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Last time, I talked about the one Nicktoon from a decade I was familiar with that I never really watched growing up. This time, we talk about a Nicktoon from a less familiar decade that I definitely know about. #7. “Your Real Best Friend” – KaBlam! [October 11, 1996] You know, there were a handful of ‘90s Nicktoons I haven’t really caught growing up that I ended up liking later thanks to a little site I found called Nick Reboot. Among the many shows that played on there was this little showcase of cartoons called “KaBlam!” and as you’d expect, I loved it just about as much as everyone else on the site did. I mean, it had cartoons! It had ska! It had They Might Be Giants music videos! And rather than just be a typical showcase like “Oh Yeah Cartoons” was, “KaBlam!” has two animated hosts named Henry and June, who would introduce the sketches as well as have their own adventures. And while the show never really spun off successfully as the other one did, it was definitely the more exciting one. Let’s get to it, shall we? Sniz & Fondue: A Toxic Tail: We get to our first cartoon, Sniz & Fondue, a cartoon about two ferret roommates who can’t get along. In this one, Fondue gets tired of Sniz messing up his room so he decides to buy a Madagascar scorpion from an exotic pet shop. However, the tank accidentally breaks and the scorpion’s wandering around the house and he and the family must stop it. The scorpion ends up on Fondue’s back so Sniz slaps it off using a tennis racket and the little kid in the family kills it using her shovel. In the end, Fondue settles on letting Sniz jump on his bed as long as he charges him for each use. Action League Now: Road to Ruin: Our next cartoon involves a group of sentient action figures who form a superhero team called the Action League and their task this time is to stop the Mayor (who is the main villain of the show) from dropping trash over town. They chase after his car but the Actionmobile ends up falling off a cliff and landing on Thunder Girl (who actually bailed out on him mid-fall). They face off against the Mayor but as you might expect, their tiny car had nothing on the Mayor’s and they get crushed. Think that’s how it ended? Nope! The Mayor ends up driving off a cliff and the Action League surviving laugh. Life with Loopy: Hi-Fi Frankenstein: Our next cartoon is a slice-of-life adventure centered around a girl named Loopy and the adventures she has, narrated by her brother Larry. After she mishears Larry call her a “goober”, she makes her own friend named Frank out of parts from her dad’s stereo system. But Larry’s sensed that something’s going on around the house when all of their other appliances went missing. Turns out Frank has started an uprising against humanity. Larry and Loopy team up and fight them off. Afterwards, they both hang out together and listen to music. Prometheus and Bob: Our last short is arguably my favorite out of all of them. The premise is simple: You’ve got an alien named Prometheus trying to teach a caveman named Bob some of future’s greatest inventions and it either ends up going wrong due to the monkey or Bob’s incompetence. This episode’s shorts revolved around them learning about art and bowling. Funny shit, man. And that was KaBlam! I was gonna summarize some of the Henry and June wraparounds but those ones didn’t really have a specific plot this time. There are more episodes of this show that have more interesting plot points for them. That being said, this show is still pretty solid! Prometheus and Bob, as you’ve read above, is my main highlight of the show but let’s not discount any others like Action League and Sniz and Fondue, which were just as entertaining and have their own share of highlights. In general, it’s just a fun show and an excellent tribute to comic animation in general. VERDICT: 9/10 (No matter which time or network you watch this on, it’ll be KaBlammerific!) RANKINGS: Well, that was fun! Whatever show we've got up next, I'm ready for it!