Alvin and the Chipmunks Knock offs: The Happy Hamsters

Here is a knock off of the Chipmunks that should have been a short story, but sadly turned into something worse....much worse!

In 1984, Audiofidelity put out a record to cash in on the new success of the Chipmunks called The Happy Chipmunks sing Michael Jackson's Greatest Hits.  It was a typical kind of record you would expect from the Chipmunks.  High squeaky voices singing all the big his.  Some may question why such creatures are singing about Human Nature or a song involving a girl claiming Michael's the father of her child, but we've been exposed to his music so much that we really don't care.

Ross Bagdasarian Jr. filed a lawsuit against Audiofidelity causing them to change from The Happy Chipmunks to.....

  

As the album indicates, these records also came with a poster.  A second record came out titles The Happy Hamsters Sing Ghost Busters.  This time they keep stressing the fact that they are NOT chipmunks, they are hamsters.  As the times changed, LP records began to disappear and it caused The Happy Hamsters to not sell well.  This should have been the end right?  Right??  RIGHT?????????

In 1988, Audiofidelity for unknown reasons formed a VHS company called Amvest Video.  This company had two divisions: 1. Kid Pics (which we'll talk about) and 2. Gampa's Sci-Fi Classics with Al Lewis in his Grandpa Munster getup (noticed the change from GRANDPA to GRAMPA).

The Kid Pics division pretty much released public domain cartoons.  Unlike most tapes, they had a host.  Can you guess who??????   I think you should watch this video of Kid Pics featuring The Happy Hamster.

As the video describes, kids can sign up to be part of the Kid Pics Fan Club where you get free swag such as a T-Shirt, a poster of The Happy Hamsters Sing Michael Jackson, newsletters, and a free tape.  Kids must pay 10 dollars and write a paragraph about themselves.  This should have been a red flag for parents.

The Kid Pics Fan Club......it never existed.  The paragraphs were used to sell off kids to creepy pedophiles that run kids pageants.  This angered many parents.  The company formally known as Audiofidelity, now Amvest Video, had become corrupt.  If you read the Creepypasta 1999, this is it in the blood.  A guy in a full fury hamster suit making moves on children to make them comfortable and love him only to be used to be sold to pedophiles.  Isn't this disturbing?  Wouldn't that make you as a parent angry?  And here's the best....they did a lot of gimmiks with the Disney cartoons that MAY HAVE fallen in the public domain.  I want to do a post about the tapes themselves someday, but here are some pics.

Just for the record, Amvest no longer exists.  Good.  I told the story should have ended after the records.  Maybe all The Happy Hamster stuff then could have been a forgotten but very good memory.  Instead, it was just another story of how a character's mercy is ruined by bad people.  Some say that The Happy Hamster is still out there....waiting and watching for the next move to use kids again.  The world may never know............