= Contains content or subject matter that may be scary or distressing to some people.
Lost Media Hoaxes (Coming Soon)
Also, here's a quick guide to Lost Media statuses:
This is from a Tumblr post I came across a while ago and I've been thinking about it ever since. The OP has changed blogs, but they keep the saga updated from their new account.
Basically, I'm just going to summerize the posts here.
This is one of those baby toys that you strap to the side of a baby's crib, and it plays nature sounds and music to soothe the baby. This specific toy was released in the early 2000's, possibly in 2003 before being recalled shortly after.
The toy was released under a Walmart brand called Kid Connections, and was most likely not manufactured within the United States. It was made as a cheaper alternative to a Fisher Price aquarium toy, which does not use the same audio as the Tugboat.
The main issue with the Tugboat toy was that parents insisted that they could hear a voice under the ocean sounds repeating the phrase "I hate you." Walmart denied this and said that it was just beeping noises, but recalled the toy anyway after news articles started cropping up.
As of right now, nobody has come forward with a recording of the toy's audio. The toy itself is hard to find, and we don't have very many pictures of it. However, at least one screenshot of a news broadcast on the toy has been found, as well as several online news articles.
The first screenshot is from a New Orleans news station, so it might be a good idea to check to see if you or someone you know might have a VHS recording of that station from around that time. The second is from an archived page of a website for a news station possibly based in Memphis, this webpage once had a clip of the toy on it, though it is no longer accessible.
I really hope someone manages to find one of these toys and record and upload the audio. It would be really interesting to see if the rumors are true or if they really were just beeping sounds.
Most likely they are just random noises that sound like a voice, because what would be the purpose of hiding such a negative message in a baby toy? And why did nobody catch onto it before it hit store shelves?
This case also just feels really nostalgic to me, it brings up other similar cases, such as the Bratz Babyz rockstar toy that was accused of saying "Fuck You." Or a baby doll that parents thought was saying "Islam is the light." Or, my personal favorite, the infamous "Who wants to die?" Elmo potty training book. One parent hears it, tells other parents, and now it's an issue. Though, in these instances, we do have audio of the toys.
This entry is honestly a bit unnerving.
While the existence of Hitogata is dubious at best, it's still pretty interesting to me just for how creepy it is.
Hitogata originates from a 2chan discussion way back in the olden days of the internet. (Or, somewhere in the late 90s or early 2000s) if you're unfamiliar, and I don't blame you if you are, 2chan is the Japanese equivalent of 4chan, except it's not as degenerate.
Hitogata is said to be a PSA made by the Japanese Ad Council. Some say it was broadcast on television, while some say it was exclusively shown in elementary schools. What exactly it was addressing also isn't clear, and theories range from railroad safety to suicide prevention.
Whatever it was for, everyone agrees that the commercial contained two white humanoid silhouettes, blinking in and out opposite of each other while a clang noise plays every time. It ends with a simple sentence "Every two seconds a life ends." Or something similar.
This commercial's status as an urban legend is mainly due to there being no trace of it found in the Ad Council's archives, as well as the origin being an anonymous discussion forum that's sprouted other notable Japanese urban legends such as Kisarage Station, Inunaki Village, the Red Room curse, Tegami, and Kunekune. Most believe that it doesn't actually exist, and that it's just a collective inside joke amongst 2chan users, much like Saki Sanobashi (AKA Go For A Punch), or The Grifter.
Still, there's a group of people who think it's worth searching for. There are a few pieces of lost media that people thought were hoaxes before they were found, like Clockman, Cry Baby Lane, or Dexter's Rude Removal.
Personally, I think it could be real, and it's possible that it was decided it was too scary and eventually locked away. So it'll take some digging to uncover it. It's also worth noting that people could be misremembering what the commercial was about or what it looked like.
There's plenty of recreations out there, and some commercials that are similar have been found. But the exact commercial is yet to be identified.
This is a mystery originating from a Filipino Facebook group, about a Doomsday PSA that aired on iBC-13 in 1992.
The PSA is very disturbing, and includes photos from the Holocaust, with depictions of bald, skinny people being dragged by their necks, and people with "666" tattooed on their foreheads. It warns of a rapture that was supposed to happen on an unknown date, and throughout the PSA it flashes "666" and makes note of it being a paid advertisement.
You can see a recreation of the PSA below. This recreation isn't nearly as disturbing as the real thing may be, but it still is unnerving.
It isn't known who made and paid for the advertisement, and some suspect that it could just be a shock video and not an actual commercial. Though, Y2K and the rapture was a huge topic during the 90s, so it doesn't seem that too far fetched that a fundamental religious group put something like this out there.
Source: Lost Media Wiki
Yet another 2Chan post, this one describes a commercial that was edited post-production to omit the face of a deceased actor.
The original post says that when they were young, in the 1980s, a commercial for a pickle shop aired that cropped out the face of a male actor in the commercial, with a message saying that the actor passed away and the cause of death. The commercial then aired again with a different voice over for the actor before it stopped airing altogether.
After much speculation on who the actor was and which company the commercial was for, it was agreed upon that it was most likely a commercial for Shin-Shin foods, and the actor was Arihiro Fujimura, who passed away due to complications from diabetes in 1982. This comes from Shin-Shin commercials found where his face was cropped out. However, these aired before Fujimura passed away.
One of these commercials is at the 27:13 mark in the video below.
As of right now, any commercials that Fujimura starred in that aired after his death are yet to be found, as well as the commercial that announced his death.
Here's what I think: The commercial aired sometime in the 1980s, and the original post about it was made in 2010. Childhood memories are not always reliable, I would know. It's possible that the OP may be misremembering the commercial or mixing up two different commercials. But I don't think it's entirely impossible for a commercial like this to exist, memorial commercials and network bumpers are absolutely a thing.
It's also important to remember that the commercial may not have been for Shin-Shin specifically, or that the actor was Fujimura, this is just the most popular theory. It could be for a less well known actor or pickled foods company. So it may be wise to look into other Japanese commercials.
Source: Lost Media Wiki
Back in 1999 Hasbro Interactive planned to release two CatDog games. CatDog: Quest for the Golden Hydrant was the only one out of the two to actually get released. Fun fact, but I actually got this game in a cereal box, I remember getting so frustrated with the sledding level that I never played it again.
While Golden Hydrant did end up coming out for the PC, the other game, Saving Mean Bob, which was supposed to come out for the Playstation, was just kind of forgotten. And for a while the only proof we had of it was some advertisements.
That and two screenshots of the game, which might be from early in development.
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Saving Mean Bob was being developed by Terra Glyph Interactive Studios and was planned to have 15 levels spread out over 6 different locations in the game. The player could play as either Cat or Dog, or two players could play both of them as a team. I can only imagine the arguments that would have broke out among friends or siblings over who got to be Cat or who got to be Dog. The entire point of the game was that Cat had thrown away Dog's Mean Bob action figure, and the two had to explore the town in order to find it.
A Press Kit CD-ROM that was shipped out by Hasbro also has a few other assets from the game. Including a version of the boxart and a screenshot of The Dump and gameplay at Taco Depo.
Interestingly, despite that these images are on the disc, CatDog: Saving Mean Bob isn't listed anywhere in the program's interactive menus, and the most recent date of the files is May 5th, 2000. So maybe it had already been canceled at this point. Then again, a couple documents for Golden Hydrant are on the disc as well, and Golden Hydrant doesn't appear either.
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There are also screenshots of the game from a PSX Nation article, and it looks to be pretty far along in terms of development and probably even in a playable state.
So, with how finished it looks, how come it didn't release?
Well, LMW points out that Hasbro Interactive was sold off to Infograms in 2001, which could have caused them to cancel the release entirely. This isn't really uncommon for unreleased games. LucasArts Games is an infamous example of this, as several Star Wars games that were in development were tossed out when Disney bought up the entire LucasArts company.
The last mention of Saving Mean Bob was in February of 2000, where the release date had been updated to May, when the original release date was in April.
Terra Glyph Interactive Studios was only part of a bigger company, which included an animation studio. This studio produced a film released in 1999 named Carnivale, about four kids who stumble upon a portal that takes them to an abandoned and haunted amusement park, and have to find a way to leave before they are trapped in the park forever. Terra Glyph planned to make a tie-in video game for the Nintendo 64 to go with the film. It's unknown when Carnivale N64 was planned to release, but the company was having financial issues and the game was canceled in 2001. The issues at Terra Glyph and the cancellation of Carnivale N64 can clue us in on what happened to Saving Mean Bob.
YouTuber Cartoon Review did a deep dive into what became of the game, and this is where I got a lot of my info from. He even got into contact with one of the people who worked on the game, Ralph Melgosa, who said the game was in the middle of development hell when he joined the team. In particular, the biggest issues were disagreements over the game's mechanics vs the console's limitations and cutting huge chunks out of the game to try to make the tight deadline. There were also major issues with the company's finances. When the money dried up for one game, the company would offer to make a new game for another IP, and then use that money to fund the previous game while also working on the new game, and so on and so forth in a never ending cycle. An email CR got from John Podlasek, the producer of the game, confirmed this.
Ultimately, Ralph left the company, saying that the game was nowhere near ready for release at the time he left. Ralph then referred CR to another team member, Andy Hanson, who worked on the game's QA (quality assurance), and got to see the game at 75% completion.
Thankfully, a playable build of Carnivale N64 is available, but sadly we can't say the same for Saving Mean Bob. Unfortunately, neither Ralph, John, nor Andy are in possession of a playable build of the game. We don't know who has the prototype, where it could be, or even if there is still one, just sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting to be discovered and finally released to the world.