Monday, April 25, 2016

Tooniversary: Captain Caveman & Son (1986)

Captain Caveman returned to ABC in 1986, this time as a show-within-a-show backup feature on The Flintstone Kids. "The world's first superhero", as it was claimed 9 years earlier, had returned to the Stone Age when NBC picked him up and added him to the Flintstones mythos in 1980.

This time, Cavey (Mel Blanc) has a son, Cavey, Jr. (Charlie Adler), with whom he shares his adventures. In other words, this time around, it was even more for laughs than before.

In one instance, it was even a family affair, as Cavey's mom joined the fun for a day. Anyway, each episode opens with Fred and pals gathered in front of a TV for the show.

Here's "Greed 'Em & Weep":




Geez, don't they look like Mr. Potato Head & family with hair?

Rating: C.

3 comments:

Silverstar said...

I can imagine how that board meeting went: some HB exec figured, "Hey. Captain Caveman's a caveman, we should put him on 'The Flintstones'!" Never mind that Cavey stuck out like a sore thumb in Bedrock. Cavey's no more at home in a modern Stone Age society than he is in the present day. It only kinda-sorta works here because in-universe he's a fictional character.

Goldstar said...

I remember this episode. It was the Mother's Day episode. The shows' producers chose to deal with the subject of mothers by having Captain Caveman's mom come to visit rather than addressing the question that I've been wondering since this series started: Who did Captain Caveman "do the deed" with in order to get a son?

hobbyfan said...

The easy answer for Junior's existence was H-B & ABC needed Cavey to have a junior sidekick for his 2nd tour of duty with the network, to correlate with the whole concept of the juvie adventures of Fred, Barney, Wilma, & Betty, and their friends (some of whom weren't previously seen as adults). Apparently, six months after cancelling 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo (and thereby sending Scrappy packing after 7 seasons), they hadn't learned their lesson about unnecessary additional characters.

Seems to me they retconned Cavey's earlier adventures in Bedrock (1980) out of existence while they were at it.......