Topic 101: Sponges

Carol:

Mighty Mouse Vs. The Sponge

When I was in grade school in the 1950’s there were no television channels dedicated to children’s programming. The only children’s  shows I watched were the Mickey Mouse Club on week-day afternoons and Saturday morning cartoons. My favorite was Mighty Mouse Playhouse. I can still hear the theme song in my head as our tiny hero sings, “here I come to save the day, Mighty Mouse is on the way.”
 

Mighty Mouse, 1945

I didn’t realize when I was watching M.M. on CBS that his character had already been popular in the movies for ten years. He started out at Terrytoons around 1945, both in movies and in comic books. And, his movie cartoon Gypsy Life received an academy award nomination in 1945.  In 1955 Paul Terry, the producer of Terrytoons sold his studio to CBS, which is how it ended up on the Saturday a.m. line-up in our West Los Angeles living-room. (source: Don Markstein’s Toonopedia)
 

Mighty Mouse Playhouse was both parody and formula.  In the evening with our parents, we watched Superman save the day for Gotham Metropolis and Lois Lane. Saturday mornings, we watched a miniature caped crusader save the day for Mouseville and Mitzi. The same cliffhangers and “hero saves damsel in distress” themes had kept my own parents entertained at the Saturday morning movie matinees. The show was so popular that it aired for 12 years, with old episodes recycled or syndicated up through the 1980’s.
 

By the time my kids were in grade school, children’s television programming had seen significant expansion  and by the mid 1980’s the first children’s channel Nickelodeon began broadcasting.  But, Nickleodeon didn’t really reach its height of popularity until the late 1990’s when it aired a low-budget cartoon with an unlikely cast of characters. Meet SpongeBob SquarePants and his friends in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Unlike Mighty Mouse, SpongeBob is not a hero. The situations he faces resemble a children’s version of Friends more than the superheroes of the ‘50s. And while Mighty Mouse was clearly the central character of Mouseville, there is more of an ensemble feel to Bikini Bottom; SpongeBob’s friends Squidward and Patrick the starfish are fully developed characters.
 

SpongeBob SquarePants, Official Nickelodeon Poster

Although SpongeBob is a sea sponge, he looks like he would be more comfortable submerged in a tub of dishwater. His wardrobe reminds us of the nerdy Steve Urkel   from Family Matters, which was already a popular evening sitcom before SpongeBob SquarePants was released. SpongeBob’s white shirt, red tie and brown knee high pants (do Sponges have knees?) seem like the appropriate visual clues to his goofy, naïve personality. 
 

In the 1950s, merchandising for children was uncommon except perhaps through Walt Disney’s conglomerate of movies, television and Disneyland gift shops. Mighty Mouse might outmuscle SpongeBob in a cartoon boxing ring, but he would be K-O’d by The Sponge in the marketing ring.  As SpongeBob’s success spread to the teen-age and young adult audiences, the spin-offs and tie-ins multiplied. The film adaptation was released in 2004, the water ride at Six Flags Over Texas in 2007, and the rollercoaster at Nickleodeon Universal Mall of America in 2008. Not to mention the videogames and fast-food meals.
 

Although SpongeBob and his friends at Bikini Bottom are still popular in 2011, there has been a resurgence of popularity in the last 5 years of the Marvel comics superhero. Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men, and The Hulk have all been resurrected with big box-office success.  I think it’s about time for a return of that mightiest of mighty mice, and rumor has it that Paramount Pictures may have one in the works through its subsidiary Nickleodeon (source: Screenrant.com).  
 

Sources:
Mighty Mouse:
   Toonopedia: http://www.toonopedia.com/mightym.htm
   Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mighty_Mouse
   Screenrant.com http://screenrant.com/mighty-mouse-movie-could-be-on-the-way-tmal-54726/

SpongeBob SquarePants
      http://spongebob.nick.com/games/spongebob-squarepants-legends-of-bikini-bottom.html  

Megan:

 Seriously?

On more than one occasion Trixie, our dog before Milo, ate a kitchen sponge and it passed through her system intact and unharmed.

I think that’s the only anecdote I have about sponges.

Merriam-Webster  have 5 main definitions for the word sponge. I thought that was pretty comprehensive until on a whim, I looked up the word in the Urban Dictionary and sifted through 28 results. You can say what you want about the creative (and extremely offensive) ways the word can be applied, but all definitions still seem to refer back to a sponge's porous texture and absorbent quality.

I honestly can’t think of anything else to say about sponges.  Instead, here are cartoon representations of the Merriam-Webster definitions.

1.    a marine animal

2.    a piece of surgical equipment

3.    a parasite

4.    a food type

5.    a contraceptive device.