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Nerding Day: Mormon Mouthful
Author: Lydia Bugg
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The TV show Happy Days lasted for eleven seasons and was one of the most popular series of the late 1970s, so it makes perfect sense it would get a Saturday morning cartoon spinoff. What makes less sense is that the spinoff would be about three of the main characters from Happy Days traveling through time with a talking dog and fighting Dracula. The cover art for the complete animated series tells you almost everything you need to know about the show. It looks like a bootleg copy of Ukrainian Scooby-Doo.
If you’re wondering how Fonzie, Richie, and Ralph Malph ended up in a time machine, so am I. Keep wondering, chump. This show is never going to tell us. In episode one, we cut to the gang mid-time machine crash. How did they get on the time machine? How did they meet Cupcake, the time-traveling 25th-century chick who is also magic? When did Potsie get replaced with a talking dog named Mr. Cool? How did Anson Williams take the phone call telling him he would be replaced by a talking dog named Mr. Cool? Did they at least offer to let Anson Williams voice Mr. Cool? For some reason, none of these questions will be answered in the show.
The title of the show is probably The Fonz And The Happy Days Gang because at the time Fonzie was so insanely popular that the producers wanted to change the name of Happy Days to Fonzie’s Happy Days, but none of the actors on the show, including Henry Winkler, wanted that, so the name stayed the same. However, the studio wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to stick the solid gold name Fonzie on a cartoon that was definitely just a reskinned American Dr. Who.
Yes, the plot of this show is exactly Dr. Who. At some point, Richie Cunningham, Ralph Malph, Fonzie, and Fonzie’s dog, Mr. Cool, all got into a time machine, and ever since then, they’ve just been trying to get back home. Along the way, they detour to 1,000,000 BC, the moon, Blackbeard’s pirate ship , the year 3057, and Atlantis, and that’s all in season one. Yes, this show got two seasons. It even got some merch.
You may notice that the characters are so poorly drawn they sort of look like those weird Marvel cartoons where they didn’t want to pay Marvel actors for their likenesses, so Black Widow looks like Shmarlett Shmohansson. I’m going to assume they had permission to use the Happy Days actors’ likenesses, since all of the actors from Happy Days voiced their characters. That must have been a wild time for them, going to the studio during the week to record an episode where Richie learns an important lesson about lactose intolerance and then hitting the VO booth on the weekend to do the episode where the Viking Sorceress Grimhilde steals the gang’s time machine.
Every episode of this show sounds so profoundly made up. There’s an episode just called “KELP!” where the gang ends up in 3817 on the ocean floor in a battle between the kelp farmers of Aqua City and a greedy surface dweller who wants to destroy the city. So it’s Happy Days in a time machine, in the future, under the ocean. It’s like this was part of a scientific experiment to see how much you can Ship of Theseus a TV show.
I guess if I were to single out any one episode as the weirdest, it would be the one where Fonzie defeats Dracula, partly because it was so early in the series when they got to the Dracula fight. Most shows don’t bring in Dracula until deep in their tenure. Buffy The Vampire Slayer waited until season 5; Penny Dreadful at least made it to season 3; The Fonz And The Happy Days Gang was seven episodes in before they were like, “this show needs some Dracula.”
Like every other episode of the show, we begin in the time machine, where Cupcake is one thousand percent certain they are about to land safely in 1957 Milwaukee. “You rubes!” the children at home scream at the television, you will never return to 1957 Milwaukee. As everyone looks out the window, distracted and excited about finally ending their six-episode-long journey, Darcula appears in the control room and redirects the time machine. Cupcake gets a lot of shit for being a bad driver, but you try driving when Dracula is yanking the wheel.
They do end up landing in 1957, but instead of Milwaukee, they are in Transylvania at the castle of Count Wolfgang Von Wolfenstein, which, of course, logic dictates is the extremely werewolf-themed name of Dracula. As happens in almost every episode, the time machine mysteriously disappears, and the gang is suddenly stranded. Now here’s where I’m a little confused. If I were the Happy Days Gang, and I’d been to the Ming Dynasty and the Old West in search of 1957 Milwaukee, I would be psyched to be a mere plane ride away from Milwaukee. This show would be over. I would be immediately hitchhiking toward Milwaukee.
Unfortunately, The Happy Days gang chooses to split up with Fonzi, Mr. Cool, and Cupcake opting to spend the night in Dracula’s castle, and Richie and Ralph opting to find a place in the nearby town because silly Ralph is afraid of the nice Dracula for some reason. Of course, they are immediately chased by a wolf, which is another weird, recurring thing that happens in this cartoon a lot. Were wolves really funny in the ’80s? I guess the idea of Richie Cunningham specifically being chased by a wolf is kind of funny. It feels like the cartoonists who worked on the show only knew how to draw certain things, and one of them was wolf. It definitely seems like drawing a wolf was a more important qualification to the studio than drawing consistent human faces.
Back at the castle, Dracula immediately announces to Cupcake that he wants to marry her and make her his queen. Cupcake responds with her catchphrase, which is “cosmic calamities.” She says this like nine times an episode, and it can mean anything. This time, I don’t think it means yes, I will marry you, Dracula, let’s settle down and have vampiric babies. It seems like Dracula wants to marry Cupcake because she has magic powers, but her magic powers almost never work, which he quickly learns when he hypnotizes Cupcake to attack Fonzie, and she instead turns him and Mr. Cool into circus clowns. I think they were trying to cram in as many horror movie concepts as possible in twenty minutes and hadn’t hit clown yet.
Meanwhile, Ralph and Richie are chased down a trap door in the basement where, of course, there’s a gross little guy doing weird experiments. Every Dracula house comes with one. For some reason, this gross little guy is doing some sort of The Fly-style experiment and ends up fusing Ralph and the wolf that was chasing them, which causes Ralph to become a werewolf. Cartoon science is beautiful.
Richie is now on the run from Werewolf Ralph inside the castle, where he runs into Cupcake and Fonzie. This is the conversation that ensues:
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Richie: “I’ve got bad news, Fonz, and I’m not sure how to break this to you.”
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Fonzie: “Yeah, we know, Rich, the count is a vampire.”
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Richie: “Worse, Fonz, Ralph is a werewolf!”
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Cupcake: “Cosmic calamities!”
Now, Cupcake, Mr. Cool, Fonzie, and Richie are all running from Dracula, Igor, and Werewolf Ralph. A lot of this show is running and sliding through trap doors. They end up back in the lab, where we finally get the Fonzie Vs. Dracula showdown we’ve all been waiting for. Fonzie says, “It’s just you and me,” to Dracula, who turns into his smallest, weakest form, a bat, and swoops at Fonzie.
The show’s biggest problem is that Fonzie’s superpower is being able to do absolutely anything because he is so cool. That makes any conflict difficult, so they sort of have to keep Fonzie distracted by a girl, or trying to observe good manners for a long time, until finally he decides to solve whatever the episode’s problem is with his magic cool powers. In this case, bat Dracula accidentally activates the controls to turn Ralph back when trying to attack Fonzie. That’s how cool Fonzie is!
At this point, the Dracula fight has been going on all night, and Fonzie realizes this, directing Mr. Cool to pull a lever that opens a trap door in the ceiling. The sunlight turns Dracula into a tornado, which reveals the time machine under an extremely time machine-shaped tarp in the lab. The Dracula tornado sends Mr. Cool tumbling through the air, but Fonzie catches him and they both go “AAAAYYYYYYY!” Because this show needs more catchphrases.
They all get back on the time machine to attempt to fly to Milwaukee. Spoiler alert, in the next episode, they land in the Salem witch trials, and Cupcake almost gets burned at the stake. The most shocking thing about this show is that it was renewed for a second season, and even after it was canceled, Fonzie and Mr. Cool both lived on after a transfer to Laverne & Shirley In The Army. They even changed the name of the show to Laverne & Shirley With Special Guest Star The Fonz. I guess that was the only way to sell a show back then. I wonder if it would still work today. All I’m saying is that there’s nothing preventing us from changing this website’s name to 1900HotdogWithSpecialGuestStarTheFonz.com.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Mr. Bob Gray, who has also been replaced by Mr. Cool. Sorry Bob, the fans want what they want.
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Nerding Day: Battle For Milkquarious
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Nerding Day: Whoopee!
I have a Taco Bell conspiracy theory. I was settling in to watch the Taco Bell Presents: Live Mas event, which Taco Bell now holds every year to announce new menu items. It’s sort of like Apple’s keynote speech but for tacos that are an abomination to God. The CEO of Taco Bell opened his speech by thanking several celebrities and influencers in the audience, including football player Davante Adams, surfer Kai Lenny, and someone named Yoquierotacoballads. It was a silly name, so I looked it up, assuming that someone who got an onstage shout-out from the CEO of Taco Bell at the Oscars of Taco Bell would be pretty popular, but it turns out he has 1,767 followers on Instagram, his most popular platform. SUSPICIOUS.
To explain my conspiracy theory, I have to tell you about another one. Back in 2021, there was a band called Tramp Stamps that got a bunch of heat on TikTok for marketing themselves as an indie band when it turned out they all had deep industry ties and seemed to be a label-created concept for an elder millennial punk-pop girl band. The guitarist and lead singer both had solo publishing deals with controversial producer Dr. Luke. They both seemed to have been pursuing pop music careers before dying their hair and joining the counterculture. The consensus on TikTok was that Tramp Stamps were industry plants. They vehemently denied these allegations, then disbanded and immediately returned to solo pop careers.
So, when I put on my dope ass little detective hat and started exploring the works of Yoqueirotacoballads, I had to ask myself, is this man a fast food industry plant? Is it possible that Taco Bell is paying people to be Taco Bell influencers so they have the appearance of this rabid grassroots fanbase that they also have complete control of the narrative from? Can we trust anyone these days? Or are they all just robots being puppeted by Yum! Brands?
Let’s take a look at some of the work Yoquierotacoballas has produced. I know it’s not uncommon to put a brand in a rap song, but it’s usually in a way that the brand would never want to acknowledge. Like if Cardi B says her man is gonna Baja Blast that pussy, Taco Bell probably won’t repost that. Yoquierotacoballads produces exclusively corporate friendly Taco Bell songs. His song “Baja Blast” doesn’t contain any pussy references at all! It’s just about a man enjoying a Baja Blast from Taco Bell, which is so incredibly lame. It provides no commentary, no metaphor, no life at all, which demotes it from a song to a jingle.
The most controversial take in Yoguierotacoballads’ music is the idea that Taco Tuesday can be any day of the week. It absolutely cannot. This is a lie Taco Bell wants you to believe, but you can’t have Taco Tuesday on a Saturday; that would be absurd. Yoquierotacoballads has released five singles on Spotify, all but one of which are about Taco Bell. The fourth is about National Taco Day. He keeps separate social media accounts under his Christian name, William Bradford, where he experiments with things like conscripting his family into a Christmas album. None of the songs on his album are about Taco Bell, so it’s nice to know he can do other things. One of the songs is called “Juicy Christmas,” though.
It makes me angry that even though the account is called Yoquierotacoballads, he hasn’t produced a single ballad. He began by reading people’s Taco Bell receipts and putting them to music. The posts would always say “swipe left for receipt confirmation,” as if someone might accuse him of lying about buying two bean-and-cheese burritos and a Dr. Pepper.
This would be way more fun if he were digging through Taco Bell trash cans and doing gotcha journalism on tired millennials who claim they ordered only a single crunch wrap supreme when in fact they got two and downed one on the way home, and here’s a little song about it, that might be fun but I don’t think Taco Bell would like it. They don’t want secret crunch wrap supreme time to be exposed.
Taco Bell is always in this man’s comments. He’s basically Taco Bell’s best friend. They responded, “Amazing!” To his jingle for the Build Your Own Cravings Box. Three months later, he posted a video yelling at people to get a burrito from Taco Bell for National Burrito Day, which Taco Bell called Iconic. The video had 180 likes. They usually just respond with fire emojis or a single peppy word, but they’re omnipresent in the comments section. Almost like they’re trying to lend legitimacy to this normal Taco-loving man.
Now I do acknowledge that this could simply be the case of a man who loves Taco Bell so much that he shaved their logo into his hair. That’s exactly what Taco Bell wants you to think. I’m not pretending people like that don’t exist. I just think those people are typically less controlled maniacs. They will usually, at some point, slip and reveal it is sexual and they are fucking the chalupas. That’s not going to happen with Yoquierotacoballads. Taco Bell somehow knows that they are safe in his squeaky-clean, probably Mormon hands.
How does Taco Bell know their precious brand is safe with this man, though? Oh, maybe that’s because he works in marketing, and specifically, he has worked in marketing for Taco Bell before. Yoquierotacoballads is a freelance marketing executive named William Bradford with a chunk of his personal website dedicated to the work he’s done for Taco Bell.
SUSPICIOUS. The commissioned songs were from 2021. So if he is on Taco Bell’s payroll, he has been for nearly six years. I promise I have scoured the internet trying to find the corner where this man got popular enough to attract the attention of Taco Bell. Each social media platform I found was worse than the last. YouTube 336 subscribers, Twitter 70 followers, Facebook 56 followers, Spotify 20 monthly listeners. These are Aunt Barb Who Smokes Too Much and Mostly Posts Minions Memes numbers. Why has Taco Bell elevated this man to the front row at the Taco Bell conference status? It makes no earthly sense.
Also, he’s obviously a bad singer. It’s not like he’s Susan Boyle out here singing Taco Bell receipts with the voice of an angel. It’s more like rapping, I guess, but slowly and exclusively about tacos, and the lyrics aren’t much either. He’s not some sort of virtuoso that Taco Bell is patronizing for his great contribution to art, is what I’m saying. Although the lyrics to “Baja Blast” are a little bit horny, I’ll count that as some contribution to art.
Yoqueirotacoballads pulled up to the 2026 LiveMasLive event in a white limousine, wearing a velvet purple jumpsuit. In his post from the event, he tagged several other Taco Bell influencers, including @tacobellsommelier, @alwayslivingmas, @bajabesties, along with the head of social and PR for Taco Bell. So there is either an ecosystem of people who are Taco Bell’s preferred influencer squad or brand simps, coming when the chulupa signal lights up the sky, or they’re a false-flag marketing team curated by a corporate giant and I’m honestly not sure which is weirder.
Sure, this could simply be the case of a Mormon man who had his first bite of spicy food ever and made it his whole personality. For his loyalty, he’s been rewarded with a bit part in the Taco Pizza musical and tickets to every Taco Bell premier in perpetuity. It’s getting a lot harder to tell who’s being honest about advertising on the internet. At least I know I can trust my favorite influencer, Gordita Supremely. She’s been posting about Taco Bell non-stop for eight years for only the most genuine reasons, I just know it.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Ogi-Wan Supreme, who is just like regular Ogi-Wan, but comes with sour cream and diced tomatoes.