Following the release of JumpStart Academy games for preschool and kindergarten, the JumpStart website showed a roadmap of future games for 1st to 5th grade for a while. These ended up never being released, due to the shutdown of JumpStart Games, Inc. in 2023, and it's unknown how many, if any of these titles ever even started development.
When it comes to the planned 3rd-5th grade titles, a point of speculation is whether or not they would've gone in a similar direction as previous games aimed at these grades, that being more fantasy and/or science fiction oriented, generally with human (or human-like) characters. These trends can be observed in the original 3rd-6th grade games from the 90s, the game Magic & Mythies, and even some parts of the JumpStart MMO such as FutureLand. Otherwise, the series might've chosen to stick with Frankie and his friends all the way through, possibly aging up characters as needed.
Did you know that somewhere in the late 80s (1987-1989,) there was supposed to be one more official Care Bear cousin?
The Care Bear artist at the time “Elena Kucharik” was tasked by the “American Greetings” company to make one more Care Bear cousin, she ended up making a koala character, which had no symbol and was most likely female.
This character must have been well received because a prototype plush was made for the character,
Despite this however, the character never got to see the light of day, and was never released, it’s still unknown what happened to this toy product of the character,
However, eventually after many years the character was uncovered along with other unreleased material for many to see, including fans of the franchise,
the Care Bear related fandom taking notice of this character having no name, decided to give the new name “Glow Heart,” which much of the fandom still calls this character by.
The Elephant 6 Lost Release: E6-013 - The Clay Bears
Below the cut for more info!
Okay, well it was never released, only catalogued!
“The Clay Bears” was, per the Elephant 6 Instagram, an experimental noise band from Ruston, Louisiana featuring a rotating lineup of Elephant 6 musicians. They were “known for their unpredictable performances and room-clearing live shows.”
One of the more well known quotes about the band came from the Elephant 6 website, which used to read “Clay Bears - One of the big mysteries of the E6. Apparently a super-group of some sort from the Ruston-era. The band had a revolving door line-up which at some points included such people as Scott Spillane, Jeff Mangum & Will Westbrook. They are thanked in the liner notes of Neutral Milk Hotel's album On Avery Island.”
And they are thanked on the On Avery Island linear notes! Taken from my personal copy:
That quote is no longer on the website, but it is archived on NMH fansite neutralmilkhotel.org. That website also contains this snippet of information: "In a BBC interview in August 1998, Jeff mentioned the Clay Bears had a double album which was poised to be released. This never transpired, however. Ross Beach, a member of the band for a while, told me the following: 'As far as I know, the Clay Bears never had any official releases, though there were probably some 4-track cassette one-offs floating around Ruston in the early 90's. That was also a Jeff solo project, only noisier and more chaotic. The live version that I was in was purely an experimental noise improv band.'"
So based off this, we can assume that The Clay Bears was a project possibly spearheaded by Jeff Mangum and there may be demo tapes floating around the Elephant 6 sphere. The double LP Jeff mentioned is catalogued (but not listed in the database) as E6-013 on Discogs.
There is supposedly a clip of a Clay Bears concert on YouTube, but the video's since been privated. A Reddit post on r/Elephant6 asked about this clip (but got no replies). This redditor also did some digging, supposedly uncovering news from the 2006 Elephant 6 website about a DVD release with a Clay Bears snippet. Whether or not the supposed clip would be the one from the YouTube video is not known. The redditor further opines that the DVD was never released. Another redditor on a different post asked Jeff (because this was back when NMH were on their reunion tour) if Clay Bears would ever see the light of day, saying "it’s up to the people to decipher." The post itself speculates that the Clay Bears would appear on the Elephant 6 documentary. Admittedly, I haven't seen the doc, but I would assume it didn't end up appearing because there's seldom any discussion about the band or any resurfaced clip.
In another Reddit post, a user shows the University of Georgia media archive, which featured several Neutral Milk Hotel stuff in the Robert Schneider Collection of Elephant 6 Recording Co. Records. There is a Wayback link, but it's broken and while I can see the first recording is NMH instrumentals, I don't know what the second recording is. Apparently, the Clay Bears is somewhere in the archives, but the University of Georgia seems to have removed the collection and the Wayback Machine only archived the two aforementioned files. Although according to a commenter in the Reddit post, most of the links (including the Clay Bears) didn't work and would require going out to Georgia to listen to the physical tapes.
So that's about where the whole Clay Bears mystery stands. It's interesting how there's been multiple possible Clay Bears leaks, yet none of them seemed to survive. The Clay Bears is still listed as an Elephant 6 band under "The Collective + Extended Family" section of the website and there was an (aforementioned) Instagram post by the official Elephant 6 account last year.
Last thing, the image up at the top was posted by the Elephant 6 Instagram, but I don't really know what it is. They don't explain it and reverse image searching turns up nothing. It could be one of Jeff's demo tapes, but that's pure speculation on my part. I might try to contact them in the future for clarity, but I'm lazy and shy so I dunno.
Anyway, here's a few posters also posted by the Elephant 6 Instagram:
i need to talk about this show. people need to know how bizarre this production is.
ok so this is idol x warrior miracle tunes
this is the first entry in the girls x heroine franchise, a short-lived live action magical girl series. basic premise is these girls are idols but they're magical girls and have to rid the world of negativity. there are no fights, they transform, and automatically go into a final attack and it's like that for 51 episodes. came out in 2017 to middling reception but it did really well in its target audience (girls aged 2-6 years old) and with the idol crowd. enough to gain 4 more seasons before going on an indefinite hiatus.
first weird thing: it's directed by takeshi miike. an extremely prolific japanese director who's known for doing a Lot of shit. he has over 100 films under his belt and none of them are the same in terms of tone or genre. infamously, he has directed the horror film Audition, Ichi the Killer, the Ace Attorney movie and the JJBA DiU film.
so needless to say the man has his toes in A Lot of different places. he's scary.
but miike is not why i wanted to talk about this.
a lot of shows get dubbed and brought over to other countries, that's one thing and miracle tunes was no different, being brought over to Thailand, South Korea and China.
but how many shows are allowed to get full international adaptations and remakes?
the same year that the original miracle tunes ended, 2018, there were reports that an english/international version was in the works because of how 'popular' it was in Japan. soon after, Mediterraneo Media, an Italian company, got their hands on the rights and began filming their adaptation.
and so, this production became... the Italian Miracle Tunes remake.
this is a nearly shot for shot, costume-for-costume remake of the entire 51 episode original show, down to the same plot beats and even keeping some of the same names while localizing others. think how power rangers adapts super sentai footage but everything is refilmed.
Example: the villain group in the original is named the "Doku-Doku Dan" (roughly translating to The Toxic Troupe). In the remake, they are still called the Doku-Doku Dan and there is no explanation for why as far as I can tell.
transformation sequence comparison here
the remake had some cultural changes to it, being in italy now. the girls in both versions of the show get power-ups/form changes based on different genres of music (hip-hop, rock, and techno). In the Japanese version, the girls get an "Enka" themed power-up, while the Italian version has a "Flamenco" themed power-up.
the adaptation also had its own music, some which were semi-adaptations of the original j-pop songs, and some were original, all in italian of course. main difference being in the Japanese version, the girls sang their own songs since the show also acted as an idol group promotion tool. while in the italian version, all of these songs are not sung by the actresses.
oh and there was a explicitly queer character in the japanese version that they made straight in the italian version. just. no reason. i guess. okay.
ok so a random italian remake is. odd, but not out of the realm of possibility. but it gets weirder when you realize the entire show wasn't even originally italian
the entire production was filmed in english (minus the song performances), and *then* dubbed in Italian. Looking at any clip of the Italian remake you will Immediately realize none of what they're saying syncs up with their lips. it's terrifying. (i can't really show you an example without just pasting a full episode, but if you look up miracle tunes italia and watch for a minute or two, you'll see what i mean.)
none of the english versions of these episodes exist anywhere, as far as i can tell. i don't know if it can be considered lost media, but it is unreleased media.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE
The Italian version of Miracle Tunes was also brought over to Greece and dubbed in Greek, almost fully. this exception being every single song was not the italian version, but a previously unreleased English version.
from what i know, there was an intention to eventually get an international release of miracle tunes in some capacity, hence the amount of english songs, marketing materials, and like
The entire production of the show.
but it hasn't materialized quite yet!
anyways yeah hope you enjoyed by insane rambling of this weird rabbit hole of an adaptation.
Dave and Gini Ball, as Here To Go, by Mick Mercer, December 1985
The duo recorded an album with production by Mike Hedges (previously worked on Marc Almond's Vermin In Ermine and Stories of Johnny albums) which wasn't released due to conflict with recording studio, and no leaks of their material have ever occured either.
At some point, crossovers between the JumpStart MMO and Scooby-Doo, Hasbro, and Sesame Street were conceptualized. Entire 3D enviroments with character models were created for these concepts, but for unknown reasons these areas were never formally released in the MMO. The images here come from an online portfolio belonging to Chris Williams, who was formerly a creative director at JumpStart. The images are all dated 2010 on his website.
