer Katy Perry released a song with the same name, and Jill Sobule went into a profanity-laced rant against the song, although later on she said it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but I don't know. In a harbinger of things to come, on May the 15th, Stone Temple Pilots lead singer Scott Weiland was arrested for possession of heroin. I remember seeing Stone Temple Pilots in concert in 1996, and it was maybe not that show, but it was within the next couple of shows that Weiland was arrested and sent to jail. On May 29th, legendary British rock band Pink Floyd released the live album Pulse. I remember this one from going into stores at the time. Newberry Comics or Strawberries. And when it was in the new release section, it had a little red light that would blink. So it was very distracting, but it made people, I think, want to buy it because it was unique. Also on May the 29th, Jamaican musician Shaggy released his song Boombastic. Shaggy has a very unique voice. He sounds like he's got something stuck in his throat. Now when you go to listen to his music, you're going to hear that. Oh, he's got something in his throat. He's got to clear his throat. Now we've made it to June 1995. On June the 3rd, Bryan Adams' song Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman goes to number one, where it spent five weeks. On June the 5th, Irish rock band U2 released their song Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me from the Batman Forever soundtrack. This is a song that I enjoy, but I know it gets pretty poor reviews from musical critics, if you want to take their word. I think the fact that the movie wasn't that great kind of sours the soundtrack, but what do I know? On June the 13th, Alanis Morissette released her monumental album Jagged Little Pill. When I talked about that Monica single being an anthem for girls I went to high school with, this whole album is basically filled with them. You Oughta Know, Ironic, Head Over Feet, Hand In Pocket, All I Really Want. I mean, all these songs were hits. Alanis Morissette, at least to me, kind of came out of nowhere. The album has sold more than 33 million copies worldwide. But when I saw her, I'm like, wait, is she the girl that was on You Can't Do That on television, on Nickelodeon? And she was, not for many episodes, but she was. On June the 20th, Michael Jackson released his double album, His Story, which was one album of greatest hits and one album of new material. It included his last number one song, You Are Not Alone. This album has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, which I don't know why I didn't think it was as big of a seller when it came out. By this point, Michael Jackson had fully crossed over to where his personal life overshadowed his music, so he was definitely on the downslope of his popularity. On June the 21st, we had the debut of the Warped Tour. Not the Vans Warped Tour yet. That would come next year in 1996. This tour is kind of associated with skater, skateboard culture, punk rock, a little bit of alternative, emo, that type of stuff. 1995's tour was headlined by Sublime and No Doubt. And this is before No Doubt released their Tragic Kingdom album, so they were still slightly under the radar. On June 23rd, R&B group Groove Theory released their song Tell Me. I enjoyed this song so I figured I would share it with you. Now you can go on Spotify and listen to it if you don't remember this song. And finally, June the 27th, rock band Bon Jovi released their album These Days. This album was not as successful as their past albums, although it did have the song Something for the Pain, which had a unique music video with the band playing with impersonators of other singers like Eddie Vedder, Scott Weiland, Courtney Love. It would be five years before Bon Jovi made a comeback in 2000 with their album Crush that had the song It's My Life. And there you have it. That is 1995 The Year in Music Part 1. Not quite a speed run through it, I tried to give you the main point and maybe a little bit of extra with it, but now you can see why I couldn't do the entire year in one segment. It would be the whole podcast, which would be fine, but I've got a lot more to share with you. And we'll do part two of 1995, the year in music, in July. So you've got that to look forward to. And a full playlist of 95 music that you can go look up now. This week in history, we are going back 24 years ago to January 9th, 2001 and the debut of Apple's iTunes. It's hard to believe this is almost a quarter century ago now, the debut of iTunes. It was a pivotal moment in the history of music and technology. It can't be overstated. I record this podcast on my laptop and I'm looking at the taskbar at the bottom of my screen and there's the iTunes logo right there. iTunes wasn't just a software application. It became the cornerstone of Apple's digital music strategy and it reshaped how music was bought, organized, and consumed. We got to go back a few years before to kind of get why this was so important. In the late 90s, the internet wasn't what it was even 10 years later, but digital music was gaining traction with the rise of MP3 file formats. This allowed high-quality music to be stored in small file sizes. I mean, small was relative back then. Super long download times. The files were typically bigger until compression became something you could really do years later. But the digital music also led to... Music piracy, fueled by platforms like Napster, and later on, sites like LimeWire. Apple CEO Steve Jobs recognized the potential of digital music, and he aimed to create a legitimate and seamless ecosystem for music lovers. Jobs wanted a single application that could organize music libraries, play tracks, and connect seamlessly with Apple hardware. I've never owned a Mac computer or laptop, but I can only imagine that Apple products, iTunes, probably blends better with those. In 2000, Apple acquired SoundJam MP, which is a popular Mac-only MP3 player application created by software developers Jeff Robin, Bill Kincaid, and Dave Heller. I tried to find out how much they paid for it. It's an undisclosed amount. But Apple then tasked these three developers with refining and simplifying the software and then integrating it with Apple's hardware and aesthetic philosophy. Fast forward to January 9th, 2001, and Steve Jobs unveils iTunes during Macworld Expo. And it was offered as a free download. The tagline at the time was Rip Mix Burn. It emphasized the ability to rip CDs to create digital MP3 files, mix playlists, burn CDs. iTunes 1.0 featured a clean, user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop functionality, support for importing music from CDs and organizing it by album artist genre. It was naturally a Mac-exclusive product at first. And what's crazy is it was basically for music storage and converting to MP3s because the iTunes Store wouldn't be around for more than two years. It was April 2003 which debuted the iTunes Music Store, which really transformed iTunes into a platform for legally purchasing music. With all of the songs starting at 99 cents, making music affordable. This allowed you to buy individual songs rather than a full album. You know, if you spent $16, $17 on a CD for one song, or even $4.99 for a CD single, this was a way better deal. The creation of the store led to the demise of physical media. It empowered independent artists. It led to new revenue models and the rise of streaming services. Like I said, you cannot understate the importance of the debut of iTunes. And that initial launch of iTunes 1.0 for the Apple Mac products occurred 24 years ago this week in history. Oh, here we go. A new time capsule with the same funky music. For this time capsule, we're sticking with the day that iTunes debuted, January 9th, 2001. What was going on in the world of pop culture back then? Let's find out. The number one song was Independent Women Part 1 by Destiny's Child. This song was on the soundtrack to the movie Charlie's Angels. It spent 11 weeks at number one and was rated the 18th best song of the 2000s by Billboard magazine. The song was released later in 2001 on Destiny's Child album Survivor, which ended up selling more than 10 million copies worldwide. The number one movie was Save the Last Dance, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $5.65. This is a dance movie produced by MTV Films starring Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas. It received mixed reviews. It's 54% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, but it was a major hit, making over $130 million on a budget of $13 million. The number one TV show was ER. I'm resigned to the fact that certain TV shows seem to be number one for certain eras of these time capsules I do. I think this is probably half a dozen times I've had ER as the top show. It's a medical drama. It was on for 15 seasons and 331 total episodes from 1994 to 2009. And it had loads of famous people, George Clooney, Noah Wiley, Anthony Edwards, Juliana Margulies, Eric LaSalle. And if you were around back then, I know I was, January 9th, 2001, you have just heard about the release of iTunes, but you don't have a Mac? Uh-oh. How are you going to get iTunes? Well, you're in luck. If you go to big box stores like Best Buy, you could get yourself the top of the line Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 laptop. It was an inch thick. It weighed five pounds. It could have RAM speed enhanced up to one gig. It had five hours of battery life. It had a DVD drive. Sounds good, right? Well, if you want one, it's going to set you back $3,499 or $6,233 when adjusted for inflation to 2025. Was that laptop good? Is it $6,000 adjusted value good? I don't know. But there you have it. A brand new This Week in History, a brand new Time Capsule. There was no YouTube when the Apple Titanium PowerBook came out, which is where you'll have to go to find any of these shows that are coming up in the top five. So let's look at the 1980s Fox TV show fails coming up right now. It's hard to believe that the Fox network, the group of networks, hasn't been around forever. I'm actually old enough to remember when we had a knob-turn TV for the stations. We had the three, ABC, NBC, CBS, a couple of local stations, maybe a PBS. And then in 1986, 87, this brand new network came out. Fox TV, based around the 21st century Fox movie studio. There were definitely growing pains for the first few years of the network. For every Married with Children or The Simpsons or Beverly Hills 90210 that came out, there were shows that I can't believe people greenlighted and put on the air. But I guess when you're looking to fill time on a new network, you try a lot of different things. What we're going to do now is the top five 1980s Fox TV show fails. I'm sticking with the 80s because there's a lot of meat on the bone there. As with many of these top fives, there are honorable mentions and the top five itself is in no particular order. So let's just jump into some of these honorable mentions. I'll give you a little bit of info with these just so that if you go and check them out and they're terrible, I can at least say I warned you. Honorable mentions for 1980s Fox TV show fails include The Late Show, This was a late night talk show starring Joan Rivers that was one of the first shows ever on Fox. It was canceled after two years and also ended up leading to the Arsenio Hall show as he was on the late show when it started. Another honorable mention is the Wilton North Report. This was the replacement for the late show when it was canceled. It lasted less than two months. It was another news magazine type show. Another honorable mention was Dirty Dozen the Series. This is based on the 1967 World War II movie. It was on for one season in 1988 with only nine of its 12 episodes airing. Another honorable mention was Mr. President. This was a sitcom created by Johnny Carson's company and starred George C. Scott as the President of the United States. The show lasted two seasons and 24 episodes, with it ultimately being canceled with George C. Scott saying how bad the work environment was on the show. And the final honorable mention is Open House. The show lasted one season and 24 episodes from 1989 into 1990. It was a spinoff of the TV show Duet and was a breakout role for a young Ellen DeGeneres. So there are the honorable mentions. Had you heard of any of those shows? Well, let's get into the actual top five, starting with number one, Second Chance. The show was on in 1987. And what's crazy is there was actually a show in 2016 on Fox called Second Chance. So it's like the second chance for the title. The show's premise is based around a man who dies and he tries to get into heaven, but they say he's not good enough for heaven, but too good for hell. So they send him back to Earth in 1987 to help his younger self through life. The show had 21 episodes. It's mostly known for two things. Being a breakout role for Matthew Perry, who played the younger self of the man who dies. And also being renamed to Boys Will Be Boys. It's like the ratings were so bad, they tried to change the title of the show to get people to come over. Like, ooh, what's this new show? And it's like, wait a minute, it's the same one. It did not help. Number two. is The New Adventures of Beans Baxter. Benjamin Baxter. I think he may be the best courier the network's ever had.

Speaker 04:

Ever?

Speaker 00:

Yeah, man. I laughed when I saw the title, so I said, that's gotta go in there. The show starred Jonathan Ward as Benjamin Beans Baxter. It's an action comedy series, which revolved around spy activities of Beans Baxter, who moves from Kansas to Washington, D.C. with his family. The show debuted in 1987. It was on for two seasons, but only a total of 17 episodes. Number three is Down and Out in Beverly Hills.

Speaker 01:

If that title

Speaker 00:

sounds familiar to a lot of you 80s kids, yes, this was a TV show based on the movie. The movie starred Nick Nolte, Richard Dreyfuss, Bette Midler... The TV show has none of them. The show debuted in April 1987. 13 total episodes were made of this show with five being unaired. The show is about a rich but dysfunctional family in Beverly Hills that saves the life of a homeless man who in the movie tries to drown himself in their pool. It's definitely an odd movie to be chosen to be made into a TV show, but maybe that's just me. Number four. is Women in Prison. This is another one where you see the title. What in the world is that? It's like Beans Baxter and Women in Prison. These were on Fox's lineup. This show is a comedy, and it's based around the interactions of inmates at an all-women's prison. Only 13 episodes were made of this show, and it was on from October of 87 through February of 88. This was the stereotypical slice-of-life TV show with a yuppie, an old woman, different backgrounds, different races. I mean, I guess they tell you all you need to know with the title. Yeah, it's women in prison. I guess they wanted you to know what they were peddling right away before you spend a few minutes watching it. Michael Moyet and Ron Leavitt were the people that created this show, and if their names sound familiar, they created Married with Children. So you talk about one major Fox hit and then women in prison. Sorry. And finally, number five on the top five 1980s Fox show TV fails was Karen's Song. This one I found really interesting because it stars Patty Duke as a 40-something divorced mother who begins dating a much younger man, much to the chagrin of her daughter, Terry Hatcher. 13 episodes were filmed of this show, but four were unaired. This show seems like if they had done it a few years later, when Terry Hatcher was more famous, maybe it would have been a bigger hit. Patty Duke was a big star in the 1960s. She had her Patty Duke show, which we 80s kids remember from Nick at Night. So maybe people didn't want to see sweet, wholesome Patty Duke being a cougar chasing younger guys around. But that wraps up the top five 1980s Fox TV show fails. There are plenty more. I could do another segment for early 90s fails. I found a lot of shows that I thought were 80s that were actually... early 90s, and I had to be true to my list. But how many of these did you ever heard of? Had you ever watched? Did you watch women in prison? Try Google searching women in prison and see what you get in your search results. Don't do it if you're at work, though. So we go from 80s TV show fails to 80s mascot fails, or at least weird 80s mascots. So let's look now at what the hell was the Noid? There are a lot of iconic product mascots in the 1980s. Ones that I remember growing up with. Poppin' Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy. The Hamburger Helper, White Glove. The Energizer, Bunny. Spuds McKenzie, the Dog. And various cereal mascots. Tony the Tiger. The Rice Krispie Guys. Captain Crunch. I mean, I could just name millions. The Noid is a unique one. Because... Most of you that grew up in that time that are around my age, you know who the Noid is. And it's interesting because it's hard to tell if the Noid, the brief mascot from Domino's Pizza, if it's a fail or if it's a success. For me, when I think about it, it definitely left an imprint on me as a kid. You know, I was... 10 years old, maybe, when the Noid came out, claymation with a weird high-pitched squeak voice where they didn't say anything and just kind of made noises. But it definitely stood out as far as 1980s pop culture product mascots go. I don't know. Where do you guys fall on that? Do you think the Noid was a success or a fail? I'm going to try to sway you a little as we go into the history of the Noid. The idea of the Noid was part of Domino's Pizza's aggressive marketing campaign to promote their delivery service. Pizza hot and fresh to you in 30 minutes or less, which I do believe a few years later, or maybe many years later, but they dropped the 30 minutes or less because drivers would be getting into accidents trying to get to the house before the 30 minutes because otherwise the pizza was free. The Noid character was introduced in 1986 by the advertising agency Group 243. So this character was developed as part of Domino's Avoid the Noid campaign. The Noid was a humanoid type character. Mischievous, rabbit ears with the red rabbit ears, red jumpsuit with the N emblazoned on his chest. I tried to find why they called him the Noid. I thought it was, you know, avoid the Noid means avoid being annoyed by your pizza being cold. I don't know. Maybe I'm putting too much creativity into it. The commercials were everywhere though. Fun and weird claymation type commercials. There's one commercial, The Dome of Quality, where there's a pizza in the middle of the screen and the Noid tries to destroy it with a mallet, but there's an invisible force field to protect your pizza from the Noid.

Speaker 02:

Domino's Pizza delivers quality. It takes fresh baked quality to avoid the Noid.

Speaker 00:

There's one where the Noid is trying to freeze your pizza. He's got like a jet pack that blasts cold air on it.

Speaker 02:

The Noid hates hot quality pizza. He loves to make your hot pizza ice cold. Call Domino's Pizza.

Speaker 00:

So the Noid was designed to embody the obstacles and mishaps that could ruin a pizza delivery. Could be delayed. It could be cold when you get it. It could have fallen off the seat and been smushed. Do you remember a few years ago when Domino's was really promoting pizza insurance? Where you could pay a little bit extra just in case if you fell out in the parking lot and ruined your pizza, you could get another one free? Did any of you ever try that? I'm sure they probably still have it. They just don't promote it because, I mean, what a fail. Yeah, I'm spending whatever, $15 on a pizza. I'll pay a few dollars extra just in case I'm too clumsy to walk to my car. But you know there's somebody out there that bought that insurance, didn't fall when they got home with their pizza and was mad about it, tried to get reimbursed. I couldn't find an exact number as far as how many different TV commercials the Noid character was in. It was probably a couple of dozen commercials. But for as weird as the Noid character was, it was popular. I enjoyed the commercials as a kid. And obviously other kids did as well because the Noid's popularity led to merchandising. Toys, t-shirts, and what I wanted to get into. And that was the video game for Nintendo called Yo! Noid from 1990. Yo!

Speaker 03:

Noid

Speaker 00:

It wasn't very original. It was a rebranded version of the Japanese game Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru. The game has the Noid as the hero, trying to fight off his evil doppelganger known as Mr. Green. He's got special weapons like a super yo-yo. There's no... Health meter for your character. You either die when you touch your enemy or if you don't complete the level in a certain time. And when you win as the Noid, you get a huge pizza prize from Domino's. In the instruction manual for Yo! Noid, there was a dollar off coupon for Domino's pizza. In 2017, there was a fan-made sequel to this called Yo! Noid 2 Enter the Void. It's free. You can go and play it if you want to play the sequel to Yo! Noid. I found it at Noid.pizza. I can put a link in the description of the podcast if you want to play Yo! Noid 2. So the Noid was a hit. It was weird. But it became closely associated with Domino's Pizza in the late 80s. And it reinforced brand loyalty, customer loyalty. But we can't talk about the funny and foolish of the Noid without something that was definitely an unintended consequence, I'm sure. And that is the Kenneth Lamar Noid incident. In January 1989... A mentally unstable man named Kenneth Lamar Noid believed that Domino's Pizza had created the Noid character to mock him personally. This escalated when Noid, Kenneth Lamar Noid, was armed with a gun held two Domino's employees hostage at an Atlanta, Georgia location. He demanded $100,000, a getaway vehicle, and a copy of The Widow's Son, which is a novel about Freemasonry. After a five-hour standoff, the hostages escaped and Noid surrendered to the police. Even though Domino's denied any connection between Kenneth Noid and the character the Noid, which, I mean, obviously, the incident cast a shadow over the Noid character. And even though the campaign continued for a little longer, it was phased out within the next couple of years. For those wondering, Kenneth Lamar Noyde. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, but sadly, he committed suicide in 1995. So that story does not have a happy ending. In the 90s, Domino's got away from the Noyde. They had reestablished themselves. They had established their delivery service. So it wasn't as necessary to have some kind of wacky mascot. The Noid maintained a cult following among fans of 80s pop culture like me, like I'm sure a lot of you that are listening to this. And he came back to the forefront once YouTube came around and people started uploading their old commercials. I can go right now on YouTube, obviously you've heard clips. I can download old Noid commercials and clutter up my computer with that stuff. The Noid did make a comeback though in 2021. This was where Domino's did a series of commercials promoting their partnership with Nuro, which is an autonomous vehicle delivery service. So this time, instead of trying to destroy your pizza, the Noid was portrayed as trying to thwart the futuristic delivery robots. It was that hot and fresh nostalgia, just like Domino's pizza. It's interesting the staying power of the character, the Noid, as a mascot. Because there's no denying that it's very weird, like an acid trip. Like someone just came up with this, hey, what about a rabbit with a human face that makes these weird squeak noises and tries to destroy your pizza with mallets and freezers and things. But it ended up with toys and shirts and video games. Do you remember the Noid game? And I'm talking more from the 1980s. I know the commercials from a few years ago a lot of people saw. And I'm sure a lot of lovers of pop culture were thrilled to see the Noid back. But do you remember the ones from the 80s? The Claymation, Stop Motion. And what other 80s weird product mascots or mascots in general do you think should make a comeback? I'd love to see the Hamburger Helper Glove come back. That's another one that's very trippy. Talking Glove. When it does the Italian-flavored hamburger helper and it's singing Italian with the little mustache. You need to go find that. The Noid, though, it had a fascinating history of a blend of marketing genius, cultural impact, and unexpected real-world consequences. I'm sure Domino's would have sold a lot more of that weird pizza insurance if one of the clauses in there was that you avoided the Noid. But until next time, that's going to wrap up episode 177 of the In My Footsteps podcast. That's a lot of episodes. Just think about it. In a couple of months, I'm going to hit 200 episodes. I'm already past where I thought I'd be when I first was brainstorming this podcast in the fall of 2020. I had said I probably had enough material I had researched for about four years of the show, and we are past that now. And I literally, I have enough to do probably another four years. And that's, again, if I don't research anything more. Thank you so much for those of you that tune in weekly that make me a part of your week. Or those of you that are here for the first time that enjoy nostalgia and have found this show. These are a lot of fun to research, put together, record. I mean, editing's not great, but whatever. and marketing and seeing the response either through the audio realm or when they go up on YouTube, which is just the audio with a video place card. There's no video of me doing this. I do the webcam weekly wrap-up podcast. That's my video show, which is me recapping my wacky week that was. That's another one that's a lot of fun to put together but takes a long time to edit. Next week, I'll be back with episode 178. You may not know exactly what's going to be on the show, but you know it's going to be nostalgia. That's pretty much a given. Find me all over social media, Instagram, threads. I'm on Blue Sky. I do TikTok, but not that much. I have a Facebook fan page for the podcast. Read the blog. It's a lot more than Initial Impressions 2.0. There's loads of stuff. 2024 was my most prolific writing year as far as the blog went. Subscribe on YouTube. I've got hundreds and hundreds of videos, video podcast segments, the webcam weekly wrap-up, New England Cape Cod travel videos. There's tons of stuff up there. I am almost done with the In My Footsteps podcast website. Just putting the backlog of episodes up on there to be linked to it. Boy, that took forever. I am not a web designer. I do not pretend to be. If you want to see a real website, visit my homepage, ChristopherSetterlin.com. Created and updated by my oldest friend, Barry, who's a real designer with real skill. But my site does have links to my nine books, so I guess I do have some skill. A consequence or side effect of doing the podcast website is the fact that I have closed down theladyofthedunes.com. It's something where the money put in to run two different websites that I update with online shopping, it's not feasible. I'm in the process of migrating some of the stuff over to my homepage. So you'll still be able to buy the book. You'll still be able to watch Frank Durant's documentary. But I feel like after two years that this chapter is over. I am so proud and blessed to have been a part of the Lady of the Dunes case and the resolution of the case. But it's also, it's a new year. I am... Closing this door to allow other things in. That doesn't mean that I won't still talk about the book every now and then. If places want me to do events, I'm not going to say no. But I'm also not going to now have it at the forefront of what I promote about me and my work. It's the podcast, the videos. I am now dipping my toes into copywriting. That's something that may end up being a bigger part of my life as 2025 goes on. But that's all the stuff that's happening. Plus my debut acting gig, which films in March. That is for Frank Durant's upcoming horror film. So you'll be getting updates on that when the spring starts to roll around. Wherever you're listening from, though, I hope you're having the best day, week, weekend. I hope the weather is at least sunny. You can't always hope for warm weather, at least up in the north, northeast here. But get out as much as you can. Get that vitamin D that we're all deficient of or will be by the time February ends. And lean into the things that make you happy. Certain people, certain foods, certain places, certain podcasts. I'll keep pumping out the content to try to add to your happy place. And as always, 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 into episode 177. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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