Candle Cove

*It comes most often at night. That niggling memory, gnawing in some corner of your mind like a rodent chewing the corners of the drywall. The memory of some brightly lit cartoon funland, or a world of puppets. A memory of a tv show, you would watch, seated cross legged on the living room floor with the fixed enthusiastic attention only a child can give. Attention that you wish now, you perhaps hadn’t given so freely. For there is something about that show, something about the discordant music, the details of the characters, their motivations and the storylines, the fixed maniacal grins that seems, looking back, to be altogether too sinister to be a children’s show. You try to block the memory out and yet, there in the back of your mind, most often at night, the puppet’s fixed grin, keeps on smiling.*

## NetNostalgia Forum

Skyshale033

Subject: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

Does anyone remember this kid’s show? It was called Candle Cove and I must have been 6 or 7. I never found reference to it anywhere so I think it was on a local station around 1971 or 1972. I lived in Ironton at the time. I don’t remember which station, but I do remember it was on at a weird time, like 4:00 PM.

mike\_painter65

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

it seems really familiar to me…..i grew up outside of ashland and was 9 yrs old in 72. candle cove…was it about pirates? i remember a pirate marionete at the mouth of a cave talking to a little girl

Skyshale033

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

YES! Okay I’m not crazy! I remember Pirate Percy. I was always kind of scared of him. He looked like he was built from parts of other dolls, real low-budget. His head was an old porcelain baby doll, looked like an antique that didn’t belong on the body. I don’t remember what station this was! I don’t think it was WTSF though.

Jaren\_2005

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

Sorry to ressurect this old thread but I know exactly what show you mean, Skyshale. I think Candle Cove ran for only a couple months in ‘71, not ‘72. I was 12 and I watched it a few times with my brother. It was channel 58, whatever station that was. My mom would let me switch to it after the news. Let me see what I remember.

It took place in Candle cove, and it was about a little girl who imagined herself to be friends with pirates. The pirate ship was called the Laughingstock, and Pirate Percy wasn’t a very good pirate because he got scared too easily. And there was calliope music constantly playing. Don’t remember the girl’s name. Janice or Jade or something. Think it was Janice.

Skyshale033

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

Thank you Jaren!!! Memories flooded back when you mentioned the Laughingstock and channel 58. I remember the bow of the ship was a wooden smiling face, with the lower jaw submerged. It looked like it was swallowing the sea and it had that awful Ed Wynn voice and laugh. I especially remember how jarring it was when they switched from the wooden/plastic model, to the foam puppet version of the head that talked.

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mike\_painter65

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

ha ha i remember now too.  do you remember this part skyshale: “you have…to go…INSIDE.”

Skyshale033

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

Ugh mike, I got a chill reading that. Yes I remember. That’s what the ship always told Percy when there was a spooky place he had to go in, like a cave or a dark room where the treasure was. And the camera would push in on Laughingstock’s face with each pause. YOU HAVE… TO GO… INSIDE. With his two eyes askew and that flopping foam jaw and the fishing line that opened and closed it. Ugh. It just looked so cheap and awful.

You guys remember the villain? He had a face that was just a handlebar mustache above really tall, narrow teeth.

kevin\_hart

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

i honestly, honestly thought the villain was pirate percy. i was about 5 when this show was on. nightmare fuel.

Jaren\_2005

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

That wasn’t the villain, the puppet with the mustache. That was the villain’s sidekick, Horace Horrible. He had a monocle too, but it was on top of the mustache. I used to think that meant he had only one eye.

But yeah, the villain was another marionette. The Skin-Taker. I can’t believe what they let us watch back then.

kevin\_hart

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

jesus h. christ, the skin taker. what kind of a kids show were we watching? i seriously could not look at the screen when the skin taker showed up. he just descended out of nowhere on his strings, just a dirty skeleton wearing that brown top hat and cape. and his glass eyes that were too big for his skull. christ almighty.

Skyshale033

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

Wasn’t his top hat and cloak all sewn up crazily? Was that supposed to be children’s skin??

mike\_painter65

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

yeah i think so. rememer his mouth didn’t open and close, his jaw just slid back and foth. i remember the little girl said “why does your mouth move like that” and the skin-taker didn’t look at the girl but at the camera and said “TO GRIND YOUR SKIN”

Skyshale033

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

I’m so relieved that other people remember this terrible show!

I used to have this awful memory, a bad dream I had where the opening jingle ended, the show faded in from black, and all the characters were there, but the camera was just cutting to each of their faces, and they were just screaming, and the puppets and marionettes were flailing spastically, and just all screaming, screaming. The girl was just moaning and crying like she had been through hours of this. I woke up many times from that nightmare. I used to wet the bed when I had it.

kevin\_hart

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

i don’t think that was a dream. i remember that. i remember that was an episode.

Skyshale033

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

No no no, not possible. There was no plot or anything, I mean literally just standing in place crying and screaming for the whole show.

kevin\_hart

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

maybe I’m manufacturing the memory because you said that, but i swear to God i remember seeing what you described. they just screamed.

Jaren\_2005

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

Oh God. Yes. The little girl, Janice, I remember seeing her shake. And the Skin-Taker screaming through his gnashing teeth, his jaw careening so wildly I thought it would come off its wire hinges. I turned it off and it was the last time I watched. I ran to tell my brother and we didn’t have the courage to turn it back on.

mike\_painter65

Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

i visited my mom today at the nursing home. I asked her about when i was little in the early 70s, when i was 8 or 9 and if she remembered a kid’s show, candle cove. she said she was surprised I could remember that and i asked why, and she said, “because i used to think it was so strange that you said, ‘I’m going to go watch candle cove now mom’ and then you would tune the tv to static and juts watch dead air for 30 minutes. you had a big imagination with your little pirate show.”