“Yikes I’m in Uncle Carl’s mouth…”

“I’d like you to meet Sadsack, the air-sack…” (who’s dying b.t.w.)

Once again I am forced to question what the adult educators and television producers were ingesting in the 1970’s when I was growing up.  But under the guise of edutainment ABC networks unleashed a barrage of nightmarish horror on the children of America in the form of a tiny cartoon nemesis named “Timer” who delighted in shrinking and changing normal kids into tiny flea-sized cartoon copies of themselves and then leading them through the inescapable terrors of the human body.

The ABC After-school specials themselves were an anthology series that ran from 1972 to 1997, and were designed largely to impart joy and entertain young minds with uplifting titles like “My Dad Lives in a Downtown Hotel“,  “Which Mother is Mine?“, “Terrible Things My Mother Told Me“, “Date Rape”, or “Stoned.”  And touched on issues like divorce, drug and alcohol abuse, and frequently the unique and varied ways childhood could suck.   I truly believe these little gems are responsible for developing early onset clinical depression for most of us who grew up in this era.

But it was timer that got to me…and just like Freddy Kruger, he was back in sequels, and even invaded my beloved Saturday morning cartoon block, where he tried to teach us how to make snacks with ice trays and toothpicks, that got us in trouble for making a huge mess in the kitchen and refrigerator.

High shrill evil sounding voice, yellow blobby body. and with mysterious powers to shrink and make children disappear inexplicably, this animated child predator would transport his victims into abstract representations of internal body systems, introduce the innocents to strange and abnormal talking body parts,  ignore impassioned cries for help in dangerous situations,and make the kids fight their way back to the real world.

Uncle Carl is in trouble, and it turns out every nightmare inflicted on those kids was planned by his evil talking internal organs.  And so were we on these bad acid inspired psychedelic television trips.

If you dare…here was Timer’s first appearance in The Incredible, Indelible, Magical Physical, Mystery Trip.