How About That Thing?

Ah, The Ren and Stimpy Show. A show that I thoroughly enjoyed as a child… And I think a lot of it was because my mom absolutely hated it, and absolutely refused to let me anywhere NEAR the TV when it was on. Which meant I usually ended up watching it at my grandma’s house, or at friends’ houses, but never when my mom was around.

Seriously, there’s really something to be said for the idea of “the more you tell them no, the more they’ll want one.” It’s ultimately why the prohibition on alcohol back in the 1920s failed, why the ban on transfats ultimately went nowhere (last time I checked, anyway), and why more and more states are giving up on the fight against marijuana. It’s also why I became as obsessed with Ren and Stimpy as I did. If I didn’t have a big bad authority figure telling me I couldn’t watch this cartoon for no reason besides “it’s gross”, I probably might not have been as fanatical.

Honestly, though, watching it as an adult, two observations come to mind immediately:

1. Wait, this was for kids?
2. Ren and Stimpy didn’t get REALLY good until the Bob Camp years.

We reach kind of a slippery slope here, because part of me wants to give John K his due. He got the ball rolling, and his time on the show did generate some memorable episodes. On the other hand, John K is apparently insufferable to work under at absolute best, and a manipulative pedophile at absolute worst. So… Yeah, if ever there was an example of having to separate the art from the artist…

Frankly, long before I, or anyone else outside John K’s immediate circle knew what kind of disgusting subhuman he was behind the scenes, I still find that a lot of my favorite Ren and Stimpy episodes come from the Bob Camp era. IE, seasons 3, 4, and 5. Including the subject of today’s little rant.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this favorite episode of mine is that it doesn’t feature Ren or Stimpy in any capacity. Instead, it features this guy right here.

This guy right here, for the uninitiated, is Powdered Toast Man: superhero extraordinaire, and spokesperson for Powdered Toast. His commercials appear in Ren and Stimpy episodes all the time, and through said commercials, we are assured that Powdered Toast contains vitamin F, and tastes like sawdust. And yet, I can remember eating worse things than this as a kid. Hell, in my college years, I once ate a receipt from Blockbuster Video. I don’t even remember why… But I digress.

Powdered Toast Man himself is voiced by Garry Owens. I hear a lot about GOATs these days, and when it comes to voice acting, I’d have to say, Garry Owens ought to be in the conversation at absolute least. Based on his performance of PTM alone, I could listen to that guy read The Book of Mormon.

Which reminds me, Powdered Toast Man’s secret identity is the super creative alias of Pastor Toastman.

You got to love heroes who think a pair of glasses will hide their identity. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’ve always been a Batman guy, and Kevin Conroy was wise enough to use two different voices for Bruce Wayne and Batman, but that whole thing with the glasses just cracks me up. Surely, that doesn’t work in real life. SURELY!

I shouldn’t have to explain why this is made even sillier with PTM… So I won’t. Instead, let’s get into the episode.

We join Pastor Toastman in the middle of overseeing a bingo game. Suddenly, he gets a distress call coded in olive loaf. Because Ren and Stimpy. SHUT UP AND LAUGH!

The distress call comes from an individual who fills PTM with dread. A person whose name is only spoken of in the darkest regions of the galaxy. Or in worst of WWE gimics lists on What Culture or Cultoholic. None other than Little Johnny.

Little Johnny tells Powdered Toast Man that he wants to meet the president of The United States of America before his nap. Which tells me that yeah, this was definitely written in the 90s. Back when people actually had respect for the president. Compare it to 2024, where he’s seen as a dementia-infested fool who’s basically rearranging furniture on The Titanic, and the only popular alternative in the upcoming election is looking like ANOTHER dementia-infested fool who likes the furniture on The Titanic the way it was before he got kicked out.

I could point out the logic errors in Little Johnny’s request, but he’s got to be, like, three or four, so I guess I can let it slide. and Powdered Toast Man decides to humor the little guy.

Meanwhile, the president of The United States is currently in the process of prepping his pen to sign a peace treedy that will end all wars forever. Pff, yeah, this is definitely a work of fiction. An American president who DOESN’T have a boner for war? What, did The Green Party finally win one?

All joking aside, the president is about to sign the treedy, only for Powdered Toast Man to show up on the scene, and ABDUCT THE PRESIDENT IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY! In order to get to Little Johnny’s house in time, PTM uses warp speed, and in the process, reduces the president to a pile of ashes.

Yes, folks, you heard it right. Powdered Toast Man basically abducts the president, and through his own incompetence, ends up killing the guy. The president is literally dead, and yet, the entire country seems unmoved and apathetic.

Okay, so maybe this IS more like 2024 after all.

The entire world seems a lot less interested in the fact the president got reduced to ashes by a rogue superhero who was willing to disrupt a peace summit, and a lot more interested in the fact some random three-year-old boy lost his dream. I mean yeah, I guess that sucks for Little Johnny, but I think our priorities are a little askew here. I’m genuinely surprised the first thing the vice-president didn’t do was to put a bounty on Powdered Toast Man’s head. Or at least send a bill to congress demanding that Powdered Toast be made illegal.

Well, regardless of the country’s priorities, Powdered Toast Man realizes his blunder, and retires in shame. And when the hero is away, the villains will play. Specifically…

Meet Waffle Woman: one of Powdered Toast Man’s most bitter rivals. In the beginning, she was Vikki Velcro: CEO of the company that made Liquid Waffles. Which, I got to say, sounds about fifteen-percent more edible than Powdered Toast, but that’s apparently just me. Because once Powdered Toast became a thing, Liquid Waffles disappeared from the market faster than Pepsi Blue. She swore revenge on Powdered Toast Man, and through the power of… A giant waffle iron? She became Waffle Woman.

And now that Powdered Toast Man has been disgraced and forced into retirement, she can begin her epic rampage unopposed. And the first thing she does… Is kidnap Little Johnny, and demand a match with Powdered Toast Man.

Uh, why? Powdered Toast Man is retired. You can literally just pick up where you left off in destroying or conquering the world. Come to think of it, with PTM disgraced and forced into early retirement, Powdered Toast itself is probably going to take a heavy hit in the market. You could reintroduce Liquid Waffles, and make one hell of a comeback! Plus, nostalgia is huge in the 2020s…

But no, Waffle Woman decides now is the chance for an epic final battle. And boy is it an epic battle. The two exchange breakfast themed attacks that frequently miss each other, and end up destroying everything around them. Including a sequence where Waffle Woman shoots explosive syrup that ends up blowing up The World Trade Centers. Yip, that one definitely aged well.

The battle is so intense, that most of the planet Earth is destroyed in the process. But at the end of the day, Powdered Toast Man ends up saving the day. For all the good it ends up doing, considering about a thousandth of the Earth is all that remains at the end of it all. Pretty much the entirety of life as we know it went extinct, but at least PTM beat a villain. Truly a happy ending for one and all.

And that’s Powdered Toast Man Vs Waffle Woman.

I admit, I’ve been pretty snarky and over-analytical throughout this episode, but that’s just me and my sense of humor. All of that aside, it’s actually one of my favorite Ren and Stimpy episodes ever. It’s also not hard to see why they didn’t make any other PTM-centric episodes afterward. They kind of raised the bar a bit high with him and Waffle Woman destroying most of the planet or what not. It’s the kind of battle the final tracks of Gloryhammer albums are made of, and despite that bit with The World Trade Centers, it holds up pretty well.

I probably won’t be covering a lot of Ren and Stimpy episodes on here, based primarily on the fact that I’d be explaining the jokes. And as The Joker once told Harleyquin: “If you have to explain a joke, it isn’t funny.” Still, I’ll highly recommend you check this particular episode out.