Mac/Windows: $19.95

By Rodney Alan Greenblat "Dazzeloids' wacky stories and goofy songs and sound effects make it a MUST HAVE for your CD-ROM library."  "This could be the Rocky and Bullwinkle of multimedia if it weren't so marvelously childlike."  Do the Dazzeloids make Ren & Stimpy look like Lassie & Hello Kitty? Not quite, but these cyberheroes are pretty darn strange. (If we didn't come right out and say so, you might sue. In fact, if you're feeling litigious, please do not watch "Stinkabod's Dream.") But the animations are so brilliant, the palette so electric, the script so silly, and the message so appealing (think for yourself! be goofy! turn off the tube!) that we fell for the Dazzeloids hook, line, and sinker.  Who are they? Creatures from a mondo bizarro somewhere to the left of Pee-wee's Playhouse, whose mission is to save the hapless Habitroids from total, mind-numbing boredom. They're Stinkabod Lamé (daredevil, prankster, slamdancer), Yendor Talbneerg (technoid supreme), and Titan Rose (muscleman and poet who speaks in rhyming couplets). Their fearless commander is the idealistic Anne Dilly Whim, out to avenge her sister's death of boredom in front of the TV. The Dazzeloids' nemesis is the Mediogre, head of the BLANDO Corporation and power-mad capitalist worm, and his sniveling techno-weasel sidekick, Pin Bleeper.  In "A Child Is Bored" the Dazzeloids step in to save little Jeremy Gerbilman from brain-washed zombification caused by an excess of BLANDO programming. The outcome of this adventure depends on which Dazzeloid is sent to the rescue. Stinkabod performs his inspired Dance of Silliness; Yendor straps his Brain Fun Stimulation Device to the child's shriveled cranium (you choose the mode: Bloat, Spin, Morph, Crunch...)  The Dazzeloids' mission in "Banker, Spare that Petshop" is to save the smelly Probe 'n' Poke Petshop (familiar to fans of Rodney's Wonder Window) from being sucked into the void of the Mediogre's Transglumifier to make room for another bank. "Dazzeloid Dreams" offers a glimpse of the heroes' psyches (more, perhaps, than you want to know) with totally weird dream sequences. Dazzeloids is crammed with choices--narrated text with definitions of both real and fanciful words, strange poems, interactive screens, bizarre sound effects, and enough hilarious surprises to entertain for hours. Rodney admits that Dazzeloids may contain material unsuitable for hamsters, but his kids love it, and so do ours.