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You heard it at the end of a thousand TV shows. A dog, a frisbee, and a man's voice saying "Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog." But almost nobody knew what it meant — or the surprising truth about that four-second clip.

For Gen X, the Ubu Productions logo is one of the most familiar things on television — and one of the least understood. Back in the '80s and '90s, people were so baffled by it they wrote letters to newspaper columnists asking what it was. Plenty of folks didn't even hear the name right (yes, the "Boo Boo" people are still out there). In this video, we get into who Ubu really was, the broke hitchhiking trip through Europe where that famous photo was taken in front of the Louvre, how Gary David Goldberg built an empire around his best friend — and the one secret about that clip that almost nobody knows to this day.

Stick around to the end for that one. And for my own attempt at a "Sit, Ubu, sit" tribute, which… did not go as planned.

⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 — [Cold open]
00:34 — The vanity card nobody understood
01:03 — Who was Ubu?
02:40 — The photo in front of the Louvre
03:06 — How Ubu Productions was born
04:05 — Michael J. Fox and the two big hits
05:10 — The secret behind the bark
05:49 — Good dog


If you remember catching this at the end of Family Ties, you're in the right place. This channel is for the folks who were there — the stuff we grew up with, and the stories underneath it we never knew.

The inspiration behind Ubu Productions came from Gary David Goldberg whose dog was actually named Ubu "yes there was a real Ubu" and the story behind this production company's name was Gary had named it after Ubu passed away as a tribute to him. But when 80's sitcoms were huge Ubu Productions was huge for producing monster hits like Family Ties and Spin City and Silver Spoons and you could tell that a Gary David Goldberg sitcom was gonna be good just by seeing the famous Ubu Productions logo and the logo alone is a fun bit of nostalgia for anyone who loves dogs