It could even be a youtube video or movie that you don’t think anyone reading this has heard of besides you.
I got this. Someone, please prove me wrong. I’ll PayPal you $82.76 if you find this.
There’s a cartoon from the 80s (could be late 70snor early 90s) called Howard The Duck.
You’ll never find it, because of the wildly popular movie bearing the same name.
The “Howard the duck” I’m referring to was a cartoon movie that was about a Mallard duck who got separated from his flock while they were migrating south for the winter.
Howard finds himself in NYC for the winter, where he spends time with rats and frogs. They show him around NYC via the sewers.
There’s a scene where they’re beneath the world trade center and Howard and the frog marvel at is enormity. Then, the frog reminds Howard that “Nothing lasts forever; especially in New York.” (This is an exact quote, sparing punctuation.)
The VHS I had ended with a music video by some band with the word “dogs” (junk yard dogs? Something like that) in their band name. The music video was trippy AF. There was barking in the song. The visuals were mostly patterns of colorful circles.
Like, this sounds like a fever dream, but if you’ve seen it and can locate it, it will make sense. I swear.
My memory is shit but I’d describe the art style as watercolor. Animated watercolor. Fro the 80s. So, yeah. Sorry.
Fuck it. $20.
Fuckit 2: 4 payments of $20.69
I gave it a fair shake. But you’re right, seems obscure enough to be lost media adjacent. Ended up scrubbing 2 DuckTales episodes, skimming the ugly duckling (1997), and watched half an episode of Charlie chalk. My strategy was to ignore the name Howard entirely. Here’s a list of animated ducks for your reference.
Found it! New Friends 1981
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3352786/
After a few attempts, the successful Google string was:
“howard” “duck” “frog” -comic “new york”
Edit: By few, I mean my whole morning. Fun puzzle 😉
Edit 2: My work here is done. https://youtu.be/06kfHOvZdbs
Edit 3: Donate the money to charity, or use it to buy gifts for kids for the holidays!
HOLY SHIT.
😃
Ill absolutely donate to charity for your work. I’ll even probably update this post at some point to show it.
Thanks!! About to see my sister’s at Christmas, we grew up on this movie, and they both have kids and we’ve been trying to figure it out for YEARS.
Thanks!!
Haha, NP, glad I was able to rekindle a fun Christmas memory for you guys. Have fun! And tell them you found it on Lemmy. Get’em on the Fediverse 😉
https://rarefilmm.com/2019/01/new-friends-1981/ New friends 1981, Fmstrat gave the answer right before I could.
Movies:
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Kubo and the Two Strings. Some of the story elements are a bit too obvious, but the overall story is charming and the art style (stop motion with puppet-like characters) is just plain cool.
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Kirikou and the Sorceress. Wonderfully weird with an interesting story
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Triplets of Belleville. The entire movie is “told” without words, except for a single sentence right at the start and one right at the end.
Games:
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Terranigma (SNES). Main characters revives / creates an entire world that was doomed ages ago. It’s kind of bittersweet when you’re done reviving the continents, plants and animals and then the humans start f*cking stuff up. Great music and visuals too, despite being 16-Bit style
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Ōkami. One of my all-time favorites but due to minimal marketing, not many people are aware that this game even exists. Charming art style and interesting gameplay concept.
Kubo was a BAFTA winner and Okami was IGNs game of the year winner. The rest I agree with, but those two seem really popular for an “unheard of” list.
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The Illusion of Gaia for SNES. I don’t know anyone who has heard of it.
I still have the T-shirt that came with the box set!
It was a weird game, honestly.
I think the other two games in that series (Terranigma) didn’t get official English versions, but there are fanslations if you want to play them.
All 3 games got official English translations. Soul Blazer and Gaia were released in the US and Europe, but Terranigma for whatever reason was only released in Europe. I’m so glad emulation came around and opened up access to so many region-locked games.
The original Death Race 2000 starring Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine. It may have had a small comeback when the Death Race remake came out but this isn’t the kind of movie you’d see randomly on tv.
My parents love this movie, I saw it many times growing up. Every time they drive past someone in a wheelchair that movie gets mentioned.
“What’s that?” “A hand grenade” best pun in cinematic history, un-toppable. I’m a huge Death Race fan, and CarWars, and the Twisted Metal game. Gun cars are just cool
I edited the nudity out of that so we could screen it at work. There’s a LOT of titties in that movie.
The 1976 arcade game called Death Race (seemingly no relation) is one of the first to ever spark controversy over violence in video games. It’s not too well known today, being almost 50 years old and fairly primitive.
And fun movie fact, Death Race 2000 is Sylvester “Sly, The Italian Stallion” Stallone’s first non-pornographic film role.
Fun story, my dad met a guy who talked about a movie he had seen once, where racers ran over people to score points, my dad thought this guy was taking the piss and never considered the movie might be real. Until one day he was watching TV randomly and stumbled on the movie. But as people from the era of cable TV might remember, it was hard to know the name of the movie you just caught midway through, unless the channel showed the name of the movie you were out of luck, so I grew up knowing that this movie existed, but never knew the name. When the remake came out the plot seemed familiar enough for me that I immediately went to check what it was based on and finally put the final nail in the coffin of a long family mistery.
What was the movie called?
Nevermind I’m high
Anna and the appolypse, it’s a fantastic zombie musical with insanely good songs. I have never met anyone in the real world or online who have heard of it (except a few who I forced to watch with me).
I watched it and I did not like it, but it is probably that I went into it with the wrong expectations. The entire premise of “musical about a zombie apocalypse” sounded a bit goofy to me and the trailer had the same mood, so I expected a comedy, or at least something a bit tongue in cheek. Instead, the movie is a total downer.
Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future
Show from the 80s that was really just a vehicle for selling toys. They had a line of fighter jet thingies that were light guns you could shoot at the tv and somehow the guns themselves could respond to the lights from the tv and cause the cockpit to eject when it was hit. Not terribly obscure I think, but it was only a thing for like a year or two.
Oh my god I loved this as a kid, and had a shitload of the toys, and from my late teens on I’ve been trying like hell to figure out what this show/line of toys was!!!
Thank you for posting this today. Gonna show my kids. This is so wild.
