The Hot Hero Sandwich Project: Hot Hero Sandwich Project Archives: You and Your World Article, February 18, 1980

by G. Jack Urso

You and Your World, Vol. 12, No. 18, February 18, 1980.

Publisher: Xerox Education Publications and the Xerox Corporation.

No advertising. Cost 40 cents.

One of the better write-ups on Hot Hero Sandwich I’ve read, it’s unfortunate that it was published in Feb. 1980, after the show had been cancelled that January, though reruns would run through April 5.

I haven’t been able to find out much about this publication. With no advertising, I initially thought it might have been distributed to schools like Scholastic Magazine, but the 40 cent cover price seems to suggest otherwise. According to the Internet Archive, it was published 28 times a year from 1969 to 1981.

Front cover and inside full-page photo.

Special thanks to Hot Hero Sandwich Music Coordinator Jimmy Biondolillo for saving this issue of You and Your World in pristine condition!

The complete transcript and scans of the entire article are provided below. Original spelling and punctuation retained. All images from You and Your World. The information provided in brackets [ ] are my own editorial notes.

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Well, it’s Saturday morning again. Since you have nothing better to do, you switch on the TV. Suddenly it’s as if you’re in a zoo.

First, you watch Mighty mouse slam dunk a squadron of ferocious cats. Then you are amazed as a full moon turns a loveable creature into the wolflike Fangface. A half-hour later the great Godzilla’s nephew Godzooky saves a crew of scientists, Bugs Bunny wisecracks across the screen a few minutes before Wile E. Coyote gets sliced in half by his Acme Road Runner Trap.

After a few hours of wandering through this comic-strip jungle, you stumble upon an oasis. It’s high noon and suddenly you’re face to face with a spot on the tube reserved just for you. Now you can take a break from that steady diet of cartoons — you can try a bite of NBC-TV’s “Hot Hero Sandwich.”

What’s on the menu? Basically, this new series aims to deal with the problems all teenagers face.

“The teenage years are an extremely stressful time,” comments Carol [sic] Hart, who helped develop the program. “Young people want to be on their own. Yet they need their parents’ support. It’s a period of pain and joy, We set out to make a program that would show teenagers aren’t alone in their feelings. They should understand that everyone goes through these changes.”

Most of the action in the series occurs at the Hot Hero Cafe, a sort of disco luncheonette. That’s the hangout for a group of teenagers who seem right out of your own neighborhood. For example, Stanley Dipstyck is terribly shy. In fact, he’s so shy he wears a sack over his head and never tells anyone his problems. A couple other characters include Ted, a high school dropout who manages the café and Tapedeck, whose recorder always blasts a cloud of sound around him.

The program has a reasonable aim and the characters seem lively enough. But how does it all work? Generally, each hour-long program contains three segments:

Short interviews with today’s heroes such as Julius Irving, Bruce Jenner, Sally Struthers. Cheryl Tiegs, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Comedy sketches that focus on teenage problems such as being too short or unpopular, first dates, parental divorces, etc.

Music by the Hot Hero Band or guest groups like Sister Sledge, KISS, or Little River Band.

Let’s back up a minute and talk about those interviews. Where else could you discover Hal Linden (“Barney Miller”), who had been raised in the Jewish religion, failed to pass along his strong beliefs to his children? When “Holocaust” was on TV, Linden’s kids didn’t watch it. “There was no greater influence in my life than that event,” he says, “Yet, somehow, I didn’t get it over to the next generation.

In one interview Donna Pescow (“Angie”) told about her hunt for her father whom she hadn’t seen in eight years. And Erik Estrada explained how he felt when he found his best friend dead, a victim of drug overdose.

These interviews aren’t the kind you’ll find in fan magazines. They’re not gossip. Dr. Tom Cottle, who handles the interviews, doesn’t ask anyone about her favorite kind of ice cream or his latest movie. These celebrities talk about more important things. All the people interviewed on “Hot Hero Sandwich” focus on the changes they’ve gone through and how they coped with their own special problems.

“We really wanted people who were heroes to kids,” Carol [sic] Hart explains. “There’s nothing more encouraging than to know that people whom you admire went through the same kinds of things you are going through. You can get the message across that there will come a time when you can smile at the problems you’re encountering now.”

The interviews make “Hot Hero Sandwich” exciting. And the comedy sketches present problems with a lighter touch. For example, suppose a celebrity tells about the nickname he had in high school. In a sketch a new kid in town goes to a party. Everyone there has a nickname, but the new kid is too embarrassed to reveal his. Finally he gives in. Instead of calling him Mark Johnson his buddies in his old school called him Mark Swivelhead Dinosaur Breath Pizza Face Donut Brain Wombat Jelly. With that name, he’s accepted by the group.

[Note: For the record, Mark Johnson’s (Jarett Smithwrick) nickname in episode 1 is actually, “Mark Swivelhead, Motormouth, Dinosaur-Breath, Pizza Face, Donut Brain, Yellow-belly, Bugger-eyed, Silly Putty, Sniveling, Bowlegged, Barfbag, Dipstick, Hangnail, Wombat, Johnson.”]

In another skit two aliens Ym and Ur [Denny Dillon and Paul O’Keefe] are traveling to Earth. They wonder if there is intelligent life on our planet — their only information comes from picking up TV waves/ Sometimes they don’t understand what they’re seeing. For instance, when they spot a beauty queen being crowned, they believe they’re watching an example of Earth’s politics. And when they catch the President smiling for the cameras, Ym and Ur think they’re seeing a beauty contest.

But not all sketches are funny. Some of the episodes deal in a real way with problems that don’t have easy answers. In one sketch Sam [Matt McCoy], a football player, has just learned that his parents are divorcing. He’s very upset about it, His friends at the Hot Hero Cafe help him work it out — but they don’t really wrap up his problem in a neat solution as you might expect. They suggest that Sam use that anger he feels on the football field. Maybe if he lets out some of his inner feelings, the team might break its losing streak.

Finally, the loom of music weaves all these segments together. In the first show Sister Sledge sand “We Are Family” after telling how the profits they received from their first hit record were used to buy braces for their teeth, And in a recent program a minimovie followed KISS’s Gene Simmons as he touched up his vampire makeup and then showed the rock group entertaining an enthusiastic audience.

Well, that’s “Hot Hero Sandwich.” YYW thinks it’s a pretty good show that doesn’t offer much baloney. Some top critics agree. A Christian Science Monitor writer says the show “is filled with a mix of fun, fear, and wackiness.” And a Los Angeles TV writer says the program is “a classic novel hidden inside a comic book.”

But not everyone is satisfied with “Hot Hero Sandwich.” A writer for Chicago New Expressions comments that the skits are too humorous, the scripts and acting sometimes too corny, and the show “another stereotype of how adults see teen life.”

Not all the scores are in for the program. But it seems the show’s creators have achieved their main goal. “We want to show teenagers that they are not alone in their feelings, “ Carol [sic] Hart remarks.

Maybe that’s a lot to crew on. But it’s an idea that almost all the heroes interview on the program support.

When Leonard Nimoy (“Mr. Spock”) spoke on “Hot Hero Sandwich,” he recited something that he written: I may not be the fastest. I may not be the tallest or the strongest. But one thing I can do better than anyone else, and that is to be me. Nimoy concluded. “Finally, that’s all you can do, isn’t it? You can do a really good job of being yourself.”

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