Long before DC Comics became part of the Warner Bros. family, WB parodied the famous races in the books between Superman & The Flash by having their two super speedsters, Speedy Gonzales & The Road Runner, meet in a match race in Mexico, marred by their respective nemeses, Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote.
Here's "The Wild Chase":
Baseball fans will recognize this next song.
"Narco", by Blasterjaxx & Timmy Trumpet, was released in 2017, but has become the entrance music for not one, but two MLB players.
Mets closer Edwin Diaz selected "Narco", and this season, it has taken off, so much so that Atlanta catcher William Contreras has adopted it as well. Former major leaguer Socrates Brito, who now plays in Korea, makes it a trio.
The beat is ridiculously infectious.
"Pickled Pink" was early in the Pink Panther series, released in May 1965, so this was still in the developmental phase.
Anyway, a drunk (Mel Blanc) brings the Panther home, then has to worry about his wife (also Blanc) finding out about his carousing.
Now, this is rare.
Radio & cartoon legend Paul Frees makes a rare on-camera appearance in this 1971 ad for Taster's Choice coffee, recycling his Inspector Fenwick voice from Dudley Do-Right, which he'd also used for some other characters at Hanna-Barbera (i.e. the Chief from Secret Squirrel).
To show that Hanna-Barbera was not afraid to skewer its own line of adventure cartoons, including comedy heroes like Atom Ant & Peter Potamus, we have Abbott & Costello as space detectives battling "Sinister Professor Sinister" (Don Messick).
Now, here's a crossover that should've merited more attention than it did.
Actor-impressionist Maurice LaMarche (The Real Ghostbusters) takes on the role of Inspector Gadget for the first time as the cyborg sleuth visits The Super Mario Brothers Super Show. DIC produced both series, so it made sense to bring Gadget to life in this case, a few years before Matthew Broderick donned the trenchcoat.
In "Defective Gadgetry", Luigi (Danny Wells, ex-The Jeffersons) makes like Radar and has Mario (Capt. Lou Albano) answer the door before the bell even rings, LaMarche nails a perfect Don Adams mimic in playing Gadget, a role he'd revisit in animation years later after Adams passed away.
Among the announcements made by Marvel at the San Diego Comic-Con was the reveal of a new Spider-Man series, set to debut on Disney+ in 2024.
What we do know is that characters such as Harry Osborn, Peter's roommate in college and the 2nd Green Goblin, and Amadeus Cho, a more recent character more closely associated with The Incredible Hulk, will be part of the supporting cast. Villains will include Speed Demon, Chameleon, Green Goblin, and........the Kingpin.
The biggest part of the announcement was the fact that Vincent D'Onofrio will reprise as Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, not only in this series, but a pending Daredevil reboot, also ticketed for 2024 for Disney+, and, in lockstep, Charlie Cox, who a brief cameo as Matt Murdock in "Spider-Man: No Way Home", will play Murdock/Daredevil again. The live-action Daredevil: Born Again is an 18 episode series, and likely adapts a classic story arc from years past.
The role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man has not been publicly announced. Stay tooned.
I believe this was Keye Luke's 1st appearance on Dragnet during its 2nd run (1967-70). In "The Jade Story", he plays an expert on rare jewels, and appears around the 11 1/2 minute mark.
Thomas Wolfe once wrote you couldn't go home again. However, in Hollywood, that isn't entirely true.
After developing series for Disney and other outlets (i.e. Wander Over Yonder), Craig McCracken is returning to Cartoon Network to helm another relaunch of The Powerpuff Girls.
But, that ain't all.
TV Line is also reporting that McCracken is relaunching the Emmy winning Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends as a preschool series, aimed squarely for CN's Cartoonito block, with a new roster of imaginary playmates to debut.
Stay tooned.
You all know about the Raid line of bug sprays. Ant & Roach Killer. Flying Insect Killer. And so on.
In 1997, Johnson Wax (now SC Johnson) developed Raid Ant Baits, introduced in this ad:
Remember the days when we were kids? When there were things such as the Book Mobile, where teachers read books after school?
Virginia Lee Burton's 1942 story, The Little House, likely was read in the Book Mobile as well as during kindergarten story times. In 1952, Disney adapted The Little House into a cartoon, narrated by Sterling Holloway.
Rick Springfield and Miss Tickle's Adventurers' Club run up against a music hating tyrant named Captain Coda. Time for some Mission: Magic!
Sticking with our "You Know The Voice" feature, we're moving back in time by about 9 years from our earlier entry.
Earlier this week, we featured Olan Soule playing a deputy coroner on Dragnet during the final season. In that season alone, Olan also played a judge (previously reviewed), and, in this offering, a doctor. Friday & Gannon are working a hospital detail, and have to deal with a mentally challenged suspect (Del Moore), and a parolee whose date has died.
Olan first appears around the 12 minute mark, and returns for the finish.
In between seasons 1 & 2 of Tarzan, Lord of The Jungle, Robert Ridgely (ex-Uncle Croc's Block) makes a brief (and I do mean brief) in this ad for Swiss Miss instant hot chocolate mix (now made by ConAgra). You can't get enough of the stop motion Swiss Miss mascot, though.
Oh, this will be rich.
Sesame Street's resident chowhound, Cookie Monster, is going to show how to make some variation on pudding for the beach.
Ahoy there! Time to scope an episode of The Popeye & Olive Comedy Show.
"Rocky Rolls": Private Olive Oyl (Marilyn Schreffler) and Alice The Goon find a unique way of peeling potatoes, but Sgt. Blast (Jo Anne Worley) doesn't dig.
"Hogwash at The Car Wash": Popeye (Jack Mercer) opens a car wash, and Bluto (Allan Melvin) schemes to ruin things for Olive, the first customer. Predictable chaos.
"Snow Foolin'": It's winter at the base, and the base commander wants to go to vacation in Hawaii.
Also: Popeye makes the mistake of leaving a knife where Swee'pea can use it. Later, he teaches about pool & playground safety.
Dragnet was nearing the end of its 2nd run. Sgt. Friday (Jack Webb) and Officer Gannon (Harry Morgan) try to solve the case of a missing persons cold case. Olan Soule plays his 3rd different character in this run, this time as Deputy Coroner Ned Harris, appearing at the 3:15 mark. Another Webb repertory company regular, Anthony Eisley (ex-Hawaiian Eye), also guest stars.
Destination Kia and Destination Nissan are just two of the dealerships with ad contracts with Florida animator Rob Boulware.
The husband & wife team of James & Megan Morrell are also regulars on local radio stations, their ads airing twice every hour, for example, on WROW (James Morrell, Sr., James' father, owns Albany Broadcasting, WROW's parent), and, along with the following ad, establishes that James is the kookier of the couple.
Uncle Croc's Block was all about parody. The show itself was a send-up of, for example, Captain Kangaroo. Recurring characters were spoofs of Sherlock Holmes and The Six Million Dollar Man, among others, showing that ABC was, we thought, willing to laugh at itself. The ratings said otherwise.
In this skit, Croc (Charles Nelson Reilly) gets a visit from Junie the Genie (Alice Ghostley), who is supposed to be a teenager, two years after CBS had done a "prequel" of sorts of I Dream of Jeannie, except that Junie is a total bungler, not unlike Ghostley's character of Esmerelda, a bumbling witch, on Bewitched.
From the ill-advised Mork & Mindy animated prequel:
Mork (Robin Williams) learns of a movie being shot in Boulder, so he wants in. However, he & Mindy (Pam Dawber) get roped into a mystery when a robot being designed for the movie is stolen by two rogue Orkans, which means, of course, in this series, Mindy gets to go to Ork way sooner than in the live-action series. Mork conjures an Orkan uni for her, and the animators gave her a too familiar sexy pose that was used for other female characters of the period.
The implausibility of Mork's egg-shaped spaceship, already rebooted as an eggmobile for Earth travel, remaining in said form for a round trip to Ork & back. As a certain Exorian doll might put it, real spacey.
Here's "Extraterrestrial Toddler":
Tennessee Tuxedo (Don Adams) needs a quick lesson on gardening in order to impress the mayor's wife while at the same time, forcing Stanley Livingston, the zoo director (Mort Marshall) to improve the zoo menu.
Here's "How Does Your Garden Grow?":
This episode of Popeye & Son lends itself to our summer theme.
First up, Popeye (Maurice LaMarche, The Real Ghostbusters) and his son, Junior, find that Bluto (Allan Melvin) and his son, Tank, are forcing beach-goers to their new business via shady means, all because the attraction is, ah, tanking.
Then, Junior and his BFF, Woody, run afoul of the Goons.
From season 1 of Laverne & Shirley in The Army:
The girls (Penny Marshall & Cindy Williams) and Sgt. Squealy (Ron Palillo) wind up in some seriously creepy trouble, crossing paths with a mad scientist and his assistant, Talbot, who looks like the kind of guy the girls would fall for. He's also a callback to a certain film franchise in "When The Moon Comes Over The Werewolf".
Laura Branigan made her 2nd appearance on American Bandstand with 2 tracks, including the smash hit, "Self Control". After an interview with host Dick Clark, she also sings "Satisfaction", not a cover of the Rolling Stones hit.
We had this up some time back, but it was taken down by YouTube and Dailymotion due to copyright issues and/or user rights being terminated. Now, however, it's back.
Liberty's Kids was produced by DIC, initially for PBS, but the 40 episodes were later reissued for syndication. It's a star studded cast that leads young viewers through the early days of the US. The series turns 30 this year, making this return even more special.
DIC was able to bring together an array of talent including CBS news legend Walter Cronkite, and actors Michael Douglas, Ben Stiller, Annette Benning, Billy Crystal, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gulf War hero General Norman Schwarzkopf made his acting debut in the series.
We're skipping past the two part series opener, and going to "United We Stand", with guest stars Crystal (as John Adams), Benning (Abagail Adams), and Douglas (Patrick Henry).
The other day, the staff of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert dubbed over an old Sesame Street skit to poke fun at Texas Senator Ted Cruz after Cruz picked another losing battle on Twitter with perpetual 3 year old Elmo over his COVID vaccination.
Well, we've found the original footage, dating back as far as 2009. Here's "Elmo's Song":
Fat Albert & The Cosby Kids marks its 50th anniversary, as far as being a series goes, in September. In this episode, Albert and the gang meet Otis, a prankster whose idea of tomfoolery can and will backfire.
