Our Famous First for September is the series premiere of Fangface, the debut entry from Joe Ruby & Ken Spears' studio, as they spun off on their own after two seasons back at Hanna-Barbera, time also spent creating series for the Kroffts.
The biggest flaw to the show, really, was the title hero himself (Frank Welker). Sherman Fangsworth, aka Fangface, wears a backward baseball cap in both identities. The infant Fangs, shown in the open, would be recycled the next year as Sherm's nephew, Fangpuss. How unoriginal can you get?
Actress Susan Blu (Kim) later became a voice director herself, but was the relative unknown in the core cast, alongside H-B vets Welker and Jerry Dexter (Biff). Bart Braverman (Puggs) would become recognizable to audiences from his work on another ABC series, Vega$. As explained in the opener, "A Heap of Trouble", Fangface has this obsession with eating Puggs whenever someone mentions food, usually by accident.
The Heap, the villain of this episode, is not to be confused with the comic book character of the same name, whose history goes back to the Golden Age, and may have been the forerunner to Marvel's Man-Thing and DC's Swamp Thing. The villain's secret identity and motivations are revealed in the first three minutes, which makes solving the case easy for viewers accustomed to Scooby-Doo and his various "clones", of which Fangface was the latest.
Norman Maurer (The Robonic Stooges) is one of the writers.
Rating: B--.
2 comments:
Puggs and Fangs may or may not have been patterned after Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall of The Bowery Boys.
Joe Ruby and Ken Spears' visual and animation style so closely resembled that of Hanna-Barbera studios that I initially believed that Fangface was produced by H-B until I noticed the show's end credits.
Re.: Puggs & Fangs: Yes, they were patterned after Gorcey & Hall, and I noted that in previous Fangface entries.
I think Ruby & Spears had earned enough cheddar from their work with H-B, the Kroffts, Fox, & DePatie-Freleng to start their own studio, which marks its 40th anniversary.
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