May 25, 2018 (Half-O-Ween 2018):
*a coffin is shown in front of a fake graveyard*
*the coffin's door slowly opens, and I.M. Weasel (dressed as a vampire) rises up from the casket*
I.M. Weasel (in a slightly harrowing tone): Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! I am Count Weasel, and welcome to Fridays. It is Friday, May 25th, and that means it's almost time for Half-O-Ween!
*Weasel laughs evilly as the headlights off camera flicker to resemble lightning, while lightning sound effects play in the background*
I.M. Weasel (speaks in his normal voice again): *looks back at the camera* Oh, but don't worry about Tommy and Tara, they're taking the week off. Not to worry, everyone, we'll be able to make do without them, at least for this week.
*Weasel steps out of the coffin*
I.M. Weasel: As you may already know if you saw last week's show, we're preparing a little game show for you viewers at home tonight. We have teamed up with some animators and copyright owners from Burbank, CA to give some lucky winners a chance to go trick-or-treating early this year.
*footage of this game show appears onscreen*
I.M. Weasel: Every half hour tonight, one of you lucky viewers will get a chance to go on a 40-second scavenger hunt. There will be 6 different house, but choose carefully! Some of them are filled with prizes for you to keep as your own, but others will be home to the scariest creatures you'll have ever laid your eyes upon!!!
*cuts back to Weasel as he laughs again*
I.M. Weasel: But not yet, of course. We've still got a night of Fridays to enjoy. But stay by your phones as you watch tonight's shows. Those who submitted texts and/or post cards and memorized our caller ID must be dying to get the opportunity of a lifetime. For now, however, let us commence with tonight's brand new Stick Friends, because we can't actually play the game until the episode is over...
I.M. Weasel (drops character): Also because this isn't the costume I'm going to wear. I-I'm going to be wearing something else after the break...
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While Fridays did do something Half-O-Ween related for May 31, 2019, I was more interested in including a segment from this night instead because of how interesting it is.
Here's what happened, as part of a collaboration between Great 5 Productions and Nickelodeon, we were given permission to utilize one of their Halloween events from the 90s for ourselves.
In this case, we were allowed to utilize the format of a call-in trick-or-treating game show, where players had 40-seconds to search for prizes (it's explained at 0:25 in this video).
Back when it was first created, the event was part of a yearly Halloween event/contest that Nickelodeon held known as "Nick or Treat".
We decided to remove every mention of Nickelodeon's name (including the "Nick or Treat" name) from the packaging for 2 reasons:
Some of the higher-ups were worried that the inclusion of the Nickelodeon name would be a bit too distracting on Cartoon Network.
Well... the original name sounds like... yeah, you know...
Now, how exactly did we do this call-in thing without the trademark... name...?
Well, what we did was give out a phone number and caller ID (I believe it was "CN Fridays" or something) on May 18, 2018 for people to write down and memorize. Viewers who texted "Half-O-Ween" to that phone number were asked to label that number with the ID that was featured on Fridays. The viewers would know that they won based on what the caller ID was.
Oh yeah, and we managed to get a hold of the original game show's music, as well as a non-music version to prevent musical confusion with sound effects during the game. That was weird because when TeenNick's "The Splat" brought back the game show thing for Halloween 2015 (a few years before this), they apparently didn't have the original track with them. Not sure what happened there.
For this Fridays show, 2 games were played every hour of the block. Each hour was hosted by different Cartoon Cartoon characters (while Tommy and Tara had the week off), each wearing costumes that were similar to (or exactly) the ones they wore during the CCF Halloween Party.
I can't quite remember all of the hosts, or what order they went in, but I believe Dexter (as Courage) and Blossom (as Eddy) were 2 of the ones who appeared (as well as Weasel of course).
As for why the Halloween CNF logo is here despite being May? Well, since we forgot to use the logo in October 2017, we decided to make up for that by using it here.
Alright, that's all I got for you guys. Happy Half-O-Ween, everybody!
