It’s FAT ALBERT!!!!!!

What? I can’t make a cartoon a fatcon?

Pffft.

I just did.

It’s Fatwareness Month and this animated pudgester is definitely on my list!

#28: FAT ALBERT

Hey, Hey, Hey...Fat Albert is FATCON #28!

Back in the day, when I was a kid, Bill Cosby could do no wrong. He was the JELL-O pudding pop man, he was on the brink of the Cosby Show and he was the voice of the dopest cartoon around, Fat Albert. The Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids show really spoke to me for a lot of reasons.

1) We were not rich, I will tell you that, and Fat Albert and his gang of friends made me feel okay about being a little kid with hand-me-down gear and not so great sneakers.

2) Fat Albert gave me much-needed fashion sense. In fact, I am going to credit my love of sneakers and dope t-shirts and hats to the Fat Albert show. Those Cosby kids might have been poor and in the junkyard, but hot damn if their sneaker game wasn’t on point.

3) Fat Albert made me feel like I could be a chubby kid and still be happy and have friends. At a time when the delicate lines were being drawn of normal kid and chubby kid, I had a pretty healthy sense of self-confidence. Hey, Hey, Hey…

4) Fat Albert gave me a healthy appreciation for music, too. I challenge you to find a doper theme song than the Fat Albert theme song. Seriously. It’s like Sly and the Family Stone and Curtis Mayfield had a baby. It is funk perfection and any song that states, “Na, na, na gonna have a good time!” is fuckin’ all right by me. Solid, man. Solid!

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids gave me a good appreciation for black men. Rudy Davis' swagger could not be denied.

5) Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids also gave me a healthy love of minority culture…yeah, I am really going to pin my love of the brothas on this cartoon. lol I had a thing for Rudy Davis. (The one in the purple and pink outfit. Bellbottom goodness and a hat  to match! Any man who could rock such a gregarious ensemble had to have mad  game. Perhaps this explains my fascination with pimps…hmmm….but I digress…) Saturday mornings with the Cosby Kids and their high-beat, infectious hilarity and mad swagger made me feel like saying it loud, I was black and I was proud. Well, I was brown, but I was growing up in an Irish neighborhood and there was a big shortage of caramel and chocolate in my hood, if ya’ know what I mean. Fat Albert really satisfied my curiosity about darker folks like me.

6) Watching Fat Albert was also mad educational. Bill Cosby would always say,”This is Bill Cosby coming out with music and fun. If you’re not careful, you may learn something before it’s done!
Hey, hey, hey!” And boy was he right. Fat Albert was one of my T.V. moral staples. There was a lesson in every episode, I tell you, and I sucked all those pearls of wisdom up. (Eww, I just said sucked up all those pearls…HAHAHAH!!)

Hence, Fat Albert is deemed a Fatcon, by me, and makes the countdown at #28 for FATWARENESS MONTH. And I am posting the theme song because it’s so fresh, so check it out and revel in the bigness, ya’ll. Being fat never felt so jive-a-lacious!

-goobs