It's cute, but where did this cartoon convention of one-eyed cephalopods get started?
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…except that I can't stand poker or gambling of any kind, and I refuse to believe that cephalopods would be stupid enough to indulge in it.
Maybe it's mocking the dumb one-eyed squid morph.
I've always wondered where this strange meme of one-eyed cephalopods came from — here's a poster from the heyday of B movies that suggests it has been around for at least 50 years.
That's from a site with a collection of old movie posters, that brings up old memories. I used to pedal my bike over…
Logic and knowledge are a couple of things creationists are lacking. I'm surprised at the fate of the corpse of that poor cyclopic kitten:
A one-eyed, noseless kitten that stirred debate last year over whether it was a hoax will be the centerpiece of a new museum intended to promote the theory of…
Awesome.
Note, however, that it reiterates that odd theme of one-eyed squid that we see all over the place.
(via Michael Barton)
Via The Simpsons
They kind of look like the Daleks, once you get their shells off...
Poetic license. An anatomically correct cephalopod would be staring left and right of the pages of the book making it difficult for us to anthropomorphosize...whew!
You can look cuttlefish in the eyes, but squid don't lend themselves to two-eyed charicatures if you don't resort to cubism...
But the important thing is, don't we all just love Lio? I know I do.
Hah. Until I read the comment below the cartoon and looked closer, I was wondering why the squid had positioned the book such that it could only see it with one of its eyes. I just assumed that the other eye was hidden behind the little human with the giant head. Now, of course, I see that all of the critters are cyclopsquid.
You ask "...where did this cartoon convention of one-eyed cephalopods get started?" They're all Unitarians.
They look kind of like Plankton, the ultimate villain. My personal favorite cartoon cephalopod is Mark from the planet Eukapotamia, who seems to...not have a picture anywhere on the internet? Egads. Well, here's a video starring him, in, um, Swedish. You can get the gist of it, but the dub doesn't have the great voice.
"but the dub doesn't have the great voice"
Exactly. Sweden has a tradition of keeping the original track and add text lines, so have no great dubbing tradition. Which is fine since you can appreciate actors voices and train foreign languages. (But the lines often hide some interesting parts of female anatomy...)
Of course children movies are different. But for some reason they have adopted this badly stereotyped dubbing *everywhere* instead of developing something sensible.
That's interesting. Actually, a few of the dubbed voices are almost dead-on to the original, particularly Wanda and Vicky (yes, I have children at home, and Nickelodeon is on almost constantly). Not that the dubbed voices ever have to sound like the original, but the character of Mark has a very unique cadence that I find almost impossible to describe - sort of old style fire and brimstone pastor meets surfer dude. And the fact that almost all of his statements start off with "Puny human!" is quite fun.
(slinking back to my cartoons. and unfinished syllabi.)
The squiddies from the water levels of Super Mario Bros. had just one eye apiece. Anyone have an earlier reference?