In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 183: Scratch-and-Sniff Stickers, Bizarre Gameboy Titles & Lost Bubble Gums!(2-19-2025)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 183

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The Valentine's chocolates are gone, but the sweet nostalgia is just getting started! Episode 183 takes you on a trip back to the sights, smells, and flavors of the past:

✨ Sniffing Out the '80s – Remember the thrill of scratch-and-sniff stickers? From pizza-scented rewards to bizarre fragrances, no one asked for, we uncover the history behind this smelly sensation that had '80s kids obsessed.

🎮 The Weirdest Gameboy Games Ever – Monkey boxing? A game controlled by a sewing machine? Yeti chefs? We’re digging deep to find the strangest, rarest, and most ridiculous Gameboy titles ever made.

🍬 Bubble Gums We Wish Weren’t Gone – From powdery classics to flavor-packed icons, we count down five bubble gums that deserved a longer chew. Did your favorite make the list?

🕰️ This Week in History & Time Capsule – A look back at the legendary first superhero, The Phantom, and the mark he left on pop culture.

Hit play and let the nostalgia rush in! 🚀

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Speaker 01:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 183. It's the post-Valentine's Day episode, so either it's a lot of Lonely Hearts Club or celebrating love. Either way, I've got a lot of nostalgia to fill up the empty chocolate hearts box. We're going to start it off by looking back at a beloved part of childhood for 1980s kids. That is scratch and sniff stickers. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at the rarest and or weirdest Game Boy games ever. We will get sad at the new top five as we look at some discontinued bubble gums. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time capsule looking at the very first superhero comic ever, The Phantom. All of that is coming up right now on episode 183 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Ah yeah, so what is it? Is it Lonely Hearts Club time? Is it Celebration of Love time? It is the post-Valentine's Day episode of the podcast. Me, I enjoyed Valentine's Day. A lot of fun stuff I did on my own. Didn't buy any candy hearts or flowers or anything. I hope, however, you out there celebrated your Valentine's that it was as good as it could be. If it was terrible, at least you didn't have to wait too long for a new episode of the podcast filled with the nostalgia to make you forget about Valentine's Day. Think of it this way, we're already more than halfway through the last full month of winter. Spring is about a month away from when this podcast goes live, so at least you got that. I mean, on Cape Cod, spring doesn't really start until early May. Late March through April is pretty much upper 40s, a lot of clouds, fog, and drizzle. But it's technically spring, so I guess you can't complain much. I can't start this podcast off... without doing what I normally do, and that is thanking my Patreon subscribers. For $5 a month, you can get a shout out and access to bonus content like Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Leo, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal. You can also go to the site and look at the free tier. I put something up for Valentine's Day for the free tier for everyone to enjoy. Something new this week from the adding things to my plate department, since my plate is never too full, I guess. I have restarted my Etsy shop dedicated to my photography. Those of you that follow me on social media, more specifically Instagram and threads, you see a lot of my photography. I get a lot of comments from people asking if I sell them, and it always seems like a lot of work. The idea of posting photos and then getting the print on demand services going. But I finally figured, hey, why not start up an Etsy shop? The joke was on me. I went to Etsy and I was going to create a shop. And when I signed in, Google signs you in automatically or it can. Lo and behold, there was a photography shop already there that I'd made in 2017 that I totally forgot about. It's been sitting there collecting dust for almost eight years. I'm not saying that this one's going to be much better, but CJ Sederlin Photos, I kept the name. I'm going to have a link in the description of the podcast. I've got a lot of work to do on it. Right now, if you go there, there are several digital prints you can order and download. I'm starting to put up physical ones that you can get shipped to you. Maybe this will be a fun new side hustle. Maybe in a couple of weeks, you'll wonder why I don't mention it anymore on the podcast. It'll be because I just forgot about it until 2033. So go over there and just check it out. You don't have to buy photos. Just let me know what you think of it And those of you that follow me on social media, on IG, on threads, if you have any photos that you see of mine that you say, ooh, that might make a good print, even if you don't want to buy it, just send me a message. Because my taste in what I think makes a great photo is a lot different from the average person that views my page. Now, unfortunately, I can't make any of these photos scratch and sniff. Here's a good segue coming up. But let's kick this podcast off, episode 183, with a look back at something that is a really fun memory from my childhood in the 1980s. That is scratch and sniff stickers. So let the sniffing begin now. When I think back to school in the 1980s, specifically elementary school, there are so many positive memories. I think because school wasn't so... serious, like you didn't feel like your future depended on what you did in school when you were in kindergarten through third, fourth, fifth grade. I've talked before about Lee J. Ames and his drawing books, Draw, Draw, Draw, Draw 50 Animals and all that. I actually recently did a video that went up on YouTube for that segment of the podcast if you want to go check that out. And I've talked about educational kids shows of the 80s and watching things on the TV on the rolling cart. At some point I'm probably going to do a segment about school lunch and recess in elementary school so we can all talk about pizza day and the scoop of mashed potatoes that held its shape very well. One of those memories that was probably a smaller part of my childhood in school than I think but made a big impact was scratch and sniff stickers. Every now and then when I'm researching the podcast and I find things from the 80s that other people my age put up, someone will have a picture of the little round stickers on a sheet of paper. And I'm like, oh, I should do a segment on that for the podcast. But I keep forgetting there's so many other things that I think about. So scratch and sniff stickers get put way in the back corner of my research department. But they really are symbolic of that early time in school, the more innocent time where you're learning letters and numbers and shapes and very basic math. And like I said, it's not serious. If you fail a math test in first grade, you're not going to then not get into Harvard. Although, I mean, maybe. Maybe it's a sign of things to come. Anyway. Those of you that are around my age, a little older, a little younger, you probably can picture the scratch and sniff stickers I'm talking about in your head. And those are probably the ones I'm going to be talking about. A very specific brand from a certain company. The scratch and sniff stickers, they were a massive craze in the late 70s and early 80s, mid 80s. Those of you that grew up later on, you don't understand how important it was to get the certain types of scratch and sniff stickers on your homework or on your tests. One of the biggest companies behind the trend of scratch and sniff stickers was ironically called Trend Enterprises. And so they're the basic ones I'm going to talk about. The origins of scratch and sniff technology dates back to the 1960s when scientists developed a process called microencapsulation. where tiny fragrance-filled capsules were embedded in a coating that would release scent when scratched or rubbed. I couldn't find what the purpose of this technology was in the first place, but it ended up by the late 1970s finding its way into the educational and novelty market, especially for kids. A little side note, it's funny to think about something like this microencapsulation. where the scientists are finding this brand new technology and they probably have these dreams of it being used for something so important to change the world. And it ends up being known mostly for scratch and sniff stickers that kids in the 1980s liked, which it's not a bad thing. I'm sure it made trend enterprises a lot of money, but the scientists were probably like, no, it was supposed to be for something way more important, not so that kids in the 80s could smell pizza and popcorn on their homework. The kings of scratch and sniff stickers was Trend Enterprises. They were founded in Minnesota in 1968, and they originally focused on educational materials for teachers. It was around 1977-78 that Trend Enterprises introduced their first line of scratch and sniff stickers as classroom incentives. The stickers were used by teachers to reward good behavior, completed assignments, or achievements in class. And again, I come back to if you didn't grow up back then, you don't understand how big it was to get your homework back to you or a test back to you and have certain stickers on it. As a kid at that time, it was the scent and it was the colorful design. They were highly collectible among kids, although... I don't know how you could take them home. I mean, I guess you would keep your homework, but I also don't remember trying to keep the sticker, like tearing the corner off my homework to make sure I had it. By the early 1980s, when I started school, scratch and sniff stickers were everywhere. And Trend Enterprises was one of the biggest players. The OG of these scratch and sniff stickers, they included ones like Grape Ape. which I'm shocked they didn't get sued for from the cartoon, but it smelled like grape. Peppermint puppy, which was mint. Root beer bear, which was root beer. Orange orangutan, which was orange. Pizza, which smelled like cheese and tomato. And then you got skunk, which smelled like not really a skunk. I mean, I wouldn't have known what a skunk smelled like when I was six, seven years old. I just knew I didn't like that one. What's great is if you go online now, you can find on eBay, on Etsy, on a lot of shopping sites, you can find sheets of these stickers from back then. I don't know how long they hold their scent, but you're more than welcome to go and find out for yourself. There were other stickers, like one that smelled like a Christmas tree or cinnamon rolls. My favorite was the popcorn one. Poppin' good. That was the one. I don't remember in school if we could choose our stickers. Like, we were that presumptuous. Like, I know my homework is good, so give me this sticker as a reward. Or if the teachers were like, you look like someone that would like the skunk one, so you get that. Or you get the bat one, which, I mean, I don't know what that smelled like. I'm finding pictures of some of these old stickers. I'm like, I don't remember the bat. But there were gumballs. There was fried chicken. There was a kind of rainbow one that just said fantastic. I can't remember what it smelled like. Maybe the glass cleaner fantastic. Trend Enterprises wasn't the only brand though. There were other ones. Mellow, Smellow, Creative Teaching Press, Hallmark. But they didn't succeed like Trend Enterprises. Those of you that are picturing scratch and sniff stickers in your head, the ones I've named, you can see those. If you don't go and Google it, can you picture any other type of scratch and sniff stickers from Hallmark? I don't know. I know that there were times that I would get the stickers on my homework. There were other times that you'd get the stickers still on the paper, the smooth paper. So if you wanted to use it, you could. If you didn't want to, you could trade with others. That was a thing in elementary school. The scratch and sniff stickers that weren't used, they became prized possessions. And some of the rarer Trend Enterprises stickers are still sought after by collectors of my age and around my age today. I keep saying how powerful nostalgia is. The older I get, the more I crave these things from my childhood. Because unfortunately, you can't stop the hands of time. But at least for a few moments, you could sniff old stickers while you watch Reading Rainbow on an old TV, if you have one. Like a lot of things, the Scratch and Sniff stickers were more of a fad, a craze, that by the late 80s, early 90s, had been replaced by other things. There were the Lisa Frank stickers, which were a lot of different animals, a lot of unicorns, a lot of sparkles and rainbows in these stickers. There were pogs, which looked like thin coasters that you'd almost want to set your drink on, but they had images on them of all different pop culture things. And things like slap bracelets, which were huge in the early 90s until they got banned because I guess people were getting hurt by them. I remember those specifically from sixth grade. For me, nothing tops the scratch and sniff stickers. I can still remember them and maybe even vaguely remember the smell of the popcorn or the pizza and unfortunately the skunk. You out there who began school in the early, mid-80s, do you remember the scratch and sniff stickers? And those of you out there that are all different ages, what was the first... trend in school that you remember was it pogs or slap bracelets if you were interested you can find the scratch and sniff stickers from trend enterprises on ebay and other collector sites like i mentioned etsy but the crazy thing is trend enterprises is still around today if you go to trendenterprises.com they have a collection of these retro scratch and sniff stickers There are 25 different scents. And if you click on one, like I clicked on the popcorn one, you get two sheets with 24 stickers on each for $3.99. Or if you want to drown in nostalgia, you can get all of them, 25 different scents, 24 stickers in each for $90. It's on sale. I just looked. So there you go, Gen Xers. Go out there and get your favorite scratch and sniff stickers and give them to your kids for chores well done. Or just save them for yourself. This week in history, we are going back 89 years ago to February 17th, 1936, and the debut of the very first superhero comic, The Phantom. It's wild to think that in a world of comic books and superheroes, where there's Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, that none of them were the first. If you had asked me before I did my research, I would have thought the first superhero was Superman. That kind of made sense to me, but nope. Before any of those iconic figures emerged, there was the Phantom, who was created by writer Lee Falk, and it debuted in newspapers on February 17th, 1936. The Phantom predated Superman by more than two years. Lee Falk was a young writer and theater director, and he had already created Mandrake the Magician, which was a successful syndicated comic strip in 1934. Falk conceived of the Phantom with inspiration from mythological and literary heroes like Tarzan, Robin Hood, and Zorro. He wanted to create a masked vigilante with a strong moral code, someone who would fight against injustice across the globe. I won't dive too deep into the origin story of the character the Phantom, but he lived in a fictional country. And he was different from the other heroes of the time, like the Shadow or the Green Hornet, because he wore a skin-tight purple bodysuit, black mask, and skull-emblazoned ring, which he used to leave a permanent mark on criminals. This type of outfit became a template for future superheroes like Superman, Batman, and The Flash. Another innovation of the Phantom was having a secret identity. And even if you've never heard of the Phantom character, like I hadn't until I did my research, its legacy is undeniable. The use of a costume and a mask set the stage for the superhero genre. The concept of an oath-bound hero who fights crime as part of a long-standing tradition. That influenced the characters. But beyond comics, the Phantom influenced film, television, and literature. The Phantom character has been adapted into more comics, animated series, and a 1996 live-action film starring Billy Zane. The movie is 43% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and was a bomb, losing tens of millions of dollars. So I don't know if you've never seen The Phantom. That might not be the best place to start. It is true often that the originals in a certain genre are overshadowed by what comes after because there's no template. So there was no template for superheroes before the Phantom. That being said, the Phantom stands as a pioneering figure in comic history. His introduction laid the groundwork for the superhero genre as we know it today. So every Marvel movie that you watch, any superhero movie, it all traces its origins back to The Phantom. And that very first comic strip, the very first superhero comic, The Phantom, came out 89 years ago this week in history. Oh, we'll keep the good times rolling with the new time capsule. We're going to stick to the same date. So the Phantom is debuting in newspapers, February 17th, 1936. What is going on in the world of pop culture back then? Well, let's find out. The number one song was Pennies from Heaven by Bing Crosby. This single by Bing Crosby, the legendary crooner, was number one for 10 weeks. This song has been recorded by some of the biggest names in the history of music like Billie Holiday, Doris Day, and Tony Bennett. As for Bing Crosby, he was the first true multimedia star, a celebrity in music, in radio, in motion pictures. What's crazy is that Bing Crosby had sold a total of more than 200 million albums as far as records, 45s, like the singles, by 1960. He's one of the biggest selling artists of all time, rivaled by the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson. That's it. The number one movie was Modern Times, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing 25 cents. This is a Charlie Chaplin partial talkie comedy film. It was his last ever performance in a motion picture as his famed Little Tramp character. Which is basically, if you picture Charlie Chaplin, the top hat, the cane, the little mustache, that's the little tramp character. The film was not a massive hit. It basically broke even with its budget, but it's 98% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so it's got a lot of love, and especially if you like old-school comedy. A fun fact about Charlie Chaplin was he was the first ever Hollywood actor to be paid $1 million per year. And that was in 1918. And if you were wondering, that is a shade under $21 million when adjusted for inflation to 2025. The number one radio show, because there was no television, was Amos and Andy. This is definitely one of the most controversial shows ever in entertainment history. Two white men basically doing a minstrel show, which was them playing black people, but on the radio. So very stereotypical voices. The show starred Amos Jones and Andy Brown, and it ran as a radio show from 1926 to 1960. At its peak in the early 1930s, Amos and Andy had 40 million weekly listeners. For a little scale there, the population of the United States in 1930 was just over 122 million people, meaning that basically about one out of three people in the United States would listen to Amos and Andy on a weekly basis. And if you were around back then, February 17th, 1936... Maybe you missed Valentine's Day and now you feel bad, so you've got to get your significant other some kind of gift to make up for it. Whoa, boy, you're in luck. I found something for you. At your local Sears, yes, the department store, you can get yourself day-old baby chicks, Rhode Island Reds, for 12 cents each. Why get a bouquet of roses and a box of chocolates when you can get a box of baby chickens to bring home? Have no fear. They are all polyrim tested, which was a type of typhoid, so you're not going to get diseased chickens to bring home. I mean, you think about that, going to a department store and you just got chickens there you can buy. That was a different world in the 1930s. Well, there you have it. Another time capsule, another This Week in History. You can't go buy chickens at Sears anymore. You really can't go to Sears anymore at all. But as we get into the new top five, I've got more things you can't buy as we look at discontinued gums. We should all take a moment of silence, chew up a piece of gum, stick it under our table, desk, wherever we are, and bow our heads in the memory of fruit stripe gum. The fact that that gum was discontinued was what got me to do this top five segment about discontinued bubble gums. The funny thing is, Fruit Stripe gum was discontinued about a year ago, and I just found out about it a few weeks ago, which shows how much I chewed Fruit Stripe gum. As a kid growing up in the 80s, early 90s, I loved Big League Chew, the shredded gum, or Bubblicious, or Hubba Bubba gum. When I got older, I started chewing the quote-unquote healthy gum that would help your teeth dentine, things like that. I haven't chewed gum in years. I don't know about you out there. What is your favorite gum that's out there now? There are a lot of classic bubble gum, chewing gum. And what I wanted to do here was go through some discontinued gums from yesteryear. As with most of these top fives, they are in no particular order. There are some honorable mentions. I'm going to say that maybe half of these you will remember. That's me just assuming. But let's just get right into it. Let's start with some honorable mentions. So honorable mentions for discontinued bubblegum chewing gum include Skittles Bubblegum. This was the bubblegum version of the popular candies, Taste the Rainbow. The best I could see, Skittles bubblegum was around from roughly 2004 to 2010. Another honorable mention is Gator Gum. This was the gum version, I guess, of Gatorade. This was around in the late 80s, discontinued in 1989. I remember loving it in 5th grade, 6th grade, and then it was gone. Another honorable mention is Beachy's gum. This used to be known as beach nut gum. It was discontinued in 2023 after being around for almost a century. Another honorable mention is ouch bubble gum. This was around from the 90s to the late 2000s and its claim to fame was that each stick of gum was wrapped in a way that made it look like a band-aid. The final honorable mention is stride gum. This had the big swooping S on the front of the package. It was discontinued in the United States in 2023, although technically it's still available in China and Australia. But are you really going to order stride gum from China or Australia? I mean, come on. So there are some honorable mentions. Sad last days of discontinued gums. Do you remember any of those? Well, the actual top five is going to be full of ones I bet you'll remember. Bets will not be honored. So let's dive into the actual top five, starting with number one. You heard me talk about it. Fruit Stripe Gum. The infamous gum where supposedly you would get about 15, 20 seconds worth of flavor and then it was just useless. I didn't try it enough to really be able to validate that claim. Family Guy had that clip where Peter eats it and after like two chews, he's got no flavor.

Speaker 00:

Oh, man, you're more of a letdown than fruit stripe gum.

Speaker 01:

Now, because fruit stripe was discontinued in January 2024, you can technically get it still as some of the gum would not have expired yet. So you got the people that hoarded it once they found out it was discontinued and they sell it on eBay. Much like stride gum. Are you really going to go on eBay and pay $80 for a couple of packs of Fruit Stripe gum? That being said, Fruit Stripe was around for a long time. Created by Beach Nut, the same company that made the Beachies gum that got discontinued. It came out in 1960 and lasted all the way until last year. It was known for the zebra mascot, the really colorful stripes on the front of the packaging. Obviously, the majority of these gums, bubble gums, they're meant to appeal to kids and teenagers, not to adults. Adults have chewing gum. That's more mature. Number two is chicklets.

Speaker 03:

Well, cowboy, I think chicklets flavor is outside. I can't decode it. Superficial thinking, comrade. The flavor of chicklets is in the gum. Outside. It's out here. You may be partly right, but mostly left. Chicklets. Two flavor. Great. No debate.

Speaker 01:

Well, this is another one I remember from being a kid. My mother liked Chicklets. Chicklets, this is kind of a confusing one here. I've seen where it's still kind of available, but the brand was sold in 2023. So you'll have to let me know where you are, if you can find Chicklets gum. Because I can see it online that you can order it. But like Fruit Stripe, is it stuff that's just, they're running out the string as far as what they've got in stock? Chicklets are, instead of being flat pieces of gum, they're smaller, square, with kind of a hard coating on it that you would crunch through first and then you'd have your gum. The Chicklets brand dates back to 1900, with the name being derived from an Aztec word, chicle, meaning sticky stuff. What I saw in my research is that Chiclets was discontinued in the United States in 2016, but it's still available in Mexico. So just like stride gum or old stock of fruit stripe gum, I think you can get it. But how much effort are you going to go into to get Chiclets gum? Number three is Chewles gum.

Speaker 04:

Chules

Speaker 01:

was a cube-shaped gum that had kind of a liquid center that when you would bite in, it would ooze out. Chules debuted in 1977. and was one of the very first advertisements on MTV on its first day in 1981. The big claim to fame by Chewles is that it was an alternative to sugar-filled gums. So it didn't have sugar, but it had saccharin, which was like worse than sugar, artificial sugar. In fact, saccharin was even banned, taken off the market in 1981. Although it's still around now, but for a while it was actually banned. The best I could see is Chewles was discontinued in 1992, although you can go on eBay and find vintage packs of Chewles gum for sale. I have no idea how 30-plus-year-old gum would taste, but I'm sure anyone that gets it is not getting it to eat it. They're getting it just to have. Number four is Super Bubble. Lost in the shuffle of Fruit Stripe gum getting discontinued, Super Bubble was also discontinued around the same time last year. Super Bubble, much like Fruit Stripe, it's been said that the decline of chewing gum, bubble gum habits, chewing habits by people in general, is what led to the discontinuation of them. Super Bubble first came out in 1946. then known as Bub's Daddy. All right. So Super Bubble was around for even longer than Fruit Stripe. You're looking at almost 80 years. I'm sure at its peak, Super Bubble, Fruit Stripe, they probably didn't see changing in consumer habits with bubble gum. I mean, I thought it was only me that wasn't chewing gum anymore, but I guess it's way more. And that'll lead us into number five, Freshen Up.

Speaker 04:

Freshen

Speaker 01:

Up was one of those gums that was supposed to be breath freshening as well. It had crystals inside that were made by the Cadbury Company. It first came out in 1975 and had all the classics, peppermint, spearmint, cinnamon. and regular bubblegum flavor. Freshen Up was big in the 1980s when bubblegums were meant to be as much breath fresheners more than brushing your teeth or mouthwash. You chew Freshen Up or Dentine or Big Red. It's like chewing gum. to clean your teeth is like the same as on The Simpsons when Bart and Homer were home alone and Bart said, do I really have to brush my teeth? And Homer said, no, just rinse your mouth out with soda. That's like chewing gum to clean your teeth is about the same as that. Freshen Up was discontinued in 2019. So it's wild to think four of the top five were all discontinued within the last 10 years, less than 10 years. But there you have it. Top five discontinued bubble gums or chewing gums. Which of these was your favorite that was gone? I enjoyed Chewles. I like the idea of that first bite into the gum, getting like that ooze of something sweet. Maybe for old time's sake, I'll go get a pouch of Big League Chew and just shove all that shredded gum in my mouth just to pretend like it's the old days. Oh, you kids today, and even most of you adults, spoiled by the availability of handheld video games, whether consoles or on your phone, those of you around my age, you know what a huge deal it was in April 1989 when the Nintendo Entertainment System released their handheld Game Boy console. I got mine as a Christmas present, Christmas or birthday present, In 1989, so I would have been turning 12. Nothing beat sitting in bed playing Super Mario Land or baseball or Tetris. Sure, the screen was pretty small and it was green, but you didn't know what was coming as far as evolution of video games. To me, it was the greatest thing ever. Just a few years earlier, I was playing Pitfall on the Atari 2600. or going nuts over the Oregon Trail game on the PC at school. Back in episode 47, I did a deep dive into the origins of the Game Boy and my first experiences with it and such. So you may be asking, why am I talking about it again? Well, I'm running out of content. No, that's not it. What I wanted to do was take a look at some of the rarest and weirdest games that were released for the Game Boy. It was originally going to be just the original Game Boy. And what ended up happening was I found some of the funniest ones were for the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. So it became all hands on deck. What I have are eight titles. And they're a mix of games that are hard to find because either they weren't released for long, weren't popular, or were just odd. And also weird games. So let's jump into this list. The first game I found was one called Robopon. This was a game for the Game Boy Color, and it focuses on a boy named Cody and his adventures on this island with his robot friends. It was released in North America for the Christmas season in 2000, and it doesn't seem that odd until you get into the kind of the actual makeup of the game cartridge. What makes Robopon weird is the cartridge itself is longer than a typical Game Boy cartridge because at the top of it, there's a heat sensor. This heat sensor, infrared sensor, could allow you to do things like point your TV remote at the cartridge and get a stat boost or wirelessly trade characters. It's definitely innovative, definitely ahead of its time. I think part of the reason it wasn't as popular as they probably wanted it to be was that it was a blatant ripoff of Pokemon. You can't blame them for trying, though. Creating a game with a heat sensor, infrared sensor on it, that's really unique. The second one I want to talk about is definitely a weird game. It's called Avenging Spirit. So this game came out in 1991 for the original Game Boy. The game starts with you as the player walking with your girlfriend. You're ambushed by this crime syndicate. They kidnap your girlfriend and kill you. So you are in the game as a ghost. And you get to possess different characters in it who have different abilities. It was said at the time that the game was praised for its uniqueness and the longevity of the game. You could play it forever. But that it came with a really steep learning curve, which meant that most casual players like I would have been at the time wouldn't have put in the time and effort to learn avenging spirit. I just find it weird because, boy, this is a really dark and morbid game to start where you're murdered in the first few seconds of it. I don't know why, but this game made me think of a very, very obscure and not good movie from 1990 called Heart Condition starring Bob Hoskins, who was in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where he has a heart attack and he receives the heart of Denzel Washington, who then is like a spirit inside of him. I don't know why it made me think of that with this avenging spirit game. Heart condition. Boy, referencing that movie may be the most random bit of nostalgia pop culture you might ever hear on this podcast. The next game is a religious game. The NIV Bible and the Last 20 Levels of Joshua. This falls into the ultra-rare category. Creating a very serious, educational, religious video game that really carves away at your general audience. The game basically would convert your Game Boy into a portable NIV Bible. And it's filled with education about religion. That's why it's so rare. If you go online looking for it, you can find copies of it for sale. The cheapest I found, and I don't even know if the game works, was almost $150. And I've seen it for over $700 for this Game Boy cartridge. The next rare and weird game I found was Fish Dude, which was for the original Game Boy in 1991. The game is pretty simple. You're a fish in the ocean. You eat smaller fish and try to avoid getting eaten by bigger fish. There's 18 levels that get progressively harder. You get three lives in each game, and there are cheap deaths, like swimming right into the mouth of a bigger fish that appears in front of you. This falls more into the rare category than weird. I've seen new-in-box versions of Fish Dude going for well over $400, and it seems from what I've read about it that after about five minutes of playing it, you've kind of seen everything the game has, so it would be a major waste of money. Now I'll cue the angry comments online from people that love Fish Dude. So the first four, they were kind of straightforward. The last four are where the fun really begins. The fifth game I wanted to talk about is the reason why this list went from the original Game Boy to all incarnations of it. And the game is called Monkey Puncher. I mean, right there, as soon as I saw that title, I was like, that needs to go in. Because every time I see it or say it, it makes me laugh. Monkey Puncher came out for the Game Boy Color in 2012. And I've seen it described as part virtual pet and part boxing simulator. Like, how do you mix those together? From what I've read, it's like the game starts, you're gifted this monkey, and then it's just training and fighting. And I've seen screen captures of the game where it tells you how the monkey is feeling at the time. Like, when I see it say the monkey's angry, it's like, yeah, of course, if you're beating the hell out of it, it's not going to be happy. Monkey Puncher sounds like something I would have come up with my friends in high school with my camcorder for a skit. Oh man, that's a hard one to top. The next game I found is called Spud's Adventure. In this game, the main character is an anthropomorphic potato. This game came out in 1991 for the original Game Boy. Like I said, Spud is the hero. He's a cape-wearing potato. He has to rescue Princess Mado, who is a tomato. Basically, all the characters in this are different vegetables. Terry Turnip, Arnie Eggplant, Garrett Carrot. These are some of the ones that you will find in Spud's Adventure. This game seems like it would be fun and unique. Like something that a kid would want to play for the original Game Boy. But it did not sell well. It is very rare. I've seen it on eBay for upwards of $350. So that's a pretty good markup when considering that the original games in 89, 90, when it came out, they were usually about $49. The irony is that even though Spud's Adventure didn't do well, Game Boy seemed to be obsessed with superhero potatoes. They came out with another game a few years later called Amazing Tater, and that one also didn't do well. It's like, did you learn? Now you should never make potato-based superhero games ever. Anyway, moving on. The seventh game I found, this seems to be one that... A lot of chatter I've seen online considers it the weirdest Game Boy game ever. You be the judge. It's called Mario Family. This game was only released in Japan, and it really doesn't even qualify as a game. It was designed to work in concert with a JN sewing machine. So right there, you know, it's weird, a game and a sewing machine together. But you were supposed to feed these Mario themed patterns into this sewing machine and then hopefully watch the machine recreate them. So it's like if there was an image of the ending of Super Mario Brothers with the castle and Mario and the princess, you would then craft that onto a pillowcase or something like that. It's one of those ideas that you wonder how in the world that first came out. Did the sewing machine company say, you need to make a game that works with our machine? And how did that even start? The game was released in 2001 for the Game Boy Color. Like I said, only in Japan. I have not found any... real images of these created patterns by the sewing machine. So I'd love to know if anyone has seen those. I'm figuring most of you have not heard of Mario Family, though. But that leads us to the last game on the list here. It's the only one where the title rivals Monkey Puncher. It's called Urban Yeti. This game was from 2002, and it's about a yeti that has to make a go of life in the big city. It is said that this game has a big open world, kind of like Grand Theft Auto. But I read somebody described one of the scenes where the Yeti is working in a soup kitchen to pay a bridge toll. I mean, stop and think about that sentence I just said. And that's a video game where you can be a Yeti in a city working in a soup kitchen to pay a bridge toll that you owe. It's like that South Park episode where the manatees take the balls and push them together to form weird ideas for the show's family guy. It's like that's how they created Urban Yeti. That's another one that I could have seen my friends and I making a skit about. I mean, we made a skit about a boy that was raised by trees and somehow grew roots. So I could easily see Urban Yeti or Monkey Puncher being things we would have come up with. So what did you think of those games? Have you heard of any of those? When I started researching this segment, I can tell you none of these games I had ever heard of. Monkey Puncher changed everything for this segment. Can you tell I like just saying that? But yeah, if you want to find any of these games, get ready to fork over at least a couple hundred dollars for most of them. And yes, if you want to watch real gameplay of Monkey Puncher, it's on YouTube, so you're welcome. But until next time, that's going to do it for episode 183 of the In My Footsteps podcast. I hope that I soothed your broken heart if Valentine's wasn't great or added to your amazing week if Valentine's Day was awesome. If you enjoyed my show, if you enjoy my content, you can become a subscriber on Patreon, $5 a month. You can buy me a coffee. You can find me all over social media, Instagram and threads where you can see my photos, but I'm on Blue Sky. There's a Facebook fan page. I do TikTok videos, not dancing or anything, mostly scenes of Cape Cod. Subscribe on YouTube. I've got hundreds and hundreds of videos on there. New England travel videos, podcast segments. I said, if I get to the point where I can monetize my channel, I will likely bring back the Webcam Weekly Wrap-Up podcast as a live stream because right now it's on pause because I just don't have time for everything. You heard at the top of the show, I'm bringing back my Etsy Photoshop. It's like right there. I don't even know if I have room for that, but I got a good idea and it's like I got to capitalize on it. I'm getting... closer to filming some of my scenes for Frank Durant's upcoming horror film. I'm actually, when I get done with this podcast, I'm going to practice my scenes. I now have two people that have products that are going to be featured in my scenes. There's always room for more. Frank said if we got three, four, five different people that wanted to be in it, we'd find ways to put them in it. For me, I'll just crowd them all into my scenes that I have. It'll be me and then it'll be just all kinds of product placement around me. Thank you as always to all of you that tune into the show, that find me all over the rest of my content. I put loads of work in every week on this content. So those of you that check it out, I really appreciate it because I spend probably 10 to 15 hours a week doing this type of stuff. Recording, editing, marketing. And the podcast train doesn't stop. Next week is episode 184. My math might be off, but as far as I'm seeing, I believe episode 200 is going to be June 18th. I'll try to figure out something good to do for it, whether it's another listener's choice episode or some kind of a bigger deep dive into something. I'll make it worthwhile for a 200th episode. But that's heading towards the summer. We've still got winter and spring to go through. It's definitely been the doldrums of winter on Cape Cod and New England. But hopefully wherever you are, you're getting to get outside, get a little bit of sun, a little bit of vitamin D. This is that time of year where most people are deficient in it. Days are still short and cold and filled with either snow or rain. So lean into the things that make you happy. Whether that's favorite foods, people, podcasts, whatever your content choices are. Special happy birthday shout out at the end of the show to one of my good friends. You've heard her on the podcast before. Kaylin Orr, trainer TKO, coach KO, owner of the Misfits Gym. She's one of the sponsors of me in my film debut. I've known her since day one that I was a trainer. And she's someone that I've called her a tornado of sunshine probably since day one. But knowing her for almost 10 years, seeing where she is, everything she's gone through, her evolution. Like you want to talk about inspiring to start your own business, to have the guts to do that. It makes me happy and proud to know her and to be her friend. So I hope you have a happy birthday. Don't do anything too crazy. And all of you that are on Cape Cod, go to her gym, Misfits, M-S-F-T-S. Visit the website. Go to her studio. You won't be disappointed. And as for me, I'll be back next week with more podcast fun, nostalgia fun. Find me everywhere. I've always got content coming up. And remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew me. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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