ON TONIGHT'S SPECIAL REPORT.....

I'm sure you're all familiar with the Good & Plenty licorice candies that are sold in stores across the country. And I'm sure you remember the story of Choo Choo Charlie, the little engineer who used his Good & Plenty candy to make his trains run. From 1950 until the 1970s, you'd see him run his train with the box, shaking it to make the sound of an engine.

And I'm sure you're familiar with the jingle, right?

"Charlie says,
Love My Good & Plenty!
Don't know any other candy
that I love so well!"

That song was set to the tune of "Casey Jones," the ballad of another railroad engineer.

Well, in 1971, Charlie was using his Good & Plenty box to run his train across the US/Canadian border as a marketing campaign to introduce the candy to Canadian children when suddenly, in a small town called Pufferville, Ontario, 10 miles from Buffalo, New York, a group of bikers were crossing the railroad line.  Two of the bikers crashed into the train, sending Choo Choo Charlie flying into a ditch.  He landed hard on his back and broke his spinal cord.  His passenger, who was a young lady whose name is forgotten, was flung headlong into the window of the train.  She ended up being run over by it before the train itself jack knifed off the track and into a nearby railroad yard.

The 2 bikers themselves were killed and another was injured.  The other bikers took off and left them there.  They've never been found, let alone prosecuted.

When the EMS people found him after two hours, Charlie was still screaming, "Love My Good & Plenty."  In fact, as they took him to the hospital to be evaluated on his condition.

The news was reported in every media outlet worldwide, and the people who ran Good & Plenty were hit with several lawsuits from the families involved in the accident.  All of them were settled out of court.

Oh, Choo Choo Charlie is still alive and well, but he's been paralyzed from the neck down and is unable to walk.  But he still loves to make that Good & Plenty sound effect when he's in his bed at night.  That's all he's able to do since his voice box was ruptured in the accident.

On our next episode, Sylvester Sneakely faces the death penalty for trying to kill Penelope Pitstop-but killing Dick Dastardly instead.  Don't miss it.

WELCOME TO BEHIND THE CARTOONS!

Welcome to Behind The Cartoons, the fictionalized accounts of childhood cartoons and the hard times they fell upon after their series were cancelled by the networks.  Yes, this is of my own imagination, but there are possibilities.

For example, what if Jay Sherman, the Critic, was injured in a card accident?  Let's suppose it left him paralyzed from the neck down and unable to talk.  Or how about Choo Choo Charlie, the kid who used Good 'N' Plenty Candy to make his trains run?  We'll discover how one certain trip on the tracks ended in disaster, with Charlie being thrown from the train.

Or maybe....