Author: Lydia Bugg

Learning Day: All About Singing Fish🌭

Post author By Lydia Bugg
Post date 07/06/2026
1 Comment on Learning Day: All About Singing Fish🌭

We all remember The Big Mouth Billy Bass, right? Wrong. You’re remembering it wrong. You probably think it was just a silly novelty item that every uncle had in the early 2000s, but it’s so much more than that. Pre-Big Mouth Billy Bass animatronics were for Disneyland, or maybe for very expensive, large Halloween decorations. The early 2000s were the first time the common man could own an animatronic, and the one he wanted was a fish that begs for its life by singing a Talking Heads song, because the desires of man are dark and mysterious.

For most people, that was the end of it. They bought a Big Mouth Billy Bass; it did its thing. Then it did its thing too much. The very thing it was designed for became its downfall. If I walk by that damn fish and it sings that damn song one more damn time, I’m going to…”TAKE ME TO THE RIVER,” the fish begs. It gets volleyball spiked into a trash can, and the story of the Big Mouth Bill Bass is over.

However, for some, the Big Mouth Billy Bass was too much of a revelation in the novelty toy world to ever let it go. There are rumors that the manufacturer, Gemmy, made $100 million off of the product and that’s in early ’00s dollars. They couldn’t let this product die, and neither could their competitors, so companies just kept churning out sequels and knockoffs that slowly drifted farther and farther from the original product. There are so many of these things that there’s a website devoted to cataloging all of them, and it’s called The All About Singing Fish Wiki.

There’s a warning for all potential posters on the wiki’s front page. Don’t get too crazy, kids. We have very specific parameters for what is and isn’t considered a singing fish. It must be “animals, usually on a base, that have mouth movement and secondary movement that sing or talk.” Does the animal have to be a fish? No, absolutely not, but let’s start with the fish to keep things simple. You, the uneducated, have probably only heard of the Big Mouth Billy Bass, but in fact, father bass gave birth to Big Mouth Billy Bass Jr., Big Mouth Billy Bass Superstar (according to the wiki this model has an anal fin), World Record Billy Bass, Big Mouth Billy Bass Sings For The Holidays, and Big Mouth Billy Bones, to name just a few.

In their vain attempt to create a Billy Bass sequel, Gemmy produced Travis The Trout. Travis had people saying, “Ok, how many of these things do we really need?” Almost immediately.

He’s the exact same thing as The Big Mouth Billy Bass, BUT he sings a much more annoying song, “Doo-Wah Diddy Diddy” by Manfred Mann. You’re probably thinking that Travis wasn’t that popular, but tell that to Christmas Travis. Look him right in the little Santa hat and tell him that, you monster.

Then Gemmy really took a big swing with Cool Catfish (yes, he raps). Cool Catfish was Gemmy’s first foray into original songs with his cool rap. Here’s a little taste of the lyrics:

“I’m kickin it, groovin’, down for the hood

Got down on the cat like I’m looking good

Got my gills polished up, a wide-brimmed hat

No doubt in my mind I’m a real cool cat”

So, obviously, that’s cool. As you can see, the fish are getting cooler with each iteration, which is why it’s crazy that Gemmy would stray so far from God with abominations like Lucky Tom, whose packaging promises to “entertain your friends by singing of his misfortune”. In addition to singing two songs, he also says several catchphrases like “I admit it, I’m a redneck” and “don’t look at me that way!” which is one of the most haunting things a fake taxidermy could say to me. Don’t try to trick me into believing the fake taxidermied turkey has achieved sentience, please. I will cry.

Those products are all Gemmy originals. Somewhere, a team of people spent every workday trying to come up with a similar product that was just different enough to legally slap their company’s name on. Men have been driven mad by less. I won’t bother you with the Wiggling Willies, or the Sensational Willies, or the Syd Salmons, or the Louie the Large Mouth Basses. I like the ones that strayed from the concept far enough to really be considered adding to the art form, like Big Mouth Larry Lobster, created by Lhi Chinn Industrial.

On the side of Larry’s packaging, it says, “See the surprise on people’s faces when LARRY getting up & moving his mouth to the words of the song.”

I did having a surprise on my face when Larry moving his mouth to the song, but not because of Larry’s movement. By the time Larry came out, I’d seen many, many Big Mouth Billy Bass do exactly what he was doing. However, I’d never seen a lobster waggle an absolutely terrifying human tongue at me. That was new. I don’t need or even want my singing fish knockoffs to be perfectly anatomically correct. However, this mutilation of lobster biology is freakish. Lobsters do not have a tongue, they have mandibles. This is some island of Dr. Moreau shit to me. This pornographic lobster tongue will haunt me.

If you find Big Mouth Larry Lobster as upsetting as I do, you should know that Lhi Chenn Industrial commissioned a special song just for him and then used it on all of their other Billy Bass knock-offs, whether it made sense or not. Probably the strangest case of this is hearing their product, Fossil Dino Fact File Dwarf Allosaur, sing “I don’t wanna go in the cooking pot, because everybody tells me that’s way too hot.” No one is putting you in the cooking pot, Dwarf Allosaur. You are a fossil. That would ruin you.

Which of the knock-off Billy Basses do I find the most upsetting? Thank you so much for asking. There’s one that really made me realize the Big Mouth Billy Bass concept is really just “It would be pretty funny if this dead animal could somehow beg for its life in the form of a jaunty little tune,” and that’s the Rockin Roaster.

The Rockin Roaster has a long intro to his song that goes: “Did somebody turn up the heat? It smells like something’s cooking. Hey, it’s getting hot in here…” as the music builds behind it like he’s about to sing his I want song at the beginning of a Broadway show. Then it pops up, sings “Hot Hot Hot” and thunks backward onto the grill with a dramatic slap, finally relishing the sweet relief of death until the button is pushed once again.

This preoccupation with food torture might seem like a uniquely American thing, but the Billy Bass phenomenon did spread to other countries, which interpreted it in some interesting ways. One knock-off made just for the Chinese market was one of the few with a female singing voice. It was called the Millennium Fortune Fish and sang Gong Xi Gong Xi, a song about the Chinese New Year. In Europe they had Tessy the singing cow, who did a parody of “Happy Together” called “Happy in Leather.” It feels like they said, “Yeah, this is some shit Americans would do,” and produced this specifically to make fun of us.

I would say that no one mounts a cow head on their wall, but America is large and insane, so I’m sure someone has done it, but hopefully just to note their vengeance on the cow that killed their brother. Even though it isn’t a common practice, I can’t argue with a Big Mouth Billy Cow. It makes as much sense as anything else in this universe.

I hope you enjoyed this history lesson on the cultural impact of the Big Mouth Billy Bass. It’s as important a piece of our history as the pen that you tilt to make a lady’s dress come off, or Groucho Marks glasses. They’re no whoopee cushion, though- let’s not go crazy- but if you see a dusty 25th anniversary edition Big Mouth Billy Bass in the back of a Canadian Shoppers Drug Mart (the only place they were sold), be respectful. Do not push the button. Let it stay dead.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: toasty god, who knows what that lobster tongue do baby, and it does it goooood.

Tags anal fin, animatronics, Free, lobster tongue, Lydia Bugg, novelty toys, The Desires of Man

UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Talking For Two

Post author By Lydia Bugg
Post date 06/29/2026
5 Comments on Upsetting Day: Talking For Two

Tags amish woodworking, average polycule, books, Lydia Bugg, romance books, Ventriloquist

PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Sky Commanders🌭

Post author By Lydia Bugg
Post date 06/22/2026
4 Comments on Punching Day: Sky Commanders🌭

In the late 1980s, Kenner Toys wanted to compete with GI Joe, so they came up with their own original concept: GI Joe plus ziplines. Zipline GI Joe should have been an idea that printed money. Ziplines are fun, and Reagan had deregulated children’s television enough to allow Kenner to make a 30-minute-long toy commercial disguised as entertainment from Hanna-Barbera.

Sky Commanders are fondly remembered by most people who just saw the commercials, but not by anyone who played with the toys or saw the show, because they were a good concept with the worst possible execution. Picture someone about to hit a baseball with perfect stance, then accidentally letting go of the bat, launching it into the audience and sending the team’s beloved mascot to hell (where all mascots go).

First, let’s talk about Sky Commanders as a toyline. The cardinal sin of a children’s toy, one that will make children love it and parents hate it, is being too messy. Sometimes a child’s joy can outweigh a parent’s terror; that’s why slime is still so popular. However, Sky Commanders weren’t cheap and everywhere. If parents had an option not to buy their children a tripping hazard factory for adults, they would take it. The toys were also pretty easily broken by knots in the zipline, and they took way more setup than a GI Joe, so children with short attention spans were not about to build the meticulous landscapes needed to effectively play with them.

So the toy was a radical idea that was difficult to execute, and the show suffered from a similar problem. Quick, come up with an idea for why a team of adventurers can only travel via zipline. It’s not easy, is it! The zipline is essential to the story, and there are so, so many reasons not to use a zipline. I personally have avoided using a zipline every single day of my life. Figuring out why the Sky Commanders had to command the sky was not an easy task, so Hanna-Barbera came up with an overly complicated solution.

The exposition dump of the thirty-second intro is this: “Deep in the South Pacific, a tumultuous and untamed new continent has erupted. Spawned by a highly unstable new element known as Theta 7. If this powerful new element could be controlled, whoever possessed it would be the undisputed ruler of the world. One man, General Lucas Plague, is determined to hold that title, and it’s up to a rugged team of mountaineering experts, led by Commander Mike Summit, to stop him. Employing revolutionary new gravity lock and laser cable technology to traverse the ever-changing terrain of the high frontier, Mike summits Sky Commanders, and General Plague’s Raiders are locked in mortal combat, with the fate of the entire world hanging in the balance.”

If I’m eight years old, you lost me, tumultuous. That is a pretty heavy sci-fi plot for kids. I can’t imagine discussing the geopolitical implications of Lucas Plague obtaining Theta 7 on the school bus. It wasn’t just the Sky Commanders writing team who was stretched thin. Hanna-Barbera was used to animating Yogi Bear, not the complex sci-fi action scenes of a show based around zip-lining. They outsourced a lot of the animation to Japanese animation studio Toei, and the final result looks pretty rough at times.

They got around the animation problem by having a lot of close-up shots of the characters delivering dialogue while supposedly ziplining, relying heavily on the voice actors’ performances to carry the show, which was a bad idea. They carried the show in the same way I would carry Shaquille O’Neal. Let me introduce you to the cast.

It’s huge and as diverse as a group of almost entirely white people can possibly be. I’ll focus on the characters we meet in the pilot because the cast is so big, not everyone gets airtime. Also, it’s pretty hard to tell them apart when they’re all wearing similar helmets. I think that’s why almost every single character has a crazy accent and defined stereotype. There’s Mike Summit, (leader), Jack “Spider” Reilly (Australian), Rex “Cutter” Cling (second in command), R.J. Scott (surfer kid), Pete “Kodiak” Crane (tall), Loran “Red” McCollough (girl), Cliff “Books” Baxter (nerd), and Yuri Androv (Russian).

That’s just the heroes of the story. General Plague also gets four distinct henchmen: Rader Rash, Dr. Erica Slade, Mordax, and Kreeg, which sounds like the name of a kid who goes to a Montessori school and has parents who wanted to spell Craig in a fun way. All the voice actors made choices with their accents, but none more than Red, who is Irish. Every time she opens her mouth, I want to apologize to an Irish person. The line “Wise up RJ you can never be too prepared,” becomes “Warse up ahr jay yer can neveh be teh prehpared.” It sounds like she got the accent from a game of telephone that started with the Lucky Charms Leprechaun and had a pirate in the middle.

The show also made sure to create one female villain for the female hero to fight, but in the pilot, most of what Red does is nag RJ to stop dicking around. The pilot involves the Sky Commanders tricking Dr. Plague into believing they are retreating so he will lead them to his hideout. Is it that important to find his hideout when a big point of the show is that the landscape is so unstable it’s impossible to stay in one place for very long, and in fact you have to wear a gigantic tactical backpack and be ready to zipline away at any moment? Apparently, yes.

The Sky Commanders’ headquarters is a ship that they can easily escape in if a mountain suddenly starts to crumble, but for some reason Dr. Plague is having his henchmen lug tons of equipment from mountain to exploding mountain. No wonder it’s taken him so long to find Theta 7. So often thwarted evil plans come down to bad project management. However, what he lacks in management skills he makes up for in interior design. His lair contains an acid bog full of monsters. One of them gives Cutter the opportunity to participate in the story by being eaten. (He gets better).

Again, I’m not sure how life has developed on this world, which keeps crumbling and regrowing around our heroes, but the acid bog is full of enormous, nightmare-inducing creatures. There’s a full Kraken in the acid bog that I guess dies when the mountain eventually collapses. It should be impossible to sustain life in that much of a shifting environment, but somehow General Plague has not only managed to find an acid bog, but also a Sephora, because his eyeliner is incredible.

Most of the episode is just ziplines breaking. That’s the plot of the show. They start ziplining, oh no, a horrible ziplining accident has suddenly occurred. Whatever will we do? Oh, thank goodness, someone has managed to put out an emergency zipline, and we can all clip onto it. The day is saved! If I were a parent watching this show, I would never allow my kid near a zipline. They are constantly getting blown up or attached to a crumbling mountain if this show is to be believed.

The heroes of the show spend about forty percent of it tumbling through the air like rag dolls. They don’t seem very proactive in their own story. Sure, they’re technically battling General Plague, but most of what they’re doing is just trying not to die. I don’t know why, but ziplining for your life is just not that entertaining to watch. There’s not a lot of fighting in the show, probably because it was too expensive for Hanna-Barbera. They didn’t have a fighting budget; it was a gliding or tumbling budget only.

Kenner planned to do a second run of the toyline that would focus more on the monsters of the high frontier, but the show and the toyline were both canceled before it was produced. At the end of the pilot episode the team finally catches up to General Plague as he flees his mountain lair. They shoot a couple of lasers at him and when someone suggests they continue to chase him Mike Summit says, “No, let him go. We’ve had enough adventure for one day. We’ll deal with Plague and his raiders again soon enough.”

So, the whole episode was for nothing. The tumbling, the getting eaten by a giant flower, the attempt at an Irish accent. They caught up to General Plague and let him fly away for no reason. It took the whole episode just to find him, and when they did, they were like, “actually I’m pretty tired,” and ziplined the fuck off. GI Joe would never! I’m glad the majority of these toys ziplined right into a trash can.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Greg Cunningham, who knows Sky Commanders was one good lunch meeting away from genius because it totally could have worked if like the new continent was a vertical disaster zone where mountains grew overnight and valleys collapsed in minutes and gravity storms could like flip terrain and gravity and stuff sideways. Like anything with wheels or marching or treads is straight up dead weight, the only people who can survive there are climbers, riggers, rescue pilots, and lunatics. They HAVE to zipline, there is no other safe way to travel. General plague builds crawler fortresses with drilling platforms that harvest bits of Theta 7 and it leaves dead gravity zones behind that are super unstable, and his guys are cutting and sabotaging anchor points and weaponizing terrain collapses against the Sky Commanders. Maybe Spider Reilly gets exposed to Theta 7 radiation during the first expedition and gets a low-grade mutation and can like sense tension in cable lines and carries microfilament anchor webs and can free-climb the High Frontier. And then the toys are like modular cliffs and suction anchors and spring-loaded cable launchers and breakaway bridges and monster nests and rescue pods and the fun is building these elaborate traps that fling dudes everywhere and ziplines are happening and people are swinging and stuff is collapsing like a jenga tower. But he hasn’t thought about it too much.