BY: DIGITAL WAX MEDIA STAFF 

 

If I’ve already lost you at Bump in the Night , worry not. You wouldn’t be the first, and you won’t be the last. Though I can’t physically observe the perplexity peppering the contour of your face in this moment, I’ve witnessed it enough times in others to know exactly what it looks like. Allow me to provide some context, and by that I mean entirely too much context.

 

The 1990s are a heavily nostalgic period these days, particularly when it comes to us millennials. From Rugrats and the Nintendo 64 to that one Charlotte Hornets windbreaker that everyone seemed to have, it was a distinctly memorable time for which those who experienced it continue to yearn in the present day.

 

But despite the collective warm and fuzzy feeling generally shared by members of my age group, one particularly memory seems almost unique to myself alone. That memory, as you may have guessed by this point, is that of Bump in the Night, a stop-motion animation children’s television show which aired for just over a year in the mid-90s.

 

The show was produced by the ABC network and follows a delightfully zany premise that shouldn’t work but does – at least it did for me anyhow, though that could very well be the nostalgia talking. Essentially, the show follows a green monster who eats dirty socks and winds up in all manner of wacky hijinks in the AM hours. This thing really did exist. You can read about it online; there are photos of the animation. I know this because I had to go check for myself years back to ensure that I didn’t imagine the entire thing as part of some sort of fever dream I incurred as a child.

 

The humor and general style of Bump in the Night was, at times, admittedly kind of gross. This can’t have done much in the way of favors for its overall shelf-life and replay value in the present day. But one must also consider the context of the times. Successful kids television during this time looked like Rocko’s Modern Life and The Ren & Stimpy Show, both of which are looked back upon fondly today and the latter of which I found disgusting and borderline unwatchable even as a child.

 

Despite the idea of the show generally falling in line with what was considered bankable at the time, the stop-motion animation made Bump in the Night a bit of an outlier by comparison to the animation styles of prominent shows of the time. Though contemporary series such as Kablam! would confirm that it was indeed possible to find an audience while operating within the format.

 

One aspect about Bump in the Night worth noting is just how much talent had come onboard as part of the show’s production. Seriously, the voice cast for this thing, sparse though it may have been, was STACKED with regard to talent.

 

The primary role of the show’s title character was voiced by none other that Jim Cummings. That’s right, SpongeBob SquarePants himself; the man with the most expansive resume in voice acting due to a renowned career spanning over half a century was the central focus of this bizarro production about a green monster covered in purple warts named Mr. Bumpy who eats dirty socks.

 

The second-most prominent character featured as part of the regular cast of Bump in the Night was a blue monster named Squishington who lived in the toilet – stay with me, I promise I’m not just making all this up. This achievement of American broadcasting brought to life by Daytime Emmy Award winner Rob Paulsen, whose voice acting credits read like a list of every beloved franchise and animated series of which you’ve ever heard and them some.

 

These characters were often joined by a monster doll named Miss Molly Coddle, a character not only voiced by a former cast member of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, but a co-anchor of SNL’s flagship program, Weekend Update in actress and comedian Gail Matthius!

 

Bump in the Night aired in 30-minute episodes which were often broken up into two, and sometimes three mini episodes. The brief runtime of each story presented was ideal in that it allotted enough time for the establishment of the plot and the ensuing of the insanity without getting lost in the weeds and allowing the overall premise to wear thin. What’s more, there we’re music videos at the end of each episode!

 

These delightful mini-compositions featured the vocal work of Cummings, who even at this relatively early stage in his career was diverse enough a voice actor and vocalist to be limited only by his own imagination in what he could conjure up. These light-hearted romps were specific to the episodes they followed, usually featuring characters from such episodes and reiterating certain plot points featured throughout.

 

Though Bump in the Night initially ran from 1994 to 1995, it wasn’t until the reruns of show began airing in the very early morning hours on Toon Disney in 1998 that I would Become familiar with it. The fact that reruns of the series aired at an hour that few parents in their right minds would be allowing their children to sit up and watch television likely had much to do with my peers’ seemingly complete unawareness of the existence of any show called Bump in the Night.

 

It was during this period that I discovered the thrill of being awake while most of the world was fast asleep. There were no pressures or expectations at 1:00am in the middle of summer in 1998 – the world was essentially mine to just exist in for a few fleeting hours.

 

Another motivating factor in my nocturnal habits during this time was the decidedly unconventional selection of television viewing in which I could indulge. I was exclusively into animated television at the time, and while Nick at Night  would generally be airing reruns of All in the Family or Lavern and Shirley, Toon Disney would be showing a bunch of off-the-wall content of which I had never heard previously.

 

 

Among this ragtag lineup of AM entertainment was Bump in the Night – naturally – Super Dave: Daredevil for Hire, Blazing Dragons, Wild West C.O.W. – Boys of Moo Mesa, The Adventures of the Gummi Bears and more. Unsurprisingly, I would later discover that Jim Cummings provided voice work in a great deal of these shows as well, including two of the aforementioned four. Seriously, that guy was and remains everywhere in terms of animated television.

Sidebar: Show of hands – who here is familiar with Season 6 – Episode 4 of the 2000s sitcom How I Met Your Mother? For the 99% who don’t simply have that information on hand, it’s an episode in which the show’s five main characters embark upon an absurd race to the purported location of filmmaker Woody Allen, only to encounter talk-show host Maury Povich at every turn – to the extent that there almost appear to be supernatural forces at play allowing Povich to seemingly be everywhere all at once. That’s essentially Jim Cummings in the world of animated television – but I digress.

 

 

There was a feeling of exclusivity to this sort of unconventional programming. As I was but a child, I wasn’t privy to the notion of media trends or syndication. It was all just one huge, diverse world of content and I was consuming as much a variety of it as I could. In researching this programming now I realize that much of what drew me to these shows was the contrast in storytelling, animation, and overall presentation to the contemporary shows of the day – Wild West C.O.W. – Boys of Moo Mesa had originally aired six years prior in 1992, a lifetime ago for a young child, and The Adventures of the Gummi Bears was practically primordial having initially aired in 1985.

 

I’ve clearly gone off on a tangent here. But in attempting to explain to all of you fine folks what this show even was I seem to have unlocked some core memories I didn’t even know I had and, as such, currently find myself in several rabbit holes with no discernible end in sight.

 

But of all these dated, oddball shows lumped together in late-night syndication for no one, Bump in the Night was my favorite. There was probably someone somewhere who was also awake at some point during this period – I’m not even sure I’m the first to refer to thing as a fever dream, as I vaguely recall seeing that phrase used to describe the show at some point. Perhaps it was in reference to another program and my brain assigned it to this one due to the fact that it – and the other aforementioned programs – indeed felt very much like some sort of cockamamie 90s fever dream.

 

In any case, Bump in the Night will always occupy a special place in my millennial heart. I would encourage others to work backwards and unearth some core memories of their own with regard to obscure television programming which was near and dear to their hearts as children. Also, make sure you watch Bump in the Night, or at least do some Googling so that one day I’ll be able to stop trying to prove to other human beings that this was a thing that actually existed in the world.