Old-Timey

Hungry in the '30s

The Old-Timey era (also referred to as the 1936 era) is the collective name for the Homestar Runner toons said to have been made in the 1930s; they are in essence a pastiche or tribute to the cartoons of the time. The toons are in black and white and have intentionally sloppy edits, a grainy and scratched appearance, and a soundtrack filled with static and pops. The characters look different from their modern-day counterparts, and often have different personae, much in the way that the characters in the earliest Mickey Mouse and Looney Tunes cartoons are noticeably different from later incarnations. The characters also sound different, and some, like Old-Timey Strong Bad, have Mid-Atlantic accents, a characteristic accent of early Hollywood. At first, as in Kick the Can, Old-Timey cartoons are silent, but by Parsnips a-Plenty they begin to feature sound. The 1936 era of Free Country, USA, like that of its real-life counterpart, is characterized by a generally poor quality of life (due to the Great Depression) as well as the Prohibition of alcohol, though the amendment establishing Prohibition was repealed in the United States by 1933.

Appearances

Full Cartoons

• Kick the Can — a series of shorts featuring The Homestar Runner kicking his "can of water soup"
• Main Page 10 — old timey main page
• Parsnips A-Plenty — old timey version of The Reddest Radish
• Ballad of The Sneak — old timey version of The Cheat Theme Song
• Mr. Shmallow — old timey version of Meet Marshie
• That A Ghost — old timey Halloween special
• Sickly Sam's Big Outing — old timey Valentine's special

Segments

"E'erybody, e'erybody."

• Email little animal — In an Easter egg, Old-Timey Strong Bad gets in a never ending chase by Strong Man.
• Email 50 emails — In an Easter egg, there is segment where Old-Timey Strong Bad, along with The Sneak, answer "The Electronic Message."
• 20X6 vs. 1936 — The Homestar Runner is featured throughout the toon.
• Email 2 emails — In an Easter egg, Old-Timey Strong Bad has a segment about "Uncle Strong Bad's Flavor Taste Style Chewing Powders."
• Email flashback — In an Easter egg, there is a segment in which Old-Timey Strong Bad sends a message in his telegraph machine.
• Email radio — Old-Timey Strong Bad provides one of the examples of different types of radio broadcasts. There is also a follow-up to this in an Easter egg.
• Email high school — In an Easter egg, The Homestar Runner, Old-Timey Strong Bad, Sickly Sam, and Don Knotts have a short segment in Ancient Rome.
• Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 13.2 — The Homestar Runner and Old-Timey Strong Bad leave messages on Marzipan's answering machine.
• Email alternate universe — Old-Timey Strong Bad is featured in many places throughout the email.
• Email 4 branches — The Homestar Runner, Old-Timey Strong Bad, and Rumble Red have a segment about Polymascotfoamalate.
• Decemberween Short Shorts — The Homestar Runner, Old-Timey Marzipan, and Rumble Red have a segment about Decemberween.
• Email pet show — In an Easter egg, The Sneak wins a "Plague Show" for "having more infectious diseases than any other vermin" there.
• April Fool 2014 — Homestar "brings everybody's favorite old-timey cartoons into the modern age with his patented colorarization!"
• Fish Eye Lens (Easter egg) — Old-Timey Strong Bad films with a fish strapped to his camera.
• Email sbemail 206 — An Old-Timey Index Page is showcased with an animatronic The Homestar Runner and an animatronic Old-Timey Strong Bad charging a fee for "tomfoolery" with prices ranging from one pence to a baby. In an Easter egg, there is a similar scene with the Old Timey Strong Bad animatronic advertising "Old Time Jones Drug-filled Tonic".

Characters

See main article: Characters

The following lists every Old-Timey character with their modern counterpart in parentheses. Some characters do not have modern counterparts.

• The Homestar Runner (Homestar Runner)
• Old-Timey Marzipan (Marzipan)
• Fat Dudley (Pom Pom)
• Old-Timey Strong Bad (Strong Bad)
• Strong Man (Strong Mad)
• The Sneak (The Cheat)
• Old-Timey Bubs (Bubs)
• Sickly Sam (Strong Sad)
• The Kaiser (The King of Town)
• The Demon (The Poopsmith)
• Fort Wayne Locomotive (Coach Z)
• The Barbershop Trio (The Announcer)
• Mr. Shmallow (Marshie)
• Mr. Bossman
• Eustice Pietimer
• The Guys
• Old-Timey Ghost
• Don Knotts
• Rumble Red
• Dee
• "The Rest", the characters who only appear in the intro to Sickly Sam's Big Outing
• Possible Old-Timey variation of Homsar

Dates

As far as we know, all of the toons in this style take place in the 1930s, although only three of them are dated. Kick the Can, Parsnips A Plenty, and That A Ghost are labeled 1933, 1936, and 1937, respectively. The early "1933" toons did not have voices and were much more cartoony than the later Old-Timey cartoons, with heads coming off, body parts changing and characters flying away, among other things. (See the variants from Kick the Can.) Toons released in later years featured voices and were more realistic (if only slightly).

Color

"Am I up with the times?"

It appears as if the Old-Timey world is actually entirely gray, rather than filmed with old timey camera equipment. Old-Timey characters are still gray, even when appearing in colorful time periods, as in 20X6 vs. 1936. When The Homestar Runner is seen on Planet K, he is still in black and white, with slight scratching appearing over him and crackling audio whenever he speaks (as in the full cartoons). Also, Strong Bad is still in full color when he appears in the black-and-white Old-Timey world in the email alternate universe. However, the Ballad of The Sneak establishes The Sneak as being "small and smart and yellow", and the toon Sickly Sam's Big Outing was presented in "A Color", adding a very light pink to certain items in the toon, so the idea of color in the Old-Timey world is still open to debate. April Fools' 2014 contains the first attempt at a fully-colorized Old-Timey toon.

References To Other Periods

There are also some references to eras before and after the thirties. It could be that The Brothers Chaps did not intend to limit the Old-Timey universe to strictly the thirties.

Ancient Times

• Email high school — the Old-Timey characters are seen as Romans.

19th Century

• Emails 50 emails and flashback — Old-Timey Strong Bad has been seen using a telegraph.
• Ballad of the Sneak — The political cartoon is captioned "Boss Tweed gives The Sneak what-for!"

1900s

• Kick the Can — The Entertainer plays in the background of each segment. It was published in 1902.
• Ballad of the Sneak — The Sneak flies the Wright Flyer, first flown successfully in 1903.

1910s

• The Kaiser — His design is a reference to Kaiser Wilhelm II, ruler of Germany during World War I.
• Sickly Sam's Big Outing — The toon is animated as an experimental color film.
• Ballad of the Sneak — The Sneak allegedly dances on the Panama Canal, which opened in 1914.

1920s

• Parsnips-A-Plenty — The toon is summarized as "the first Homestar Runner talkie", the antiquated name for a sound film. The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s.
• Ballad of the Sneak —
  • The Sneak is described as having moxie and pizzazz. It also says that he captures all the flapper girls' affections. Flappers had their origins in the 20s.
  • The song is done in a dixieland style, which was primarily popular in the twenties.
  • The Fort Wayne Locomotive is designed after the leatherhead days of American football.
• Various toons reference Prohibition, which began in 1920 and lasted until 1933.
• Fish Eye Lens (Easter egg) — The Barbershop Trio again provides a dixieland performance.

1940s

• Parsnips-A-Plenty (Easter egg) — The "Buy US Soup Bonds" ad is a reference to buying bonds for World War II.

1950s

• Ballad of the Sneak — The Sneak dances the Hully Gully, a form of line dance popularized by the 1959 song of the same name.
• Mr. Shmallow (toon) — The "look lively" scene features the period's fashion and science fiction.
• Email 4 branches — The Homestar Runner refers to Rumble Red as a "communist fool", a reference to the second Red Scare.
• Sickly Sam's Big Outing — The Fort Wayne Locomotive's voice sounds very much like Ed Norton, a character on the TV show The Honeymooners, which first aired in 1955 and which was spun off from a recurring sketch on The Jackie Gleason Show, which debuted three years earlier.

See Also

• Old-Timey Other Costumes