Billy: Hey everybody!

Regina: Hey Billy.

John: Hey Billy.

Adrianne: Hello.

Billy: So, we’ve been getting a lot of mail lately and just messages, in general from people. So we have a bunch of stories based on messages we’ve received from people that I think maybe don’t qualify for a full blown out episode, but that we want to help with, regardless.

John: A lot of podcasts do like mailbag segments. Do we have a funner name for our mailbag?

Adrianne: Side Quests.

John: Side Quests is good.

Regina: Side Quests.

Billy: Okay. So this is the first Underunderstood Side Quests.

[epic music]

So Adrianne, what do you have? You have something for us, right?

Adrianne: I do. We got an email from a listener named Maddi with an “I” and Maddi with an “I” sent us an email with the subject line, “Tampons in the freezer?”

Regina: Oh my God, this one was painful!

Adrianne: This question obviously grabbed my attention. First of all, I had a negative reaction to the idea of a frozen tampon. I think that would be uncomfortable for me personally, although other people, some people may enjoy it. That’s fine. But the question turned out to be Googleable. It wasn’t easily Googleable. It took some heavy Googling.

The email included a link to this thread from the subreddit r/shittygifrecipes. And the description of the Subreddit is, “whether it’s the quality of the gift or the inedible food contained within, this is the home of shitty gif recipes.”

John: What is this point of the subreddit?

Adrianne: Yeah. So I think gif recipes are usually like those sort of like short, quick hacky food hack things that loop.

John: Oh.

Billy: Tasty stuff.

Regina: Got it.

Adrianne: Yes. And this is like, well, yeah, I think oftentimes they are a gif, but not always. I just dropped the link to this Reddit thread in Slack and I will play the video.

Feminine voice: Just to make sure that the cracks are covered… that’s it.

Regina: That’s Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

Adrianne: Someone wants to describe what’s happening?

John: Someone has filled a casserole dish with like Cinnamon Toast Crunch and kind of patted it down. Now they’re adding canned peaches on top of them.

Billy: And then they have two full sticks of butter.

John: Now she’s adding cake mix on top.

Billy: Yeah, vanilla cake mix.

Regina: Why cake mix? She hasn’t mixed cake.

Billy: I’m really struggling to find what the connection is going to be here.

John: This- this is unhinged. What she’s making here…

Regina: She’s just putting like little slices of butter on top of the dried cake mix, which is on top of this sliced peaches, which is on top of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Billy: She’s essentially ensuring that the entire surface of it is covered with slices of butter.

John: And now she’s putting the whole thing in the oven.

Feminine voice: It’s perfect. Get the ice cream. Get the ice cream.

Regina: Get the ice cream!

John: What?

Regina: And it’s right next to tampons. Oh, I see.

Billy: Okay, so they went- they went to the freezer to get the ice cream because apparently, an important part of this recipe is you got to quickly put ice cream on it. And in the rush to get the ice cream out of the freezer… you quickly see a box of tampons in the freezer.

Adrianne: Yeah.

Billy: Along with the ice cream.

Regina: Wait, can I see what the end result is? I can’t. Why? How could you stop it?

Billy: Yeah. And sorry, we should clarify the tampons are not part of this recipe or it doesn’t appear to be that way. They were just in there.. I think it’s the point that you’re going to get to here. Right?

Adrianne: Yeah.

Feminine voice: And this is basically peach cobbler.

Billy: Oh, so this is supposed to- this is supposed to be like rapid baked peach cobbler.

Adrianne: Yeah!

Billy: Okay.

John: I’m going to try this. I’ll be honest.

Regina: Okay.

Adrianne: All right. So the title of that thread on Reddit was “When you see it.”

Regina: Yep.

Adrianne: Which is a common construction for link posts on Reddit implying that there’s an Easter egg or something to watch for it in the video. But the point of this link being posted is not the main content of the video, but something that you have to look for and when you see it, you’ll have a reaction.

Regina: Hm-mm.

Adrianne: And in this case, it was the fact that there are tampons in the freezer. So a lot of the comments are people being like, “whoa, tampons in the freezer! Why are there tampons in the freezer?” There are lots of theories about why there are tampons in the freezer. Do any of you have theories about why there might be tampons in the freezer?

Regina: I mean, one is just like that it’s a box that contains something else. Like, you know, you use the box to like put other things that you want to have in the freezer. It was just like the right sized box, you know?

Billy: I think it’s feasible that it could be some kind of personal preference thing, right? Am I off base with that?

Regina: Yeah.

 Billy: Like some people like freezing cold pillows to lay their head on at night and might put their pillow case in the freezer. And perhaps this is a similar situation?

Regina: I think that’s feasible.

John: Is there anything in a tampon that expires?

Regina: No, I mean, tampons are…they’re essentially cotton. Like there’s a whole controversy because like some companies like put other stuff in them and it’s not all cotton, but like lately the trend is like a 100% cotton tampons.

John: Is any of the non cotton stuff volatile?

Regina: No.

Adrianne: It’s also completely dry.

Regina: Yeah. As soon as it gets wet, it expands. So…

John: What if- just throwing an idea out here. What if there’s no more room under the sink- in the bathroom and the freezer was some available storage space?

Adrianne: Totally could be.

Regina: I mean, it’s just a little less convenient. Like you’re less likely to be like, you know, peeing and need to change your tampon and then be in the kitchen than you are to be in the bathroom. I would maybe move something else to the freezer instead.

Adrianne: So all of this is like really galaxy brain. I was able to find some people very, just like smatterings of people saying that this could be a…some kind of treatment, like a remedy for soreness either when you’re on your period or post-pregnancy.

I also saw that the theory that tampons could grow mold and that if they’re sitting around for too long, you could stick them in the freezer to preserve them longer. Neither of these reasons had much- I don’t think there were very authoritative.

I think maybe there’s some… maybe there’s some people out there who do this as a treatment for soreness. The mold theory is that seems like it’s gotta be a really, really tiny group- if it exists at all. The mold- the risk of growing mold is just not that great.

And also you just don’t keep tampons around for like 10 years. So it doesn’t really seem like an issue.

Billy: So, yeah, like standard ones would be like individually wrapped, right? Like where are the mold becoming from? You think there be…?

Adrianne: Right. They’re also just very dry- again. So without moisture, all of these issues are not really…not really huge issue. So I’m pretty sure the answer is not those things. And I went through and watched a lot of videos from this person actually, it’s a duo.

So that the person who makes this video is named Janelle Flom. She is the sister of Justin Flom who is another influencer who does magic and was on Wizard Wars. Apparently there was a TV show about magic and he’s on the Ellen DeGeneres show a lot. Anyways, this is his sister and it was his Facebook post that I was able to find first. So that was one that helped it go viral for sure.

Here’s another one of her videos. This is from a series called “Food Fun,” and it’s pretty much all stuff like this. Somewhere between like DIY-life hacky-shitty recipe gif, and sort of like 1950s galaxy grand-prepared-food fancy work. So this one is titled “Best Salty And Sweet Treat.”

Feminine voice 1: It’s really hard to spread once it’s on because you don’t want to mess up the potato chips.

Feminine voice 2: But it’s easy.

Feminine voice 1: Oh my gosh. It’s so easy.

Feminine voice 2: And that will cook on the bottom.

Billy: So these are like ruffles chips…with like brownie mix or something on top?

Feminine voice 1: All right. Oh, well, do you want to get the other topping?

Feminine voice 2: Yeah like chocolate chips.

Billy: Yeah it’s brownie mix. There’s also a wig strategically placed I feel like on the counter. Is this a common thing she does?

Adrianne: Okay…

Regina: I see. So she just does like a click baity thing. Like, I mean, I thought of that one, you said like that thread was called “Wait for it.” I was like, “oh, that just feels like a- that’s a thing people would lean into as like a- or “When you see it.”

Adrianne: Okay, here’s another one. So this one they’re- they’re doing us like a double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s in a waffle maker.

Feminine voice 2: But it seems like it’s supposed to be fast food, not slow food. One more fry. Here, I’ll get a plate. I’ll get a plate.

Regina: Oh, God.

Billy: And she’s getting a plate. There’s a jar full of credit cards?

Regina: The credit cards are like in rice or something? This is so dumb.

Billy: That’s not even a good one. I also don’t get the wig like what, who cares?

Adrianne: Okay.

Regina: I think it’s just like, if you see it taken out of context, then you watch more, you know?

Billy: I know, but it’s like tampons in the freezer is peculiar enough where I get it. I don’t get a wig on the counter. Like who cares? It’s not like there’s like a- like a loaded gun on the counter or something.

Regina: Right. But like people would just comment and be like, “why is there a wig?” And then you get engagement.

Adrianne: Exactly. So if you look at the comments on both of those videos, tons of people are pointing out the wig being like “why is there a wig on the counter? Why are there credit cards in the cabinet?” It just seems to be a little extra kick for your-

John: Her thing-  

Adrianne: Just a little trick. I don’t know if it’s her thing because I think she is part of a content economy that borrows a lot of these click baity hacks from each other. It’s like, you find one thing that works. You do it to death. Everyone else does it to death until the audience stops reacting to it. And then you move on to another hack that will boost engagement until the audience becomes numb to that.

Billy: I’m just saying I don’t get the wig one. Wigs are normal people wear wigs.

Regina: Okay, Billy, but it’s a-

Billy: It’s on the counter.

Regina: Yeah, it’s just a hack. And sometimes people do bad hacks. Remember the hellscape trope?

Billy: Yeah. Yeah. So her audience is like, “we’ve never seen you in pink hair. What’s the pink hair for?”

Regina: Yeah.

Adrianne: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think it’s as good as the tampons but I think it was the same idea and people did react to it if you look in the comments.

Billy: So that one didn’t go as viral. I would have assumed.

Adrianne: That one did not go as viral.

Anyway, all of this is just to say that the tampons in the freezer… I’m fairly confident were put there in order to stoke engagement. There was another time that this same person went viral for another clearly fake thing. And it’s like, this is- I’m looking at a Yahoo article. That’s like,

“Video viewers are divided over a viral TikTok that showed a woman getting revenge on the person sitting in front of her on a plane who kept flipping her hair back and blocking the TV on the back of the seat.”

Regina: Oh, I saw that.

Adrianne: “Janelle Elise Flom uploaded the video to her account after supposedly filming it on a flight at the end of November. It has since racked up over 10 million views. The woman sitting in front of her, it seen mashing a wad of chewed up gum into another passenger’s hair infuriated that the person doesn’t seem to notice.”

“It doesn’t move their hair. She proceeds to cut parts of the hair off with nail clippers, sticks a lollipop in there, and then dumps the ends into her coffee cup. ‘Whose side are you on?,’ Flom captioned the video.”

Okay.

Billy: No ones?

Adrianne: So you get the idea. It is a viral video collective. They are very good at making videos go viral. This is one of their cheap tricks. Don’t put your tampons in the freezer.

John: After the break, the search for missing iCarly song.

Adrianne: Hey everyone! It’s Adrianne. Last week, I fell into a real rabbit hole on our bonus show, Overunderstood. We talked about bunnies, we talked about batteries and I dug through some fun law suits. I don’t wanna spoil it but two multi-billion dollar companies signed a secret deal two decades ago and now one of them is claiming to have lost all copies.

Speaking of Overunderstood, we’ve done 21 episodes. We do that show every week even though the main show here is on hiatus. If you subscribe to our Patreon, it’s $5 a month and you get access to Overunderstood.

You will also get access to our Discord. If you haven’t used Discord before, it’s just basically a chat room where in there listeners in there, we chitchat, we kvetch. Also, Underunderstood will be participating remotely in the legendary Stevens Point Trivia in April. And we need as a large a team as possible. So, if you join our Patreon, you can also join the trivia team.

As always, thanks so much for listening. We appreciate you!

Billy: Regina, you have a story from a listener as well, right?

Regina: I do. Yes. I have an email from someone named Adam and the email says…

“Hello! I just came across your show today and I have a long internet mystery I would love to have solved. A little a year ago some friends and I were hanging out with some music on when the ‘Beautiful Girls’ by Sean Kingston started playing.”

Billy: Uh huh.

Regina: “My friend Haley asked if any of us remembered when Miranda Cosgrove covered the song during her years on the Disney channel. None of us had and we started joking with her that she made it up. Haley was insistent however swearing that she remembers it clear as the day.

If she had no reason to this we would have dropped it off together and not thought at all since. But her dedications made me think that maybe there are some long forgotten cover out there.

We tried a few routes, like asking Miranda Cosgrove fans in Subreddit and absolutely received no response one way or the other.

Google searches are fruitless and Miranda herself is notably inactive/absent on social media.

Can you help us settle this debate once and for all?

Thanks in advance,

Adam”

So, first, do you all remember the song “Beautiful Girls” by Sean Kingston?

Billy: Yes, of course.

John: No.

Adrianne: I don’t think so.

Regina: Okay. I’m going to play a little bit of it for you.

John: Oh, okay.

[music]

Regina: Yeah. You remember it now right?

John: Hm-mm. Hm-mm.

Regina:  Adrianne?

Adrianne: Hmm-mm.

Regina: It came out in 2007. It peaked at number 17 on the hot 100. At that time Sean Kingston was a teenager, he was 17. Should I explain Miranda Cosgrove, or-?

John: You can make fun of me for this. I don’t know who Miranda Cosgrove it.

Regina: Okay. So Miranda Cosgrove is an actress/singer. Like I think the first big thing she was in with School of Rock.

John: Oh.

Regina: But then she was on two Nickelodeon shows. She was on Drake and Josh, and then she was Carly in iCarly.

John: I feel less bad about not knowing who this is now.

Billy: iCarly was huge.

John: Not with me.

Billy: No, no, no. I know..well same. Yeah. Well, we were all too old, I think, but I’m just saying like, that’s the short version, right? Like who is she? She’s iCarly.

Regina: Right. Yes, you’re right. Also, so a thing I discovered while doing this episode is that every episode of iCarly starts with “i” something like in the same way that iCarly is like lowercase “i” and then Carly.

John: That’s really good.

Regina: This was that era.

Billy: It’s really funny.

Regina: All right. So now that we know who Miranda Cosgrove is and what “Beautiful Girls” is, any theories as to why this cover may exist, may not exist, may be scrubbed from the internet?

John: Were there like iCarly tours or anything? I know this is a thing that like kids’ shows would do where they would do like arena tours for.

Regina: I don’t think so, but there were songs in iCarly and there was an iCarly soundtrack and like there was like Miranda Cosgrove did tours.

John: Right. Because this seems like the kind of thing that I don’t know, maybe you would cover live and there wasn’t a studio version or something, right?

Regina: Yeah, that was the theory I had after reading the email too.

Billy: My main theory would probably just be that like, maybe it’s because this song, the hook is sort of regrettable. You know what I mean?

Regina: Yep.

Billy: “You’ll have me suicidal…?”

Regina: Right. You’re referring to like the, there was like a lot of controversy around like certain radio stations and stuff wouldn’t play it because it was like, yeah, “you’ll have me suicidal.” It was basically like if the girl is so beautiful that if she doesn’t like me, I will kill myself.

Billy: Yeah. Or even just being flipping about the concept of suicide.

Regina: Yeah. It hasn’t- like the song in general, hasn’t been scrubbed from the internet and like, you know, there’s like a pretty standard workaround for that, where they basically treated it like they would a swear and made like an alternative version. So they changed “suicidal” to in “denial”.

[Masculine singing: “You got me in denial, in denial”]

Regina: There are a lot of covers of this song and some people- and some of them will say in denial, some of them will say suicidal. The suicidal version has not been scrubbed.

So I looked up like the official covers, you know, who sampled, it does like samples and covers and all that. They don’t have Miranda Cosgrove listed, but like, again, this is- this is YouTube, My Space era so there could definitely be also unofficial cover.

John: What does an official cover versus an unofficial?

Regina: Like you could release like the basic one would be an official cover where like that was released, like through a label you would like be paying, you know, like the publishing rights to be using the lyrics to this song versus like on YouTube, content ID didn’t exist at that point like you were just like performing somebody else’s song. So people would just do that.

John: So no paper trail to those.

Regina: Yeah, exactly. But it wasn’t like… it wouldn’t exist on an album.

John: Okay.

Regina: So I couldn’t find an official one. I couldn’t find an unofficial one. I did find the track listing for the first iCarly soundtrack. And so this is a photo of that track listing.

Adrianne: Is this a- this is a photo of the back of a CD?

Regina: Yes. Yes.

Adrianne: Okay.

Billy: Wow. This is low res. Okay. Number-

John: Oh, so this is okay. Number eight is “Beautiful Girls” — Nickelodeon mix by Sean Kingston.

Regina: Right.

Adrianne: But this is the iCarly.

Billy: Huh?

Regina: This is the iCarly official soundtrack released via Nickelodeon right?  So I was like, all right, I saw it. Easy. Done. Except it does list Sean Kingston as the artist. And I was like, well, she obviously remembers Miranda Cosgrove singing the song.

John: But it says Nickelodeon mix.

Regina: But it says Nickelodeon mix. So maybe they’re in it.

Billy: Or it’s like a duet or something.

Regina: And then I just looked in Spotify and this is an official soundtrack. So like it’s in Spotify. And it’s the only thing that I think makes it the Nickelodeon mix is that they say “in denial” instead of “suicidal,” but it’s Sean Kingston all the way. There’s no like iCarly references or cast in it. There’s nothing. It’s just the song but Nickelodeon friendly.

 So I have an alternative theory.

John: Yeah.

Regina: As I started looking at like the unofficial covers. You know, there’s like the Plain White T’s did one, Jesse McCartney did one of those ones like that was just live. It never like got released except for like on YouTube and My space and like, you know, recordings of it.

But there’s no mention of a Miranda Cosgrove cover. I went through like her set lists of all of her performances, because she did do this thing at her live shows where she, like, she would do like mashups of her favorite songs on the radio and do a few, like 32 second versions of it, but never did this song.

And it seems like she wasn’t really like touring until like 2010. So at this point that’s a lot later on and it wouldn’t necessarily have been in Haley’s memory as associated with iCarly? I don’t know.

And then I had another little theory because according to Wikipedia, like when this song came out, there was this video service, which was called Votigo or Votigo.

Do you guys remember this?

Billy: No.

Adrianne: Definitely not.

John: Votigo is good though.

Regina: Yeah. It’s basically like fans would submit covers of this song and like the award for the best cover was like a phone call from Sean Kingston. But I couldn’t find any of these. And like the person who won is this person named Mallory Robbins. I tried to find her cover to see if like she just sounded like Miranda Cosgrove.

John: Hm-mm.

Regina: I did find like a YouTube video from a 2008 performance from this group called Super Pop that very much gave me like Miranda Cosgrove vibes but I don’t think that that is likely the source of this.

And then at this point, looking for YouTube videos the search term, “Beautiful Girls” and getting like later, deeper, deeper into the pages, you know? I just kept coming into- coming up on videos that I was like, “this is not what I’m looking for!”

John: It’s just porn.

Regina: Yeah. I just started getting a lot of that. And so I was like, I’m gonna leave this lead and I started looking into like iCarly fandom pages, just to even figure out like why the show- the song was on the soundtrack. But there’s no trace of the song being on the show, sung by her or not sung by her.

Billy: There wasn’t there wasn’t ever like a movie or anything?

Regina: No. But there are Google searches that will give you like “Beautiful Girls” by Miranda Cosgrove like that will come up as a result. But I think it’s more an error of like sometimes the iCarly soundtrack, the metadata is like attributed to Miranda Cosgrove as the artist. So all the songs on the soundtrack will show her as the artist.

But here’s my theory. There was one cover that was really popular, which I haven’t mentioned yet because it’s like more of a reply than a cover.

John: Oh.

Regina: So I’m going to play that…

[Feminine voice singing: “I’ll have you suicidal, suicidal, when I say it’s over”]

Billy: Huh.

Regina: So, you guys heard the beginning of that reply, what do you think?

Adrianne: Hm-mm?

John: Is that Miranda Cosgrove?

Regina: It’s not Miranda Cosgrove, but it kind of has that vibe, right?

Billy: It’s a feminine voice and a very processed kind of sound.

Regina: So this song came out in 2007 as well.

Regina: And it is by JoJo.

Billy: JoJo?

Regina: Remember JoJo?  

Billy:  Yes.

Regina: JoJo came out with this song in 2007. And at the time… you know, there were these like teen stars who were kind of being grouped together in these pop star magazines. There’s a 2008 video at the teen choice awards for example, where JoJo, Selena Gomes and Miranda Cosgrove all like present a series of awards together.

Feminine announcer: There isn’t enough time to give out all the awards on the show but we want to mention a few now. For instance James Marsden who we saw earlier. He starred in 27 Dresses, which is your choice chick flick!

Regina: And so my theory is that the combination of like the song being on the iCarly soundtrack, the cover, having that, like teen pop star kind of sound but is also like the Miranda Cosgrove sound and just the internet exploding with covers everywhere kind of all combined to Haley just misremembering this song as being Miranda Cosgrove and not JoJo.

Billy: Also worth noting that there’s a character on iCarly apparently called JoJo the gigantic baby? Very disturbing looking. I’ll send the photo.

Regina: Great.

John: Have you told our listener about this?

Regina: So I couldn’t talk to both of them at the same time for scheduling reasons but I did talk to Adam and I ran my theory by him to see what he thought…

Between the song being a part of the soundtrack for iCarly, Miranda Cosgrove doing a lot of covers when she performed and Miranda Cosgrove kind of being grouped in with those teen stars at the time. It kind of all like memory melded,

Adam: Miranda and Jojo together really makes a lot of sense. You know, I’ve heard about stuff like this before where, you know, people have two separate memories that they kind of create into one somebody. I think that makes a lot of sense. No, it’s a reasonable explanation for why she would have been so certain about it because, you know, in her mind it was true because of two very similar things that are true.

Billy: All right. And then our last side quest, John, you have a story from a listener.

John: Yeah! We got an email from a listener named Nick. And Nick has been searching for a very specific brand of fruit snacks that he remembers from the 90s for the better part of a decade.

Billy: This is so on brand for us.

Regina: Yeah.

John: I called up Nick to talk to him about it.

Nick: For whatever reason, this has been bugging me for years. I asked coworkers, I asked friends, I asked family. Like my current job, I think I’ve asked. And I remember like two or three jobs before that I’ve asked people about this.

 And just either feel, “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” or they’re like, “I kind of remember it, but like, other than what you just described, I couldn’t tell you anything further.”

The people that knew what I was talking about being my mother and my brother, they said, “yes, I remember” but that was the extent of it.

John: Instead of next recollection, the gummy snacks that we’re talking about were shaped like sports equipment.

Nick: So like, one of them was like an inline skate. One of them was a surf board. One of them was a skateboard. And if anyone like can make comparison to like Scooby-Doo fruit snacks, that’s kind of the texture-flavor consistency, where there was like a, a white one, a blue on red, orange, you know, so on and so forth.

John: So everyone here is a 90s kid. Does it, is this ringing a bell with anybody?

Adrianne: No.

Billy: I can imagine it, but I don’t have a strong personal connection. I’m not like, “oh yeah, definitely.”

Regina: Same. Yeah. I feel like I have like maybe a vague recollection of like this type of thing, but…

John: Yeah. They were- yeah, I had the same thing. It’s like, I know what he’s talking about I remember Scooby-Doo fruit snacks. I don’t remember extreme sports fruit snacks.  

Regina: No.

Billy: I feel like maybe this was a generic store version?

Regina: Yeah, that was my thought.

Billy: Because all the heavy hitters have some sort of big brand association, whether it is…

Regina: Like the Gushers.

John: Right.

Billy: Well, or, yeah, they’re the standalone brand in and of themselves like Gushers, but I’m saying like ones that do like shapes are like Mickey Mouse or-

Regina: Right.

Billy: Scooby Doo…or whatever.

John: Yeah. Nick seemed very committed to finding these and he has been looking for them for so long. So I was like, okay, let’s take a look.

Nick: I mean, probably it would even be like close to 10 years I’ve been trying to find this. So I really, at the end of the day, what I want is I want to make sure that this actually existed pretty much see a picture of the box, the packaging, the fruit snacks themselves, something like that.

John: Do you remember anything about the packaging?

Nick: So I think the packaging had like a silver package and I don’t remember much about the box. I don’t even remember if that’s actually what the packaging was or not, but that’s what I could tell you.

John: Do you think you would remember the box if you saw it?

Nick: Absolutely, yeah.

John: Okay. And what did you- what have you done so far to try to find these?

Nick: So outside of asking people, I Googled until what I feel like is the end of time. I tried to look for any type of like 90s food blogs. I went to r/AskReddit, which was not very successful.

I even reached out to Betty Crocker because putting two and two together I assumed the formula was very similar to Scooby-Doo and that’s who makes the Scooby-Doo fruit snacks so I emailed them to ask them if they had any recollection or log of any of this. I actually don’t even think I got a response from them.

Adrianne: Mmm.

John: I’ve done all of this too. These don’t show up with Google. You Google: surfing fruit snacks, rollerblade fruit snacks. They don’t show up. Nothing.

Listeners to this show know that I have a history of trying to get information about snack food companies.

Adrianne: Mhm.

John: Of course.

Adrianne: Have you gotten any better at it?

John: I might have. So I was absolutely prepared for another situation, like my other ones, where I email and call a bunch of companies repeatedly and not get any answers. But this one went a little bit differently and this is from my conversation with Nick.

So I did the same thing you did. And I reached out to Betty Crocker, but I reached out to their media contact, not their general. And so I sent that yesterday at 2:46 PM at 3:02 PM I got a response from them that says-

Nick: No way!

John: Yeah, it says…

“Hi, John. Let me do some research and see what I can find out for you. Mike.”

 Nick: Oh my gosh.

John: Mike of Betty Crocker is by far the most proactive snack food PR person I’ve ever encountered. And at this point I’ve encountered quite a few.

Adrianne: Oh absolutely. Frito Lay needs to hire Mike.

John: I agree with you. The morning after I first reached out, he came back with this email.

“Hi John,

“As always, my archives team came through for me.”

There’s an archives team.

“These pictures of products from the nineties should answer your question.”

So, head over to Slack.

Adrianne: Ooh.

John: There’s a photo.

Adrianne: Ooh..

Regina: Wow!

Billy: The branding looks great.

Adrianne: These look so good.

Regina: I love this.

John: Here’s the second photo.

Adrianne: “Excellent new shape.”

Regina: Oh my God.

John: These are like really clean- does somebody want to describe these?

Regina: These are good photos. Like these are not like the back of the CD jewel case photo that I shared. These are like scans of labels.

John: Yes! It’s really- and they have an archives team.

Billy: I’m gonna make this my desktop background.

Adrianne: And the art is fantastic!

Regina: Yeah. It is fantastic.

Adrianne: Those rollerblades look so cool.

John: So we’re looking at two different products.

Billy: Yeah, the Tutti-Frutti-chewy fruit snacks, surf’s up excellent new shape fruit corners made with real fruit. Fruit snacks in the branding. I would say it’s like almost kind of a Bubblicious vibe. It’s like very like plump and you just want to like bite into it.

John: Yeah.

Billy: And it’s very colorful, bright green, bright purple, and yeah, and then they have all these different surfing gummies. They have palm tree, a surfer, a beach ball, a…what is that?

John: A motorboat for some reason, that’s not really surfing, but it’s there. Yeah. And then the second one is rollerblade branded fruit snacks by Betty Crocker. So, like you said, this is like a brand 90s.

Regina: These are much more.

John: Yeah. Rollerblade is an official brand and this is license from Rollerblade and, and these are way more nineties. These are like cut out neon shapes in the shapes of Rollerblades on the packaging. And the shapes of the gummies seemed to be a helmet, a Rollerblade, a roller hockey player, just a regular Rollerblader. It’s all like- it’s kind of what Nick is describing to me.

The final names of these are Surf’s Up Tutti Frutti_1992.JPEG. So Surf’s Up was from 92.

Regina: I need to work for Betty Crockers archive team.

John: It seems great and they seem responsive and they have perfect scanners. It’s awesome! And the rollerblade one is a labeled rollerblade_1994.JPEG so these are from 92 and 94 respectively.

Billy: I love that this is an official brand partnership, Rollerblade licensed.

John: I know.

Regina: Yeah.

Billy: Like they didn’t have to do that.

John: I know.

Billy: They could have just called them like roller gummies or something. And it would have been clear what it is.

Adrianne: So? Was the listener pleased?

John: Well, I showed the images to Nick.

Adrianne: How’s listener satisfaction?

John: Okay. So I’m going to text you an image.

Nick: Okay.

John: So I sent him first the Surf’s Up 1992 one.

Nick: So see this, I don’t think is ringing a bell.

John: Really? Oh no.

Nick: Yeah.

Regina: No.

John: So that’s from 1992 and then this…

Nick: Oh, yes! That one’s ringing a bell! That’s the one! Holy! Pardon my French. Oh my gosh! Exactly it! Oh my gosh! And I specifically recall that little tiny, like illustration icon that’s above the rollerblade logo, I specifically remember that in my head.

John: So this is- you remember this on fruit snacks?

Nicck: A hundred per- this is without a doubt, a 100% what I remembered. Oh my gosh. I cannot believe I’m looking at this right now.

Adrianne: Wow, he’s so happy.

John: He’s so happy.

So I went back to Mike, like, this is great. I went back to Mike and I asked him ”do you have any pictures of the pouches? Because Nick remembered them being foil?” And he said that they didn’t. And then two hours later, I got another email. It was like, “oops, nevermind. The archive team had it also.”

So check this out in Slack.

Regina: Oh, my God! It’s scan of a package. You can even see the little corner!

Billy: Oh, yeah.

 Regina: The little corner is folded.

Billy: Well, no, but no, it kind of, the corner kind of does make it look like foil. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to tell.

John: I hadn’t seen that.

Regina: Yeah. The corner makes it foil. Yeah.

John: But the outside is not foil. It’s just rollerblade fun snacks and it looks pretty flattened, 2D and colorful.

Regina: Oh, I love it.

John: Yeah. I thought this was going to be disappointing to Nick but-

Nick: No way! No way. Oh, my gosh! That’s insane!

John: So they were not foil..it looks like.

Nick: Yeah. Yeah, but that’s okay because like I said, I think by association might just be connecting the Scooby-Doo to these because of the similar, like, flavor and consistency, but the packaging is definitely also ringing a bell to me, yeah.

Regina: Wow.  

John: That’s it. Another satisfied question asker.

Billy: Wow, what a great outcome.

Nick: I’m going to immediately call my mother after we’re done talking. You found them for me.

John: That’s awesome.

Nick: I can’t believe this. Wow. Wow. I like can’t stop just looking at the box. I might like, print it out and frame it, honestly. This is incredible.  

John: Underunderstood is Regina Dellea, Adrianne Jeffries, Billy Disney, and me, John Lagomarsino.

Adrianne: All of today’s questions were sent in by listeners like you. If you have a question the internet can’t answer, we want to hear about it. Email us hello@underunderstood.com. You can also talk to us on Twitter. We are @underunderstood.

Billy: And just a reminder that Underunderstood is not the only show that we do. We also do Overunderstood and that comes out every week including weeks when under understood is on hiatus, you can find that and a bunch of other stuff on our Patreon, that’s at patreon.com/underunderstood.

Regina: Thanks for listening. See you next time!