Today, I began my task of tracking down the 32 missing thumbnails.1
I made some good progress — locating roughly half of them — without even using the Wayback Machine!2 But I can’t get this done all in one night, so I’m taking a break.
Of the episode thumbnails I’ve recovered so far, this one is by far my favorite. Straight from Episode 62: Gary the Cat Killer!
I was so delighted to see that poor-looking Pikachu face while scrolling through the episode list. But I felt this funny feeling while looking at it.
I’d never forgotten this picture. It’s so familiar to me, and one of my favorite thumbnails. But at the same time, I realized that I did forget about this picture. Completely.
When I saw Episode 62 was missing a thumbnail, I didn’t even know what was supposed to be there instead. I’d never remembered this image or thought about it at all.
Until now.
I don’t like forgetting things. It’s why I keep so many notes in my daily life: physically and digitally, tracking both the mundane and the important.
And I guess that’s why this website exists, too. So I always have somewhere to come back to and jog my memory. So I won’t forget small things, like an incredibly sad-but-hilarious photo of a poor, poor Pikachu cat.3
Not only does this episode feature the true story behind Gary the cat killer, but doesn’t it also include the first mention of the Pokémon trading card game?4 I probably need to give this one another listen.
Anyway, the missing thumbnail task has turned out to be a surprisingly interesting journey so far. I even discovered an unreleased thumbnail. But more on that later.
- This is an initial estimate, of course. There are 32 episodes on the site that are showing the logo for their thumbnail. It’s possible that one or two of these did indeed use the logo as the thumbnail. I can’t remember at this point. Of course, this 32 number is not counting episode 1, which is the only one that did not have any kind of thumbnail image. ↩︎
- Yes, that means all of these images I found tonight are still hosted on the AGG website. They just aren’t displayed on the website for some reason. But I will save the details for another post. ↩︎
- For the record: you should not do this to your cat. Or any cats. But I’m not going to sit here and act like this photo isn’t hilarious. ↩︎
- Pete playing the Pokémon theme song while introducing the game is one of my favorite podcast moments, whatever episode it happens to be on. But again, that’s for another post. ↩︎