MIRROR TOOBWORLD - "THE LONE RANGER"

John Hart was also that masked man
by Joe Southern
For one season, in 1952, Clayton Moore was replaced as the Lone Ranger on the popular television series. For 52 episodes, John Hart dashed across the television screen as the man behind the mask.

John Hart played the part from 1952 to 1954 on 52 episodes when Moore held out in a contact dispute.

For more on that story, click here.

The producer (Jack Chertok) was supposedly a cheap guy to work with and he figured that the kids watching the show would accept anybody under the mask as the Lone Ranger. But they knew; boy, did they know! So after a year, Clayton Moore came back and John Hart moved on to other endeavours.

For Toobworld, this is how it plays out: when we see Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger, we're watching the actual Lone Ranger. Those 52 episodes with John Hart are part of a TV series within the main Toobworld in which John Hart portrayed the legendary hero of the West. It's just that unlike many other TV shows we see from Toobworld, there was no framing device of TV characters watching the program in other shows.

So the Lone Ranger in the Mirror Toobworld would look, sound, and act like John Hart, not Clayton Moore. But there was no danger of him crossing over into the "real" world of Earth Prime-Time. That's because the Lone Ranger remained in his proper timeline - the mid-1880s after the Civil War.

However, John Hart did show up in two other TV shows of the 1980s as the Lone Ranger - 'The Fall Guy' and 'Happy Days'. He's not a video transfer from Mirror Toobworld; he's simply appearing as the televersion of himself, in costume as one of his two most famous roles. (Natty Bumppo of 'The Last Of The Mohicans' being the other.)

MIRROR TOOBWORLD - "HI HONEY, I'M HOME!"

'Hi Honey, I'm Home' serves as the template for Mirror Toobworld and as such is one of "The Essentials" of Toobworld Central......

MIRROR TOOBWORLD - "REMOTE CONTROL MAN"

The first time we ever saw TV characters cross over from the Mirror Toobworld could have been in the 1980/81 promo blipverts for CBS. (You can see those in the article.)

A few years later, 'Amazing Stories' did an episode about a man who was able to replace his family with people from the MIrror Toobworld.....

MIRROR TOOBWORLD - "MURPHY BROWN"

In Toobworld, everybody will have a TV show about themselves in the future. One of those TV characters was 'Murphy Brown' who actually had two TV shows about her! (One was based on her actual life, while the other - 'Kelly Green' - was about a character very much like her.)  The TV show based on her "real" life features an actress named Candice Bergen who looks just like her.

Here's a clip from 'Murphy Brown' as seen on 'Seinfeld'. In the Mirror Toobworld, this gives Murphy a living doppelganger, as well as a character named Steven Snell who doesn't exist in Earth Prime-Time.....

MIRROR TOOBWORLD: "ZOMBO!"

Earlier this week I wrote an article about the existence of a Toobworld counterpart to Toobworld itself. "Mirror Toobworld" I call it and it's a dimension in which the TV shows within TV shows have their own reality. (I wouldn't be surprised if it's a situation that goes on forever!)

I listed several examples of the types of TV shows that would make up such a world, but I didn't want to clutter up the post with a lot of YouTube clips. So instead, I'm featuring them today.

First up, here's a fictional show within a show which was not based on a "real" character from Earth Prime-Time:

AS SEEN ON TV: "THE STORY ABOUT PING"

Today's "ASOTV" literary showcase is somewhat different in that we focus on the original story rather than a character adapted for television from that story. This is because the topic has had a long tradition of being read to the audience from the Trueniverse (although it was also adapted for the Tooniverse on 'Sesame Street' thirty years ago.)

On the season finale of 'Louie', Louie C.K. gave his youngest daughter a copy of "The Story About Ping" for Christmas and then read it/will read it to her (if its Christmas 2012). Later, after Louie has an emotional crisis during the holidays, he goes off to China on a holy grail quest to find the Yangtze River because of that book.

Here's the story about "The Story About Ping".....

"THE STORY ABOUT PING"

WRITTEN BY:

Marjorie Flack

ILLUSTRATED BY:

Kurt Wiese

AS SEEN IN:

'Louie'

'Captain Kangaroo'

'The Shari Lewis Show'

'The Howdy Doody Show'

'Sesame Street'

'The Soupy Sales Show'

From Wikipedia:

"The Story About Ping" is a popular children's book written by Marjorie Flack and illustrated by Kurt Wiese. First published in 1933, "Ping" is a colorfully illustrated story about a domesticated Chinese duck lost on the Yangtze River. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association named the book one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children."

Ping is the name of a domesticated duck who lives on a riverboat on the Yangtze River in China. He gets sent out every morning to forage along the river with his relatives, and is expected back every evening. The last duck on the boat would get a swat with a stick and one day he is the last duck. He is afraid to return and spends the night on shore. When he awakens his boat is gone and he is soon caught by a boy on another boat where he worries about becoming their dinner. After some time the boy lets Ping go just as all his duck relatives are getting back on Ping's boat nearby. Ping rejoins his family and happily receives the last duck swat.

"Ping" has appeared on television since the 1950s. Captain Kangaroo (or his friend Mr. Greenjeans) read Ping once a week on his show for seventeen years, while displaying its colorful illustrations in stark black and white on the screen. Only "Stone Soup", "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel", and "The Little Engine That Could" had longer runs on the show.

Soupy Sales and Howdy Doody both featured "Ping" on numerous occasions, and Shari Lewis's sock puppet Lambchop once played the role of Ping in an adaptation for sock puppets and ventriloquists.

'Sesame Street' had an animated version that ran in the 1970s. This version featured the song "Jinzhur" as the background music.

It served as an important plot point on the Season Three finale of 'Louie' in which Louie gives his daughter a copy of the book for Christmas.

BCnU!

SKED ALERT! FAREWELL TO THE PONDS

Today is a day which most 'Doctor Who' fans have been dreading.....

AND NOW, FOR A BIT O' FUN....

THE REAL ROBINSON CRUSOE

"THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE" - THE SLIDESHOW