Sunday, March 25, 2018

Toon Rock: Old McDonald Had a Farm, Flintstone style (1964)

From season 3 of The Flintstones:

The Flintstones & Rubbles are on a camping vacation when Fred (Alan Reed) & Barney (Mel Blanc) happen across a global Cave Scout Jamboree. The climax has the boys leading the scouts on a rendition of "Old McDonald Had a Farm", with the lyrics done multi-lingually. There's really a question of whether or not the producers actually got the French, Dutch, German, Italian, & Japanese translations right, though.



This is the only part of the episode I remember seeing. We'll have the full episode up another day.

6 comments:

magicdog said...

Always enjoyed this episode and especially this segment!

As someone who speaks French (and a smattering of Spanish), it would seem the kids are speaking in accented English rather than their actual languages.

One YT commenter stated what the lyrics would have been for the German and Dutch scouts:

Gobble gobble herr und ein gobble go dort (German)
Quack Quack hier ist un Quack Quack er (Dutch)

French would have been something like this (using the French word for chicken):

Avec un poussin ici et un poussin ici, un poussin, un poussin, Partout un poussin

(With a chick chick here and a chick chick there, everywhere a chick chick)

The Mexican boys were still speaking in accented English but they did use the Spanish word, chica (de pollo) for "chick".

hobbyfan said...

Hmmm, sounds like they were cutting corners....

Chris Sobieniak said...

It wouldn't surprise me they'd cut corners than to try hiring someone familiar with those languages to help out.

hobbyfan said...

When you're dealing with network suits concerned with budgets, some sacrifices have to be made.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Jonny Quest fell into the same situation when it came to using incoherent gibbering and passing it off as some native language heard in the show.

hobbyfan said...

That's cutting corners for you. I can imagine they did the same thing with some of the adventure shows of 1966-68.