Hi folks, and welcome to SVR’s Halloween in March special. Today we’re going to have a look at things that just scare the bejeezus out of us. First up, Tiny Toons. I was never as big a fan of the series as some of my friends, but it did have its moments. The subtle homomegalomaniacism of Pinky & The Brain, for instance, never ceased making me wonder “how the hell did they get that past the censors?” But as the original Warner toons taught us, the best kids’ shows are really aimed at adults, anyway.

The scariest – and funniest, probably – of all Tiny Toons characters was Elmira, the adorable little red-haired girl from Hell. And Elmira just loved animals. Loved them to bits. Our favorite Elmira episode is embedded in this episode, which unfortunately is broken into two parts. The good part starts at the 7:28 mark of the first clip and continues in the second.

Next, meet the BigDog robot. This one is fascinating intellectually, because the technology is so impressive. But it also creeps us out for reasons that we can’t fully explain. Maybe because it manages to denote machine while something in it connotes animal. As Gizmodo notes, “[it] feels so ‘animal’ that I almost feel bad when they hit it to demonstrate how it regains balance on its own.” That’s exactly how it struck us, too. And the noise of the engine doesn’t help.

Finally, we don’t know what the hell is up with cooking in Japan, but trust us, we’re afraid of it. Heck, Satan is afraid of this.

By our count, we just gave you three or four good costume ideas for Halloween, which is just around the corner. So no excuses this year, huh?

Have a nice weekend. If you can…

Thanks to Nick Langewis for the disturbed mushroom chef; to Russ Wellen for BigDog; and to Chris Merrell for tracking down the Elmira clip.