What do you get when you cross Devo with tbe Monkees and the Impossibles? How about........The Aquabats!
The Aquabats are a real-life band out of Southern California who've been around for nearly 20 years, and now are finally gaining the national exposure they've long sought, with the Hub's newest Saturday morning entry, The Aquabats! Super Show!, which launched last month, and currently has reruns airing in the early evening on Mondays.
Frontman Christian Jacobs, aka MC Bat Commander, is also one of the creative forces behind Nickelodeon's Yo Gabba Gabba!, and has shopped around the concept behind this series for a number of years. The bizarre, campy monsters shown in the following clip will remind many of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers franchise, which is still going strong as it approaches its own 20th anniversary in the US. Appropriately, the Hub recently made a programming change on Mondays so that the live-action Batman leads into repeats of Super Show!, especially considering that Jacobs has cited Batman as one of the influences behind the series.
Here's the open:
According to a Wikipedia entry on the series, and take it for as much as you think it's worth, given how Wiki-entries have often been tampered with, the band had a deal with Cartoon Network for a show, but it went south when CN shuffled out the executives who'd cut said deal. The band's previous link to CN was in composing music for Evan Dorkin's Welcome to Eltingville 1-shot special a few years back. The Hub, a relatively fresh network by comparison, signed the band for 1 season, 13 episodes, and if it goes over with the audience, you can expect renewal sometime before the end of the year.
I watched a repeat episode earlier with special guest star Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) as the villain, and I have to say, it is a throwback, not only to Batman, but considering its primary spot on the schedule, the live-action Saturday shows of the 70's, like, for example, Ghost Busters. The fake commercials mixed into the show take their cues from Saturday Night Live, but are geared for children.
Now, let's see if the Aquabats can bring their act to my neck of the woods......
Rating: A-.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Peter Potamus (1964)
Like Hanna-Barbera stablemate Magilla Gorilla, Peter Potamus began in syndication in 1964, and then was picked up by ABC a year later. By then, the two series had traded backup features, with Ricochet Rabbit joining Peter, and Breezly & Sneezly going over to Magilla's show. Ideal Toys, a Long Island-based company, sponsored both series.
Peter wasn't essentially a hero, but he was a time traveling adventurer, with So-So as his faithful sidekick. The lone thing that would put him with Ricochet and Touche Turtle in terms of being a funny animal superhero is his Hippo Hurricane Holler, which he uses as a last resort to defeat the bad guys. As you'll see in the following clip, Peter had a certain charm that enamored him to the ladies. Seems the idea was that Peter had a bit of a singing cowboy to him, too.
Toontracker uploaded this black & white clip montage, which includes the season 2 closing with Ricochet & Droopalong.
In recent years, Peter traded away his pith helmet for a three-piece suit as he appeared frequently on [adult swim]'s Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law. The [as] idiots turned Peter into a bit of an annoyance based on one simple catchphrase. It's going to be hard developing a revival of Peter's original series as a result, since today's fans are only familiar with his [as] appearances. Personally, I'd rather see Peter unleash the holler on the [as] crew...........
Rating: B.
Peter wasn't essentially a hero, but he was a time traveling adventurer, with So-So as his faithful sidekick. The lone thing that would put him with Ricochet and Touche Turtle in terms of being a funny animal superhero is his Hippo Hurricane Holler, which he uses as a last resort to defeat the bad guys. As you'll see in the following clip, Peter had a certain charm that enamored him to the ladies. Seems the idea was that Peter had a bit of a singing cowboy to him, too.
Toontracker uploaded this black & white clip montage, which includes the season 2 closing with Ricochet & Droopalong.
In recent years, Peter traded away his pith helmet for a three-piece suit as he appeared frequently on [adult swim]'s Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law. The [as] idiots turned Peter into a bit of an annoyance based on one simple catchphrase. It's going to be hard developing a revival of Peter's original series as a result, since today's fans are only familiar with his [as] appearances. Personally, I'd rather see Peter unleash the holler on the [as] crew...........
Rating: B.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Bad TV: Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills (1994)
It wasn't enough that DIC had sold the inept Superhuman Samurai SyberSquad to ABC as a mid-season replacement series in 1994. The studio also gave USA Network another Power Rangers rip-off, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills that same year. This show was videotaped as opposed to filmed, unlike the other shows, and the cheesy special effects used on the show reflect the low-budget mentality of the producers.
Currently, the series airs in back-to-back episodes on This TV (check local listings) as part of their Sunday morning block, but it clearly wasn't meant for Saturday morning consumption. Trust me, there was a reason the broadcast networks passed on this show.
Let me sum up the plot. Evil alien despot wants to conquer and control Earth. A sentient jello mold named Nimbar (voice of Glenn Shadix, "Beetlejuice") recruits four teens from super-rich Beverly Hills to be his warriors, or, to use the proper term, Galactic Sentinels. Here's the open, narrated by Nimbar:
Even the music was lame, and I don't mean in gold lame, either. That it lasted a full year was a miracle.
Rating: D.
Currently, the series airs in back-to-back episodes on This TV (check local listings) as part of their Sunday morning block, but it clearly wasn't meant for Saturday morning consumption. Trust me, there was a reason the broadcast networks passed on this show.
Let me sum up the plot. Evil alien despot wants to conquer and control Earth. A sentient jello mold named Nimbar (voice of Glenn Shadix, "Beetlejuice") recruits four teens from super-rich Beverly Hills to be his warriors, or, to use the proper term, Galactic Sentinels. Here's the open, narrated by Nimbar:
Even the music was lame, and I don't mean in gold lame, either. That it lasted a full year was a miracle.
Rating: D.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Saturday Morning's Greatest Hits: Evolution Revolution (1970)
Some artists have recorded songs named after them. Bo Diddley and Living in a Box come to mind rather quickly, but there is also the Evolution Revolution, the pre-fab chimp band featuring Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp as a backup feature on Lancelot's ABC series (1970-72). The very last track on the Revolution's self-titled one-and-only album is named for the band.
Ed Simian (Dayton Allen) introduces the band.
Ed Simian (Dayton Allen) introduces the band.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Family Toons: The Hillbilly Bears (1965)
The Hillbilly Bears were one of the backup features for Atom Ant, but it's clear these shorts were a funny animal knockoff of The Beverly Hillbillies, as if the Clampetts had never left the Ozark mountains.
Most of the humor centered on mumblin', bumblin' Paw Rugg (Henry Corden), perhaps the most unintelligible patriarch in television history. In "Leaky Creek", Maw (Jean VanderPyl, The Flintstones) has to drag Paw to the creek to take a bath, but a beaver has apparently staked out the area for himself. Uploaded by vidz4kidz1:
More than a decade later, VanderPyl & Corden would team again, as Corden succeeded Alan Reed as the voice of Fred Flintstone. Unfortunately, after a rerun cycle as part of the Banana Splits & Friends syndicated package, the Rugg family hasn't been considered for a revival, and you'd think the lunatics at Cartoon Network would've given them at least a look. Of course, when you consider the idiots running that network have zero interest in doing anything right.........
Rating: B.
Most of the humor centered on mumblin', bumblin' Paw Rugg (Henry Corden), perhaps the most unintelligible patriarch in television history. In "Leaky Creek", Maw (Jean VanderPyl, The Flintstones) has to drag Paw to the creek to take a bath, but a beaver has apparently staked out the area for himself. Uploaded by vidz4kidz1:
More than a decade later, VanderPyl & Corden would team again, as Corden succeeded Alan Reed as the voice of Fred Flintstone. Unfortunately, after a rerun cycle as part of the Banana Splits & Friends syndicated package, the Rugg family hasn't been considered for a revival, and you'd think the lunatics at Cartoon Network would've given them at least a look. Of course, when you consider the idiots running that network have zero interest in doing anything right.........
Rating: B.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Saturtainment: Squiddly Diddly (1965)
Most of us know an octopus can't talk----it has no mouth. However, Hanna-Barbera had other ideas when they needed a second backup feature for Secret Squirrel in 1965. Enter Squiddly Diddly.
Squiddly was the featured attraction at a theme park based on the real-life Sea World. Just the same, Squiddly gave Chief Winchley (John Stephenson) plenty of fits. Sorry to say, I can't find an episode in English. All I can find on YouTube so far is in Spanish, save for this long-lost bumper that segues into each episode. Credit Muttley16 with this entry:
Squiddly was back in the public eye recently, along with a number of other cartoon stars of the past, in an ad for MetLife that premiered during the Super Bowl last month. Now, of course, it remains to be seen if they decide at Cartoon Network to do something worthwhile with him. Given that it's CN, I doubt it.
Rating: B.
Squiddly was the featured attraction at a theme park based on the real-life Sea World. Just the same, Squiddly gave Chief Winchley (John Stephenson) plenty of fits. Sorry to say, I can't find an episode in English. All I can find on YouTube so far is in Spanish, save for this long-lost bumper that segues into each episode. Credit Muttley16 with this entry:
Squiddly was back in the public eye recently, along with a number of other cartoon stars of the past, in an ad for MetLife that premiered during the Super Bowl last month. Now, of course, it remains to be seen if they decide at Cartoon Network to do something worthwhile with him. Given that it's CN, I doubt it.
Rating: B.
Saturtainment: The CBS Children's Film Festival (1967)
The CBS Children's Film Festival first hit the air in 1967, airing as a series of summer specials for kids that aired on weekend or weekday afternoons. Four years later, CBS decided to move the show into a permanent slot at the bottom of their Saturday morning lineup and scale back on the repeats of older shows.
Puppeteer Burr Tillstrom revived his puppets, Kukla & Ollie, along with human sidekick Fran Allison, to serve as the show's hosts. Kukla, Fran, & Ollie had previously headlined their own series some years earlier, but the comeback for this trio lasted just a few years before the network decided to tinker with the formula and dismissed Tillstrom & Allison in favor of a shorter format and a new title, The CBS Saturday Film Festival. The series was subsequently cancelled in favor of a newsmagazine, 30 Minutes, anchored by In The News narrator Christopher Glenn, but was brought back for a 2 year run before ending for good in 1984. By then, however, the film festival was blacked out in most areas as network affiliates opted to fill the hours from noon (ET) onward with syndicated programming that would help increase local ad revenues.
The purpose of the film festival was to showcase short features from around the world that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day in this country. Today, some of those films, were they to be given another airing here, would probably air on either the Sundance Channel or IFC or some other arts-centric channel.
Tapthatt12 uploaded this open & close from 1967.
Regrettably, I didn't see this too often, largely because it was blacked out in my area for the majority of its run, for one thing, and for another, when it first aired, it was usually around nap time for a little toddler like me. No rating as a result.
Puppeteer Burr Tillstrom revived his puppets, Kukla & Ollie, along with human sidekick Fran Allison, to serve as the show's hosts. Kukla, Fran, & Ollie had previously headlined their own series some years earlier, but the comeback for this trio lasted just a few years before the network decided to tinker with the formula and dismissed Tillstrom & Allison in favor of a shorter format and a new title, The CBS Saturday Film Festival. The series was subsequently cancelled in favor of a newsmagazine, 30 Minutes, anchored by In The News narrator Christopher Glenn, but was brought back for a 2 year run before ending for good in 1984. By then, however, the film festival was blacked out in most areas as network affiliates opted to fill the hours from noon (ET) onward with syndicated programming that would help increase local ad revenues.
The purpose of the film festival was to showcase short features from around the world that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day in this country. Today, some of those films, were they to be given another airing here, would probably air on either the Sundance Channel or IFC or some other arts-centric channel.
Tapthatt12 uploaded this open & close from 1967.
Regrettably, I didn't see this too often, largely because it was blacked out in my area for the majority of its run, for one thing, and for another, when it first aired, it was usually around nap time for a little toddler like me. No rating as a result.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)