Vegetable Soup

Surfing the blogosphere, I happened upon this top ten list of the weirdest, creepiest, freakiest children's television shows on the air today. Though I strongly disagree with the inclusion of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, author Matt Dinniman has put his finger on some of the most consciousness-bending nightmare-inducing kids' programming I've ever seen, especially his top 5 picks.

In the user comments that follow, there's a discussion of which shows should be in the top ten of all-time, and there's plenty of the usual suspects: The Bugaloos, H.R. Puffenstuff, The Banana Splits, Barney, etc. What's not on the list? Something lesser known than any of these, but leagues more disturbing: Vegetable Soup.

What's Vegetable Soup? According to Wikipedia, it was "an educational children's television program produced by the New York State Education Department that originally ran for 78 episodes from 1976 to 1978." Though produced for local PBS affiliate stations, it eventually found its way to stations like Nickelodeon and TBS. James Earl Jones and Bette Midler both lent their voices to it. So you might think this series had something going for it--and indeed it did. I'll be the first to admit it was a smart show, a highly versatile show (mixing live action, animation and puppets), and one of the first shows to make a point of celebrating diversity. As was evident in the theme song:

Come on along and join us
Come on along
We're gonna have some fun
Come on along and join us
In a little bowl of Vegetable Soup
It takes all kinds of vegetables
All kinds of vegetables
All kinds of vegetables
To make a Vegetable Soup

"All kinds of vegetables," so no matter what your heritage, gender, or nationality might be, and no matter what disabilities you might have, you can dive into the fun just like everyone else. It doesn't matter if you're a carrot or a turnip, all are welcome in the soup.

Now, you might be saying, it's a little odd inviting young children to be part of someone's soup, as it bumps up against a primal, Hansel and Gretel-esque "the witch wants to eat me" fear, but it's clearly well-intentioned, and the lyrics aren't half bad. As long as they aren't sung by anything too monstrous, I can't see the problem. Right. Meet the band:

This is not warm and fuzzy kids' animation. This is psychedelic, surrealist, Yellow Submarine-inspired, "hey kiddies, don't the freaky people, like, totally trip you out?" animation. Now imagine that you're six years old and watching these demonic squiggles kick out the jams while song lyrics are practically shrieked at you in some kind of weird, jazzy gospel blasphemy: "It taaaakes... AAALLLLL KIIIIINNNNDDDSS of VEGGGETTABBLLESSS!"

Deeply unnerving.

Now meet Woody the Spoon. Voiced by Bette Midler, Woody would shock you out of whatever terrified stupor the previous segments had plummeted you into by dancing around like a lunatic and demanding that you cook something. Make popsicles out of orange juice, your ice tray, and toothpicks! Get the celery out of your crisper! Go stick a banana in your oven! Two hundred fifty degrees! Don't forget to ask your mama first! Screeching at you, this spoon.

Here he (she?) is, teaching you about plantains:

Note the deranged smiles on the bowl and the, uh, whatever that floating face is.

But most disturbing of all: the "Outerscope" segments. "Outerscope" was a serialized puppet show about a multicultural group of kids who turn their clubhouse (or maybe just a bunch of old junk) into a rocketship and explore the universe with it. They meet aliens, have all kinds of adventures, and along the way they learn lessons about tolerance, friendship, etc. Not a bad premise for a kids' show. Just two problems with the idea.

First, the puppet children were incredible creepy. They had a certain "dead mannequin" quality, with weird, oversized hands. "Man hands" some might say.

Second problem: These segments are frightening just in their tone. Again, imagine you're six years old. You watch these dead-eyed big-handed (but otherwise likeable) puppet kids fly off into outer space and get lost. They try to get home, but each episode they just get further and further away. Everything goes wrong, one puppet kid sadly looks at the other and says, "I guess we're never going home." End of episode. Sleep tight, kids.

Vegetable Soup scared me silly when I saw it, and yet I couldn't turn away. Why did I keep watching it? And why do I remember it fondly today, nightmarishly weird though it was?

Comments

[Heather]

First of all, blog bookmarked and favorited. Secondly, though, I may be able to help here.

The animation studio behind the above stills from Vegetable Soup, if I'm not mistaken, was Wantu Studios in New York. The producer/senior animator and character designer, I think, was Jim Simon, one of many African-American cel animators who met some success during the Seventies. Simon did extensive work for The Children's Television Workshop, including a lovely etude where a little black girl gleefully awaits snow to fall all night so she can use her new sled - "That's the fun one," she muses - the next morning; and a rather famous clip where a second little black girl promises her mother she will remember the day's grocery pick-up list: "A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter." Jim Simon's visual style was very distinctive; he appears to have imagined his characters through a squeezed Anamorphic camera lens. He later contributed several cartoon segments to The Electric Company, including a football player voiced by Bill Cosby who mourns, "Throwwww... it... to... meeeee" until a gigantic IT word falls out of the sky on him and he tells us, "I GOT 'it'", and possibly his best-known, showcase segment, "Hey Diddle Diddle", where a clearly soul-influenced downtown night band featuring an album quality-voiced tomcat on honky-tonk piano and his two preternaturally thin feline ghetto-honeys in plump pimp coats, wailing together, "Heyyyyyy, Diddle Diddle" and "He can skedaddle down the keys... with the fingers of one... haaaaaannnnnd".

Another black animator who got a lot of work during the same period, if I'm not seriously mistaken here, was Tee Collins, who gave Sesame Street such famous segments as "Wanda The Witch" ("Witches who wash their wigs on windy winter Wednesdays... are wacky")and "Nancy The Nannygoat" ("Nancy, don't be a ninny... never nibble on your nails").

I have a tiny company that closely studies this kind of animation because we hope to replicate it for the children's shows we make today. (You can click my hyperlinked name below to access its URL and begin your journey learning more about us; we're also on YouTube.)

I enjoyed reading this blog entry and I agree that classifying Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as creepy is Just Plain Wrong. If that's what "creepy" is today, by all means take me back in a time machine to the era where creepiness was born and fully reigned. Happily Gen X, too,

Heather

[Heather]

Here is another Electric Company clip by the distinctive Jim Simon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LWisHKRIoc

"A Loaf of Bread, A Container of Milk, & A Stick of Butter":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jdP7HUPbVs&feature=related

And here is Hey Diddle Diddle. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyAyWIoDusI&feature=related

[Ray Santangelo]

I was born in 1970, grew up in New York, and have lived most of my adult life in Massachusetts and Los Angeles ... and I so rarely have been able to find anyone who knows what I'm talking about when I mention this nightmare of a children's show from my childhood. I had the hardest time turning away from it or turning it off as a child whenever it came on, but I remember hating it, being terrified by those psychedelic cartoon band characters and those god damned puppets. What a bad trip you gave me with the pictures on your blog ... thanks Nick!

[Robert L]

**ANYONE looking for the Vegetable Soup show for personal viewing can contact me to obtain a set of the 1st complete season on 13 DVDs at a reasonable price. These were created from the original broadcast tapes, and are near excellent video, and good audio. I aquired these from a guy who made them from the tapes, and I paid his outrageous price to own them, but I believe everyone should have access to this bit of nostalgia, so I'm reproducing them at half his cost so that all you people that are dying to see the Outerscope episodes again, along with the rest of the 70's goodness from the show, can have them without feeling like you're making a car payment to do so.

Send an email to [email protected] if you want this piece of history for yourself, and your children, because there are some real lessons to learn from this show - I wish they still made this required viewing in elementary schools today.

[Paul Stewart]

Only the New York State Dept of Education could be so disconnected from the minds of children and have the ignorance to make this "progressive" show in the 70s that was, in fact, horribly inappropriate for very young children.

[Paul Stewart]

I forgot to mention. Yes I remember this. I am 39 now so I was about 7 when I saw it. I thought it was creepy and disturbing and it left me with a bad feeling when I saw it. Sheesh. Read pevious comment.

[Bob VandeSande]

I was on this show (Vegetable Soup: The Big Job Hunt) back around 75 or 76 ( i was in the 6th grade) I have been looking for a video of that program for years. Any suggestions on how to get a copy of video.

[gregg]

Wow I had nightmares about outerscope 1. It still bothers me but it helps to see it again. wow what were they thinking. no wonder it freaked me out.

[CEC]

I remember this show! I always used to beg my mom to help me make the Woody the Spoon recipes. I didn't realize until now that was Bette Midler's voice! It was definitely trippy. The Outerscope kids really freaked me out too with their "man hands" and such. But still, I couldn't wait to see this show when I got home from school. Thanks for the memories!

[Delmarchie']

OMG, I'm 44 years old and still think about this show. I was actually making some chicken soup and started singing the vegetable soup song. I decided to Google what lyrics I remembered and found this site. The show (especially the one human hand on each puppet) was so weird and is still etched in my mind. However, I was always glued to the TV and had to watch. It's so interesting that others feel the same...

[Ian Thal]

I remember watching Vegetable Soup when I was a kid. The surreal animation was terrific. Yes, Outerscope was creepy, but kids used to be made of sterner stuff and liked being scared. Pop culture, and children's television, was generally more experimental back then.

I just took a look at an old clip of Outerscope and it's far more enjoyable and imaginative than just about anything that gets marketed to kids these days,

[Marsha]

Do you have any video of the Metric Series with "Metric Man"? I remember watching that in 8th grade math in the 80's and would love to see a clip of that again!

[brewbot]

faverouties was He-man and The Transformers, and still are.
A few months

[JAH JACKSON]

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED VEGETABLE SOUP COMING UP!!! I WISHED IT COULD HAVE BEEN ON A LITTLE LONGER. I HAD FORGOTTEN WHAT SOME OF THE CHARACTERS LOOKED LIKE UNTIL I PULLED THE THEME SONG UP ON YOUTUBE. NOW, IF IT WAS UP TO ME, I WOULD HAVE HAD MY KIDS WATCH THIS THAN SOME OF THE OTHER MIND-NUMBING TELEVISION SHOWS ON TV.

[Charity]

I loved Vegetable Soup in Nebraska in the early 80's! Glad to see that I'm not the only one who remembers...