5 years after The Flintstones had ended production, Hanna-Barbera decided to return to Bedrock, but time apparently moved even faster there, as Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm were now teenagers, the idea being that CBS wanted to load up on teen-oriented cartoons as much as possible, with Pebbles joining H-B stablemates Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (3rd season) and Josie & the Pussycats (2nd) and Filmation's Archie's TV Funnies & Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Sally Struthers (All In The Family) was heard as Pebbles, while Jay North (ex-Dennis the Menace, Here Comes The Grump) voiced Bamm-Bamm. Due to her Family commitments, Struthers left the series after the first season, as Pebbles was rebooted as part of the Flintstone Comedy Hour.
Here's the intro:
Pebbles did inherit one trait from her father, Fred (Alan Reed). A penchant for outlandish ideas and schemes that, despite the best of intentions, always seemed to fall apart at the most inopportune of times.
Despite a series of prime time specials in recent years that followed Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm all the way to the altar, advertisers seem to prefer them to remain eternal toddlers, as witnessed in recent ads for the Pebbles line of cereals from Kraft's Post division. As The Flintstones marks its 50th anniversary today, you wonder if or when WB will finally do the right thing and restore Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm to adulthood and create a new series around them as a sort of Flintstones: The Next Generation, if you will. The format change in '72 suggests that despite the lineage, viewers didn't feel the kids could carry a show on their own, even with their parents around.
Rating: B.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Toon Rock: "Yabba Dabba Doosie" (1972)
From 1972's Flintstone Comedy Hour, here's the Bedrock Rockers (Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm's band), performing "Yabba Dabba Doosie". The video has Pebbles, Penny, & Wiggy as fairies, a la Tinker Bell, if you will.
Not exactly on a par with, say for example, Josie & the Pussycats or The Archies, or even Fat Albert's Junkyard Band, who debuted that season. The Bedrock Rockers had debuted on Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm a year earlier as an excuse to pit the titular teens against their fellow toon rockers, even if none of them were going to replicate the success of the Archies' 1968 #1 smash, "Sugar, Sugar". Let's put it this way. While Pebbles inherited her father's penchant for outlandish schemes that didn't always work, despite the best of intentions, she didn't inherit his latent vocal talents.
Not exactly on a par with, say for example, Josie & the Pussycats or The Archies, or even Fat Albert's Junkyard Band, who debuted that season. The Bedrock Rockers had debuted on Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm a year earlier as an excuse to pit the titular teens against their fellow toon rockers, even if none of them were going to replicate the success of the Archies' 1968 #1 smash, "Sugar, Sugar". Let's put it this way. While Pebbles inherited her father's penchant for outlandish schemes that didn't always work, despite the best of intentions, she didn't inherit his latent vocal talents.
Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Shirt Tales (1982)
Based on characters from a series of greeting cards in the early 80's, the Shirt Tales acted as a lead-in to Smurfs when it debuted on NBC in 1982.
MzTavish uploaded the season 2 open, taken from Retrojunk.com.
The amazing thing was how the team managed to carry out their missions without Park Ranger Dinkle knowing about it. Even more amazing was that it didn't last as long as you'd think, just a couple of years before NBC pulled the plug. CBS would pick up the series as a mid-season replacement a few years later.
Rating: A-.
MzTavish uploaded the season 2 open, taken from Retrojunk.com.
The amazing thing was how the team managed to carry out their missions without Park Ranger Dinkle knowing about it. Even more amazing was that it didn't last as long as you'd think, just a couple of years before NBC pulled the plug. CBS would pick up the series as a mid-season replacement a few years later.
Rating: A-.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Saturtainment: The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show (1974)
CBS wanted to do something different with their Saturday morning lineup, just to prove they weren't resting on their ratings laurels. That "something different" was adding some live-action programming to the schedule. Granted, they already had the CBS Children's Film Festival, hosted by Kukla, Fran, & Ollie, at the bottom of the lineup, but ever since Captain Kangaroo had left Saturdays a few years prior, the network had a mostly animated slate. One experiment was a half-hour variety show featuring the Hudson Brothers.
Series regulars Ted Ziegler & Billy Van had also been in the employ of producers Alan Blye & Chris Bearde on Sonny & Cher's prime time show, and Van also starred in the syndicated Hilarious House of Frightenstein, another Bearde production. Murray Langston is better known to most as the Unknown Comic, a frequent visitor on The Gong Show, which Bearde initially co-produced with host Chuck Barris. Freeman King, another member of the Sonny & Cher repertory company, would later serve as announcer-DJ on Merv Griffin's Dance Fever. The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show is available on DVD, so if you want to show your kids what you watched when you were their age, here's a great example.
Rating: B.
Edit, 2/3/21: The video has been deleted due to copyright claims. We have, instead, a small sample clip:
Series regulars Ted Ziegler & Billy Van had also been in the employ of producers Alan Blye & Chris Bearde on Sonny & Cher's prime time show, and Van also starred in the syndicated Hilarious House of Frightenstein, another Bearde production. Murray Langston is better known to most as the Unknown Comic, a frequent visitor on The Gong Show, which Bearde initially co-produced with host Chuck Barris. Freeman King, another member of the Sonny & Cher repertory company, would later serve as announcer-DJ on Merv Griffin's Dance Fever. The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show is available on DVD, so if you want to show your kids what you watched when you were their age, here's a great example.
Rating: B.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Celebrity Toons: Mr. T meets Alvin & the Chipmunks (1983)
NBC got Alvin & the Chipmunks off to a fast start by having another of their stars pay Alvin, Simon, & Theodore a visit in their opener. The network figured that the best way to promote the debut of Mr. T later that morning was to have the big fella make his toon debut on Alvin, coming to the aid of the boys when bullies steal a gold watch Alvin brought in for show & tell.
Edit, 7/5/26: Dailymotion deleted the video. In its place is a short excerpt from YouTube:
Ruby-Spears obtained licenses for both Mr. T & Alvin, but would lose the Chipmunk license to rival DIC a few years later. NBC would lose the Chipmunks altogether, as the series later moved to Fox to finish its run, albeit under a new title. But that's another story for another time.
Rating: A.
Ruby-Spears obtained licenses for both Mr. T & Alvin, but would lose the Chipmunk license to rival DIC a few years later. NBC would lose the Chipmunks altogether, as the series later moved to Fox to finish its run, albeit under a new title. But that's another story for another time.
Rating: A.
Rein-toon-ation: Jim Henson's Muppet Babies (1984)
The centerpiece of CBS' 1984-5 Saturday morning lineup was Jim Henson's Muppet Babies, which reimagined the familiar Muppets, such as Kermit the Frog & Ms. Piggy, as toddlers. This was spun from a dream sequence in the movie, "The Muppets Take Manhattan", which was released in July of that year, with Muppet Babies following 2 months later to launch a 7 year run. Here's the open, courtesy of YouTube:
The most interesting aspect of the show is the talent involved. Howie Mandel (Deal Or No Deal), who was appearing on St. Elsewhere at the time, worked on the show the first two seasons, and when other commitments precluded him from continuing, the producers hired another Canadian comic, Dave Coulier (later of Full House) to take his place. The Muppets' Nanny, whose face was never seen, was voiced by sitcom icon Barbara Billingsley (ex-Leave It To Beaver). Marvel Comics' television division produced the show, and Marvel even produced a comic book spun from the series. Today, both the Muppets & Marvel are the property of the Walt Disney Company, but due to rights issues regarding music and/or film footage used on the show, there doesn't appear to be a DVD release coming any time soon. It was good, clean fun, just like the Muppet Show before it.
Marvel would also do a cartoon based on another Muppet franchise, HBO's Fraggle Rock, for NBC, but was not quite as successful.
Rating: A.
The most interesting aspect of the show is the talent involved. Howie Mandel (Deal Or No Deal), who was appearing on St. Elsewhere at the time, worked on the show the first two seasons, and when other commitments precluded him from continuing, the producers hired another Canadian comic, Dave Coulier (later of Full House) to take his place. The Muppets' Nanny, whose face was never seen, was voiced by sitcom icon Barbara Billingsley (ex-Leave It To Beaver). Marvel Comics' television division produced the show, and Marvel even produced a comic book spun from the series. Today, both the Muppets & Marvel are the property of the Walt Disney Company, but due to rights issues regarding music and/or film footage used on the show, there doesn't appear to be a DVD release coming any time soon. It was good, clean fun, just like the Muppet Show before it.
Marvel would also do a cartoon based on another Muppet franchise, HBO's Fraggle Rock, for NBC, but was not quite as successful.
Rating: A.
Saturtainment: Pryor's Place (1984)
Sid & Marty Krofft had previously sold one first-run series to CBS, 1975's Far Out Space Nuts, which lasted one year. Now, the network was looking for programming to counter then-#1 NBC, which dominated Saturday mornings in the 80's with Smurfs, Mr. T, & Alvin & the Chipmunks. The Kroffts offered up a Sesame Street-esque half-hour, Pryor's Place, somehow managing to secure comedian Richard Pryor to do a Saturday morning show. By this point, Pryor had started making more family-friendly comedies, and had come off a dramatic turn in "Superman 3" a year earlier.
Here's the intro, with the theme performed by Ray Parker, Jr. ("Ghostbusters"):
Unfortunately, Pryor's Place met the same fate as Space Nuts did, cancelled after just 1 season, only in this case, CBS wasn't willing to let the show play out the string. By the spring of '85, the network had acquired the original Land of the Lost to fill the space vacated by Pryor.
Due to syndicated programming airing from 11 (ET) forward on Saturdays, the local affiliate aired Pryor at 7:30 am, which was when I'd be able to see the show. Had it been given an earlier berth, there's no guarantee the show's fate would've changed for the better. It can be said that Pryor's near-death experience a year or two earlier had given him a career epiphany, leading to this show and movies like "Moving", which came out the following summer. At least he fared better this time than with his prime-time show, which got a month on NBC in 1977.
Rating: B.
Here's the intro, with the theme performed by Ray Parker, Jr. ("Ghostbusters"):
Unfortunately, Pryor's Place met the same fate as Space Nuts did, cancelled after just 1 season, only in this case, CBS wasn't willing to let the show play out the string. By the spring of '85, the network had acquired the original Land of the Lost to fill the space vacated by Pryor.
Due to syndicated programming airing from 11 (ET) forward on Saturdays, the local affiliate aired Pryor at 7:30 am, which was when I'd be able to see the show. Had it been given an earlier berth, there's no guarantee the show's fate would've changed for the better. It can be said that Pryor's near-death experience a year or two earlier had given him a career epiphany, leading to this show and movies like "Moving", which came out the following summer. At least he fared better this time than with his prime-time show, which got a month on NBC in 1977.
Rating: B.
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