patchy's "knockoff" spongebob collection in 'the sponge who could fly'

Bees

Bees

Imitation Krab
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i've always thought this was interesting- when patchy has his meltdown after watching "just a bunch of cheap walk cycles! (what a rip)", the majority of spongebob merchandise in his room has been modified in some way. apparently this was due to FCC regulations stating that merchandise from a children's tv show cannot be advertised or shown within that show (i actually cannot find a source for this specific claim, but wikipedia states that there are regulations "prohibiting the airing of advertising for products related to the program currently airing" which i would assume also applies to the shows themselves by default)

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some of the most noticeable differences here are: all the characters pupils have a rubber hose cartoon style to them with no irises, spongebob's tie is now a bowtie, squidward's shirt has vertical black stripes on it, spongebob's krusty krab hat is now black and blue, and patrick's pants appear to have spots all over them (only visible in first screenshot, kinda hard to see)

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the text on patchy's blanket also appears to have been intentionally misspelled as "jeloyfishing"

later on in the series in 'goons on the moon', a patrick toy from burger king is seen sitting on the storyboard animator's desk. this was acceptable likely because the toy had been out of circulation for nearly two decades by that point.

i just wonder where all of this stuff is now, they made all of this custom merchandise just to be shown on screen for a couple of seconds. i'd assume it was already-existing merchandise that they made modifications to. if anyone is able to identify any of the original pieces of merch they used here, that would be super cool to know
 
Bees said:
View attachment 21569

i've always thought this was interesting- when patchy has his meltdown after watching "just a bunch of cheap walk cycles! (what a rip)", the majority of spongebob merchandise in his room has been modified in some way. apparently this was due to FCC regulations stating that merchandise from a children's tv show cannot be advertised or shown within that show (i actually cannot find a source for this specific claim, but wikipedia states that there are regulations "prohibiting the airing of advertising for products related to the program currently airing" which i would assume also applies to the shows themselves by default)

View attachment 21570

some of the most noticeable differences here are: all the characters pupils have a rubber hose cartoon style to them with no irises, spongebob's tie is now a bowtie, squidward's shirt has vertical black stripes on it, spongebob's krusty krab hat is now black and blue, and patrick's pants appear to have spots all over them (only visible in first screenshot, kinda hard to see)

View attachment 21571

the text on patchy's blanket also appears to have been intentionally misspelled as "jeloyfishing"

later on in the series in 'goons on the moon', a patrick toy from burger king is seen sitting on the storyboard animator's desk. this was acceptable likely because the toy had been out of circulation for nearly two decades by that point.

i just wonder where all of this stuff is now, they made all of this custom merchandise just to be shown on screen for a couple of seconds. i'd assume it was already-existing merchandise that they made modifications to. if anyone is able to identify any of the original pieces of merch they used here, that would be super cool to know
Click to expand...
Honestly seeing these up close, it's pretty cool that they're able to do that just for that episode.

Maybe get ahold of Vincent Waller or anyone who worked on the episode? (Although admittedly that would be hard to do)
 
This is really interesting! I never noticed. I haven't seen this episode very much though, because it was rarely aired. It may seem like some work to have to create these knock-offs, but it was worth it for this hilarious scene!
 
At the time, Viacom owned both Nick and CBS (they do again now too), and CBS had a block of Nickelodeon programming. I don’t know if the regulation about showing merch on kids shows applied to cable kids TV, but it definitely applied to broadcast kids TV. It’s possible they may have done this in case they wanted to air the episode on CBS too.
 
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