As we all know, ABC's 1972-3 Saturday morning lineup wasn't much to write home about, with 3 new series, all of which have been reviewed. The network acquired reruns of HR Pufnstuf from NBC, and continued to air daytime repeats of Bewitched six mornings a week, after the series had ended first-run episodes in the spring.
Unfortunately, the balance of the fall preview was lost to the mists of time, but this excerpt is all that has been made available on YouTube. HooDoo (from Lidsville) meets with the Brady Kids.....
Paul Gale took over the role of HooDoo from Charles Nelson Reilly, and would reprise 6 years later on The Krofft Superstar Hour.
Barry Manilow went from commercial jingles to the top of the charts with his debut single, 1975's "Mandy". The iconic track brought Manilow to The Midnight Special:
I've always believed that if something isn't broken, you don't fix it. In 1984, NBC's Saturday morning lineup didn't need fixing, but it could've also done without being sabotaged.
After the disaster that was The Yummy Awards, NBC came up with Laugh Busters, the title, and accompanying theme song, riffing on "Ghostbusters".
Apparently, what the writers came up with was also a bit of a knockoff, as the villain of this piece had never seen "Popeye & The Man Who Hated Laughter", an ABC Saturday Superstar Movie made 12 years earlier. Gargamore (not to be confused with Gargamel) doesn't like anything that's funny. Director Jack Regas had spent several years working with the Kroffts, and the cheesy sets seemed to have that 70's era Krofft feel.
NBC's 1984 freshman lineup:
Kidd Video.
Going Bananas.
Pink Panther & Sons.
All had been previously reviewed. Our cast includes Bill Saluga (Going Bananas), whose previous experience with children's television was in ABC's preview special 10 years earlier, when he was a member of the Ace Trucking Company, James Avery, Danny Cooksey (Diff'rent Strokes), Alfonso Ribiero (Silver Spoons), and KITT (voice of William Daniels, Knight Rider). Thom Bray (Riptide) is our de facto host.
The video gets wonky briefly, but, thankfully, just briefly.
Joe Higgins (Hee Haw, ex-The Rifleman) revisits his sheriff character from Dodge commercials.
Didn't see this the first time, as we were watching the Mets, I think. No rating.
Following is what appears to be a VHS compilation from Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling. Saban, which did not co-produce the series, seems to have gotten the rights, along with Sony (Coca-Cola Television), before the rights went to WWE.
"All Time Champ" is a compilation of three episodes from the series, which, it seems, was bumped down to the lunch hour death slot for season 2 to make room for Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Hogan (Brad Garrett) narrates.
Among the features is a Robin Hood parody. Head writer Jeffrey Scott, who came to DIC in 1983 (The Littles) had done something similar with the Super Friends six years earlier.
Individual title cards were edited off in the VHS release.
Also missing are the live-action skits with the wrestlers themselves, which is why we have just the cartoons. In any event, it's in memory of Hulk Hogan, 71, who passed away on Thursday. No rating.
Eight years after WB released "The Cat Came Back" as a Merrie Melodies entry, Terrytoons co-opted the title for a Farmer Al Falfa short.
Seems that Al is tired of having a cat at the house, so he tries to get rid of him. When we first see the cat (and his girlfriend), he gets tossed off a bridge into the river. However, this cat doesn't just have 9 lives, but is a very resourceful feline.
I wish I could find the title of the short I'd seen at a couple of Ground Round restaurants back in the day. It's so far back, I can't even remember the plot. Ehhh.
Here's another Merrie Melodies entry that hasn't gotten much play since airing on Nickelodeon in the 90's. I say that because I don't think Chumptoon Network or Boomerang have run it, and I don't know if MeTV picked it up.
Anyway, the eternal feud between cats & mice is domesticated in "The Cat Came Back":
After Rory Calhoun's The Texan ended its primetime run on CBS, ABC acquired the series to air on weekdays, and, later, Saturday mornings for three months in 1962.
Calhoun played Bill Longley, a traveling gunfighter. In the opener, Longley tries to help a friend accused of attacking a young girl. John Larch, Neville Brand, and Hank Patterson guest star.
Calhoun doubled as co-executive producer through his production company. Desilu's Desi Arnaz was also a co-executive producer, but not credited.
Poor Sylvester. A black panther escapes from the zoo, and happens to be in the same neighborhood as Sylvester and Spike & Chester (Mel Blanc & Stan Freberg). Chaos ensues in "Tree For Two":
Friz Freleng would revisit this plot in one of his Dogfather shorts for DePatie-Freleng 20 years or so later. The twist ending in this one was a real corker.
Dynamite had planned on releasing a comic book based on the 1990-5 Captain Planet series, but the company's ongoing issues with former parent Diamond forced a delay in releasing the first issue to stores.
Now comes word that the Captain will return to television, or, at least, streaming, in a live-action series.
SAY WHAT?
Netflix, which already has a live-action Scooby-Doo revival in the pipeline, is asking for the same for Captain Planet, a project that reportedly has been in the works for nearly a decade.
Here's a little sampler from 1990:
WB is once again joining with producer Greg Berlanti, and this time, they're joined by actor-producer Leonardo DiCaprio, whose production company had initially optioned Captain Planet for a movie nearly a decade ago. Going live action means the special effects budget will blow up substantially.
David Pepose, the writer of the current comic book, changed one villain's name from Looten Plunder to Lucien Plunder, making Looten, seemingly, a nickname. I think that carries over into this series if it does hit the air.
This is the short that started it all for Beavis & Butt-Head.
Mike Judge had initially been introduced with some redneck dillweed named Inbred Jed, whom we'll look at another time. Now, "Frog Baseball", the 1st Beavis short, came from under the Inbred Jed umbrella. Judging from Jed's laugh, dare we guess he might be kinfolk to the Texas Twits? I guess we'll never know, since Jed was a distant memory by the time they made "Beavis & Butt-Head Do America" in 1996.
Killing flies & frogs, or even poodles, ain't my idea of a good time, but that's what happens when you have two ill-educated kids.
REO Speedwagon's breakthrough album, "Hi Infidelity", was released in the winter of 1980-1. The first single, "Keep on Loving You", soared all the way to #1 on the Hot 100, and netted the band a gig on The Midnight Special.
Singer Kevin Cronin is currently fronting a new band, playing all the REO classics.
There's a reason we're bringing out this entry from The Wild West COW-boys of Moo Mesa. Explanation coming after "Bang 'Em High" (the title is a riff on an old Clint Eastwood movie).
The Nacelle Company now owns the rights to the gang from Moo Mesa, who will return to comics this fall at Oni Press, and, that's followed by an all-new animated series, nearly 35 years after the original, due next year or in 2027. We'll be keeping an eye on this developing story.
Even though he'd produced a number of series for MTV and its sister networks, Nick Cannon took his talents to Cartoon Network in 2013 as producer and chief songwriter for the primetime series, Incredible Crew, the last live-action series during the Stuart Snyder era. Cannon was also the show's off-camera announcer.
Facing backlash from viewers because of their insistence on live-action programming, Snyder and his partner-in-idiocy, Rob Sorcher, threw in the towel after one season. Reruns continued well into 2014, but now, it lies in the WBD vaults. This was a show that actually, and rightfully, belonged on CN's sister network, TBS.
Following is a high school skit featuring Emoticonnie.
It looks as though Emoticonnie's head is really a CGI creation to conceal the actress' identity. Not many of the cast have been heard from since the series ended.
When NBC acquired Underdog for reruns in 1969 for a 4 year run, a new teaser was added with announcer-narrator George S. Irving noting that all 4 chapters of a serial would air in the broadcast.
That wasn't how it was originally.
When the series launched in 1964, the serial would be split over two weeks to allow the requisite backup features to air.
This video collects all 4 chapters of "Weathering The Storm", first shown in 1965 (presumably season 2), in which Simon Bar Sinister (Allen Swift) plots to control the weather patterns on earth. Regardless of the scheme, Simon was a one note villain, always looking for world domination. Simon and his sidekick, Cad Lackey, hijack a space mission, taking Sweet Polly (Norma McMillan) prisoner. Of course, you know, Underdog (Wally Cox) will save his #1 fan......
Yes, the original title cards were edited out.
Rating: B. If you've seen one Simon plot, you've seen them all.
"Snacktime!" was a children's album by the Barenaked Ladies, released in 2008, and the final album with co-vocalist Steven Page. Keyboard player Kevin Hearn also wrote & illustrated a picture book that came with the album.
The first track is "7 8 9", a riff on an old joke, with lyrics by vocalist-guitarist Ed Robertson.
What you see above is meant to be a teaching tool to young ladies.
Mattel will soon bring this variation on Barbie to stores, the first with type 1 diabetes, which is often diagnosed in children.
When I first read of this on Yahoo!, there was the predictable pushback from some ill-informed types. Heaven forbid certain nationally known conservative trolls start whining about it, as they often do. It's not that they don't understand, but, rather, they don't want anything like this on the market.
"Diabetic Barbie" is the creation of model Lila Moss, daughter of 80's supermodel Kate Moss. Lila herself is a diabetic, and saw the means to educate young girls. Bravo!
Kellogg's thought it'd be cool to have Tony the Tiger (Thurl Ravenscroft) conduct an orchestra to promote Sugar Frosted Flakes (now known simply as Frosted Flakes). Hanna-Barbera provided the animation for this one.
Beavis & Butt-Head's 2nd short on the series was heavily edited when it premiered in 1992 by MTV censors. The boys attend a monster truck rally, where future teacher Dave Van Driessen ends up getting run over by a truck in mid-song.
In a way, series creator Mike Judge had to clean up the boys' behavior before the series launched the following year. Silly stuff.
Beetle Bailey, after seeing how Zero had refilled the trenches, volunteers himself and Zero to fix a leak in General Halftrack's basement. Here's "Is This Drip Necessary?":
Listen carefully to Allan Melvin's portrayal of Zero, the camp idiot. Melvin would refine the voice for Magilla Gorilla a year later. At least he & Howard Morris (Beetle, Halftrack) would work with other actors on that series.
Beetle Bailey (Howard Morris) and the boys are competing in war games. Unfortunately, when assigned to blow up a bridge, dumber than a bag of hammers Zero is left behind to operate the remote control. Uh-oh!
"Bridge on The River 'Y'" is a riff on Bridge on The River Kwai.
You know things are bad when Sgt. Snorkel (Allan Melvin) and Otto have to leave their hospital beds before Zero blows things up again......
