Saturday, September 29, 2018

Getting Schooled: The Toothbrush Family (1974)

G'day, mate. Do you remember The Toothbrush Family?

This series of short cartoons was the idea of Marcia Hatfield of Australia, who came up with the idea to convince her son to start brushing his teeth. Billie Richards (Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer) and Len Carlson, known here in the States for his work on the animated Swamp Thing and other cartoons, performed all the voices in these shorts, which made their way to the US in 1979, airing on Captain Kangaroo.

Let's take a look at a sample.



The poster is referring to the period when these shorts ran in the US, as the copyright clearly shows 1974. The series was revived in 1998 in Australia, but those efforts haven't reached our shores.

Rating: B-.

2 comments:

Goldstar said...

Myself, like other American children (I suspect) saw "The Toothbrush Family" when those cartoons ran on CBS' Captain Kangaroo on weekday mornings. I would watch the show on the occasions when I was off from school.

The animation was made on the cheap, with the same drawings and animations being re-used several times per short. Perhaps this studio was Australia's equivalent to Filmation.

hobbyfan said...

Rainbow might've been just that, for all we know.