the caddy show (january 18th, 2017 - december 12th, 2019)

strap in, folks. this is going to be a long and convoluted one. but i never realized until now just HOW much i had to say about this show.

the month is january 2017. caddy had just moved to his current house, he’s now going by jim, and the last pre-2016 side show - current quickies - has just been axed. gone were the days of gimmicky characters and review methods…well, at least for shows that weren’t the caddicarus show.

in this update video, the ultimate side show replacement -the caddy show - was announced to be a variety show that would cover just about anything. modern game reviews, drum covers, video game event vlogs, reactions, shitposts, rants, discussions, the whole shebang. caddy’s film fridays (soon to be rebranded as cinemaggots) would still serve as an outlet for film reviews - with the exception of one caddy episode that covered a quiet place.

the caddy show was really, truly the very first time the channel had ever seen a central modern game review series with no gimmicks or formulas. the closest thing there was to a formula was the “spoilers, alright? ok, noice” in every video, but that was mostly it. it was the only modern review series from 2017 to 2019 and it covered all kinds of modern games.

series overview

the show began the wednesday after it was announced, debuting with a review of the last guardian. next week’s episode saw caddy attending a press event for the nintendo switch. if this event had occurred before this show was introduced, caddy probably would’ve tried to implement a video based on it into the caddicarus show, or current quickies. because of the way the channel was run at this time, every single video uploaded had to be a part of some kind of show, which limited video ideas and possibilities. the caddy show opened up so many new possibilities, such as videos like this.

another example of the benefit of this show is the mr. youtube videos, two satirical videos created in september 2016. these videos didn’t really fit into any kind of format, but they were billed as caddicarus show episodes and put into the show’s playlist. by january 2017, they were rebranded into caddy show episodes, with caddicarus show branding being stripped from them.

the show also had rant/discussion videos that discussed new gaming topics or anything else, such as the one about the n. sane trilogy where caddy expressed his worries about the game’s graphics. obviously, that one didn’t age well. there was also the one where he discussed those weird bootleg kids’ peppa pig videos, and how an article about them conveniently dropped around the time he released the caddicarus episode about the show.

drum covers were moved to the main channel with this series. before this, there were only 3 drum covers ever posted, and all of them were on the second channel. but 2017 saw a blossoming in the number of drum covers posted due to this series.

strangely, not all of the episodes of the series were kept online. a couple of the discussion videos - the ones on caddy jumping off the hype train, and the playstation classic wish list - were privated in october 2021.

the caddy show also had sponsored videos, most of which were produced through 2017 and 2019, and none of which are public anymore. there were videos on portal knights, dreadnought, crossout, an acer predator laptop, oculus rift... i haven’t listed one, and oh boy i’ll get into that one later.

unfortunately, i couldn’t find a working capture for the crossout vid. :(

he also did a few shitposts, a couple of them being about metal gear survive and the spyro reignited trilogy. unfortunately jim didn’t unlist the original “pain” video, which was the “crash 1, i did it, crash 2, i did it, crash 3, i did it” video. but i got a capture here! there was also one on the nightmare creatures remake.

there’s also a lorne lanning interview from 2017, which was strangely unlisted along with the 2014 interview…

 

branding/graphic design history

so for the first 9 months of the show, the thumbnails and titles of all the videos had the same format:

the thumbnails all had the caddicarus show’s grunge background (albeit in grayscale), BUT there was a different thumbnail avatar specifically made for this show.

all the titles were “(subject of the video) - caddy”. simple enough, right? well, this caused a lot of confusion among viewers. some viewers actually mistook these for caddicarus episodes and had assumed that the caddicarus show was going away and this new format was its replacement…no joke lol.

so, by september 2017…the entire “caddy” branding was removed from the channel. the videos still used the show’s intro, but there was no longer a singular playlist titled “the caddy show”, and jim no longer referred to the show as being called “caddy”. jim began to start the videos by saying “hey everyone, caddy here”…which was weird af at the time.

“caddy” was removed from all the video titles and all the thumbnails were changed. there were now 3 playlists made up of episodes for this series - “NEW GAME REVIEWS” for the review episodes, which there were most of; “DRUM COVERS”, for, you guessed it, drum covers; and “ETC” for everything else. and yes, those quotes were actually in the playlist titles. that same day, the caddicarus show’s and cinemaggots’ playlist titles were also capitalized and had quotes added to them. 15-year-old me did a humorous commentary on this back when it happened.

the playlists weren’t the only instances of loud, all-caps yelling being added to the caddica-sphere. the titles of all the reviews were changed, and…hoo boy.

just by looking through some of these, you can tell that these stirred up a bit of…controversy in the fanbase. i was also pretty critical of this title format, and i’d roll my eyes with every new review that dropped. if you weren’t around during this period, this was a time where the channel was in stagnation and in dire need of support. the channel was running almost exclusively off of patreon donations, and jim needed to do all he could to boost engagement…even if that meant changing all his titles to all-caps eye-catching clickbait.

off the top of my head, i can think of a couple issues that sprung up with this title format. one is pictured above - the shadow of the colossus review. caddy adores that game, but he decided to name the video “RANT OF THE RANTOSSUS”. the word “rant” is generally considered to have a negative connotation. when someone is “ranting” about something, they are usually complaining about that thing. so when jim named his video that, there were fans that were reasonably confused. caddy defended this, saying “oh, this is a positive rant!” but like…idk dude. i always saw that title as being crappy SEO.

and then there was the infamous god of war review. posted on the caddicarus show’s 6th anniversary, the video was originally titled “GOD OF DISAPPOINTMENT”. now, there was nothing wrong with this video…well, at least from what i remember of it. i’ve not played the god of war games personally, but there is nothing wrong with giving a 6/10 score to anything, no matter how acclaimed or panned that piece of media is. and god of war 2018 was one of the most praised games ever when it came out. so lots of fans didn’t take kindly to this video, or its title. caddy would eventually change the title to “IS IT REALLY 10/10?” before ditching this title format altogether by next month.

so with the trashing of these titles, we had to give up something else…

…what if i told you that the thumbnails pictured above didn’t always have googly eyes?

on one night in june of 2018, 16-year-old mel noticed something strange when looking on jim’s channel. first of all, i saw that the modern game review series had its awful all-caps titles gone, and that it was now called “CADDY REVIEWS”. the “ETC” videos also no longer had all-caps titles…but they now all had entirely low-caps titles, which made them look very cryptic. (i.e. “I’M NOT SURE ABOUT CRASH ON PS4” became “i’m not sure about crash on ps4”.)

but i looked a little closer…

one of the modern game reviews had googly eyes on the thumbnail, and i was like…“that wasn’t there before…”

so i refreshed…and more googly eyes showed up.

panicked, i scrambled over to the playlist…and there were more.

i refreshed again. and there were even MORE.

needless to say, i lost my mind.

about a few minutes after i yelled about it on wattpad, caddy posted this tweet…

…and i proceeded to laugh my ass off. this man, who had just been utilizing these SEO-attention-grabbing-clickbait-ass video titles for 9 months, was now once again firing gunshots into the air, keeping property values low. caddicarus truly is the [tumblr] of personality-based video review channels.

a couple months later, with the debut of its 11th season, jetpackbraggin began doing thumbnails for the caddicarus show. these thumbnails initially didn’t have borders, akin to the 2020 reboot. but about a few weeks in, the season 11 thumbnails so far were actually given red borders - which is definitely not a color that gives caddicarus vibes, if you ask me.

the modern game reviews were given blue borders. this didn’t last for very long, as by the next week, jim would eventually settle on the blue borders for TCS that would last until the end of 2019, and modern game reviews were given the purple border that we see today.

after jetpackbraggin began drawing the TCS thumbnails, the caddy show - pretty much just referred to as “bonus videos” at this point - was still using the same thumbnail avatar…at least until the last episode. the last episode of the series - posted in march 2019 - was a drum cover of the tetris theme, and it was the only episode that ever used JPB’s thumbnail drawing for drum covers…it was also the first thumbnail since 2017 to have the “caddy” logo on it, and the only drum cover to have the purple border on the thumbnail. it seemed like jim wanted to do more things with this show, given its updated thumbnail format, but he just ended up integrating most of it into the caddicarus show.

 

the fall…and rise…and fall again

by 2019, the caddicarus channel was back to one video a week - that one video being the caddicarus show, and the caddicarus show only. it began covering more and more modern games. drum covers were out the window, as his work became busier, and mainline videos kept getting longer and more elaborate. by may, we were seeing caddicarus episodes chronicling video game press events - episodes that previously would’ve been caddy episodes. basically, TCS was performing all of the functions of the caddy show, because caddy wanted to invest in the main series the most. he was drifting away from having other “shows” on the channel, as that was stressing him out. waits between videos became longer…and “longer” back then meant 2 weeks to a month. CRAZY shit for the time.

so basically, the show went out with a badass tetris drum cover, and then came the buildup to the channel’s reset!

oh wait…the PUBG video…

in may 2019, caddy posted a sponsored video for PUBG mobile. it had a pretty bad like/dislike ratio. the comments were divided. he endorsed lootboxes. it was…it was a mess. he unlisted it in 2021, along with all the other sponsored videos.

and that was the last we heard from the caddy show…no more side shows…just the last of the original caddicarus show until the 2020 reboot! well gee, this sure was a long entry. for the next entry, we’ll be covering the second chann-

OH CHRIST, REALLY???

so a few months after the PUBG video, crash team racing: nitro fueled had a bit of a fiasco with microtransactions. caddy was so angered by this, he decided to retool the caddy show into a rant series. this series would cover gaming news and other random things in culture.

of course, if you scroll through his mid-late 2019 videos you’ll notice these videos aren’t there. every single rant was unlisted, along with the series’ dedicated playlist. one way you can get to them is through my unlisted videos playlist.

these 8 rant videos were produced between august and december 2019, and were produced during the peak of the channel’s recession. caddy himself wasn’t in the best mental state as well. these videos had thumbnails and titles of the clickbait-y variety, with the thumbnails featuring caddy’s actual (non-negative filtered) face - something that was rare before this series. and that wasn’t just the case for this series - you can identify season 13 caddicarus show episodes by the thumbnails that feature caddy’s actual face (with the exceptions of the final 2 episodes on death stranding and jedi fallen order - it seems like these thumbnails were so poorly received that cartoon caddy returned for the very end of the original series). the definitely-not-reminiscent-of-another-gaming-youtuber upside-down profile pic was also introduced with this series, along with the banner featuring caddy’s screaming face.

other than CTR microtransactions, he discussed things like the sans nintendo direct, playstation state of play, COPPA, the PS5 dev kit…your typical late 2019 stuff. interestingly, he discussed the controversy behind the IT part 2 poster, and it was strangely political for a video from this channel. basically, these videos were caddy’s twitter rants put into video form - there were discussions from fans who were worried that the channel could possibly become strictly a political/game news rant channel filled to the brim with clickbait and horrid fans. i had the thought before that the channel would’ve become this had the caddicarus show not been retooled. and i thank the lords above every single day that didn’t happen.

these videos didn’t do astoundingly well, apart from the CTR rants - which got about 600k - 700k views. but other than that, the videos did alright. they were mostly well-received, but there were also fans who had concerns about the channel’s future, as i mentioned above. and there were others who just saw it as his lowest form of content. but of course, you have to remember that this was a very taxing time in the channel’s history when caddy wasn’t doing great mentally and when he was struggling to pay rent.

and so, to FINALLY end off the entry, the last episode of the rant series aired on december 12th, 2019. after that was the caddicarus episode on jedi fallen order, and…with 2020 came the reset!

these videos were all privated in october 2021, but then unlisted in september 2022 - i guess if caddy couldn’t private the caddicarus episodes, he could private these to get rid of the memories of that era of the channel.

and THAT was the history of the caddy show. there were so many twists and turns…and i had no idea this would be as long as it was. geez.

for the next entry, i’ll be talking about the second channel’s history, and it shouldn’t go for as long as this one did.

take care! 💜