This might be one of the strangest animated crossovers ever put on screen, and somehow it still works in that chaotic, offbeat UPA way. Magoo Meets Boing Boing throws together two completely different cartoon worlds by pairing the near-sighted Mr. Magoo with Gerald McBoing-Boing, the boy who speaks in sound effects. Directed by Abe Levitow and released theatrically in 1959, the short came at a time when United Productions of America was struggling to recapture its earlier success. The concept felt like a last-ditch idea: combine two of the studio’s most recognizable characters and hope audiences respond. The story leans fully into absurdity, with Magoo babysitting Gerald, mistaking him for a dog, and misinterpreting his sound effects as real emergencies, including a “fire” that only exists in Gerald’s noisy imagination. What makes it even more interesting is that this crossover did not come out of nowhere. Years earlier, the characters had already appeared together in Dell Comics, wh...
There’s something kind of perfect about this. The Gruesomes didn’t come back polished or reinvented. They came back loud, a little unhinged, and exactly the way you remember them.
The Dimension of Fear dropped on September 5, 2025, via Soundflat Records, and it feels less like a reunion album and more like they just walked out of a 1966 basement session, plugged back in, and hit record. Ten originals, three covers, all dripping with fuzz, attitude, and that slightly dangerous edge they’ve always had.
This is garage rock the way it’s supposed to sound. No cleanup. No overthinking. Just snotty vocals, punchy riffs, and that raw, barely-contained energy that made them one of Montreal’s most beloved underground exports in the first place. People are calling it a “howl-fest,” which honestly feels right. It’s messy in the best way, like it might fall apart at any second, but never does.
And yeah, it’s on vinyl, because of course it is. Some records just belong there.
What really hits is that this doesn’t feel nostalgic. It feels current. Like they never stopped, even if they technically did. That’s a tough trick to pull off after a couple of decades, but The Gruesomes make it sound easy.