So, I had this theory - that everyone has a television show they remember vividly from childhood that nobody else remembers seeing, ever.
My show was Count Duckula, a cartoon about a duck vampire who was revived in an off-label sort of way by his bumbling duck servants: at the crucial point in his awakening ceremony, they used tomato ketchup instead of blood. This is the kind of mistake that can really send a duck-vampire-awakening ceremony sideways, and obviously, hilarity and hijinx ensued.
Figure 1. Count Duckula Introductory Sequence
I passed this theory by a few LUCKY FRIENDS (which is, I am sure, exactly how they feel about being my go-to people for this stuff), and it turned out that they all seemed to conform to the theory, rhyming off shows I had never heard of before and am actually pretty sure didn't ever air anywhere but in their respective basements.
The problem with experiencing some minor successes in proving a pet theory is that it makes you overconfident. Pet theories aren't meant to be actually tested, they are meant to closely guarded, barely examined, and pulled out for show only. Ignoring this rule, I plunged blindly forward, trying the theory out on everyone I could get to sit still long enough to hear me out. Maybe the flaw in the theory is the finite number of television shows, who knows, but I started hearing the same names over and over again, taking some of the wind out of my sails.
The final crushing blow came this past Sunday, when I was sitting in Tequila Bookworm and overheard the guy behind the bar delivering a top level overview of the plot of Count Duckula. He even explained it better than me.