Today is a truly joyous day, as today back in 1994 the first episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast was aired!
Back in the early 90s, Mike Lazzo was a lowly programmer for the then baby-faced Cartoon Network, when he was given the task of putting together a new show, but with a budget of next to nil. What Mike and his crew came up with was a plan to carve up animation from an old Hannah-Barbera show, Space Ghost, and then re-animate and dub him to become a talk show host. Next they would interview various celebrities, either with someone in the room with them wearing the Space Ghost costume, or having them talk to a photo of Space Ghost while they conversed with someone from another room over an intercom.
Once they'd collected an array of fairly awkward interviews, the crew would then take the footage and re-arrange it, having the guests say things way out of context, thus making the whole scenario even more absurd. Some celebrities, such as Conan and WIllie Nelson, seemed to get the joke and as a result gave some great answers for the crew to write their script around, whereas the majority came across as absolutely lost and confused by the whole ordeal.
The show was a huge success and highly influential, and led to countless things we know and love today about the world of American adult animation. Most notably Space Ghost became the springboard for Lazzo to talk Time Warner into creating Adult Swim, which Space Ghost would then move to, and also the Toonami block on CN. Members of the show would then go on to work on other stellar shows which would put Adult Swim on the map, including Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Tim and Eric, Robot Chicken, Venture Bros, and many more.
Sure it was surreal, weird, and an acquired taste, but say what you wish of Space Ghost, without it the huge jump in popularity of anime in the West would never have happened, Family Guy would and Futurama would have had nowhere to go following their original Fox cancellations, and hit shows like Rick and Morty would probably have never happened, nor shows featuring Adult Swim alumni such as Archer and Bob's Burgers. To me, that makes it pretty rad.
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