Captain Video vs. The Space Idiots

Captain Video and his Video Rangers was a 1950s sci-fi TV series that absolutely pioneered the burgeoning art of not giving a shit. They barely named the characters. Captain Video’s first name was Captain and The Video Ranger’s first name was “The.” He had generic adventures in space and the show was so low-budget they couldn’t afford to make all of it so they showed clips from other shows to fill the time. That’s no joke – large chunks of early Captain Video episodes were just somebody watching a better show and explaining “all the people you see are really undercover Video Rangers.” 

In keeping with that grand tradition of drunken apathy, Captain Video’s Children’s Activity Books were 7 pages long and half of one of those was a form you had to fill out. You colored things like “the commissioner’s radio” and “an unadorned wall.” You could listen along to a custom album for each book, presumably with all eight words on it. You could cut out your own puppets which, in true Captain Video fashion, don’t even fold up right and fall off your finger when you move them, thus ruining the daily play you put on for your dogs because it is the plague, and shit is getting weird.