One of Dr. Hook's earliest hits was an ode to a music industry magazine still going strong today. From The Midnight Special, here's "On The Cover of The Rolling Stone":
Yeah, I know. April Fool's Day was Monday. Five days later we have an appropriately titled cartoon that first aired on Halloween 1981.
From season 1 of Laverne & Shirley in The Army, a furlough turns into a working vacation for the girls (Penny Marshall & Cindy Williams) & Sgt. Squealy (Ron Palillo) in France. There's the predictable trope about an accidental swap of suitcases, espionage, and, well.......
ABC's Weekend Special closed season 6 with a 3 part adaptation of a 1960's children's novel, The Secret World of Og. At the time, ventriloquist Willie Tyler and his puppet, Lester, were the series hosts. However, this video is taken from a later VHS release that edits the 3-parter into a movie that runs just over an hour.
Voice talent includes Julie McWhirter-Dees, Hamilton Camp (Smurfs), and Fred Travalena (Shirt Tales). Produced by Hanna-Barbera's Australian division.
Wrigley's decided on a different approach when they introduced Hubba Bubba bubble gum in 1979. In order to hook the kids, they needed a heroic character, since the commercials would air smack dab in the middle of network programming, which, at the time, had its fair share of superheroes (i.e. Super Friends, Spider-Woman).
Enter The Gumfighter (Don Collier) in a series of commercials parodying old school Westerns. Western vet Dub Taylor is the Geezer, and would later join the cast of Hee Haw.
Len Lesser, later of Seinfeld & Everybody Loves Raymond for contemporary viewers, but a well traveled character actor, like Taylor, plays the villain here.
The Three Stooges head "Out West" when Shemp needs a vacation to treat an injured leg. "Out West" is a remake of "Pistol Packing Nitwits", made a few years earlier with Harry Langdon & El Brendel, the latter of whom co-starred with Shemp in the Glove Slingers series for Columbia, and would be remade again in 1954's "Pals & Gals":
Today, you'd be hard pressed to get a real cat to endorse something like Kitty Litter or its contemporaries, like Tidy Cat, for example.
In 1978, though, an ad agency contracted actor Pat Harrington (One Day at a Time, ex-Journey to The Center of The Earth, The Inspector) to voice a common housecat extolling the product's virtues.
The Three Stooges are boxing trainers in 1947's "Fright Night". If the plot looks familiar, the boys, along with Dick Wessel, revisited it 8 years later in "Fling in The Ring".
