Mystery Guest Redux

"Mystery Guest" has always been one of my favorite U.S. Acres segments on Garfield and Friends. Roy always brings a comedic energy to the episodes starring him, so putting that into a story that's (for all intents and purposes) pretty random is a match made in Heaven.

Roy pops in and invites Orson to play the Mystery Guest Game. That's it. Orson's just chasing a butterfly when Roy comes in and decides "Nah, we're gonna make this episode more exciting than that." Cue the Mystery Guest theme song.

The song offers us two clues to the mystery guest -- he's not a singing raisin, and he's not painted blue. Pretty obvious nods to the California Raisins and the Smurfs.

For decades, all we saw of these character clues were their silhouettes.

Then, 9Story's restoration came along, straight from the film negative! For the first time in about thirty years, it revealed that the character images were originally uncensored. I'd assumed that the characters were animated that way, and it was changed before the episode made it to air for legal reasons. Unfortunately, the footage was cropped to widescreen, and it looked like that was all we'd ever see.

... Until a fan sent me a copy of the episode's original broadcast, revealing to me that the uncensored character images were in fact originally broadcast the way they were animated! I guess you could say we've solved the bonus round, or something.

Here's the entire uncensored first stretch of the song, seen in its proper aspect ratio for the first time in nearly 35 years.

Why not sing along? You know you want to.

Can you guess the Mystery Guest?

Take a shot and give it your best

If you need help, I'll give you a clue

He's not a singing raisin, and he's not painted blue

If you're at home and you've got the gall

Pick up your telecan and give us a call

Use your brain -- but, wait, that's not fair!

I forgot that there's nothing there!

Ha ha ha ha!