Remember when Sesame Street was good? Of course, you do! It was before Abby Cadabby (I checked to make sure I spelt that correctly...... I didn't spell "spelled" correctly, did I?) came and dipped the show's chip into the dip of mediocrity and damnation. Sesame Street has been on PBS for an estimated 500,000 years (give or take), and has inspired hundreds of other classic kids shows. One of those, which is better than the rest is HBO's Crashbox. If you have children, and HBO Family, chances are you've seen this show. If not, I urge you to go On Demand and watch it, since it is damn good.

Crashbox was an animated, half-hour educational mindf*ck of a show, that aired from 1999 to 2001; the show had 2 seasons. The premise is that you are inside the Crashbox, a big game console full of robots, who load the cartridges for the games you will be playing. This is a game show, through and through; but not a traditional, live-action one. Instead, it takes you through about a couple of games per episode, all of which sport there own twisted animation style, and absurd sense of humor; as well as there own genre of education. I'm not gonna describe them all, since that would take forever, but I'll tell you some of favorites. 

My favorite is Mug Shots, which stars an unseen New Yorkish detective named Verity Pines, who tasks you with listening to 4 suspects' mugshots; 3 of them will give you false trivia information, while whoever gives you correct trivia, will be the innocent one. The performances from the live-action mugshots are usually pretty funny, and believe it or not, I've actually gotten a fair share of these questions wrong. I think part of the reason I like this game so much is because Verity's voice is kinda attractive....

My second favorite is Distraction News, where the news-anchor, Dory Smarmy, will give you an eductational news report, and you have to answer some questions about what she just told you at the end. Sounds easy, right? Well, not quite. During the news reading, a bunch of twisted, crazy things will be happening on screen, and you have to try and not be distracted. One problem I have with this game is that some of the multiple-choice questions she asks you at the end are so easy, that you wouldn't have had to pay attention to get it; some are kinda hard though (it's been a while since I've been in Elementary School).

Third favorite is Psycho Math (pictured above), which is, exactly what it says on the tin. Your host is a crazy-ass robot named Professor Rocket, who sounds African-American, and is incredibly funny. He tasks you with looking at 3 pictures divided (no pun intended) by different operations; whatever's inside the pictures representing a number (number of days in the alphabet= 26, number of days in week=7). This is probably the funniest game in the whole show, as Rocker says some truly butt-gusting stuff. Order of operations is not taken into consideration during this game.

Last one I'll talk about is Think Tank (pictured above), which is hillarious because of the gratuitous depiction of a Jamaican man, A.K.A. very hard to understand. He is trapped in a fish tank, inside a submarine, and wants to escape. Somehow, you deciding what 3 random things have in common, before the water reachs the bottom, will help him do so. Even though it has the most random premise ever in existance, it's a really fun (and somewhat challenging) game.

This show does not shy away from some less than appropriate kids stuff, which is why it's rated TV-Y7, and why it's that much better. Death is constantly mentioned (usually during Mug Shots), as well as religion (rarely); there's also some mild language (what does that even mean?) and violence. This show truly does make good use of being on HBO, being able to get some crap past the radar.

The bottom line is that if you have HBO Family, and some children, you have no excuse not to watch this awesome show. Hell, even if you don't have kids, wanna test your smarts, and enjoy absurd animation, and a twisted sense of humor, you owe it to yourself to at least give this show a look-over. Crashbox airs weekdays at 10 AM (for a good couple of hours) on HBO Family, plus there are about 10 epsiodes available with Xfinity on Demand.

Crashbox gets 5 out of 5 stars.