THE MANDELA EFFECT
"Fabio say...it's fabulous."
I. “Fabio say….it’s fabulous.”
I have once again experienced the Mandela Effect, but this one is a little more personal. I was definitely one of those people who distinctly remember that banal family of bears in those vapid children’s books being The Berenstein Bears, not The Berenstain Bears. But the proof is in the pudding. The name is right there.
Since the first Berenstain Bears instalment was published in 1962, the series has sold close to 260 million copies. That doesn’t mean the authors have 260 million individual readers. Most kids had at least ten Berenstain Bears book in their collection. I had closer to 30. According to the publisher Penguin Children’s Classics, there are now 360 books in the Berenstain collection. The thing about being a children’s author though, is that kid’s grow up and graduate to more serious, complex books. R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike found this out. I imagine Stan and Jan did too. I highly doubt that many kids have all 360 books. That’s nearly one Berenstain book for each day of the year. That’s too many Berenstain Bears books, if you ask me (which you didn’t).
Unfortunately, if one bear book for each day of the year was Stan and Jan Berenstain’s plan, they died five books short. Stan died in 2005 and Jan followed in 2012. They were so tantalizingly close!
My favourite was The Bicycle Lesson, in which Papa Bear tries to teach his son how to ride a bicycle and, of course, tumbles down a cliff or three, falls off the bike four or fifty times, and even clotheslines himself on a narratively convenient (suspiciously so) u-shaped tree branch. Four-year-old me thought this was the height of humour. I still think it’s pretty funny. Haha. What a dumbass.
I have two questions about the titular bears though.
Why did Papa and Mama bear name their son “Brother Bear?” How did know they were going to have a daughter who would then have a brother? Or was the daughter already born, which just begs the same question. Why did they name their daughter “Sister Bear?” Were those crafty Berenstain’s trying to avoid calling the boy “Son Bear” because the sun bear is a real animal? Here’s one trying out the whole bipedal thing. How adorable. He thinks he’s people. No, wait. People suck. He thinks he’s a bear. A sun bear! Fiat lux, my little sun bear.
Sun bears are not ugly but they are sorta weird looking. Were the authors trying to avoid their readers conflating “Son Bear” with an actual Sun Bear, an animal a young kid would even not know about until…who the hell knows? How many people knew that Sun Bears existed before reading this post? I’d bet a whole week of wages that less than 260 million people in the world are aware of the existence of the Sun Bear. And I’d bet two weeks of wages that less than 26 000 people are aware that there was an American jazz/funk duo called Sunbear who released their lone, self-titled album in 1977 and then promptly fell off the face of the Earth. Goodbye Sunbear, we hardly heard ye. With good reason too. They really sucked. Don’t believe me? See if you can endure this musical travesty. I couldn’t.
What the hell is it? Sounds like a pair of hippies who weren’t informed that the 60s were over and song titles like “Let Love Flow For Peace” were prohibitively passé. It was the 1970s now and songs had names like “War Pigs,” “Kick Out the Jams,” and “Gimme Shelter.” Just like the 1960s didn’t truly begin until either the JFK assassination or the British Invasion, depending on your proclivities, the 60s ended three weeks early at Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969, when a bunch of drunken Hell’s Angels the Rolling Stones had very stupidly hired to provide stage-side security stabbed Meredith Hunter, a Black man who the bikers claim was armed, to death. But this is the music that those still clinging to the hippie dream eight years after it died were making? Jazz/funk/adult contemporary/prog rock? It blows homeless goats.
Why did so many millions of us think the bears were the Berensteins, not Berenstains? Were young readers somehow conflating Frankenstein with the Berenstains, making them the Berensteins? No fucking way. How many kindergarten kids did you know who had read Mary Shelley’s masterpiece? They don’t even teach that book in high school anymore. It’s taught in University. So I have no idea why so many of us thought it was Berenstein when it was so clearly Berenstain.
Now, here is my latest Mandela moment. I remember the famous male model Fabio being in a commercial for Frosted Cheerios, back when they were a new thing. They debuted in 1995. I distinctly recall Fabio taking a bite of Frosted Cheerios and saying “Fabio say…it’s fabulous.”
But I could not find this commercial anywhere. I looked for years but I couldn’t find it. Until today. But Fabio doesn’t say “Fabio say…it’s fabulous.”
First of all, Cheerios are plural. So wouldn’t he say “Fabio say…they’re fabulous?” It’s a moot point, I guess, since what he actually says in the commercial is “Finally! Something I love more than me!”
I timestamped it, but if the time stamp doesn’t work, Fabio appears at the 0:22 second mark:
Fabio always seemed like a decent dude to me. He’s obviously poking fun at his reputation for having a tremendous ego here. And remember when he got hit in the face by a bird while test-riding a rollercoaster?
The supermodel was at Busch Gardens Williamsburg to celebrate its then-newest roller coaster, Apollo's Chariot. He took a front seat inaugural ride... but ended up with a face of feathers and a bloody nose in need of stitches. Most supermodels would have been on the phone with their lawyer within minutes, discussing all the tantalizing litigation possibilities. But what did Fabio do? He went on a talk show and expressed his disappointment that the ride was still running after what had happened. He wasn’t worried about himself. He was worried about other people getting hurt.
“It wasn’t a freak accident. And it’s going to happen again. And a person…maybe a child…could be killed.”
Now that’s a man with integrity. He required stitches on a face that made him millions of dollars per year. But did he seek monetary damages from Busch Gardens? Compensation for mental anguish? Nope.
Fabio simply wanted the ride shut down until the Busch Gardens could figure out a way to…I’m still not sure. Study migration patterns of the local bird population and then shut down the ride during migration season? I don’t know. But my central point stands. Fabio wasn’t thinking of himself. He was worried that someone might be killed. Fabio, I must say. You’re fabulous.
II: IronSword: Wizards & Warriors II
Recently I found something from my Berenstain Bears reading years. It’s the front cover of a video game called Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II. That’s Fabio there. I didn’t know who Fabio was at the time, but that’s him. The game’s designer and developer were furious when they saw the image. They’d asked for a knight in shining armor and instead they got Fabio shirtless and holding up a long sword. The fabled Ironsword.
Wikipedia says it best, so here’s the quote about the cover controversy:
For the game’s cover, Acclaim hired Italian male model Fabio Lanzoni to pose as Kuros. Fabio was presented on the cover bare-chested and without armor. When Zippo Games saw the image of the cover a week prior to its release, they were perplexed. According to the game’s lead designer Ste Pickford:
Our jaws hit the floor when we first saw this image (which was, being merely the developers, probably about a week before the game's release). Why on earth did they choose a photograph of a bare-chested barbarian to promote a game starring a knight in shining armour?
Pickford added that “we used it as an example of the lack of imagination of Americans,” though he did ultimately admit that having an actual suit or armour would be too costly to use for a photo shoot.
Pickford and his staff calmed down when the royalty checks began to arrive. Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II was a surprise success, selling 500,000 copies in North America and about 50,000 copies in Europe.
And the soundtrack is amazing. It sounds like something the Australian duo Power Glove might have done. Just listen to this thing. The melody almost sounds medieval.
Power Glove is an Australian electronic music and synthwave duo from Melbourne, Victoria, named after the Power Glove made by Mattel for the Nintendo Entertainment System. This is one of their bigger songs and yes, that image is the likeness of Michael Biehn, who starred in two 1980s hit movies, The Terminator (1984) and Aliens (1986).
Michael Biehn also appeared in 1989’s The Abyss. both directed by James Cameron. Only the late Bill Paxton has appeared in more Cameron films, five to Biehn’s three.
The Australian duo Power Glove are not to be confused with the American band that plays metal covers of Nintendo theme songs, even though both bands are chiefly instrumental and named after the Power Glove, a NES controller accessory. I say “not to be confused” because that Aussie duo just does it better.
I’ll leave you with a song named after a workout video by a man who is Fabio’s opposite. A rude jerk with a tremendous ego named Dolph Lundgren.
Lundgren released a workout instructional video called Maximum Potential in 1987 that is historically important for containing Quentin Tarantino’s very first movie credit as a production assistant.
In a mid-2010s interview with Howard Stern, Tarantino relates a few anecdotes about Dolph’s diva-like behavior on set (he even shouted at Tarantino when the young production assistant knocked on his trailer door at an allegedly “inopportune time.,” Stern pressed Tarantino for details because Stern is, at heart, a gossip queen, but Tarantino didn’t take the bait. He just said he thought Lundgren sucked then and still sucks now. Tarantino didn’t go into much detail because living well is the best revenge.
But thank God for Power Glove because “Maximum Potential,” is my favourite Power Glove song ever. I know I just said “Nightforce” is my favourite Power Glove song, but every Power Glove song is my favourite song while I’m listening to it. Check it below. Fabio say…it’s fabulous.