patrutrus

[patrutrus]

February 25th, 2011

Hey, I called the 1-800 hotline mentioned on Episode 3. It was a pre-recording, which I will transcribe for you.

"Hello! My name is Happy Appy! I am every kid's most helpful and favorite Apple! If you want to make a donation, press 1. If you want to know about the earthquake, press 2."

When I pressed two, the hotline said this.

"An earthquake and tsunami has recently hit Japan, and we need all the help we can get! If you can make a donation of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 dollars, you will be a big help! Anyone who donates gets a Happy Appy badge!"

So, I went ahead and donated a dollar to the donation for the fun of it by using an outdated bank account that I never used. It responded.

"Thank you for helping with the aid for the Tsunami! Look in your mailbox in a week from now, because you'll get your Happy Appy badge!"

I’m wondering what earthquake Happy predicted. Between 1999 and the current day, there were no 9.0 earthquakes in Japan. Since the 2003 Hokkaido Earthquake was pretty close to when the episode was released, as well as the magnitude mentioned in the radio broadcast, I guess he was predicting about that.

[patrutrus]

February 24th, 2011

I watched Episode 5, which had a few differences from the first four episodes. Firstly, it had Happy on a rustless (but still bent) stick. Secondly, this episode was somewhat disturbing. The theme song played, and the name of the episode is revealed as "Monkey Bar Mishap!”

It started with Happy Appy in his van driving to the playground when he sees a kid crying near some monkey bars. Once he parks the van and goes to the monkey bars, Happy finds out that the kid had fallen off of them, cutting his little finger open. Happy Appy said "What does Jake need to heal with, kids?" He gave off his evil smile at the screen for a couple of minutes, enough time to read a page of a book - preferably the Bible - to him. Like Nate Needs Help, his soulless baby blue eyes watched over anyone in the room like Big Brother. He said "That's right!" and Happy puts a bandage on Jake's finger. After getting hugged by Jake, Happy drives away in his van. It skipped to Episode 6, which had a better chance of being aired on Wonder Showzen than Nick Jr!

In the episode, called "Never Run with Knives", a kid was running with a knife facing up. The knife was clearly a rubber prop because the blade was flopping around a lot. The kid got ‘cut’, and held his hand over the wound, crying. As blood began to come out of the kid's wound, Happy parked his van, gave a normal smile, and said "Hey kids, he shouldn't have carried the knife facing up while running!" However, he did heal him by putting a bandage over the wound. The kid hugged Happy, and he said "Remember kids, never run with knives facing up, or scissors for that matter. Always walk with knives and scissors facing down!" Happy took the kid to his van, drives off, and the credits played. However, after the credits roll, the episode takes a very disturbing turn when Happy comes back in his van, the kid missing, and says "Hey kids! If you find me and my van, just talk to me and I'll take you away, ha-ha!"

Episode 7 began with Happy on the playground, but he wasn't playing with the kids, or helping them. He was just staring at them, with that unsettling smile I hate so much. A group of kids are playing with jump ropes, when Happy walks over to them. He calmly tells them something, but I could barely hear what he said. From what I heard, I could only make out "Hello... Happy... I... how... me... please?" I could see where this was going, as the kids walk with Happy into the bushes of the playground. Loud violent screams are heard for almost a minute and a half, until Happy begins to drag three bloody bodies to his van.

I couldn't believe it.

For the rest of the episode, he does that damn death smile! Why did they use that look so much? It was almost like he could climb out of your TV, grab you, and murder you slowly and painfully with a rusty knife, but he couldn’t.

I moved on to Episode 8 and 9. This time, the episodes were so violent and shoddy that they couldn't have aired on Noggin at all. Episode 8 had Happy Appy take a kid into his van. For half of the episode, flesh cutting could be heard, and so could loud screaming, which turned into gurgles. As the scene progressed, blood splatters on the windows began to appear. Eventually, Happy emerged from the van, and did a death smile until the end of the show. Like Episode 8, Episode 9 was gory and violent. But this episode was so coincidental and violent that I couldn't believe Noggin would even allow it, unless it was some sort of hijacking.

It starts out with Happy Appy walking around the playground when two kids ask him what the cycle of life is so that they could complete their homework. He proceeds to tell the kids about the cycle of life in frogs and plants. The kids said "Thanks, Happy! Can you play with us for a bit?" Happy agrees, and they start playing on the playground. When this happens, smoke starts to creep behind Happy and the children. It gets to a point where they start coughing because of how dense the smoke is, so they turn around to see what was making the smoke. Happy gasps at the sight in front of them.

Two towers were on fire and were burning up. A few people are falling out of windows to escape the fire. There was a lot of screaming, falling debris, and a crashed airplane in one of the towers. Only the tail of the plane was visible, which was nearing the point of collapse. I could hear a faint whining noise at this point, and I think that it was the plane's engine which was probably still on. Seven seconds later, the tail of the plane finally broke apart, with the largest piece of the tail hitting and killing someone. During this scene, fire trucks could be heard trying to douse out the flames, but it only slows the flames down. The wailing of ambulances could also be heard, taking away the bodies of the people who jumped from the towers. It showed a weird guy on fire falling out of one of the towers, screaming.

Happy and the kids are seen again, but this time, they stood still in fear. The smoke kept getting thicker and thicker, slowly obscuring the trees and equipment of the playground. The debris from the towers fell around the kids and Happy, and a person ran up to them and told them to run away from the towers before running off. When the older kid worriedly said "Happy Appy, why are the towers on fire?” it cuts to a higher-up floor that was near where the plane crashed, which revealed a kid that was under a huge piece of concrete, crying for help.

Some other kids tried to help him by lifting the piece of concrete off him. He was screaming so loud, it was almost heartbreaking. There were bodies and blood everywhere, and the pain and fear on the trapped kid’s face was so realistic, I cringed. After the shot with the kid trapped under the concrete, the younger kid turns to the side say “Happy Appy, why are people running and falling from the towers?” Happy Appy turns to the camera, death smile on his face, and very coldly said three words. Those three words will haunt me as long as I research this show.

"That's natural, children."

He took the two kids away from the towers, leaving the kid stuck under concrete screaming for help. When the credits rolled, the audio of the scene kept playing, and at the end, before the video cuts out, something collapsed, making a very loud noise that could scare anyone watching.

I jumped out of my seat. Was Happy a death bringer in the form of an apple? Or was he a master predictor? If that episode somehow predicted 9/11, I have to watch Episodes 10 and 11 to see if there was anything else predicted! I might not see any predictions, though, and honestly, I hope not. Oh, and you want to know what happens when someone calls the tsunami aid phone number? Tomorrow, I’m going to go and call it.

[patrutrus]

February 23rd, 2011

Hello. I will be writing on this blog because I am researching a show called Happy Appy. One of the main reasons why I'm researching this show is because I've been fascinated with missing TV shows, episodes, and movies. Like most people who research missing episodes, I'm hell-bent on finding London after Midnight, the 108 missing Doctor Who episodes, and Him, the 1974 film where a man has a sexual obsession with Jesus. Even though I should help the search for any fragment of the missing episodes and films, I'm going to research this one series for now.

Another reason I want to research this show is because I had an experience with it around 2001. It was around eight in the morning. My younger brother, who was seven, was watching a local station during its child TV show block. After a dubbed over Blue's Clues, it started to air a show called Счастливые Яблоко, or Happy Apple. I can barely remember the episode’s plot, but it was about this apple who was trying to help a kid, named Nathaniel. It felt sort of low-budget, but since my brother liked the episode, I didn't mind him watching it. The only thing that made me dubious was this evil smile that the apple did in the middle of the episode.

From what I gathered, in the first weeks of Noggin’s existence, this "Happy Appy" show began production. Its plot was about a giant clay apple with arms, baby blue eyes, and large dark green lips being held up by a bent, rusty stick. He would go around in a white 1996 Ford Windstar helping children when they got injured. As the show kept going, the episodes started to become more unusual. For one example, Happy Appy would often stare at the viewers of the show with a deranged smile.

It’s also worth mentioning that the series slowly got more violent as the series progressed. Happy Appy was one of the shorter shows on Noggin, with every episode being 10 minutes long at the most. They played in duets, making each full episode 20 minutes long, minus commercials. A couple of months after Happy Appy aired its first episode, Nickelodeon cancelled the show, and it was never shown again on Noggin or Nick Jr. Even the much more appropriate episodes weren't shown for whatever reason. However, some parents did record the show, but they were VHS copies.

Of those said VHS copies, only a few survived through the years. Many of the tapes had been destroyed either due to neglect or disgust, or were simply misplaced and thrown out by accident. However, some copies of the show were reportedly stolen by a shadowy figure. I was one of the lucky people to own a copy of the episodes. Yesterday, when I did some winter cleaning, I found an old DVD with ‘H.A. Episodes’ written on it. I had a feeling that I knew this abbreviation from somewhere, I did some research on what the H.A. meant. My first choice was the forum about missing episodes/films that I normally go to.

When I entered the missing episode section of the forum, the first thread I saw was one named "HA? What's this?" A woman posted the thread, who had, like me, found a VHS with the initials "HA" on it. As I read the thread more, I found out that the initials on the disc stood for Happy Appy. This instantly reminded me of the weird low-budget show that I watched with my brother in 2000. In the replies, the users claimed that there are no known DVD copies around. I'm not sure how the disc got there, though. I certainly don't remember owning a disc that looked like it!

After viewing the thread, I went ahead and put it into the disk drive, hoping that it would work. Thankfully, the disc did work, and it instantly cut to the intros of the episode, no menus or anything. Happy Appy's intro song had the same tune as Mary Had a Little Lamb, and went something like this.

Happy Appy Appy App,

Happy App, Happy App

Happy Appy Appy App,

He helps kids all day! 

Happy Appy Appy App,

Happy App, Happy App

Happy Appy Appy App,

He helps kids all day!

Happy Appy Appy App,

Happy App, Happy App

Happy Appy Appy App,

He helps kids all day!

Episode 1 and 2 were called “Happy's Vacation” and “Hurt Happy”, respectively.

Happy's Vacation was exactly what you’d expect; Happy Appy goes on a vacation to the beach, heals injured kids, and even talks down a bully into not hurting a child. Hurt Happy was about Happy's stick getting broken, and the kids teaming up to help Happy Appy by giving him bandages and fruit. Nothing seemed out-of-place when I first saw it, but when I saw it a second time, the episodes looked questionably odd. When Happy was driving his van to the beach in Happy's Vacation, a few seconds skipped. At first, I ignored it, saying that it could be a scratched DVD. But when I checked the disc, it had no scratches on it whatsoever. Also, during the fruit scene in Hurt Happy, the kids gave him an apple for whatever reason. It could have been a mistake by the producers, though.

Finally, I noticed some things in Hurt Happy that looked out-of-place. In Happy's van during the intro of Happy's Vacation, there was what looked like the border of the HOPE poster, but it was so out of frame that it could have been something else. At the end of Hurt Happy, there was a news broadcast about a 9.0 earthquake that recently struck Japan. Happy responded "Oh no! If you want to help the Japanese, call this number!" and a 1-800 number appeared. I thought those were just coincidental. Well, I was wrong. Episodes 3 and 4 were stranger. The intros of these two episodes were removed, but I found out that Episode 4's name was "Nate Needs Help". This struck out to me because this was the very same episode I saw with my brother, but in English!

Episodes 3 and 4 were missing a few scenes, and, overall, more disturbing than the first two. On Episode 3 - near the 5:10 mark - is when Happy Appy does his first evil smile for 25 seconds. A scene that could send chills down anyone's spine was the Boo-boo part in "Nate Needs Help". Happy aids Nate, who has a bruise on his knee. He looks to the camera, giving off the same evil smile that I remember from 2000, and says "What does Nate need for this booboo?” For 30 seconds, he stared at the camera, motionless, with his soulless baby blue eyes locking on to anyone watching. Finally, he broke the silence by saying "That's right, a bandage!" Why did he need that long to speak, I will never know.

Also, the out-of-place objects were getting more noticeable. In Nate Needs Help, the radio plays what sounds like a country cover of "Hot and Cold", which was made in 2008 and very out-of-place for a kid's show.