Podstar Runner 2006

podstar.runner

Strong Bad Emails & More!

Podstar Runner launched on January 30, 2006 with techno, dragon, japanese cartoon, kids' book, and crying. Originally a collection of Strong Bad Emails, Teen Girl Squad episodes were added on March 6, 2006 under the header "Teen Girl Squadcast". Following the addition of Everybody to the Limit on April 12, 2006, this header was revised to "Teen Girl Squad & MORE!" The background of the Podstar Runner page featured an iPod with video resting against the Floppy Disk Container on the desk in the computer room.

The podcast launched on iTunes as Strong Bad Email, renamed to Strong Bad Emails & More! around March 5, 2006, when non-sbemail toons began to be released.

This service was discontinued in September 2007, with the download instructions replaced by a note reading "Podcasts are gone for now. We'll tell them you were thinking about 'em though."

Page Title: Podstar Runner Come On and Come On, Ya'll.

Release Date: January 30, 2006

Transcript

Emails

"What am I doing in this tiny box?"

{A parody of the iPod start-up screen is displayed: a silver Homestar head (rather than the Apple logo) dead center. A recreation of the iPod menu appears:}

{The menu scrolls down to the bottom and selects "Email".}

{The selected email plays.}

{After the email has played, the screen cuts back to the "iPod menu". Strong Bad's head pops into view after a brief moment.}

STRONG BAD: Whoa, what am I doing in this tiny box? {starts banging his head and hands on the screen} Let me! Outta the! Tiny! Box!

{The screen appears to shatter, with a shattering sound effect.}

STRONG BAD: Whoops. Hope you got the extended warranty.

{The shattered screen crackles, and goes black. Two shards of the screen fall.}

Teen Girl Squad

Teen Girl Squad!

{The Homestar Runner iPod start-up image appears. After a few seconds, a piece of paper is placed over it, with the iPod menu drawn in Strong Bad's handwriting:}

{The menu scrolls down to the bottom.}

STRONG BAD: {TGS voice} Click click click click!

{"Squad" is selected.}

STRONG BAD: {regular voice} Click.

{The selected episode plays.}

Episodes

The iTunes description for the podcast initially read:

Strong Bad answers real emails from real morons!

After the rebrand to "Strong Bad Emails & More!", the description was expanded to:

Strong Bad answers real emails from real morons, draws his independent comic "Teen Girl Squad!" and lots freaking more!

Emails

Teen Girl Squad (Teen Girl Squadcast)

Toons

Fun Facts

Trivia

• The label on the floppy disk from the original Podstar menu was unreadable, but there were several possibilities.
• The podcast met with success on iTunes:
  • The podcast was featured on the Podcasts main page on iTunes in the "New and Notable" section on February 19, 2006.
  • "Strong Bad Email" reached #1 on February 20, 2006.
  • "Strong Bad Emails & More!" reached #1 on April 6, 2006.
• At A question about the Podcasts. - Red Toque|Flashforward 2006, The Brothers Chaps mentioned that the larger file sizes of the podcasts led to bandwidth concerns, leading them to second-guess whether the exposure from their iTunes popularity was translating into new fans and increased merch sales.
  • A day prior on February 27, 2006, Podstar Runner ceased downloads of all the previously available Strong Bad Emails and only allowed downloads of the most recent Podcast. A notice on the page read "due to bandwidth doodoo, we're doing one at a time for now." It was fixed on March 3, 2006, and all the emails could be downloaded again.
• The battery meter in the intro for the Strong Bad Emails is relatively full, while the hand-drawn intro for Teen Girl Squadcast's battery meter is almost empty.
• One of the keywords for the Teen Girl Squadcast episodes is "arrowed", a reference to the Arrow'd Guy.
• The binary number in the summary for technology converts to 3,341,564,587.

Remarks

HERE'S YOUR GLUESTICK, MARK!

• The clock at the top of the iPod screen reads 8:04 before and after the toon.
• With the exception of Homsar's appearance in dragon, none of the clickable Easter eggs from the original versions of the emails are present.
  • All the Easter eggs (except for "She Likes Cloth" from issue #12) in the Teen Girl Squad issues are present, and play automatically, as does the Peasant's Quest Preview egg.
• The notice on the main page originally said "sbemail podcast!" but it was later changed to "sbemails on ipod!". This was most likely changed after noting that Podstar Runner was not truly a podcast, due to the videos not being broadcast through a RSS feed syndication. As of February 6, 2006, however, an official RSS feed has been released making Podstar Runner an actual podcast. On March 5, 2006, it was changed to "teen girl squadcast!" in response to the new feature.
• The sound quality in the iPod version of bottom 10 seems to drop to the "Flash file" level after the appearance of Wet The Cheat. There also seems to be a minor sound bug while Strong Bad has the jibblies. Furthermore, on the dry T-shirt flyer, the font Snap ITC has been replaced with what appears to be Arial (same thing for the font for Chocolardiac Arrest).
• The podstar.homestarrunner.com server doesn't have the 404'd page set up; incorrect URLs will get the standard 404 error page instead.
• The filename for dragon is "trogdor", not "dragon".
• Due to the size and resolution of the iPod's screen, virus's Navbar is removed, and its "widescreen" effects removed by pan and scan.
• Everybody to the Limit, These Peoples Try to Fade Me, and An Important Rap Song are played with the email intro and ending despite the fact that they're all not Strong Bad Emails.
• In the Teen Girl Squad Issue 1 podcast, the "It's Over!" card appears after the Strong Bad Easter egg to match the endings of the other issues.
• In death metal, the email intro seems to be a little extended. Plus, the "shee-doot" sound is omitted when Strong Bad signs off of Video Thyme.
• Every time an email was added to the website's episode list from 2006-2007, another one that has been released for quite some time was removed because the maximum capacity for the list of emails was 18. This also happened on the podcast on iTunes itself.
• The Peasant's Quest Preview showed up on the Podstar directory before getting added to the iTunes podcast page.
• While the iPod in the background is meant to be a fifth generation model, the headphone port is placed in the top center of the device like a fourth generation's, rather than at the top right.
• The Podstar Runner version of Teen Girl Squad Issue 11 features a glue stick superimposed onto the corner of the screen during the scene with the Shirt Folding Store Manager, whose hair and face are constructed from sections of a magazine photo cut and pasted onto the paper.
• The Podcast for monster truck has worse audio quality than the other Podcasts do.

Goofs

The glitched preview image

• When the email ends and returns to the animated iPod menu, "Homestarrunner.com" is highlighted. However, the animated menu at the beginning of the email has "Email" selected. The iPod's memory should keep the selection where it was when you left it, not move back to the top.
• Many of the listed file sizes were inaccurate. The table in this article shows the correct file sizes.
• The preview picture for Teen Girl Squad 9 (in iTunes) has positioning problems; everything inside the panel seems to be shifted up and to the left, overlapping the panel border.
• The sound in crazy cartoon is out of sync between the intro and the ending.
• When you view the podcast in the iTunes Music Store, there are no dates listed for some of the emails, including army, flag day, trevor the vampire, stunt double, caper, isp, and alternate universe. (Dates will appear once you download them, save caper and army.) Dates aren't listed for Peasant's Quest Preview and Malloween Commercial.
• The title for "Peasant's Quest Game" is incorrect (it's supposed to be Peasant's Quest Preview).
• When An Important Rap Song was added to the list of downloadable toons, a "\" was added at the end of These Peoples Try to Fade Me.
• On certain browsers, the links labeled "main" and "rando" do not work from the Podstar Runner menu.
• In the Podstar Runner version of haircut, there is a slight discoloration, making all the colors in the email darker and duller.

Glitches

Two podcasts

• At the end of trevor the vampire, the word "back" can be seen fading in for a split second.
• On the navbar, the "p" in "podcast" cannot be clicked.

Fixed Glitches

• In the XML feed, the description of crying was the same as that of kids' book, namely "Strong Bad seriously defaces a children's book." This has since been fixed.
• There used to be two podcasts available through iTunes Music Store: one by "Strong bad" and one by "The Brothers Chaps". Noticeably different between the two was the logo of the two podcasts, as well as the absent "Clean" marker in the second podcast. The podcast by Strong Bad has since been removed.
• When guitar was released, all the email links became the same, all leading to the guitar email file. Now they have reverted back to the separate names.
• When montage was released, the link to download montage was incorrect in the XML feed, which pointed to "sb_email_motage.m4v" instead of "sb_email_montage.m4v", leaving users temporarily unable to download montage through iTunes. This was fixed the day after.
• The date for theme park in the podcast feed was incorrectly listed as May 6, 2006 instead of June 6, 2006.
• Due to the use of relative linking in the navbar (and depending on the browser), clicking on any of the links on the bottom of the page will sometimes work correctly but will sometimes take you to a nonexistent page beginning with http://podstar.homestarrunner.com/, with the Store being the only exception. This was fixed when "podcast" was added to the navbar.

Inside References

• The description for personal favorites reflects how the Brothers Chaps often get questioned about the existence of the emails.
• The description of isp refers to Matt Chapman's prior job at MindSpring, previously mentioned in a similar manner in the DVD commentary for garage sale.
• The page title refers to Strong Bad's intro song for rampage as well as a Thorax Corporation mp3.
• The description for guitar mentions hot lixx, spelled in the more typical fashion compared to "hott" as seen in the email itself.

Real-World References

• The description for bottom 10 refers to one of the locations that television host David Letterman has claimed his daily "Top Ten List" was compiled.

Podstar Runner 2008

podstar.runner 2.0

Podstar Runner remained dormant for about three and a half months. A Main Page message on January 7, 2008 indicated that podcasts would return the following Thursday; as promised, the Podstar Runner page was redesigned and had the email looking old available for download on January 10, 2008. The updated background now featured an iPod Touch leaning against a pile of books, on a table with a purple wall indicating Strong Sad's Room.

This iteration only made videos available one at a time (as cheekily acknowledged with the page title), meaning that when a new podcast was released the prior one would be removed. Unlike the 2006 run, the revival only included Strong Bad Emails; every email from 2007 and 2008 was released as a podcast.

Although no subsequent videos were released after December 18, 2008 and the podcast is no longer prominently linked to on the site, the final upload (email thunder) is still available for download.

Page Title: Podstar Runner. One a time, please.

Release Date: January 10, 2008

Transcript

Decisions, decisions.

{Shows a collection of album covers being scrolled through, similar to iTunes' Cover Flow, the first being Taranchula's "Shady Missionaries"}

STRONG BAD: No.

{Flips over to a record/CD cover to Peacey P's "deliberance" album}

STRONG BAD: No.

{Flips over to a picture of Strong Bad sitting at the Tandy 400 with the logo for Strong Bad Email above, written in the Tandy's default text}

STRONG BAD: No.

{Flips over to a record/CD cover of Limozeen's "Feed The Childrens"}

STRONG BAD: Wait...

{Flips back to picture of Strong Bad sitting at the Tandy with the logo for Strong Bad Email above, written in the Tandy's default text}

STRONG BAD: Yes.

{The selected email plays.}

"Uh-oh! Face print!"

{After the email has played, the screen cuts back to the "Cover Flow". Strong Bad stands up in front of the album covers, which become more shadowed}

STRONG BAD: Uh-oh! Face print!

{Strong Bad presses his face against the screen, leaving a smudge when he pulls his face off. Strong Bad gives a disgusted groan when he looks at it}

STRONG BAD: Uhgh. You're gonna need one of those little... shimmy cloths.

{Strong Bad leaves screen from the right and everything but the smudge fades to black}

Episodes

Only the latest podcast, email thunder, is currently hosted on the site.

Fun Facts

Trivia

• The podcast is no longer available on the iTunes Store.
• The Paper and New Paper read "The End" instead of "Click here to email Strong Bad".

Remarks

• None of the clickable Easter eggs from the original versions of the emails are present.
• Until email thunder, the preview images used to advertise the 2008 series of podcasts have been exactly the same as their corresponding pages on the Homestar Runner Wiki. The preview image used for email thunder's podcast was originally on the email's article but was later replaced.
• "Shimmy cloth" is a mispronunciation of chamois (pronounced "sham-WAH"), the common name for soft leather used for polishing glass and other reflective surfaces.
• When asked about the possibility of Podstar Runner returning on @StrongBadActual, Strong Bad replied, "I been dumpin em's on YouTube. They're not all up there yet."

Goofs

• Podstar Runner's link for looking old's podcast linked to a non-existent page. The working link to the podcast could only have been found on the RSS feed.
• The podcast versions of several emails introduce goofs that are not in their web versions:
  • "Click Here to Email Strong Bad strongbad@homestarrunner.com" is usually edited to "The End", unaltered text can be seen in the paper (the Goth The Paper) and email thunder (both New Paper and The Paper).
    • The text of the first New Paper to appear in web comics reads "The End", breaking the punchline that Strong Bad Emails are an ironic example of the "cop-out" that Strong Bad is criticizing.
  • bike thief — The Easter egg of the Lappy slowly moving to the right starts automatically; however, it does not show Homestar Runner stealing it.
  • nightlife — The Club Technochocolate flyer does not appear after Strong Bad's "Pwawty Cloughb" line.
  • fan club — Senor Cardgage's lines play against the visual of Homsar's scene, and the audio for the following scenes of Strong Sad speaking and Strong Bad at his computer play out of sync with the animation. After Strong Bad says, "the next worst word you can couple with the word 'fan' is, you guessed it, the word 'fiction'", the DVD title card for the email and a portion of the Intro play, before the "Grade A Gray Day" scene appears and the email resumes as normal.
  • licensed — Homestar's line "That junk was still my best birthdays ever" is omitted.
  • buried — The "Dry" in "Cold Ones Dry" is typeset using a generic font.
• From September 18 to November 5, 2008, the Podstar Runner page featured the download link, synopsis, and picture for hiding, but the title read "Love Poems".

Fixed Goofs

• On September 4, 2008 (the day the podcast version of specially marked was released), the RSS feed updating the Sbemail Podcasts in iTunes was disabled. The feed was reactivated on or before September 10, 2008.

Glitches

• On certain browsers, the links in the NavBar did not work from the Podstar Runner menu.

Inside References

• The cover flow features the albums Homestar's Bread Sing Alongs, Not Talkin' 'bout Butter, Shady Missionaries, deliberance, Strong Bad Email, Feed the Childrens, Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits, and Limozeen vs. sloshy.
• Chamois were referenced in funny.

See Also

• YouTube

External Links

• Podstar Runner page
  • View the 2006 page background
• forum thread re: Podstar Runner