I just found out today that the complete Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends has been issued in one DVD boxed set for the first time. Amazon is asking 68 bucks for it. I want it.

Now I have to rehearse the conversation I will have with my wife, explaining why I really really really need to spend 70 bucks to obtain (to crib the language on Amazon.com) “91 trips in the WABAC time machine, 38 attempts to catch Snidely Whiplash, 91 tales fractured and 50 bits of wisdom from Mr. Know-it-All.”

Actually, any objection from her would be less about the money and more about the hours upon hours I would subsequently spend watching 50-year-old cartoons. She has a point there. I’m working on a counterpoint but all I’m coming up with so far is, “Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”

I grew up with Bullwinkle. When I was really young, I had nightmares featuring the giant talking moose, who would constantly hassle me about something and wouldn’t respect my private space. He’d hulk over me with that giant hairy hide…and those gloves…and he’d talk in that voice. And he’d breathe through that big giant nose and you could hear every breath going in and out! Aaugh!

Once I got a little older, I started to get the jokes and watched the show almost every day after school. And then I got a little older still — and the entire show changed. The terrible puns that once went right over my head suddenly made sense:

Rocky: Hey Bullwinkle, we’re in real trouble now!

Bullwinkle: Oh good, Rocky! I hate that artificial kind!

You don’t even want to know what the stoners of my young adulthood thought of Bullwinkle. If you walked into a stranger’s apartment and the show was on, you inevitably did a quick check for a certain burning herbal aroma. The theory, of course, was that Bullwinkle was a wake ‘n’ baker. How else would someone come up with this line?

Rocky: Well, they don’t call him Wrongway Peachfuzz for nothing!

Bullwinkle: You mean they gotta pay?