[NetBehaviour] Frog-o-Mighty and the Ice Lollies, episode 28

[Edward Picot]

Dear all,

The chicks learn the truth about Frog-o-Mighty's ice lolly machine.

A spine-tingling tale of world domination and drinks on sticks! New 
episodes weekly!

Latest episode:https://edwardpicot.com/frogomightyandtheicelollies/28.html
To read the story so far: 
https://edwardpicot.com/frogomightyandtheicelollies/


Edward

PS - Alan Sondheim wrote to me asking for some background information 
about the 'Frog-o-Mighty and the Ice Lollies' series, because he was 
finding it 'very, very strange'; and when I replied to him he said I 
ought to out the reply online for the benefit of anyone else who might 
be interested; so here it is -

'I really don't think of it as strange, but I suppose that's because 
I've been living with the ideas for such a long time.

On our living-room window sill we've got a number of ornaments, 
including, at the right-hand end, a big pottery goose and two small 
pottery birds, which I think are meant to be quails; and at the left 
hand end, a bronze frog reclining on its back, next to a glass penguin. 
When my son Ray was little he used to play with the ornaments and get me 
to 'do voices' for them. Because the goose was big and the quails were 
small he naturally got the idea that the goose was the dad and they were 
his kids; the kids were always arguing with each other; and they wanted 
to go up to the other end of the window-sill and visit the frog, who Ray 
christened Frog-o-Mighty (I think he'd misheard the phrase God Almighty, 
and that's what the name was derived from).

Anyway, because the kids were always bickering, and the dad was always 
telling them to shut up, he'd come out with these phrases such as 'Put a 
sock in it!' to make them be quiet. Somehow Ray came up with this story 
where the two kids went to visit Frog-o-Mighty to take him these 
shutting-up phrases: he was collecting all the shutting-up phrases and 
putting them in a glass jar, for reasons unspecified, but something to 
do with an evil scheme to take over the world; and in return for the 
shutting-up phrases he would give the kids mints. But because he just 
lay on his back all the time, he had to get the penguin to do all the 
actual work. The kids had never actually seen Frog-o-Mighty in person, 
they always interacted with the Penguin, so they got curious and said 
they wanted to see him - and because Frog-o-Mighty didn't want to be 
seen, he told the Penguin to hypnotise them. So then the Dad had to come 
and rescue them.

This would have been about twenty years ago, when Ray was properly 
little. I thought it was such a wonderful story that I made a little 
animation in Flash out of it called Frog-o-Mighty - basically just 
moving the ornaments around on the window ledge and taking photographs 
of them, then adding voices and sound-effects. I got the idea for a 
sequel quite soon afterwards, but didn't get around to doing anything 
about it, mainly because it contained some stuff I couldn't work out how 
to animate. Then about a year ago I was writing a science fiction novel 
when my computer had a meltdown, and I lost virtually the whole of the 
novel. I didn't have the heart to go back and write it all again 
(although I may do it now that I'm over the heartache to some extent), 
so instead of that I suddenly thought I might do a graphic novel version 
of the Frog-o-Mighty sequel - and that's how Frog-o-Mighty and the Ice 
Lollies came about.

I don't know if that's an explanation of the story, really, but it 
explains a bit about where the characters and ideas come from.'