Saturday, June 18, 2011

Does anyone remember this Nickelodeon show?

Okay, here's a question for nostalgia buffs about a kids show from the
90's. The show in question is a kids-style horror show that I remember
seeing on Nickelodeon in the late 90's. I cannot recall the title or
any of the names of the characters of the show, I think it might've
been a failed pilot. Here's a synopsis of the plot.

The show starts off the bedroom of the protagonist, a little boy, who
is sleeping peacefully in his bed until he is woken up by something
moving under the covers. As he panics, we hear menacing voice come
from beneath the covers to which the scared little boy refers to by
name. During an exchange of dialogue, we learn that this bed-dwelling
creature (who stays hidden beneath the covers during this scene) had
apparently befriended this little boy. The boy, however, says that he
doesn't want to be friends with the creature anymore because although
he was nice to him at first, he is now just scary and mean. The
creature says that in order to leave him alone he'll have to pay him a
toll, although the boy is unsure what he could possibly offer up as
payment. In the end, however, the creature decides to take the little
boy's teddy bear, Bobo (yes that's right, the only character whose
name I remember is the freakin' teddy bear), as payment. Despite the
fact that the boy protests giving up his bear, we see the creature
forcefully take the bear under the covers of the bed and disappearing.

Fast forward years later, we see the protagonist is now in his early
teens, seeming to lead a fairly normal life with his single mom and
little brother. But then one morning he hears his little brother—who
is about the same age that he was during that incident at the
beginning of the show—talking about his imaginary friend that visits
him at night, a friend who just so happens to have the same name as
the creature that menaced the protagonist years earlier. The
protagonist tries to warn his brother to stay away from the creature,
telling him that he's dangerous, but his brother just ignores the
warnings.

The protagonist decides to spend the night in his brothers room so
that he can confront the creature. The creature shows up, and this
time he is shown onscreen, a rather ugly-looking beast who wore a
necklace of "treasures" that he had collected from children, including
the protagonists old bear. Anyway, the confrontation doesn't go as
planned, as the protagonist finds that he's just as scared of the
creature now as he was as a child. And for some reason, because of his
actions, his little brother is now at risk of being taken by the
creature during his next visit (I'm a bit sketchy on the details). The
protagonist realizes that he can't deal with this on his own, so he
decides to enlist the aid of this group paranormal-obsessed oddballs
from school. With their help, he determines that this creature is, in
fact, a troll and that they can get rid of it with a witch's
brew-style potion. From here they gather the ingredients for the
potion, the only part of this that I can remember is them collecting
one of the ingredients, sweat, from a spa. From what I recall, they
basically tamper with the temperature of a sauna room, making it
unbearably hot until, eventually, all of the men in the sauna come
running out, allowing them to gather their sweat.

Eventually, they manage to gather all the ingredients for the potion,
mix it, and gather in the room of the protagonists little brother that
night to confront the troll. My memory of just how this confrontation
goes down is a bit fuzzy, but from what I recall, things don't seem to
be going very well at first as the protagonist again reacts with fear
when faced with the troll. But while the troll taunts him by showing
him his old bear, the protagonist ultimately overcomes his fear and
takes his bear back, thus breaking the troll's necklace and causing it
to melt into a big pile of goo. As the protagonist and his new friends
celebrate their victory, the brothers' mom hears the commotion and
comes into the room, visibly upset a the sight of the goo on the bed
sheets. Assuming that the her son and his friends are responsible for
this, the mom forces the protagonist to wash his brother's sheets by
hand the next morning. It is during this time that the protagonist is
pulled away from his laundry duties when one of the kids from the
group insists that he come and see something that they found. The show
ends with him and the other kids arriving in a wide open field on
their bikes. Initially the protagonist is upset that he was dragged
away from his chore to see just some open field, but then one of the
kids tells him that it is not an open field that they are standing in.
We then see what they are all standing in from a bird's-eye-view: a
gigantic dinosaur-like footprint. That's where the show ends.

That's all I can remember about this show, haven't been a
Seems Yahoo decided to cut me off, even though I did edit it down.
Sorry if my post is a bit too lengthy, I like being detailed.

Anyway, basically what I say at the end of this post is that I've
searched the internet to find out the identity of this show, but I
haven't turned up anything. Does anyone know just what this show is
and what it was called?
Sorry, one more thing, it was NOT Are You Afraid of the Dark, I would
remember, I watched that show all the time. This show did not have the
campfire story premise or anything like that. I even remember it
having a rather brief opening title animation. Can't remember much
about it aside from the fact that it was in a green spooky-looking
font.

1 comment:

  1. Bloody hell I Remember this! Just not the name...

    ReplyDelete