December 22nd, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
Saturday Night Live actor Kyle Mooney and Bento Box’s Ben Jones team-up for the new Netflix live-action/animated series Saturday Morning All Star Hits!, which is now streaming. Mooney serves as co-creator and star, playing Skip & Treybor, the hosts of “S.M.A.S.H.”, an ’80s/’90s-esque Saturday Morning Kids TV program that features episodes of original animated series. That’s where Jones comes in. He’s the animation director of these series, including “Randy” and “Create-A-Crittles”. Mooney and Jones discuss all aspects of Saturday Morning in this fun Animation Scoop Q&A. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: Kyle, how has the reaction been over the past couple of weeks since these episodes dropped on Netflix?
Kyle Mooney: I think pretty good. Personally, I try to steer clear of immersing myself too deep into what people are saying. I’m very easily hurt by the slightest negative comment, so I try not to get too close to it. But I will say: I’m hearing good things. People have been supportive. It feels like we did what we set out to do, which is really special. This material that we’re pulling from and inspired by is meaningful to a bunch of people as well. So I’m happy to hear it feels like we’re kind of doing it justice.
JM: Nice. I won’t give you any negative criticism, Kyle. Don’t worry.
KM: (laughs)
JM: It is good. I watched the first few episodes a couple weeks ago and it’s really funny and genius what you guys do. Ben, how was it for you in terms of doing the visual research for these animated shows within the core show — so impressive to watch them.
Ben Jones: It took 43 years. With every waking moment I’ve dedicated my life, unknowingly, to this show. All those years of collecting VHS tapes and Saturday Morning TV — and then YouTube came out. 12 hours a day on YouTube, averaging. It’s literally like living my fantasy. It’s like going to a fantasy camp getting to make this show. It wasn’t even research. We just kind of knew this material from our own lives and the process really was learning how to celebrate it and less dissecting it, if that makes sense.
JM: Yes. This show is very positive. Kyle, you’re somebody who knows clever material and scripts with “SNL” and everything you’ve done there. How did you know that this concept could be a multi-episode series, as opposed to a sketch you would do every once in a while?
KM: Echoing what Ben was saying… the source material we’re pulling from is so meaningful to me and to us. This is stuff we watched for years and lived inside of us for years. It just felt like it can’t be captured in a three and a half minute short, or something like that. And once we got past the initial idea of, “Oh we wanna recreate that experience of watching Saturday Morning Cartoons”, there was a real breakthrough of, “We should catch glimpses of everything that would’ve been on TV at the time.” By doing that and telling these longer stories that play throughout the season, I think this is the only way we could’ve done it with a handful of episodes. And there truly was so much stuff we wanted to express our love for. Obviously there’s a lot of stuff we didn’t get to. It required as much real estate as possible.
JM: You can flush out the stories of the animated series, and then what you do, Kyle, as Skip and Treybor. You’re sort of spoofing and honoring Kids TV hosts at the same time. As you were playing the dual roles, could you kind of feel that? That “I wanna poke fun at that and get that satire in but also there are so many kids over so many generations who have grown up with these hosts in their living rooms every single week”.
KM: Absolutely. It totally really does come from a place of love. I’d like to think that if seven-year-old me saw our show, he would think Skip and Treybor are pretty cool. You know what I mean? I think we really made an attempt to hit that early ’90s/late ’80s epitome of what a rad dude was. Performing those characters was a blast. Anytime I get to be high energy and have fun, I feel like it’s always special.
JM: Nice. Now Ben, let’s talk about the animated series within the first couple episodes, which include “Randy” and the “Create-A-Crittles”. Obviously there’s “Care Bears” satire in that one and a lot of big voice actors that come into these episodes. For those two animated series, how were you able to flush them out and make them as good as you wanted them to be?
BJ: Great question. One of the things was: kind of realizing that that era of animation, which was considered bad or maybe people still think it was bad… I never thought that. In going back and really starting to draw it and understand it, it came to light that a lot of those shows… “Care Bears”… just about everything in the ’80s and ’90s was animated in Japan. Now we’re really learning to fully acknowledge and appreciate Japanese animation more and more. Back then, it had a different meaning. But obviously it came from the same people making “Akira” and Miyazaki and “Astro Boy”. It’s that community. It was like going back and looking under the hood of these Saturday Morning TV shows to realize the actual brilliance and artistry in the design and animation. It sounds very nerdy, but once we started to tinker with that, it felt kind of like what Kyle was saying.
When you’re drawing something that’s really fun to draw or having a high energy character, it’s actually the most fun you can have. And when you’re trying to tell stories or animate on top of that, it just gets to be really gratifying. And you don’t have to work against yourself. Once we got the language and the characters and the storytelling down, we could really do whatever we wanted with the actors and the script and go really crazy places.
JM: You do. The look is great and you have so much fun. I also really like that the acronym of “Saturday Morning All Star Hits” is S.M.A.S.H., like smash hits for a TV show. Ben was that an aha moment for you guys, realizing you have a big acronym here that’s perfect?
BJ: Yes. In 20 years on VH1 where we do “Behind the Music” — or “Behind the Animation” — all these fun little acronym stories will come out. Just about every name… every abbreviation… every way we arrived at a decision has a funny aha or backstory to it. We’re definitely tickled by just about every aspect of the show.
JM: Good. You guys do a spoof on a movie trailer, which I thought was very well done. And what’s interesting is: I feel like nowadays movie trailers give away a lot. But then I go back and I watch movie trailers from films that came out 20-30 years ago, and I go, “Man, they show A LOT in these trailers too!” Kyle, how was it for you doing the fake movie trailer?
KM: So awesome. That piece is something that actually we tried to make on “Saturday Night Live” a few times and never got made. And Dave McCary, who directed a lot of the live-action stuff, helped on that one. That’s truly our love letter to the family movies that were coming out at the time. As these cartoons were showing on TV… we were pulling from Fred Savage in “The Wizard” and “Blank Check”, these movies where kids do awesome things. {Mooney went on to tell me that it was great for him to finally be able to do this sketch after having the idea for seven or eight years.}
JM: You also insert commercials with toys from animated series. I still have so many toys of characters from animated films and shows of the past 20 years in bins in my house. Ben, what are the best animated series or film toys you had or still have?
BJ: I think… it’s all the Transformers and Japanese-inspired toys growing up. They were and still are my favorite.
KM: That’s probably one of the best parts about working on this show: doing the research and reminding yourself of things you loved as a kid or finding new things that maybe you caught a glimpse of but have long since forgotten.
JM: I bet the research is extensive and exciting to find all that out. And I watch all these shows where people go into people’s houses and they have the toy collections and they’re worth big bucks. So you guys probably have some really cool, rare things.
KM: I got Lion-O in the package! From “ThunderCats” from when I was a kid. I will say: the plastic is now some sort of tinted yellow or orange. I don’t know if that’s good in terms of value.
JM: That’s okay. And maybe there will be toys of all the characters you guys have created on this show that will come out for real… in the stores and Netflix getting them out there. That would be fantastic. What are your holiday season plans, and do they involve animation?
BJ: I’m gonna watch all the new animated shows on Netflix.
KM: I know that my niece and nephew… I heard last night that they’re on episode four or five of our show. My oldest brother watched the whole thing, so it’s meaningful to me that he feels like it’s okay to show kids our show. One animated piece that I kind of typically go back to every year is the Rankin-Bass [‘Twas the] Night Before Christmas. It’s not stop-motion. It’s traditional cel animation. I believe it’s from the ’70s. It’s a fun one that I always re-watch.
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