Huge Yo Gabba Gabba! fan here. I consider it one of the best kids shows on TV. This is going to be an epic post. I am going to take my time meandering around to the point, because I have some meandering to do. Deal.

Yes, that’s right- we MET FOOFA. Foofa’s mitten hand was coming off, and Foofa had hairy wrists and a watch on, but still- as far as a 2.5 year old is concerned, we are now close personal friends with Foofa, the very embodiment of femininity. In fact, Foofa gave Stella little Brobee doll, and a Tee. I mean come ON. Does it GET any more awesome? The Foofa in this photo and video moved like Foofa, which was pretty impressive, as I found out after the fact that this guy in the Foofa suit was a last minute stand in who had no idea who Foofa is. He never saw the show! He does pretty well. I guess the suit, cheapo knockoff though it is, just has the awesome supergirly Foofa vibe, you can’t help but fully become Foofa when you don it. It’s like method acting. They guy actually LOVED flowers while he was wearing this suit, and was not at all afraid of the dark. Watch the entire episode in the video below:

That video has more views than most of my youtube stuff. People dig this Foofa pretty hard!

We have metric tons of the YGG! toys and crap, originally valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, including Halloween costumes, shirts, bath toys – you name it. I put those YGG! guys’ kids through college. Stella was Foofa 2 years in a row for Halloween. I was DJ Lance Rock at a Halloween gig last year, and we both reprised our roles at Dragoncon, though admittedly it was partly for economic reasons. We couldn’t afford the Ghostbusters car.

I even remixed Brobee’s hit single “Party In My Tummy.” I haven’t gotten around to doing a full Yo Gabba Gabba! mashup collection, but I WILL! Click below for raw SOPA-defying tunage!

Peanut Butter Jam (Buckwheat Boyz vs Technotronic vs Yo Gabba Gabba)

I mean, if you haven’t guessed by all my weird bragging about how strange my tastes are, we are deeply into this show. In fact I would die happy if I got a gig doing the end-of episode remix on an episode of YGG! Are you listening, Adam Deibert? (bats eyelashes)

So yeah, anyhoo… last year, I really wanted to bring Stella to the YGG! show and get backstage. We tried to win passes by making a ‘Cool Tricks’ video, but no dice. Here’s Stella’s Cool Trick video. I spent so much time making original music and editing together the video that I delayed the release and I fell behind in the voting. Excuses, excuses. It lost to an unedited video taken on a phone of a far less lovable child spazzing out in front of a huge television. AN OUTRAGE!

Through some luck and the kindness of a friend, (yay Jen Hill) we were able to score backstage VIP access and tickets, which meant that with my original tickets, we were now lined up for TWO shows back to back followed by a meet and greet. And healthy snacks with the Gabba Gang. Good lord. We’d died and gone to Gabba Heaven! Aaaaand of course I made a video. Do you hate me yet? No one’s MAKING you watch them! With this one, like the first 7 minutes is the show itself. If you want to see DJ Lance Rock and the gang backstage, skip to about 7:30 minutes in.

OK, so with all that in mind- and I realize it is a lot to absorb- here is how I find my mind exploding one recent morning. I am drinking my coffee and browsing reddit. And here’s a Mentalfloss piece with more than you ever wanted to know about Yo Gabba Gabba. I begin skimming it, being such a deep YGG nerd that I already know most of more than you would ever want to know about Yo Gabba Gabba. And then, as I read one of the quick asides, I made one of the most jaw-droppingly insane pop culture connections I have ever made in my entire life. I think about this stuff way too much.

Christian Jacobs, highly inventive creator of Yo Gabba Gabba, lead singer of The Aquabats, voice of everyone’s favorite yellow robot Plex, was one of the cherubic child actors who played Archie Bunker’s grandson, Joey Stivic, on the spinoff “Gloria.” PLEX IS ARCHIE BUNKER’S GRANDSON.

My initial excitement paled slight when I learned roughly 15 kids played Joey Stivic on Archie Bunker and the various spin-offs through the years. Still, it was pretty cool to learn that the creator of Yo Gabba Gabba had played this strange side-character in pop culture history. Joey Stivic was the first baby to have his diaper changed on TV- by Archie Bunker himself, I’ll have you know. And I am not going to let the fact that Jacobs played a roughly 10-year-old Joey, and not the iconic crying pee-pee factory Archie hauled around, lessen my bizarre satisfaction at making this connection.

There was a baby doll made based on the “Joey Stivic: Archie Bunker’s Grandson” character, and the doll had working junk.

You heard me. Working. Junk. WORK. ING. JUNK.

That’s right! This doll was a ‘PHYSICALLY CORRECT MALE’ baby that drinks and wets. See the box for yourself. Disclaimer- these photos are from the wonderful site X-Entertainment. I did not take this horrible photo, oh no. I would never do such a thing. I just saved it and reposted it to my own website.

Apparently, this doll is expensive and sought after by doll collectors, I suppose as a weird example of marketing gone awry. It caused mild outrage when it was released, apparently. I guess the objectors thought it would appeal to pedophiles or something? Or turn little girls into pervs when they played with it? I have no idea. And neither does Wikipedia, so don’t bother looking.

A lot of Yo Gabba Gabba toys are pretty collectable as well. Kid Robot made some nice big character dolls and they go for hundreds on eBay and Amazon now. I LOVE these guys! I can’t justify being a serious collector of these, though. I can’t afford this Foofa. Or this Biz Markie doll.

So that’s the Yo Gabba Gabba / Archie Bunker Expensive Collectable Toy Connection.

The more you know!