Headbone Interactive History and Lost Media Search
While perhaps currently most recognized for Bungie the Frog, from its Gigglebone Gang edutainment games. Headbone Interactive was a video game company with an interesting history and output. Headbone Interactive now has a legacy of company pivots, half remembered nostalgia, and Lost Media. Before going bankrupt in 2001, it was once critically acclaimed and positioned as a possible competitor with much better remembered Edutainment companies Humongous Entertainment (Freddie Fish, Pajama Sam, Spy Fox) and The Learning Company, (Reader Rabbit, Carmen Sandiago, Cluefinders)
Founded in the early 90s and releasing their first games in 1995 on PC and Mac, including Elroy Goes Bugzerk, intended for ages 8 to 108, and The Gigglebone Gang: Pantsylvania, for ages 4-8, both the first of Headbones two game series. These games established a distinctive visual style in their use of composited black and white photographs as backgrounds for its cartoonish characters and props.
The games were Edutainment titles, with the Gigglebong Gang series being largely creative and exploratory due to its young intended audience, now somewhat notorious for the way its host looked and spoke directly to camera, sometimes from very close, as well as clearing the screen of unwanted creations by eating them. Meanwhile, Elroy series, sometimes called What the Heck will Elroy Do Next?, was a point and click adventure with animated cutscenes, that, meeting children where they were at with a story about a bored kid’s quest to find a cool enough bug to defeat his 10 year old nemesis, taught facts about real insects along Elroy and his Dog Blue’s journey to find the elusive Technoloptera.
Both games sold and reviewed well enough to get sequels, Gigglebone Gang the same year with Alphabonk Farm, and Elroy in 1996 with Elroy Hits The Pavement, that introduced Elroy’s friend Sid and leaned further into spies and conspiracies, teaching more diverse problem solving and elementary science.
Also in 1996, Headbone released another Gigglebone Gang title, Infinity City) and an interactive dress up game about Elroy and Sid putting on short plays, Elroy’s Costume Closet. As well as a game intended as the first of a new series, Iz and Auggie: Escape From Dimension Q, marked for ages 10 to 110, and featured more complex puzzle solving as well as incomplete failure states.
In 1997 the final Gigglebone Gang Game (World Tour), released, and after that, the story gets a little interesting.
Headbone Interactive had established a Company website as early as 1996, and kept it updated with the ability to receive a demo disk of their offerings, mail order their games, and even download additional content for Elroy’s Costume Closet, with new outfits released periodically and often themed to holidays.
An archive of the website’s Coming Soon page from January of 1997 lists two titles as Upcoming, Velma’s Costume Closet, another interactive dress up game, this time for the Gigglebone Gang, and Elroy: King of the Jungle, both slated for a Summer 1997 release.
Neither of these games, can be proven to have released, in 1997 or otherwise, though there is an unsubstantiated claim on the Headbone Interactive Wikipedia page that Elroy: King of the Jungle, received a “Limited Release” in 1999.
Around 1998, the company restructured, and attempted to diversify. Headbone.com pivoted from the landing page for a game company to The Headbone Zone, a child friendly corner of the internet including, a moderated on-site forum, online based email service, and several in browser games. Including quiz based games Riddleopolis and Scienceopolis, Management sim Rags to Riches, and Elroy’s Netscapade, later renamed the Headbone Derby, a series of educational challenges designed for school computer classes, intended to teach students how find information online in order to help Elroy, and later Iz and Auggie, solve mysteries.
Camp Champ, an interactive collectible trading card game on Headbone Zone, was sponsored by GoGurt and interfaced with codes on the packaging to unlock additional cards.
At its peak, Headbone Zone supposedly had over 350,000 registered users.
In 1999, Headbone Interactive also attempted to break into animation with their distinctive vector art style. This included thirteen 3-minute episodes of a cartoon called Fidgetmore Academy for ABC Family, the pilot for an Elroy cartoon, Elroy & Blue: The 11th Caller, and a series of ten 1 minute interstitials created for the Discovery Channel, Hugo Takes a D-Tour, only three of which are preserved on former Headbone Employee Chuck Gamble’s YouTube page.
Chuck Gamble’s online Portfolio includes both direct mention of and concept art for the mysterious Elroy: King of the Jungle in the form of character designs for Ooga and Doc. Both seen and named as “Professor von Hefflemelon (the pre-eminent Jungleologist) and Ooga (the Big Jungle Guy)” in the blurb provided in the 1997 coming soon page. Though they are now currently listed under the header for Headbone TV as part of the unrealized Continuing Adventures Disasters of Ooga & Doc.
The Elroy Games section of his portfolio also stated that “We ultimately did 4 discs involving Elroy and his dog Blue.” Which, in addition to Bugzerk, Hits the Pavement, and Costume Closet includes either Elroy: King of the Jungle, or the Headbone Interactive Take Us For a Spin sampler Demo Disk.