Morrie Turner's newspaper strip Wee Pals was adapted for television as Kid Power in 1972. Produced by Rankin-Bass for ABC, Kid Power's ethnically diverse cast of youngsters was actually comparable to Charles Schulz's legendary Peanuts strip, but it would be another decade before Charlie Brown and company would make their Saturday morning debut. Muttley16 uploaded the open to Kid Power to YouTube:
Today, Wee Pals is still around, but not in as many papers as it once was, and Morrie Turner is still writing and drawing the strip, while Peanuts lives on in reprint form after Schulz's passing a few years back. Conversely, Kid Power, the last weekly series produced by Rankin-Bass, along with The Osmonds, has been lost in television limbo after it was cancelled. I may be wrong, but the series was shifted to Sundays for its final season. It's a shame, really. Fat Albert & the Cosby Kids, with its all-African-American cast, launched the same year, and became a television icon, lasting a total of 13 seasons (the last in syndication from 1984-85). Kid Power, had it been marketed the same way, might've hung on a little bit longer. All that's left now is to hope for a DVD release.
Rating: A-.
5 comments:
Another one from my youth I have fond memories of...though again, I spent Sunday mornings parked in front of this one. I remember that they had to tone down a couple of the kids from the comic strip to the TV version...Connie and Ralph, I think they were.
Yah, Ralph was the bully. Connie was the Lucy of this group.
Not sure they toned down Ralph at all in the Cartoons..Watched a couple of episodes recectly on the PBJ diginet. You'd think once in awhile Ralph would realize he is wrong but never does..
I remember this. Sad that it didn't last longer. And Morrie Turner died on 1/7/2015, so RIP Morrie Turner.
I posted a note on Turner's passing at that time, Unknown, thanks.
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