We’ve all seen the vinyl stickers that adorn the back windshields of minivans, cheerfully representing the happy family therein. The graphics don’t just reflect your family—they can also illustrate your passions, like with this Star Wars set. Now, that even extends to all you feline fanatics. If you’re someone with a family full of cats, these “crazy cat lady” stickers are the perfect decals for you.
This quirky sticker set from GAMAGO comes with 19 stickers to put on your cat-mobile. There are 16 cats (along with two toys and a woman looking lovingly at her pets), so even the most ambitious cat owners can properly show off their whole furry family. The decals are meant to stick on the outside of the car and are weather resistant.
Lovers of novelty beers have a lot of themed drinks to choose from these days, from Ben & Jerry’s-branded beer to H.P. Lovecraft–inspired honey ale. Now you can even get your fix from ’80s pop star-turned-accidental meme Rick Astley. Astley—best known for his hit song, “Never Gonna Give You Up” and the Rickrolling phenomenon it later sparked—has been mulling over the idea of putting out his own beer.
“I enjoy a beer with friends, and I’m hoping to sell my own brand soon,” Astley told The Mirror. The singer will be teaming up with Mikkeller, a Danish brewery founded by a teacher 10 years ago. “Mikkeller beer is quite experimental, and they’ve been sending me various bottles to sample. Some are quite fruity—one was a pear beer they make for a restaurant, but we’ve gone for a pilsner type lager.”
Astley mentioned that he is still deciding on a name. (Our suggestion? “Never Gonna Give You Hops.”)
Will Rickrolling take on a new form in the shape of a beer bottle? Soon friends can pull the bait-and-switch prank at the bar by promising one beer and returning with Astley’s branded brew instead. For more information on the beer, click here.
Like a noble phoenix rises from the ashes to live again, you too can rise from a hangover and imbibe. This 80-proof rum from Firebox is the perfect addition to any fiery cocktail. This Caribbean rum has a sweet and spicy flavor with a shimmery appearance. Unfortunately, just like Hogwarts, only citizens of the UK can partake.
This 80-proof gin liqueur claims to be made with real unicorn tears that were harvested right from the animals’ eyes (but not really; sorry fairytale villains). Each bottle is almost 17 ounces and contains a shimmery concoction that tastes like oranges, juniper berries, coriander, and liquorice. Sadly, if you want to taste unicorn tears, you’ll have to take a trip to the UK.
You can get whiskey that tastes like honey or cinnamon, but did you know you can get even wackier flavors? Booze lovers who also have a sweet tooth will be pleased to discover they can get their hands on some cookies and cream-flavored whiskey. Ole Smoky mixed 35-proof whiskey with cookies and cream liqueur to create a concoction that’s delicious whether you’re drinking it on the rocks or enjoying it on top of ice cream.
Popcorn-flavored jelly beans are a source of contention for a lot of people, so this sesame and popcorn daiquiri—which you can pour directly into your glass, no mixing needed—is sure to be a controversial cocktail at any party. The nearly 17-ounce bottle is sealed with blue wax that smells like the salty booze inside. As long as you live in the UK, you can pick up a bottle to start arguments at your next shindig.
Enjoy this street cart dessert in liquid form with the help of Smirnoff. The triple-distilled vodka has 30 percent ABV and works well in creamy, sweet cocktails.
Yes, you’re reading that right: pure milk vodka. Black Cow, a company in West Dorset, England, takes milk from grass-fed cows and turns it into booze. The company ferments the whey created by making cheese into a milk beer, which is then distilled, blended, and filtered. The resulting vodka—which is only available to UK residents—is sweet with hints of vanilla and cinnamon.
This booze is the first and only vodka made with quinoa, according to FAIR, the company that makes it. It’s the result of a partnership between French distillers and Andean farmers; the quinoa is grown in volcanic soils on the Altiplano plateau in the Andean mountains. The Beverage Tasting Institute rated the vodka superlative, saying it has “Very neutral aromas and flavors [that] suggest cream, cake, and minerals with a very soft, dryish light-to-medium body and a exquisitely smooth custard, dried fruit, and limestone accented finish. A superbly silky, elegant, and delicious vodka that is fantastic on its own and will be perfect in cocktails.” As an added bonus, the booze is fair trade certified.
Oddka is a vodka brand dedicated to weird flavors like fresh cut grass and apple pie—and they’ve also created “Electricity Vodka,” an attempt to capture what a lightning bolt tastes like. The site promises a “shockingly good tongue-tickling shot”; one reviewer at Influenster described the booze as “a little sweet, a little fizzy,” while a writer at Gizmodo UK said it tasted “like licking steel wool.”
Is there anything more Alaskan than salmon-flavored vodka? This booze is made with actual smoked salmon and distilled with glacier water. It can be enjoyed on the rocks or mixed into a Bloody Mary.
Resist the urge to pour hot sauce right into your glass and buy this spicy vodka from UV. The hot, 60-proof alcohol is inspired by the cult favorite condiment Sriracha and even has a similar bottle design. Like the salmon vodka, this liquor is meant to go in a Bloody Mary; it can also be mixed with raspberry schnapps and cranberry juice.
Chilled Dills pickle-flavored vodka is very high tech: The vodka is distilled six times before flavor infusion even begins—and the infusion process incorporates ultrasonic waves that, according to the website, “create chemical compounds that we can then filter out. The result is a cleaner, more pure spirit than can be created with traditional distilling practices.” The booze is great for Bloody Marys, mojitos, and other brunchy cocktails.
This sweet collection is composed of three cordials: blueberry pancake, maple bacon, and glazed donut. The maple bacon flavor apparently matches the taste of the meat pretty well, but the blueberry pancake (imitation) liqueur is, according to Serious Eats, “sweet to the point where I’m pretty sure I felt my pancreas shutting down.”
Red wood ants produce a compound called formic acid, a reactive compound in alcohol. By making gin with these ants (each bottle contains the essence of around 62 ants), the Nordic Food Lab and the Cambridge Distillery were able to make a booze that has a distinct lemon lime flavor with a hint of lemongrass. Other notes include wood avens, nettles, alexander seeds, and juniper. The current batch is sold out, but keep your eye on their website to snag a bottle next time.
While the general public didn’t know about the charming Flash cartoons until 2000, Homestar Runner first came into being in 1996. Since his debut, Homestar has captured the adoration of millions and helped influence aspiring animators to create their own cartoons. Celebrate Free Country, USA and all its citizens with a quick rundown of Homestar trivia.
1. IT ALL STARTED AS A CHILDREN’S BOOK.
Before Homestarrunner.com, Homestar was a static character in a picture book created by Mike Chapman and Craig Zobel in 1996. The book is about Homestar who, along with Strong Bad and Pom Pom, enters a strongest man competition. Halfway through the contest, Homestar notices that Strong Bad is cheating with the help of the aptly named character The Cheat. He exposes the cheaters and helps Pom Pom win the contest. It’s a simple story with a happy ending. “Craig and I wanted the original kids’ book to feel like it was from another country or poorly translated from Japanese maybe,” Chapman told Adventure Gamers.
The books were Xeroxed and bound at Kinkos in the ’90s. All the characters were blocky and simplistic, making them easy to replicate.
Chapman and Zobel—along with younger brother Matt Chapman—gave the characters new life that Christmas when the animated gang was cast in a video made on the SNES game Mario Paint. The video was given to the eldest brother, Donnie Chapman, for Christmas. “[…] it was just by luck that half the characters don’t have mouths or hands and stuff, so they’re easy to animate,” Chapman told IGN. By 2000, Matt and Mike decided to get into the Flash animation game and brought their characters on to a new medium. In 2000, Homestarrunner.com was born.
2. THE PROCESS IS NOT VERY HIGH TECH.
As you can tell by watching the videos, the Chapman brothers were all about simplicity. Their characters had limited movement and the backdrops were often static. Generally the videos don’t go over five minutes.
“Originally, we sort of wanted to create the feel of Saturday mornings in the ’70s and ’80s of waking up early with a bowl of cereal and sitting in front of the TV watching cartoons, which I don’t feel like really exists anymore,” Mike Chapman told NPR.
All the animation was done on Flash, while sound was created in Adobe Audition. Most of the music came from “old Casio keyboards or worse.”
3. MATT CHAPMAN DID MOST OF THE VOICES.
When it comes to voices, Matt is the master behind the wide array of characters, from the upbeat but goofy Homestar to the deranged Coach Z. The only voice Matt didn’t cover was Marzipan, who was played by Mike’s wife, Melissa “Missy” Palmer. According to the Chapmans, there was only one female character in Free Country, USA because Palmer could only do the one voice. Mike would also jump in and do the voices in The Cheat’s cartoons.
4. STRONG BAD WAS INSPIRED BY AN NES GAME.
Homestar Runner is littered with obscure ‘80s references, particularly nods to NES games that the brothers used to play. Strong Bad and the rest of the Strong family were originally created to be tag team wrestlers and were based off a team called the Strong Bads from the NES game Tag Team Wrestling. One of the Strong Bads, Mascross, wore a wrestling mask similar to the one on Strong Bad.
5. STRONG BAD (SORT OF) MADE IT ON TO TELEVISION.
Back in 2011, Matt Chapman started to work for the television show, The Aquabats! Super Show! The show has a character named Carl, who bears a striking resemblance to Strong Bad, thanks to his red luchador mask. Chapman co-directed and acted in an episode called “Cobraman!” in 2012 that featured Carl, who was of course, a villain. Chapman played this Strong Bad look-alike and even used the same distinctive voice.
A puppet version of Strong Bad also made an appearance on stage with The Aquabats in Atlanta. He volunteered some fashion tips and helped The Aquabats sing “Pink Pants!” Strong Bad’s voice is featured on the album version of the song (with a quick Homestar cameo at the end). Bizarrely, that’s not the only time Strong Bad’s voice comes up in the music world. You can also hear him on the Shellac track, “Genuine Lulabelle.”
6. THEY AIMED TO MAKE SIMPLE BUT ADDICTING GAMES.
Homestarrunner.com has a ton of mini-games that attempt (and arguably succeed) to capture the magic of early console games from the late ’80s. The Chapman brothers created their own fictitious gaming company called Videlectrix. The retro looking title screen comes up when visitors play any of the titles on the website’s game page. (Its employees are Matt and Mike wearing mustaches.) Videlectrix put out classic games like Trogdor, Awesome Cross, Peasant Quest, and even made some Wii compatible games.
According to the Chapman brothers, they wanted to create simple games that could be played for hours. They were inspired by Palmer’s love of the Nintendo game Animal Crossing. In it, the only objective is to build a town and run errands. There are no cinematic cut scenes, no plot, and definitely no sex appeal.
7. THE BROTHERS MADE A FULL-LENGTH GAME.
In 2008, Videlectrix entered the console business. They teamed up with Telltale Games to create Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. While Videlectrix is not technically a real company, they still appeared as a partner in the game’s press release. (This detailed confused and concerned some shareholders).
Telltale understood the vibe of the Homestar world and wanted to accurately portray it in the game. They worked closely with the Chapman brothers, who wrote a good portion of the script. “We really wanted to make a game that felt like it came right from their minds,” Telltale Games’s executive producer Kevin Brunner told G4.
Matt ended up doing all of the voices, which took a heavy toll on his vocals. “Early on, we had to look for herbal remedies,” Matt told College Humor. “We figure by the end of this five-episode series we will have recorded as much as we did in eight years of doing the site.”
8. ONE PIZZA CHAIN ENLISTED THEIR EXPERTISE.
In 2005, pizza chain Mellow Mushroom asked the Chapman brothers to help them design their own pizza-themed version of Homestarrunner.com. The fully functional website included a similar menu page, with options like “toons,” “games,” “characters,” and more. Visitors could even switch the theme of the menu animation and make the animated mushroom float on a lazy river or stand in a kitchen. Other fun features included downloadable wallpapers, e-cards, and merchandise.
9. LIMOZEEN OPENED FOR OF MONTREAL .
Strong Bad’s favorite hair metal band was, in some way, actually real. While many Flash videos portrayed the band as various Chapman brothers in wigs (sometimes just Matt playing all the band members), they finally agreed on a band lineup and hit the stage. In March 27, 2008, they played a show that was shared on YouTube. November of that same year, the band actually opened for Of Montreal at The Tabernacle in Atlanta. The band played some of Limozeen’s greatest hits as well as some Homestar Runner songs like “Everbody to the Limit” and the Trogdor theme song.
It’s also worth noting that Limozeen had a coloring book way before the adult coloring craze took off. The “Ladies, We’re Staying in Room 302 at the Ramada” Tour coloring book has 12 pages of the band rocking out and can be printed out for personal use right here.
10. JAMES HUGGINS THOUGHT OF THE NAME HOMESTAR RUNNER.
The name Homestar Runner comes from a joke from James Huggins III, a family friend of the Chapman brothers. (He now goes by James Husband and plays the drums for the indie band Of Montreal.)
“[James] knows nothing about sports, and so he would always do his old-timey radio impression of this guy, and not knowing any positions in baseball or whatever, he would just be like, ‘homestar runner for the Braves.’ And we were just like, ‘Homestar Runner? That’s the best thing we’ve ever heard!’” Matt Chapman explained in a Kevin Scott interview.
11. THE CHAPMAN BROTHERS’ PARENTS HELPED THEM OUT.
Once the Homestar Runner brand really starting picking up, the Chapman brothers began to feel a little overwhelmed by their expanding business. By 2002, they were updating the site every Monday and fans were clamoring for merchandise. The various branded shirts, figurines, and messenger bags being sold were first kept in the creators’ parents’ home in Atlanta. The retired parents were happy to help store and organize items as a fun, post-retirement activity. It started in one spare bedroom and a closet but quickly expanded to fill multiple bedrooms, closets, the basement, and garage. Finally a warehouse had to be rented out to reduce some clutter (and give the parents a place to park their car again).
Don Chapman, the father of the family (formerly the chief financial officer at an insurance company) helped the brothers set up copyrights for their characters after they noticed bootleg merchandise was competing with the authentic products. “We’ve had to chase people all over, from eBay to little boutique shops,” Don Chapman told The Eugene Register-Guard in 2003. “I said at the beginning this was going to be the Peanuts of the 21st century. I’m now starting to believe that now.”
12. HOMESTAR DOESN’T HAVE ARMS BECAUSE HE DOESN’T NEED THEM.
After all, his name is Homestar Runner. The athlete only needs to run, so the idea of arms seemed superfluous. “I guess maybe, I don’t know, since he’s just Homestar Runner and runner is in his name. It’s like, ‘well what does this guy needs arms for?'” Mike explained in an interview. “It’s in his name. You know what he does.”
13. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER GIVES IT A NOD.
Homestar Runner definitely had some reach in its fan base, but did you know it extended all the way to Buffy the Vampire Slayer? In the final episode of the popular television show, Giles can be seen playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons with Xander, Andrew, and Amanda. Strong Bad’s character, Trogdor the Burninator, is mentioned as a beast in the game that badly wounds Giles. Andrew can also be seen on Buffy’s sister show, Angel, wearing a Strong Bad t-shirt.
14. ALL THE STRONG BAD EMAILS WERE REAL.
For the most part, you could tell that the emails coming into Strong Bad’s computer were authentic. They were nonsensical, littered with typos, and quite often rude. Not even the Brothers Chap could come up with Fhqwhgads. All the emails read were generously submitted by fans. The only one that wasn’t from a viewer was Mile, which was craftily created by The Cheat. It was apparently not too hard to find usable questions, because the fan emails were plentiful. In 2003, the Chapman brothers estimated that Strong Bad received about 7000 emails a day.
15. YOU CAN SEE MORE WORK FROM THE CHAPMAN BROTHERS ON DISNEY.
There hasn’t been a Homestar Runner update since April (save for some Strong Bad tweets), but that doesn’t mean the brothers are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. They have been dabbling in the television world and have even started making shorts for Disney XD. Their short series, Two More Eggs, is a nonsensical cartoon that retains a lot of the charm of Homestar Runner.
Disney Television Animation reached out to the Brothers Chap because members of the team were so enchanted with Homestar Runner. At first, the brothers tried to create a traditional television show with longer episodes.
“That version of our show would have consisted of two 11-minute-long shorts per episode,” Matt told The Huffington Post. “There would have been consistent characters and a plot. But in the end, I think that Mike and I—along with the team at Disney Television Animation—realized that that wasn’t really playing to our strengths.”
In the end, they settled on shorts that are almost all under two minutes. This gave the creators a chance to churn the videos out quickly and further explore the world they were creating. Since animated shorts are the Chapman brothers’ bread and butter, they flourished.
16. BUT THE NEW MEDIUM COMES WITH CHALLENGES.
The Chapman brothers have been enjoying a relative amount of freedom with Disney while working on the shorts, but it’s not all easy. They admit the thing they have the most trouble with is the character bible—an extensive guide to the personalities of different characters.
“It’s hard to nail that stuff down arbitrarily early on and just decide these things. You put the character in situations, and then that stuff happens naturally,” Matt told Vox. The brothers explained that the best way to hash out characters was to stick them all in the back of a police car and see how they interact.
“I still don’t think I could write a decent character bible or bio for Homestar, and we did that for a decade. It’s like an open beta. Our cartoons are an open beta, and we’re slowly evolving it, and we’re making you watch it.”
Nora Ephron’s most beloved romantic comedy opened in theaters more than 25 years ago. We’ll (still) have what she’s having.
1. Harry and Sally were modeled after director Rob Reiner and screenwriter Nora Ephron. Well, except for the falling in love part.
Reiner divorced fellow director Penny Marshall in 1981 after 10 years of marriage. When he met with Nora Ephron in the mid-’80s, he pitched a number of ideas for movies, including a comedy based on his dating experiences. Ephron agreed to write it after extensively interviewing Reiner. The two had many discussions about how men and women view sex, love, and relationships differently.
2. Those sweet “how we met” interludes throughout the movie are real love stories.
Reiner interviewed elderly couples about how they fell in love in preparation for the movie. He hired actors to re-tell their stories on the big screen.
3. Nora Ephron hated the movie’s title.
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It was extremely difficult for Ephron to settle on a title for her screenplay. She tried several, including Boy Meets Girl, How They Met, and Harry, This Is Sally. Reiner eventually turned the naming process into a contest among the crew members. Whoever picked the title would win a case of champagne. We don’t know who came up with When Harry Met Sally, but let’s hope he or she shared all that bubbly.
4. In the script’s first draft, Harry and Sally didn’t end up together.
Ephron felt that was the most realistic ending, but hey, this is the movies!
5. Reiner also fell in love by the end of the movie.
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During filming, he was introduced to photographer Michelle Singer by the film’s director of photography. The two married in 1989, the same year When Harry Met Sally came out. Reiner has said that finding his own happy ending helped make one for Harry and Sally more believable.
6. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan weren’t the first choice for Harry and Sally.
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Albert Brooks turned down the role of Harry, because he thought the movie was too reminiscent of Woody Allen. (Brooks also turned down the lead role in Big and Pretty Woman. D’oh!) Rob Reiner initially wanted Susan Dey of the TV show L.A. Law to play Sally. He also considered Elizabeth Perkins from Big and Elizabeth McGovern from Ordinary People. John Hughes movie queen Molly Ringwald was nearly cast, but declined due to a scheduling conflict.
7. Molly Ringwald did eventually play Sally Albright, though.
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In 2004, the popular film was adapted into an unpopular stage play on London’s West End. Luke Perry (yes, really) and Alyson Hannigan from How I Met Your Mother played Harry and Sally in its first run and were later replaced by Michael Landes from Final Destination 2 and Molly Ringwald.
8. Meg Ryan sort of paved the way for Julia Roberts.
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Ryan’s first leading role would’ve been as Shelby in Steel Magnolias, but she turned down the part to play Sally instead. Another up-and-coming actress named Julia Roberts took her place and later starred in Pretty Woman—another part Meg Ryan turned down.
9. Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner have been good friends since 1975.
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They met when they played best friends on All in the Family. Many conversations between Harry and his best male friend Jess, played by Bruno Kirby, were inspired by the friendship between Crystal and Reiner. So were the scenes in which Harry and Sally watch the same movie from different apartments. Bromance, anyone?
Meanwhile, Carrie Fisher, who plays Sally’s best female friend Marie, was BFFs with Reiner’s ex-wife Penny Marshall. Hmmm, wonder if that ever got awkward…
10. The split-screen scenes are an ironic homage to 1959’s Pillow Talk.
At the time Pillow Talk was made, the Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, set moral guidelines for all the films released by major studios. Movies weren’t allowed to show a couple in bed (or bath or beyond) together, or any sort of sexual relationship between unmarried partners. (The code was abandoned in 1968.) Harry and Sally were kept apart to show how close they were as “just friends.”
11. Estelle Reiner, the director’s mother, had one line—and it was probably the movie’s most memorable.
She’s the older woman who says, “I’ll have what she’s having” at Katz’s Delicatessen. The American Film Institute ranked it #33 in its list of the top 100 movie quotations. The famous line wasn’t in the original script. Crystal suggested it after he and Ryan improvised the entire scene. The two were originally supposed to discuss “faking it” without an actual demonstration.
12. Katz’s is proud of its famous scene.
This sign appears above the table where it was shot:
Improv Everywhere reenacted the scene in 2013, this time with contagious fake orgasms. Warning: NSFW unless you work at Katz’s.
13. Crystal improvised throughout the movie.
Watch closely at 0:29; Ryan laughs out of character and looks at Reiner off-camera. The director decided to keep the scene.
Crystal also improvised much of the scene when he admits he loves Sally, including the line, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Swoon.
14. The real-life bookstore where Harry and Sally meet for the third time inspired another Ephron movie.
Harry and Sally finally become friends when they spot each other at Shakespeare and Co. on Broadway and 79th. When the store closed after a Barnes & Noble opened on the Upper West Side, Ephron was inspired to write a romantic comedy around the David and Goliath struggle between local stores and large national chains. You’ve Got Mail came out in 1998, nearly a decade after when Harry Met Sally.
15. No one expected When Harry Met Sally to be a hit.
The film was up against the summer blockbusters Batman, Ghostbusters II, Licence to Kill, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. When Harry Met Sally opened in just 41 theaters on July 12, grossing $1 million. It opened nationwide July 21.And the rest is romantic comedy history.
Additional Sources: DVD Commentary by Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner
Every time a new year rolls around, people set out to better themselves. They promise they will lose weight, find a new job, or maybe even take that vacation they’ve always talked about. But why do we make these promises to ourselves, and where did this tradition come from? Why does this tradition live on when so many people fail to keep the resolutions they make? Well, we can start by blaming the ancient Babylonians.
Around 4000 years ago in Babylon, the earliest recorded celebration honoring the coming of a new year was held. Calendars weren’t as they are today, so the Babylonians kicked things off in late March during the first new moon after the Spring Equinox. The collective ceremonial events were known as the Akitu festival, which lasted 11 days. The festivities were dedicated to the rebirth of the sun god Marduk, but the Babylonians made promises in order to get on the right side of all of their gods. They felt this would help them start the new year off on the right foot.
Resolutions continued on with the Romans. When the early Roman calendar no longer synced up with the sun, Julius Caesar decided to make a change. He consulted with the best astronomers and mathematicians of the time and introduced the Julian calendar, which more closely represents the modern calendar we use today. Caesar declared January 1 the first day of the year to honor the god of new beginnings, Janus. The Romans celebrated the New Year by offering sacrifices to Janus.
To this day, the traditions of the ancient Babylonians and Romans continue on around the world. So much so that Google launched a Resolution Map in 2013 where people could add resolutions and see others adding theirs in real time. However, no matter how many people participated in Google’s project, the numbers are bleak when it comes to the amount of people who maintain their resolutions; only eight percent of people are successful in sticking them out.
The most popular resolutions: Lose Weight
Get Organized
Save More Money
Enjoy Life
Get—and Stay—Healthy
Learn Something New
Quit Smoking
Help Others Pursue Their Goals
Find Love
Spend More Quality Time With Family Members
If those failed resolutions above look familiar and remind you that the whole concept is a bust, or if they inspire you to create your own list of promises for 2017, just remember that this tradition is destined to live on. We have 4000 years worth of history telling us so, and that’s a statistic that’s hard to argue with.
Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.
Emojis are unavoidable these days. Entire books and URLs have been rewritten using the characters, and there’s even a whole movie coming out dedicated to the little yellow illustrations. Now, you can add the emoticons to your plate, as well: Cakemoji, an emoji-themed cookbook, teaches you how to make baked goods that look like they popped out of your phone.
In the hardcover cookbook, all the classic emojis are recreated in cakes, cupcakes, and cookies. Thanks to vibrant photographs and clear, step-by-step instructions, bakers of all skill levels can really eat their feelings.
Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Thanks for helping us pay the bills!
You know not to get them wet, expose them to bright light, or feed them after midnight. But here are 21 things you might not know about Joe Dante’s creature-filled dark comedy classic, which turns 30 years old today.
1. ITS UNEXPECTEDLY DARK THEMES ARE PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CREATION OF THE PG-13 RATING.
Truth be told, it’s Steven Spielberg who is really responsible for the introduction of the PG-13 rating. Both Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which he directed, and Gremlins, which he executive produced, were rated PG upon their release, and subsequently criticized for not being kid-appropriate. To avoid being slapped with an R rating in the future, Spielberg suggested that the MPAA add a rating between PG and R. On August 10, 1984, Red Dawn became the first movie to be released with the new PG-13 rating.
2. BUT GREMLINS COULD HAVE BEEN A WHOLE LOT DARKER.
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The original Gremlins script, written by Chris Columbus, was much, much darker. Case in point: Earlier scenes included the Gremlins eating Billy’s dog then decapitating his mom and throwing her head down the stairs. Spielberg, director Joe Dante, and Warner Bros. were all in agreement that they should tone down the gore in order to make the movie more family-friendly.
3. CHRIS COLUMBUS DIDN’T WRITE GREMLINS WITH THE IDEA THAT IT WOULD ACTUALLY BE MADE.
He wrote it as a spec script and writing sample. It found its way into the hands of Spielberg, who explained that, “It’s one of the most original things I’ve come across in many years, which is why I bought it.”
4. THE GREMLINS WERE INSPIRED BY MICE THAT INHABITED COLUMBUS’ APARTMENT.
“By day, it was pleasant enough,” Columbus noted of the Manhattan loft that he lived in while attending film school at NYU. “But at night, what sounded like a platoon of mice would come out and to hear them skittering around in the blackness was really creepy.” Those mice inspired the Gremlins.
5. THE SCRIPT DOESN’T INCLUDE MUCH GREMLIN DIALOGUE.
Much of the chatter spoken by Gizmo and the Gremlins is ad libbed, or in reaction to whatever is happening in the scene. Keeping the dialogue loose also allowed the filmmakers to localize the dialogue for the film’s various international markets.
6. HOWIE MANDEL IS THE VOICE OF GIZMO.
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It was the suggestion of voice actor Frank Welker, who voiced Stripe in Gremlins (and Fred on Scooby-Doo before that), that Howie Mandel be hired for the role.
7. BUT MANDEL DIDN’T SING “GIZMO’S SONG.”
The song was written by Jerry Goldsmith, who hired a 13-year-old girl who was a member of his synagogue to sing it for the film.
8. MICHAEL WINSLOW HELPED TO VOICE THE GREMLINS.
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Yes, this is the same Michael Winslow who is better known as “the guy who makes all those funny noises in the Police Academy film series.”
9. TIM BURTON WAS IN CONTENTION TO DIRECT IT.
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There was a lot of buzz surrounding Burton after the success of his short film, Frankenweenie—so much so that Spielberg considered him to direct Gremlins. But the fact that Burton had yet to direct a feature film worked against him, and the gig was given to Joe Dante. A year later, Burton released his first theatrical feature, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.
10. SECURITY WAS TIGHT WITH THE GREMLINS.
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Because there was no CGI at the time of Gremlins, the creatures were animatronic puppets, each of which took a major chunk out of the film’s budget. Zach Galligan revealed that when leaving the set each night, security personnel asked the cast and crew to open the trunks of their cars to ensure that they hadn’t stolen any of the props.
11. BALLOONS CAME IN HANDY.
Creature creator Chris Walas used balloons in an innovative fashion: they were the secret VFX ingredient when the new Mogwai popped out of Gizmo’s body, and he used a balloon again to explode the Gremlin in the microwave.
12. PHOEBE CATES WAS A CONTROVERSIAL CASTING CHOICE.
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Given her sweet demeanor as Kate, it’s hard to imagine that not everyone was on board with casting Cates. But her infamous topless scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High gave the studio pause about putting her in the lead.
13. CATES’ CHEMISTRY WITH ZACH GALLIGAN WAS WHAT GOT HIM THE ROLE.
Though there were better-known actors like Emilio Estevez and Judd Nelson in contention for the role of Billy, Spielberg cast his vote for Galligan, based on the chemistry he and Cates displayed during auditions.
14. IT’S THE FIRST FILM TO FEATURE THE NOW-ICONIC AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT LOGO.
By now, Spielberg’s E.T.-themed logo for Amblin Entertainment is familiar to all moviegoers. But Gremlins marked its first on-screen appearance.
15. KINGSTON FALLS AND HILL VALLEY ARE ONE AND THE SAME.
If the fictional town of Kingston Falls in Gremlins looks familiar, that’s because it was filmed on the same set used for the town of Hill Valley in Back to the Future, released a year later.
16. THE FILM WAS ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR A CHRISTMAS RELEASE.
Warner Bros.
Offbeat as it may be, Gremlins is definitely a Christmas movie, and as such had been planned for release during the Christmas season. But when Warner Bros. realized it didn’t have a “summer movie” to put up against Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or Ghostbusters, it moved up the release date. The film performed well and ended up being the fourth highest-grossing film of 1984, behind Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
17. KATE’S STORY ABOUT HER FATHER’S DEATH WAS A POLARIZING SCENE.
As a nod to the popular urban legend, Kate tells the story about how her father died while dressed up as Santa Claus and climbing down the chimney. When the rough cut was complete, both Spielberg and the Warner Bros. executives wanted it cut, as it wasn’t clear whether it was meant to be sad or funny. Dante insisted that that’s what made it a perfect metaphor for the film itself, and insisted it be kept in. In Roger Ebert’s three-star review of the film, he singled out this scene in particular, citing her story as being “in the great tradition of 1950s sick jokes.”
18. BILLY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE HERO.
At the end of the film, Gizmo saves the day by pulling up a window blind and exposing Stripe to sunlight. Originally, Gizmo lifted the first blind, followed by Billy. Spielberg suggested the scene be edited so that it was clear that it’s Gizmo, not Billy, who is the movie’s hero.
19. GIZMO AND STRIPE WERE THE SAME CREATURE AT ONE TIME.
Warner Bros
It was also at Spielberg’s suggestion that Gizmo’s role in the film grew. Originally, it’s the cute little Mogwai pet himself who transforms into Stripe the Gremlin. But Spielberg knew that audiences would want to see as much of Gizmo as possible, so he withdrew the idea so that they would appear as totally separate characters.
20. THE GREMLINS MAY RISE AGAIN.
Warner Bros
Though Gremlins did spawn a sequel (1990’s Gremlins II: The Next Batch), there’s been much talk in recent years about a reboot of the original. In April 2014, Ain’t It Cool News reported that Warner Bros. had placed the film on the remake fast track.
21. BUT CHRIS COLUMBUS, FOR ONE, DOESN’T SEE HOW A REBOOT WILL WORK.
In a 2012 interview with Screen Rant, Columbus noted: “I think it’s impossible to re-create [Gremlins] in a CGI environment. I think it will inevitably lose some of its charm. Those are edgy Muppets in a sense and you don’t want to lose that sense of anarchy that those gremlins had, because behind the scenes are 25 puppeteers making them to come to life.”
If the thought of planning Christmas dinner makes you nervous, be glad you weren’t born in the Renaissance. The earliest known published Christmas menu included pork, beef, goose, lark, pheasant, venison, oysters, swan, woodcock, and “a kid with a pudding in his belly,” to name just a few dishes.
This is according to The Accomplisht Cook, written by Robert May in 1660. May was an English chef who trained in France and cooked for nobility throughout his life. In a section titled “A bill of fare for Christmas Day and how to set the meat in order,” May suggests 39 dishes split over two courses, plus oysters, oranges, lemons, and jellies for dessert. The menu is surprising not only because of its size, but because it contains so many proteins—there are 11 different types of birds alone—and not much else. Well, unless you count pastry. There’s lots of pastry, too.
A BILL OF FARE FOR CHRISTMAS DAY AND HOW TO SET THE MEAT IN ORDER:
Oysters 1. A collar of brawn [pork that is rolled, tied, and boiled in wine and seasonings]. 2. Stewed Broth of Mutton marrow bones. 3. A grand Sallet [salad]. 4. A pottage [thick stew] of caponets [young castrated roosters]. 5. A breast of veal in stoffado [stuffed veal]. 6. A boil’d partridge. 7. A chine [a cut of meat containing backbone] of beef, or sirloin roast. Here’s May’s recipe:
To roast a Chine, Rib, Loin, Brisket, or Fillet of Beef
Draw them with parsley, rosemary, tyme, sweet marjoram, sage, winter savory, or lemon, or plain without any of them, fresh or salt, as you please; broach it, or spit it, roast it and baste it with butter; a good chine of beef will ask six hours roasting.
For the sauce take strait tops of rosemary, sage-leaves, picked parsley, tyme, and sweet marjoram; and strew them in wine vinegar, and the beef gravy; or otherways with gravy and juice of oranges and lemons. Sometimes for change in saucers of vinegar and pepper.
8. Minced pies. 9. A Jegote [sausage] of mutton with anchove sauce. 10. A made dish of sweet-bread (Here’s a recipe from A New Booke of Cookerie by John Murrell, published in 1615: Boyle, or roast your Sweet-bread, and put into it a fewe Parboyld Currens, a minst Date, the yolkes of two new laid Egs, a piece of a Manchet grated fine. Season it with a little Pepper, Salt, Nutmeg, and Sugar, wring in the iuyce of an Orenge, or Lemon, and put it betweene two sheetes of puft-paste, or any other good Paste: and eyther bake it, or frye it, whether you please.) 11. A swan roast. 12. A pasty of venison. 13. A kid with a pudding in his belly. 14. A steak pie. 15. A hanch of venison roasted. 16. A turkey roast and stuck with cloves. 17. A made dish of chickens in puff paste. 18. Two bran geese roasted, one larded [larding is inserting or weaving strips of fat in the meat, sometimes with a needle]. 19. Two large capons, one larded. 20. A Custard.
THE SECOND COURSE FOR THE SAME MESS.
Oranges and Lemons 1. A young lamb or kid. 2. Two couple of rabbits, two larded. 3. A pig souc’t [sauced] with tongues. 4. Three ducks, one larded. 5. Three pheasants, 1 larded. 6. A Swan Pye [the showpiece: a pie with the dead swan’s head, neck, and wings sticking up from it]. 7. Three brace of partridge, three larded. 8. Made dish in puff paste. 9. Bolonia sausages, and anchoves, mushrooms, and Cavieate, and pickled oysters in a dish. 10.Six teels, three larded. 11. A Gammon of Westphalia Bacon. 12.Ten plovers, five larded. 13. A quince pye, or warden pie [pears or quinces peeled and poached in syrup, then baked whole in a pie]. 14.Six woodcocks, 3 larded. 15. A standing Tart in puff-paste, preserved fruits, Pippins, &c. 16. A dish of Larks. 17. Six dried neats [calf] tongues 18. Sturgeon. 19. Powdered [salted] Geese.
Jellies.
And you know, nothing says Christmas like powdered geese and jellies.
