Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: King Kong (1966)

After testing the waters with the syndicated Tales of the Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Pinocchio a few years earlier, Videocraft (Rankin-Bass) broke onto the Saturday morning landscape with a, ah, reimagining, if you will, of King Kong. One of the most fearsome monsters in cinematic history was being represented as a superhero of a different kind. ABC was home for Kong and his back-up feature, Tom of T.H.U.M.B., a spy parody that was to Kong like oil to water, if you get my drift. Here's the pilot episode, "A Friend in Need":

Classic Media owns the rights to the show presently, but don't expect it to resurface on television any time soon. Rankin-Bass would give Saturdays another try 4 years later, and would produce a grand total of 6 series, all but one airing on ABC. Sorry to say, but Kong would end up the worst of the lot.

Rating: C-.