Brainatra
12-29-2003, 03:06 PM
1969: the year of the moon landing, Woodstock, antiwar protests, continued social unrest and political activism... and the appearance of popular fare ranging from Jimi Hendrix to the Beatles' final moments to TV shows like the "Brady Bunch".
Re: Saturday mornings: This year also saw a marked change from the type of fare of the several previous years. The action shows and superheroes (save for reruns of Filmation's "Superman", "Jonny Quest" and "Underdog" toward the end of the day) were pretty much completely off the air starting this year, mostly no thanks to parents groups complaining about violence (and also likely a drop in interest in superhero and action shows/the networks trying to cash in on the previous year's big hit, "Archie", with various shows featuring teenagers/musical groups/etc.). 1969's biggest hit new show was "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?"; other noteworthy shows were "Cattanooga Cats", "Pink Panther", "The Banana Splits", and "H.R. Pufnstuf".
1969 also saw the debut of the first cartoon based on a toy line, "Hot Wheels"---yet another thing for various groups to complain about (along with the FCC I presume), leading to a ban next year(?) on all such shows... a ban overturned in the early 80's as part of Ronald Reagan's heavy deregulation of, well, just about everything---leading to the various 30-minute toy commercials-as-entertainment craze. Who says these little postings of mine aren't educational? ;-)
Today's shows presented were:
"The Banana Splits"
"The Fantastic Four"
"The Banana Splits" (NBC)
1969 was the second (and last) season for this live-action/animated program produced by Hanna-Barbara. As TV Party's website says, it consisted of costumed characters (with familiar-sounding cartoonish voices) running around a weird theme park (the credits would claim either "Coney Island, Cincinnati Ohio" or "Six Flags Over Texas") while introducing various musical numbers (unseen in this show's airing, unfortunately) and various animated/live-action shorts. Today's cartoon was the "Three Musketeers", and about as entertaining as, well, last week's "Gulliver" cartoon was. Wonder why they didn't revive Touchˇ Turtle and/or Yippee, Yappy and Yahooie for this series if they wanted a Musketeer-esque character/cartoon (unless those particular characters were deemed "too violent" for the new "kinder, gentler" era of Saturday morning entertainment). We also get to see "Danger Island", an adventure series of shorts that aired on the show. About all I can say about this one is, um, nice biceps on the African-American guy. :-)
Per TV Party's website, this show cost a pretty penny relative to Saturday morning budgets at the time to produce (probably one reason for its demise), as well as one o. It was also Sid and Marty Krofft's big break in designing psychedelic-looking costumes for kids shows, before they went on to debut in '69 their seminal 70's era hit "HR Pufnstuf."
"Banana Splits" competition at 10:30 AM ET:
"The Hardy Boys" (ABC): Lasting a few seasons, this H-B cartoon debuted this season. Featured the familar children's mystery novel characters as a groovy rock-n-roll band who travelled the world to solve mysteries/crimes. Guessing next season's "Josie and the Pussycats" had more success with this formula than the Hardy Boys did. I've never seen this show, but it'd be interesting to see (which I guess is what "Boomerang", or this CN incarnation of the same, is *supposed* to be for...).
"Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" (CBS): The, ahem, *other* reason the "Banana Splits" probably met a quick demise. ;-) This was CBS' big hit show when it debuted in 1969 (and Hanna-Barbara's biggest success for some years to come, spawning plenty of imitators/knockoffs). Supposedly, programming decisions like this helped the children's programming head at CBS (a Fred Silverman) land himself the job of being CBS' primetime programing head (leading to CBS becoming a ratings powerhouse in the 70's with shows like "Mary Tyler Moore", etc.).
"Fantastic Four" (ABC)
The Hanna-Barbara animated series based on the comics. Using the original Kirby-Lee comics' storylines as episode stories helped make this show better-than-average.
The FF debuted in 1967 on ABC (up against the debuts of both "The Herculoids" and "Super President"), aired again in '68 season in reruns (that season, Reed Richards & co. were up against "Underdog" and "The Herculoids"... wonder if kids at the time had a tough time deciding which show to watch, though my mother, who was a teenager at this point in time, told me she used to watch both "Underdog" and the FF as a kid...), then in '69 was moved to Sunday mornings (still in reruns, natch), probably up against local stations' Sunday morning programming (read: televised church services/political discussion shows)...assuming the local stations didn't just pre-empt it to air their *own* stuff on Sunday mornings...
Flaming teenage superheroes (and the other superhero shows of the era, probably also including its competition of "Underdog" and "Herculoids") were a big complaint by the parents groups regarding cartoon violence/"bad influences", one reason that when the FF were brought back as a cartoon in the 70's, they replaced the Human Torch with some wastebasket-looking robot named H.E.R.B.I.E. (make up your own guess what the acronym stood for)...
Today's plot: a mad scientist exposed to radiation while underwater is turned all radioactive, mutated-looking and all-powerful. Lots of good old-school comic book violence results, natch. :-)
The Thing also got his own TV series in the late 70's (albeit bizarrely mutated into Ben Grimm as a teenager with a ring that turned him *into* the Thing); was paired up IIRC with reruns of the Flintstones spinoff "The New Fred and Barney Show" (attempt at more original series-style Flintstones stories in a more juvenile tone, featuring Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm as toddlers) as the series "Fred and Barney Meet the Thing" (which far as I know of never actually happened...).
And finally, since someone on here (don't remember their name) mentioned/got excited by it, I'll mention this season saw the one-season-only airing of H-B's "Cattanooga Cats", a show about a bunch of felines in a musical band, with various psychedelic-looking musical interludes. The show did spawn one spinoff of one of its segments, "Motor Mouse and Auto Cat" (cat-and-mouse chases on motorcycles/hot rods), but probably was crushed by its competition of "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour" and "The Pink Panther". IIRC, an episode of "Dexter's Lab" (the one where some weird wide-eyed girl keeps following him around) had an interlude apparently meant to reference this show...
---
Next week: as America and kidvid enters the 1970's (the decade in which yours truly was born), I'll be back with more observations on what reasonably sane adults tried to foister on kids at the time in the name of "entertainment" (assuming anyone cares/I don't get a barrage of "why are you wasting your time with these dumb reviews instead of discussing the latest 'Justice League'/'Kenosha Wisconsin' [or 'Rurori Kensin', or however it's spelled]/He-Man/<insert other shows I dislike here> episode?!" type of posts)...
-B.
Re: Saturday mornings: This year also saw a marked change from the type of fare of the several previous years. The action shows and superheroes (save for reruns of Filmation's "Superman", "Jonny Quest" and "Underdog" toward the end of the day) were pretty much completely off the air starting this year, mostly no thanks to parents groups complaining about violence (and also likely a drop in interest in superhero and action shows/the networks trying to cash in on the previous year's big hit, "Archie", with various shows featuring teenagers/musical groups/etc.). 1969's biggest hit new show was "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?"; other noteworthy shows were "Cattanooga Cats", "Pink Panther", "The Banana Splits", and "H.R. Pufnstuf".
1969 also saw the debut of the first cartoon based on a toy line, "Hot Wheels"---yet another thing for various groups to complain about (along with the FCC I presume), leading to a ban next year(?) on all such shows... a ban overturned in the early 80's as part of Ronald Reagan's heavy deregulation of, well, just about everything---leading to the various 30-minute toy commercials-as-entertainment craze. Who says these little postings of mine aren't educational? ;-)
Today's shows presented were:
"The Banana Splits"
"The Fantastic Four"
"The Banana Splits" (NBC)
1969 was the second (and last) season for this live-action/animated program produced by Hanna-Barbara. As TV Party's website says, it consisted of costumed characters (with familiar-sounding cartoonish voices) running around a weird theme park (the credits would claim either "Coney Island, Cincinnati Ohio" or "Six Flags Over Texas") while introducing various musical numbers (unseen in this show's airing, unfortunately) and various animated/live-action shorts. Today's cartoon was the "Three Musketeers", and about as entertaining as, well, last week's "Gulliver" cartoon was. Wonder why they didn't revive Touchˇ Turtle and/or Yippee, Yappy and Yahooie for this series if they wanted a Musketeer-esque character/cartoon (unless those particular characters were deemed "too violent" for the new "kinder, gentler" era of Saturday morning entertainment). We also get to see "Danger Island", an adventure series of shorts that aired on the show. About all I can say about this one is, um, nice biceps on the African-American guy. :-)
Per TV Party's website, this show cost a pretty penny relative to Saturday morning budgets at the time to produce (probably one reason for its demise), as well as one o. It was also Sid and Marty Krofft's big break in designing psychedelic-looking costumes for kids shows, before they went on to debut in '69 their seminal 70's era hit "HR Pufnstuf."
"Banana Splits" competition at 10:30 AM ET:
"The Hardy Boys" (ABC): Lasting a few seasons, this H-B cartoon debuted this season. Featured the familar children's mystery novel characters as a groovy rock-n-roll band who travelled the world to solve mysteries/crimes. Guessing next season's "Josie and the Pussycats" had more success with this formula than the Hardy Boys did. I've never seen this show, but it'd be interesting to see (which I guess is what "Boomerang", or this CN incarnation of the same, is *supposed* to be for...).
"Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" (CBS): The, ahem, *other* reason the "Banana Splits" probably met a quick demise. ;-) This was CBS' big hit show when it debuted in 1969 (and Hanna-Barbara's biggest success for some years to come, spawning plenty of imitators/knockoffs). Supposedly, programming decisions like this helped the children's programming head at CBS (a Fred Silverman) land himself the job of being CBS' primetime programing head (leading to CBS becoming a ratings powerhouse in the 70's with shows like "Mary Tyler Moore", etc.).
"Fantastic Four" (ABC)
The Hanna-Barbara animated series based on the comics. Using the original Kirby-Lee comics' storylines as episode stories helped make this show better-than-average.
The FF debuted in 1967 on ABC (up against the debuts of both "The Herculoids" and "Super President"), aired again in '68 season in reruns (that season, Reed Richards & co. were up against "Underdog" and "The Herculoids"... wonder if kids at the time had a tough time deciding which show to watch, though my mother, who was a teenager at this point in time, told me she used to watch both "Underdog" and the FF as a kid...), then in '69 was moved to Sunday mornings (still in reruns, natch), probably up against local stations' Sunday morning programming (read: televised church services/political discussion shows)...assuming the local stations didn't just pre-empt it to air their *own* stuff on Sunday mornings...
Flaming teenage superheroes (and the other superhero shows of the era, probably also including its competition of "Underdog" and "Herculoids") were a big complaint by the parents groups regarding cartoon violence/"bad influences", one reason that when the FF were brought back as a cartoon in the 70's, they replaced the Human Torch with some wastebasket-looking robot named H.E.R.B.I.E. (make up your own guess what the acronym stood for)...
Today's plot: a mad scientist exposed to radiation while underwater is turned all radioactive, mutated-looking and all-powerful. Lots of good old-school comic book violence results, natch. :-)
The Thing also got his own TV series in the late 70's (albeit bizarrely mutated into Ben Grimm as a teenager with a ring that turned him *into* the Thing); was paired up IIRC with reruns of the Flintstones spinoff "The New Fred and Barney Show" (attempt at more original series-style Flintstones stories in a more juvenile tone, featuring Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm as toddlers) as the series "Fred and Barney Meet the Thing" (which far as I know of never actually happened...).
And finally, since someone on here (don't remember their name) mentioned/got excited by it, I'll mention this season saw the one-season-only airing of H-B's "Cattanooga Cats", a show about a bunch of felines in a musical band, with various psychedelic-looking musical interludes. The show did spawn one spinoff of one of its segments, "Motor Mouse and Auto Cat" (cat-and-mouse chases on motorcycles/hot rods), but probably was crushed by its competition of "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour" and "The Pink Panther". IIRC, an episode of "Dexter's Lab" (the one where some weird wide-eyed girl keeps following him around) had an interlude apparently meant to reference this show...
---
Next week: as America and kidvid enters the 1970's (the decade in which yours truly was born), I'll be back with more observations on what reasonably sane adults tried to foister on kids at the time in the name of "entertainment" (assuming anyone cares/I don't get a barrage of "why are you wasting your time with these dumb reviews instead of discussing the latest 'Justice League'/'Kenosha Wisconsin' [or 'Rurori Kensin', or however it's spelled]/He-Man/<insert other shows I dislike here> episode?!" type of posts)...
-B.