Toasted TV
Morning television was something denied to me in my childhood. Mum didn’t think it was a very good thing for me to watch. So I ended up being raised on ABC afternoon kids shows, which at the very least exposed me to gems such as The Trapdoor, Shadow Raiders, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
But every other kid was watching Cheez TV on channel 10 on weekday mornings, 7.00 to 8.00am. You could use it as a barometer of whatever was popular amongst kids-things like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! were aired in the Cheez TV block. Some years ago, though, Cheez TV ended and was replaced with Toasted TV, which, aside from the bread-themed rebrand, doesn’t appear significantly different.
I still don’t usually watch morning television, but my parents are out camping until Wednesday, and I’m stuck back here needing to study for my final exam. So I decided to see what was on Toasted TV. Rather than just switch off at the sight of anything that looked like crap, I resolved to watch it all, making an exception for girl shows like WINX club or whatever, because I couldn’t bear to watch them.
So what was on this fine Monday morning?
Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5
Proving that the art of children’s shows produced mainly to shill merchandise isn’t a lost art restricted to the Japanese or Hasbro, this was about five ambiguously teenaged people in cars/motorcycles/weird monster truck things fighting interdimensional animal people. Portals into other dimensions, called zones, would open up, and they’d need to find something called a battle key to lock the zone so the interdimensional invaders couldn’t come to Earth.
I think I tuned into the first episode, given the explanation of who the Battle Force 5 were near the end. It was concerned with a guy named Zoom, who I think was the BF5’s leader. Some kid on a skateboard shows up and tells him that the Order of the Flying Fists wants him back, as he’s the Chosen One. Apparently Zoom ran away from them to escape his responsibilities.
Oh, and the skateboard kid’s named Zen. As you can expect from someone named Zen from something called the Order of the Flying Fists, he’s basically every martial artist cliché shoved together, complete with a taste in meditation music and a habit of spouting bizarre mantras.
Zoom brushes him off, but Zen tags along to their next zone, an energy dimension with blue and red pipes. The blue pipes have matter, the red pipes have antimatter. They point out that antimatter is dangerous, but considering how matter is also shown as electricity, I don’t think falling into a matter pipe would be very safe either.
There’s some token black girl in a green monster truck, but I honestly didn’t care for her. She didn’t do anything noticeable. The only characters besides Zoom and Zen I really noticed were two brothers, who were having a competition to eat gross things, and Stanford, a slightly fey Englishman whose taste in music and sonic-based weaponry makes him roughly analogous to Jazz in the original Transformers. Given Stanford’s apparent love of the colour purple (his car and uniform are both purple), and that he sounds like Simon Doonan from Beautiful People I am currently pegging him as the gay guy.
So the animal people are there, and the two forces fight. The animal people, led by some cheetah-leopard thing, grab the key and defeat the BF5. Zoom and Zen get trapped in front of an advancing wave of anti matter. Meanwhile, the rest of the BF5 use the matter pipes to suck in the animal people. Of course, before that wraps things up, Zoom and Zen are still stuck in front of the antimatter wave.
So Zoom spins his motorcycle and concentrates the antimatter around him while Zen kicks it at the animal people. I take it the writers didn’t read their previous statement of ANTI-MATTER WILL KILL YOU.
Zen ends up leaving Zoom to stay with the BF5, seeing that he’s been chosen for a ‘higher purpose’ (i.e. kicking alien arse). A gag involving Stanford’s ineptitude at martial arts closes the episode out.
I can honestly say I didn’t know exactly what was going on, although I was having breakfast at the time, so maybe my concentration wasn’t the best. It was a confusing mess most of the time. What I did like was the use of colour. Every character was defined by a colour, which may be to compensate for their lack of personality.
The animation felt similar to that of Dragon Booster, except smoother. As it turned out, it was made by the same people. BF5 didn’t feel much different from that show, to be honest. Same themes, same sketchy characterization, same sidelining of the token girl.
Beyblade Metal Fusion
“What? Beyblade’s still around?” was my first thought when the opening to this show started. I was expecting something girly, but instead there was this.
If you thought Yu-Gi-Oh! was ridiculous for taking children’s card games so seriously, you will not be able to sit through this, which does the same for spinning tops, except without the ancient Egyptian backstory that sort of justified Yu-Gi-Oh! There might be something about constellations in it, but it wasn’t significant in this episode.
So there’s some fat guy training in the forest. If it weren’t for the beyblade, I would think I was watching a Naruto filler. Anyway, there’s also some guy hanging out with a bunch of crabs on the beach. He's the villain of this episide,
We cut to the city, where someone is scratching beyblades. Yes. This is treated as seriously as genocide by the owner of a beyblade shop, who proceeds to go after the villain and gets immediately kidnapped, as all good token female characters are.
The villain shows up soon afterwards. He’s crab-themed, which means he references crabs in everything he says. This, obviously, includes god-awful puns, like ‘It’s pretty crabby, isn’t it?’ I never expected a kids show to make a pun off crappy, but anyway. He’s a dick who keeps attacking with his beyblade after the opponent’s is defeated, and so he scratches them all up. He’s also got a habit of saying “Craaaabbby!” for some reason.
Our hero, Jinga or whatever his name is, decides to put a stop to Mr Krabs’ reign of terror. They have a match in a crab-shaped arena by the sea. Jinga curb stomps Mr Krabs, but it turns out it’s a best of three match. It also turns out that the arena has a bad case of crabs, as hordes of them pour in and spit foam everywhere. Mr Krabs wins the second battle with this tactic, and then, with 1 all, we get to the final round. Mr Krabs is like LOL YOU’RE GONNA LOSE SIDEWINDER (yes he does say sidewinder) and Jinga is like I WON’T BECAUSE I HAVE FRIENDS.
This prompts Mr Krabs to flashback to his childhood. He had a best friend who was pretty good at beyblading, but when a bigger guy (on a ‘warrior’s quest’, however that can apply to spinning tops) showed up and wanted to fight him, he freaked out and so the future Mr Krabs dueled in his place. Of course, he lost, but it was worth it because he fought for his friend…who ran away during the battle. This drives Mr Krabs insane, and he subsequently became a crab themed villan and defeated both the big guy and his former friend. This is mildly disturbing because he sets a horde of crabs on them both and walks away from his former friend being presumably killed by the crabs. So now he finds friends useless, even though he hangs out with crabs.
ANYWAY. Mr Krabs sends some mud into the arena, while his beyblade extends its point above the mud. Apparently this means that Jinga’s beyblade will slow down and Mr Krabs’ won’t. I’m not sure physics works like that, given both are in the mud anyway. Jinga makes a comeback with his beyblade’s special power (yes, they have special powers and animals and things), which blows the mud away. He then wins and gives us all a lesson on how friends helped him to win. No, your fucking special powers helped you to win. There’s the issue of the kidnapped token girl, but it turns out the big guy from the beginning saved her. Apparently she was trapped in a hole surrounded by crabs. This is the most pathetic way to trap someone ever. Why didn’t see just step on the fucking crabs?
Mr Krabs does not absorb the message of friendship and runs away to crack more crab puns later, and so this awful show concludes. I suppose it might be hypocritical of me to bash this show while loving Dinosaur King, which is even stupider. Here’s the thing, though-the dub of Dinosaur King effectively makes fun of itself and the insane things that happen. Beyblade does not. Also Dinosaur King has dinosaurs and so is awesome.
Between these two shows are segments involving the two hosts of Toasted TV. Today’s theme was Pacific Island dancing, which was admittedly interesting. What I found weird, though, was their plugging of Facebook.
YOUR AUDIENCE IS NOT EVEN OLD ENOUGH TO USE FACEBOOK WHY ARE YOU PIMPING IT.
So that’s Toasted TV. I doubt I’ll tune in again. Despite the line-up of shows on their website including Pokemon, it also claims Yu-Gi-Oh 5DS is on Mondays 7.00am, when it clearly was not, so it hasn’t been updated in a while.
But every other kid was watching Cheez TV on channel 10 on weekday mornings, 7.00 to 8.00am. You could use it as a barometer of whatever was popular amongst kids-things like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! were aired in the Cheez TV block. Some years ago, though, Cheez TV ended and was replaced with Toasted TV, which, aside from the bread-themed rebrand, doesn’t appear significantly different.
I still don’t usually watch morning television, but my parents are out camping until Wednesday, and I’m stuck back here needing to study for my final exam. So I decided to see what was on Toasted TV. Rather than just switch off at the sight of anything that looked like crap, I resolved to watch it all, making an exception for girl shows like WINX club or whatever, because I couldn’t bear to watch them.
So what was on this fine Monday morning?
Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5
Proving that the art of children’s shows produced mainly to shill merchandise isn’t a lost art restricted to the Japanese or Hasbro, this was about five ambiguously teenaged people in cars/motorcycles/weird monster truck things fighting interdimensional animal people. Portals into other dimensions, called zones, would open up, and they’d need to find something called a battle key to lock the zone so the interdimensional invaders couldn’t come to Earth.
I think I tuned into the first episode, given the explanation of who the Battle Force 5 were near the end. It was concerned with a guy named Zoom, who I think was the BF5’s leader. Some kid on a skateboard shows up and tells him that the Order of the Flying Fists wants him back, as he’s the Chosen One. Apparently Zoom ran away from them to escape his responsibilities.
Oh, and the skateboard kid’s named Zen. As you can expect from someone named Zen from something called the Order of the Flying Fists, he’s basically every martial artist cliché shoved together, complete with a taste in meditation music and a habit of spouting bizarre mantras.
Zoom brushes him off, but Zen tags along to their next zone, an energy dimension with blue and red pipes. The blue pipes have matter, the red pipes have antimatter. They point out that antimatter is dangerous, but considering how matter is also shown as electricity, I don’t think falling into a matter pipe would be very safe either.
There’s some token black girl in a green monster truck, but I honestly didn’t care for her. She didn’t do anything noticeable. The only characters besides Zoom and Zen I really noticed were two brothers, who were having a competition to eat gross things, and Stanford, a slightly fey Englishman whose taste in music and sonic-based weaponry makes him roughly analogous to Jazz in the original Transformers. Given Stanford’s apparent love of the colour purple (his car and uniform are both purple), and that he sounds like Simon Doonan from Beautiful People I am currently pegging him as the gay guy.
So the animal people are there, and the two forces fight. The animal people, led by some cheetah-leopard thing, grab the key and defeat the BF5. Zoom and Zen get trapped in front of an advancing wave of anti matter. Meanwhile, the rest of the BF5 use the matter pipes to suck in the animal people. Of course, before that wraps things up, Zoom and Zen are still stuck in front of the antimatter wave.
So Zoom spins his motorcycle and concentrates the antimatter around him while Zen kicks it at the animal people. I take it the writers didn’t read their previous statement of ANTI-MATTER WILL KILL YOU.
Zen ends up leaving Zoom to stay with the BF5, seeing that he’s been chosen for a ‘higher purpose’ (i.e. kicking alien arse). A gag involving Stanford’s ineptitude at martial arts closes the episode out.
I can honestly say I didn’t know exactly what was going on, although I was having breakfast at the time, so maybe my concentration wasn’t the best. It was a confusing mess most of the time. What I did like was the use of colour. Every character was defined by a colour, which may be to compensate for their lack of personality.
The animation felt similar to that of Dragon Booster, except smoother. As it turned out, it was made by the same people. BF5 didn’t feel much different from that show, to be honest. Same themes, same sketchy characterization, same sidelining of the token girl.
Beyblade Metal Fusion
“What? Beyblade’s still around?” was my first thought when the opening to this show started. I was expecting something girly, but instead there was this.
If you thought Yu-Gi-Oh! was ridiculous for taking children’s card games so seriously, you will not be able to sit through this, which does the same for spinning tops, except without the ancient Egyptian backstory that sort of justified Yu-Gi-Oh! There might be something about constellations in it, but it wasn’t significant in this episode.
So there’s some fat guy training in the forest. If it weren’t for the beyblade, I would think I was watching a Naruto filler. Anyway, there’s also some guy hanging out with a bunch of crabs on the beach. He's the villain of this episide,
We cut to the city, where someone is scratching beyblades. Yes. This is treated as seriously as genocide by the owner of a beyblade shop, who proceeds to go after the villain and gets immediately kidnapped, as all good token female characters are.
The villain shows up soon afterwards. He’s crab-themed, which means he references crabs in everything he says. This, obviously, includes god-awful puns, like ‘It’s pretty crabby, isn’t it?’ I never expected a kids show to make a pun off crappy, but anyway. He’s a dick who keeps attacking with his beyblade after the opponent’s is defeated, and so he scratches them all up. He’s also got a habit of saying “Craaaabbby!” for some reason.
Our hero, Jinga or whatever his name is, decides to put a stop to Mr Krabs’ reign of terror. They have a match in a crab-shaped arena by the sea. Jinga curb stomps Mr Krabs, but it turns out it’s a best of three match. It also turns out that the arena has a bad case of crabs, as hordes of them pour in and spit foam everywhere. Mr Krabs wins the second battle with this tactic, and then, with 1 all, we get to the final round. Mr Krabs is like LOL YOU’RE GONNA LOSE SIDEWINDER (yes he does say sidewinder) and Jinga is like I WON’T BECAUSE I HAVE FRIENDS.
This prompts Mr Krabs to flashback to his childhood. He had a best friend who was pretty good at beyblading, but when a bigger guy (on a ‘warrior’s quest’, however that can apply to spinning tops) showed up and wanted to fight him, he freaked out and so the future Mr Krabs dueled in his place. Of course, he lost, but it was worth it because he fought for his friend…who ran away during the battle. This drives Mr Krabs insane, and he subsequently became a crab themed villan and defeated both the big guy and his former friend. This is mildly disturbing because he sets a horde of crabs on them both and walks away from his former friend being presumably killed by the crabs. So now he finds friends useless, even though he hangs out with crabs.
ANYWAY. Mr Krabs sends some mud into the arena, while his beyblade extends its point above the mud. Apparently this means that Jinga’s beyblade will slow down and Mr Krabs’ won’t. I’m not sure physics works like that, given both are in the mud anyway. Jinga makes a comeback with his beyblade’s special power (yes, they have special powers and animals and things), which blows the mud away. He then wins and gives us all a lesson on how friends helped him to win. No, your fucking special powers helped you to win. There’s the issue of the kidnapped token girl, but it turns out the big guy from the beginning saved her. Apparently she was trapped in a hole surrounded by crabs. This is the most pathetic way to trap someone ever. Why didn’t see just step on the fucking crabs?
Mr Krabs does not absorb the message of friendship and runs away to crack more crab puns later, and so this awful show concludes. I suppose it might be hypocritical of me to bash this show while loving Dinosaur King, which is even stupider. Here’s the thing, though-the dub of Dinosaur King effectively makes fun of itself and the insane things that happen. Beyblade does not. Also Dinosaur King has dinosaurs and so is awesome.
Between these two shows are segments involving the two hosts of Toasted TV. Today’s theme was Pacific Island dancing, which was admittedly interesting. What I found weird, though, was their plugging of Facebook.
YOUR AUDIENCE IS NOT EVEN OLD ENOUGH TO USE FACEBOOK WHY ARE YOU PIMPING IT.
So that’s Toasted TV. I doubt I’ll tune in again. Despite the line-up of shows on their website including Pokemon, it also claims Yu-Gi-Oh 5DS is on Mondays 7.00am, when it clearly was not, so it hasn’t been updated in a while.