Professor Sauernoggin is the inventor of Toxic Waste Sour Candy. He lives in the mid-western town of Rhubarb Crossing, where he teaches at a small land-grant college. There, Sauernoggin lectures on Applied Sourology,® a discipline he founded. Most of the faculty have only a vague idea of what Sauernoggin is up to, often referring to him as “that crazy, taste-bud fellow.”

In his off-hours, Sauernoggin can be found in the secret laboratory he has constructed in the cellar of his modest home, tinkering with his chemicals and looking for new ways to convert the world’s toxic waste into safe and useful products.

Sauernoggin is a good-natured fellow with a child-like appreciation for the world he lives in. He is easily distracted, intuitively brilliant, and unusually lucky.

Mr. Toxie Head is Sauernoggin’s alter ego. He’s the result of a bizarre transformation that the Professor underwent one day after he mistook a beaker of toxic waste for his coffee cup. He realized his error as soon as he had taken a big gulp, but by then it was too late. A chemical reaction surged through his body and he exploded into a human fireball, a sort of anthropomorphic mushroom cloud-shaped dynamo. Fortunately, the transformation was only temporary. After a few minutes, the potion wore off and he transformed back into his old self again. Realizing the potential of his new discovery, he distilled the substance into its pure form. Now, a sip of his secret formula is all it takes to transform him into Mr. Toxie Head, ecological hero and defender of the environment! Mr. Toxie Head uses his super powers to fight against evil polluters and enemies of the environment. While Professor Sauernoggin is passionate about recycling, Mr. Toxie Head has combined forces with the Professor to make sure Planet Earth continues to recycle itself by encouraging kids everywhere to save, save, save.

Mr. Toxie Head says there are so many ways to save. Here are just a few tips he has on saving:

Hazmat is the professor’s pet rat. Originally a mild-mannered, brainy rodent who studied the professor
in hopes of becoming a scientist in his own right, Hazmat met with an untimely end at the hands of Sauernoggin’s wife. Brunhilda, it seems, doesn’t like the idea of having a rodent loose in her house.

Unwilling to lose his companion, Sauernoggin immediately went to work on him, reviving him with bionic implants. Hazmat is back, but he is not quite the same rodent he used to be. With his zoom-lens eye and telescoping antenna for broadcasting what he sees back to the professor’s lab, he makes
the perfect secret agent for keeping an eye on the nefarious Dr. Smogg — if only he didn’t have an unpredictable, quirky new personality and a tendency to short out at the wrong time!

Smogg is something of an Environmental Super Villain. He was once an industrialist who made his fortune in heavy manufacturing using methods that were wasteful and produced a lot of toxic by-products. In order to dispose of these he began buying up land to turn into huge, unmanageable, illegal landfills. Soon he found that he could make more money taking in the pollutants of others and storing them in these unsafe waste dumps than by making anything useful. He closed down his manufacturing plants and now works full time, secretly buying properties and turning them into illicit waste dumps.

To all outward appearances, Smogg is a prosperous, upstanding member of the community. He lives in a large, Art Moderne mansion on the edge of town. The expansive lawn behind his wrought iron fence is impeccably manicured. He
is often seen driving his vintage Duesenberg roadster and he always obeys all traffic laws and posted speed limits.

It is only his disturbing personal appearance that gives a hint of his true nature: He is pale, completely bald, and though tall, would be even taller if it weren’t for a pronounced stoop. He wears a perpetual sneer and his red-rimmed eyes have a glaring quality that is not improved by the fact that he wears a monocle on a silk cord.

Toxisaurus is a small dinosaur who’s only half-way hatched from a fossilized egg. The little velociraptor pup was inadvertently reanimated when some toxic waste from one of Dr. Smogg’s illegal landfills seeped into a nearby paleontological dig. Professor Sauernoggin was able to free his top half, legs and tail, but the rest of his bottom half is still encased in the stone egg. In spite of this, he manages to get around pretty well. Toxisaurus is a spunky little fellow with a voracious appetite that tends to get him into trouble. He tries to eat anything he can get his hands on, whether it’s Brunhilda’s fuzzy slippers or even Hazmat (if he’s not careful). Fortunately, the little lab rat carries a supply of Toxic Waste candies. Whenever Hazmat feels threatened, he tosses one into the dino’s mouth, immobilizing his jaws in a severe sour pucker that lasts for several minutes.

Smog-Dog is an endearing, googly-eyed, goofy mutt with a malodorous intestinal problem. He emits blasts of foggy, foul-smelling gas from his hindquarters at inopportune times. These unintentional expulsions make him less than pleasant to be around and sometimes have sufficient “muzzle velocity” to actually propel the dog, like some kind of four-footed rocket, a short distance through the air.

Found as a stray hanging around Dr. Smogg’s property, he is adopted by Sauernoggin, who teaches him that his unusual “talent” for powered flight just might become an asset.

A thoroughly unpleasant feline, Sourpuss was found hanging around Dr. Smogg’s first illicit landfill. While he is not normally the type to take in homeless strays, something cruel in the cat’s nature appealed to Smogg’s evil side. When he first saw Sourpuss, the wiry tomcat had cornered a large junk-yard rat and was teasing the vicious rodent by alternately cutting off its two routes of escape. This example of petty tyranny won Sourpuss a place at Smogg’s side. Even though the cat is a mangy, smelly mess, he was deemed a useful ally by the villain.

While skinny, Sourpuss is uncommonly strong. His broken fang and a missing chunk of ear show him to be a battle-scarred veteran of many brawls. As if to telegraph that this cat is trouble, his ragged yellow coat is interrupted by a series of black stripes that look uncommonly like a crime-scene barrier.