It's been a long time since we checked in on Popeye.
The sailor ends up getting an unexpected 1st mate when a stray puppy decides to follow him, so now Popeye needs to thwart Brutus' attempts as a dog catcher. Here's "Dog Catcher Popeye". Most of the open and part of the closing have been edited off for copyright reasons.
After having been separated from his owner and family, Petey (Billy Jacoby) and friends encounter some poachers abducting seals for their skins. The episode title, "Petey & The 101 Seals", is a riff on Disney's 101 Dalmatians, which later was adapted for television by Disney for ABC.
Disney should've known this was going to happen.
As soon as it got out that Minnie Mouse would be given a new outfit for the 30th anniversary of Disneyland's Paris venue, conservative morons like Fox Shmooze's Jesse (Dirty) Watters and his guest du jour, Candace Owens, had a collective cow on the subject.
Lost in all of this is the fact that this is temporary, at least in France. Would Minnie have this ensemble here in the US, print media aside? That's up to Disney to decide.
One more reason to lament the fact they should've bought Fox Shmooze, too, and dumped Watters, Carlson, and the rest of the dummies.
Ye scribe has done the spelling bee thing. Not quite the formal competition as seen in 1969's "A Boy Named Charlie Brown", but as part of a 6th grade activity.
Charlie (Peter Robbins, in his final go-round as Charlie) is a couple of grades lower, but can America's lovable loser finally win?
At the end of the 90's, PBS revived two iconic series of the 70's. The Electric Company took a wrong turn at Tangent Street, and lasted just a couple of seasons.
Zoom, on the other hand, returned in the spring of 1999, and ran for seven seasons (1999-2005), updated for the 21st century, but otherwise pretty much the same as the original with games and viewer mail among the attractions.
Unfortunately, as much as I was a fan of the original, I never really got to see the updated version, so there's no rating. We'll leave you with a standard intro:
Here's a Shasta Cola ad that I wasn't going to wait until Halloween for. This was previously posted over at The Land of Whatever.
The monster of Frankenstein makes what appears to be a routine visit to a local grocery to stock up on Shasta orange. The shopkeeper (John Fiedler) just lets him go, knowing the monster never carries any money. Tom Bosley narrates.
With Hanna-Barbera having almost a monopoly on Saturday morning programming in the early 80's, with help in part from sister studio Ruby-Spears, ABC insisted on some bad programming choices in 1982.
We've previously discussed how an animated "prequel" to Mork & Mindy was paired with season 2 of Laverne & Shirley in The Army. Similarly, ABC decided that The Puppy's New Adventures, spun off from Weekend Special, would be coupled in another hour long block with Scooby & Scrappy Doo.
This was the season that introduced Scooby's other brother, Yabba-Doo, who shared adventures with Scrappy and Deputy Dusty out West. Unfortunately, Dusty & Yabba were gone after 1 season. Petey (Billy Jacoby) and friends got 2 seasons. Nancy McKeon (The Facts of Life) lent her voice to Petey's girlfriend, Dolly.
Where ABC messed up, of course, was not having Scooby team with Yabba & Dusty on a case, especially since Shaggy (Casey Kasem) had the rights to the Mystery Machine at the time. Poor Scrappy. All those frequent flier miles, and no respect.
Edit, 9/7/22: The video has been deleted. In its place is a title card:
This is the last of the three Batman quickies Filmation produced for season 1 of Sesame Street.
Here, the Penguin (Ted Knight) thinks the Caped Crusaders can't catch him, but apparently, his henchmen know nothing about housecleaning......
From season 1 of Room 222:
I can speak---sort of---to the experiences the kids at Walt Whitman High went through in preparing a student talent show.
In my senior year at Troy High, I didn't take part in the talent show, but I had friends who did. I can just picture how difficult it was to mount the show. In the context of the series, student-teacher Alice Johnson (Karen Valentine) was put in charge of the talent show, encouraging a very reluctant Helen (Judy Strangis) during class, and helping her through the show.
In fact, one of the highlights is Helen doing an a capella reading of the Rolling Stones' "As Tears Roll By".
From season 1 of Life With Louie:
Louie (Louie Anderson) is concerned about his most prized pet in "A Fish Called Pepper":
M & M's and their growing roster of mascots are undergoing some changes.
Specifically, the female mascots, Ms. Brown & Ms. Green, are swapping high heels & knee boots for sneakers in a new advertising campaign that already has gotten some blowback from Fox Shmooze garbage dispenser Tucker Carlson, who might've admitted a secret crush on the two women by whining Friday that the loss of the heels makes them, in his words, "less sexy".
Ok, Tucker, own up. Who was your cartoon crush when you were a kid? Betty or Veronica? (Because I seriously doubt he was a Wonder Woman fan growing up)
Also, Mars Wrigley (formerly M & M Mars; the company merged with Wrigley Gum some time back) is doing their part for social inclusiveness. To wit:
From season 2 of The Littles:
As in any other community, there are bound to be some bad eggs. As Grandpa (Alvy Moore, ex-Green Acres), Dinky, Lucy, & Tom search for Grandma Little, using a remote control speedboat that Henry (Jimmy Keegan) can take over, a pair of bad guys are hunting for treasure, and steal the boat.
For once, Henry's greater size works to his advantage in capturing the crooks. It seems, though, that the subtle flirting Lucy was doing with Henry in season 1 had faded.
Here's "Looking For Grandma Little":
A lasting legacy of the Will Ferrell-Norm MacDonald era of Saturday Night Live is a parody of the special celebrity-themed weeks of Jeopardy!.
Inspired by the Half-Wits sketches from SCTV some years earlier, the writers went to the sledgehammer of plot approach with this left-handed satire that featured Ferrell as Alex Trebek, Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery, and a collection of other celebrity parodies, including, in this 2005 skit, Amy Poehler as Sharon Osborne and Kenan Thompson, months removed from the feature film version of "Fat Albert", as Bill Cosby, complete with prop cigar.
Let's take a step back in time, to an era when television painted a positive picture of life in high school, despite all the societal issues of the day.
Room 222 was listed as a comedy-drama when it premiered on ABC in 1969, but, as with another 20th Century Fox series that came along a few years later, M*A*S*H, gave up the laugh track in due course. Producer and sometime director Gene Reynolds worked on both series.
Set at fictional Walt Whitman High in Los Angeles (the real Los Angeles High was the location for some of the filming), the series was built around social studies teacher Pete Dixon (Lloyd Haynes), guidance counselor Liz McIntyre (Denise Nicholas), who was also dating Dixon, student-teacher Alice Johnson (Karen Valentine), and Principal Seymour Kaufman (Michael Constantine, who had previously recurred on Hey, Landlord), as well as a culturally diverse student body.
Room 222 sprang from the fertile mind of writer-producer James L. Brooks, who'd go on to win 3 Oscars ("Terms of Endearment") and a slew of Emmys (i.e. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Simpsons, Taxi, Lou Grant) for writing or directing. The series ran for five seasons (1969-74) before moving to syndication, which is where I eventually found it, being too young to watch it in first-run.
We've previously featured a season 1 episode that included a rare on-camera appearance by Nicole Jaffe (Scooby-Doo), but she doesn't figure into this episode. Instead, we'll see future Saturday morning stars Judy Strangis and David Jolliffe in the episode "Fathers & Sons", with guest stars William Schallert (ex-The Patty Duke Show, Dobie Gillis), who was also working as a studio announcer for ABC at the time, and Ann Morgan Guilbert (ex-The Dick Van Dyke Show) as parents of a student (Bob Balaban) who apparently isn't interested in following in his father's career path. Director Terry Becker (ex-Voyage to The Bottom of The Sea) worked as a production assistant on the show during the 1st season.
A duel between Captain Leech (John Stephenson) & Gary Gulliver (Jerry Dexter) is disrupted when both are captured and conscripted by a pair of pirates (Stephenson & special guest Paul Frees). Here's "The Capture":
From The Midnight Special comes this gem, even though it ended up being a 1-hit wonder for Argent. Here's "Hold Your Head Up", introduced by host du jour John Denver:
In a concerted effort to keep viewers from changing the channel on Saturday mornings back in the day, CBS would run ads for the next show on the schedule before the closing credits of the show airing at that point in the day.
Case in point is this Wacky Races promo, with Don Messick putting on his hype man voice, in place of race announcer Dave Willock. This would air before the closing of The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour.
From season 1 comes this gem with guests Merle Haggard & Connie Smith. Haggard gets things started with "Working Man Blues".
Hanna-Barbera had attempted what amounted an unofficial sequel to Gulliver's Travels with the Saturday morning series, The Adventures of Gulliver, one of the last adventure cartoons of the 60's. 11 years later, the studio adapted Jonathan Swift's tale itself for CBS' Famous Classic Tales.
Ross Martin (ex-The Wild, Wild West, Sealab 2020, The Robonic Stooges) voices Lemuel Gulliver, as the story is told from Gulliver's point of view. H-B regulars John Stephenson, Janet Waldo, Julie Bennett, Don Messick, & Hal Smith are also heard.
Edit, 12/1/22: The video has been deleted. In its place is a picture of a VHS release of the episode:
Following the lead of Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry, the Pink Panther goes on stage with a symphony orchestra, whether Big Nose likes it or not, in "Pink, Plunk, Plink", which, in reality, is a love letter to Henry Mancini, who composed the iconic Panther theme, and makes a cameo appearance at the end of the short.
Mixing the Panther theme with Beethoven's 5th? Judge for yourselves.
From Paramount-Famous Studios' Screen Songs series comes a travelogue of Switzerland. The gags come at a swift pace, a la similar fare from WB or MGM.
"The Ski's The Limit" also offers a rarity for the studio in giving Jackson Beck credit as the narrator. Not sure if this was true for the entire series.
Tweety made his debut in Bob Clampett's 1942 farce, "A Tale of Two Kitties". According to other sources, Tweety was identified on scripts as Orson, but was never mentioned by name. Plus, Tweety isn't entirely in golden yellow, looking a little bald in the middle, but of course that would change.
Here, a pair of cats modeled after the comedy team of Bud Abbott & Lou Costello are on the hunt for some avian lunch. Tedd Pierce voices Babbitt, while Mel Blanc is Tweety & Catstello.
There is a certain amount of serendipity to this Schoolhouse Rock entry.
A literal fat cat uses a mouse as a cue ball for a round of pool. Here's "Naughty Number Nine":
Sesame Street has had a bazillion guest stars in its 53 seasons on the air. The latest get is getting acquainted with different forms of pop culture. "The League of Super-Pets" is due soon on HBO Max, and that might be part of the motivation behind its star's pending visit to the most famous fictional street in America.
Yeah, this guy:
Anyway, this has to do with a 2004 skit that recently went viral in which Elmo questioned how a pet rock (Rocco) could eat a cookie, which caused issues between Elmo and Zoe.
This led to a back & forth on Twitter between Cookie Monster and Johnson, setting up the People's Movie Star for his first ever appearance on the show, which currently has 1st run episodes on HBO, repurposed on PBS/PBS Kids. I'm guessing the episode will be taped closer to the release of "Black Adam".
Considering Johnson's previous vocation with WWE, he's used to colorful characters.......
General Mills' Radio Adventure Theater was set up as a weekend companion series to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, both produced by Himan Brown. The General Mills show premiered in February 1977, but the sponsor pulled its support after 26 weeks, forcing the change to CBS Radio Adventure Theater before it was inevitably cancelled.
Tom Bosley (Happy Days) is the series host, and queues up an adaptation of Jules Verne's oft-adapted Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea:
The Ad Council introduced an iconic character in the 70's, McGruff, The Crime Dog, who advised viewers about crime prevention.
We bring this up because an old ad surfaced on Family Guy recently as a cutaway gag, in which Brian (Seth MacFarlane) purportedly appeared as McGruff's sidekick, Sgt. Bark. Of course, that wasn't really what happened, just MacFarlane channeling his inner pop culture geek for laughs.
In this 1979 spot, McGruff teaches how neighbors can help prevent a vacationing family from being robbed.
To think it all started with Laverne & Shirley in a 2-part primetime story arc with guest star Vicki Lawrence (ex-The Carol Burnett Show). In hindsight, Hanna-Barbera, ABC, & Paramount would've been better served asking Lawrence to reprise her role in an animated spin-off.
As it was, Laverne & Shirley in The Army was virtually doomed from the start. The girls (Penny Marshall & Cindy Williams) were given a pig for a commanding officer (Ron Palillo, ex-Welcome Back, Kotter), which was meant for comic tension, but Sgt. Squealy was about as much fun as a moldy brick of cheese. Palillo played him like he was Horshack on a power trip, and the girls had to bail him out every time. Then again, over on CBS, airing later in the day, you had Private Olive Oyl, which wasn't much better or worse.
In season 2, Williams had left the parent series, and for the cartoon, actress Lynne Stewart was brought in to take over as Shirley. Only 8 episodes were produced for season 2, with Fonzie (Henry Winkler) & Mr. Cool (Frank Welker) coming over from the concluded Fonz & The Happy Days Gang. That made sure Squealy was neutralized.
Here's the series opener, "Invasion of The Booby Hatchers":
