Uncle Croc’s Block was a monumental disaster for Filmation Associates and arguably the worst program they ever produced. After the show premiered in an hour-long format on ABC on September 6, 1975, the network almost immediately whittled it down to a half-hour and canceled it on February 14, 1976. After that, ABC president Fred Silverman permanently severed all ties with Filmation and turned to Hanna-Barbera for future endeavors.
Charles Nelson Reilly in costume as Uncle Croc appearing on the ABC Saturday morning tv series ‘Uncle Croc’s Block’. (Photo by Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
But enough about this foolishness. Like most kidvid live-action shows, it featured cartoons—three different ones. The first was M*U*S*H (Mangy Unwanted Shabby Heroes), in which dogs enacted a dreadful parody of the TV hit M*A*S*H. Lou Scheimer, who wrote the episodes, recounted that he made them purposely unfunny. So woeful was this cartoon that 14 episodes went unfinished. It was this horror show that led Silverman to dump Filmation.
The second cartoon, Fraidy Cat, was a morbid exercise in paranoia in which the titular cat, having lost eight lives, is haunted by those ghosts. Worse, he has developed a phobia of the number nine, who shows up as a personification to terrify the cat further. Perhaps John R. Dilworth could have worked with this concept. Filmation, however, could not.
That brings us to the third cartoon, which is the only palatable one given the efforts and resources of Filmation. Wacky and Packy (short for pachyderm) were a duo consisting of Wacky, a red-haired clueless caveman, and his pet (buddy?) wooly mammoth. Wacky and Packy were the brainchildren of executives Lou Schiemer and Norm Prescott. They appeared in 16 cartoons spanning the duration of Uncle Croc’s Block.
The series had a well-worn premise: the “Fish out of Water.” Swept into a cave via a whirlpool, Wacky and Packy emerged two million years into the future in what appears to be New York City. Misadventures naturally follow. The caveman and his mammoth often seek food or a place to sleep and are sometimes even rewarded. Whether crashing a penthouse party, trying to land a job, or being recruited by the Army, the pair create misunderstandings and slapstick-style comedy.
What Wacky and Packy want most is to return home, a seemingly impossible wish. There is a recurring gag where Packy bursts into tears at the word “home.” The two have this exchange when Packy screws up, which is to say, in every episode:
Wacky: “One of these days, Packy—Pow! Right in the kisser!”
Packy: “What I do? What I do?”
The British VHS release.
Twenty-five animators are listed for Wacky and Packy, which is highly unlikely. Nearly all were Filmation animators or industry veterans from Fleischer and Paramount. For example, Irv Spector, Tony Pabian, and Otto Feuer had careers dating back to Fleischer’s 1939 film Gulliver’s Travels, while Virgil Raddatz worked on Filmation’s He-Man.
Art director Herb Hazelton worked on all 16 episodes.
Wacky and Packy are far more endearing than the other cartoons in Uncle Croc’s Block but are undercut by shoddy and reused animation across all episodes. It is surprising that the cartoons retained any charm on what must have been a penurious budget. Much of that charm came from writers Barry E. Blitzer, who won an Emmy for Best Comedy Writing for The Phil Silvers Show, and Len Janson, a prolific animation writer.
Musical composers were listed as Yvette Blais and Jeff Micheal, pseudonyms for Ray Ellis and Norm Prescott (who used his son’s names). This pair composed virtually every note of Filmation’s music from 1968-1982. Wacky and Packy’s end credits bop to a jumpy boogie-woogie score that is almost worth sitting through the cartoon for.
Finally, Don Towsley, who had a long and exceptionally distinguished career as a Disney animator beginning in 1935, directed all 16 episodes of Wacky and Packy. Towsley contributed work on Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Fantasia, as well as animating Donald Duck. Towsley also served as animation supervisor for Chuck Jones’ acclaimed short The Dot and the Line before joining Filmation in 1968.
Wacky and Packy still have some nostalgic fans. Their collected episodes are available on DVD and are streamed on many platforms.
Martin Goodman is a veteran writer specializing in stories about animation. He has written for AWN and Animation Scoop – and lives in Anderson, Indiana.
I’ve heard of “Uncle Croc’s Block”, but I never saw it and didn’t know anything about it. The idea that it could be even worse than the Saturday morning shows of the 1970s that I do remember fills me with horror. That said, I have to admit I got a big laugh out of the “Bowery Joe Creamath” character spoofing “Broadway Joe” Namath, who was ubiquitous on TV in the early ’70s, and not just in shaving cream commercials either.
I notice that Filmation didn’t have it in their budget to put numbers on the football players’ jerseys.
“Wacky and Packy” has a similar premise to the Sherwood Schwartz sitcom “It’s About Time”, about a pair of astronauts who travel faster than the speed of light and wind up back in the Stone Age. Faced with low ratings, Schwartz decided to reboot the show and send the astronauts and the Stone Age family back to 20th century Earth. Yes, of course the cave men form a “rock” band.
Then there was the 1970 horror film “Trog”, about a prehistoric man in modern Britain. It was Joan Crawford’s last film. No, I’m not kidding.
I’m going to have to take a look at some more Wacky and Packy cartoons, as well as the other segments of “Uncle Croc’s Block”. If the show wasn’t good enough for Fred Silverman — I have no idea how to finish that sentence.
I was just glancing through this post, and haven’t read the accompanying article, nor the rest of your post, Paul, but I HAVE to reply to your first line stating “Uncle Croc’s Block” was a terrible show! Though I guess it’s not you saying it, you are just parroting the article above.
FOR THE RECORD… I, AND MY BROTHER, LOVED “UNCLE CROC’S BLOCK!!!”
I mean, it’s got CHARLES NELSON REILLY and JONATHAN HARRIS!!! What’s not to love?!
And a sidekick named “Rabbit Ears” — as in the TV antenna. It was a lot of fun! I’ve been dying to be able to buy a Blu-ray or DVD set of the show for many, many years!
I’m afraid to go back and read the article. There’s no reason to trash the show. It was a breath of fresh air. It was ahead of its time, and that’s probably why it was cancelled.
I’m afraid to read the article
I’m afraid you misinterpreted me, Dan, which is bound to happen if you comment on something you’ve only glanced at. I never said “Uncle Croc’s Block” was a terrible show. I started by admitting that I had never seen it, and finished by expressing a determination to watch more of it, which I have done in the past week. While I share your enthusiasm for the camp icons of our childhood, in the end I have to agree with Dr. Toon’s assessment of the show. That said, there are many bad shows, even terrible ones, that I find highly entertaining, and “Uncle Croc’s Block” is one of them.
Go ahead and read the whole article. It’s good.
Not too long ago I saw some bootleg DVDs of this show being sold at clearance price at some big media store, alongside DVDs of the accompanying show Fraidy Cat. Even at 99 cents a disc it still would’ve been a ripoff.
A show about a sarcastic kiddy show host would normally be prime comedy fodder (Mad Magazine’s “Uncle Nutzy’s Clubhouse” is a perfect example), but Filmation is probably the LAST studio you’d expect to produce such an idea and it’s evident in how universally negative the reviews have been – of course, I couldn’t really tell if it was truly as bad as people have made it out to be since almost nothing of the show exists today outside of some brief clips.
From the sampler cartoon posted here I can say that, at the very least, the character designs for Wacky and Packy are appealing, but everything else is about as canned as creamed corn. Maybe it works better when there’s three guys in silhouette in the corner heckling at the screen.
Legitimate DVD’s of the show??? I had no idea! (See post above.) I’ll have to search for them!!!
Is that “Horrible Hall” (from ‘Groovie Goolies’) I see in the end credits?
Indeed it is! Most likely, the credits here were just taken from the “Groovie Goolies and Friends” syndication package from the late 70s, which included all three of the Uncle Croc’s Block segments alongside other Filmation series like Waldo Kitty and My Favorite Martians.
Yes, it is. I think that particular credits sequence was created for the syndication of “Wacky and Packy” as part of the GROOVIE GOOLIES AND FRIENDS package that aired on weekday tv on local stations in the late 1970s and through the 1980s. The series MY FAVORITE MARTIANS was also part of that package, and Filmation simply superimposed the credits for that show over backgrounds of the interior of Horrible Hall.
You sold me the whole pack. Reilly reminds me a bit of Ignatius idem, but older, bitter and wheelchair bound. Really the kind of show I would have killed for. I had Sesame Street instead.
Just when you think Filmation couldn’t stoop any lower…
I picked a Mill Creek DVD of 200 cartoons a while back. I got it exclusively because it had some Hoppity Hooper, but it also has some Fraidy Cat. In the intro, it seemed like a neat concept – cat that talks to the ghosts of his past lives. I wondered why I’d never heard of it. A few minutes into the first episode, I realized why.
Wow, someone else who remembers Hoppity Hooper!
HOPPITY HOOPER was constantly in syndication – from what I can recall – well into the ’70s, I think – on Chicago-land TV. I haven’t seen it in years until I saw some very beat-up prints in some “Public Domain” cartoon compilations. I think whoever owns the Jay Ward library owns these cartoons and I’d like to see them again in better shape. Not as good as ROCKY AND BULLLWINKLE perhaps, but close! It would be great if the series could appear on ME-TV TOONS sometime in the near future!
I remember when Happily Hooper went into syndication it was renamed “Uncle Waldo’s Cartoon Show”
The animation industry today is not in great shape, let’s not kid ourselves, but for anyone on Twitter to even compare today’s output similarly to 70s-80s slop largely led by Filmation is quite laughable to me.
Good lord Wacky and Packy was painful, along with Fraidy Cat (add mean-spirited to this as well), and they were among the most appealing looking of Filmation’s output.
I just loved Uncle Croc’s Block. Result was always such a great character in sitcoms and game shows and he brought good energy to this. The whole show seemed constructed as a big joke, parody of something. So many silly running gags. The cartoons? They were mostly unmemorable but quickly done and gone. I ran into Lou Scheimer at an AFI animation event around 1989 and mentioned my fondness for this show; he was a bit surprised and said “I didn’t think anyone even remembered that thing!” The theme song lives on YouTube and conveys the spirit of silliness and playfulness the show had.
I definitely remember seeing “Uncle Croc’s Block” many years ago. Back then, I wondered why it was getting harder and harder to find the show on TV within a few short months, to the point of having to watch it at 12:00PM on a more distant channel with weaker reception. But my favorite cartoon series from the show was “Fraidy Cat,” because I had always had this thing for numbers, probably one of the things I find appealing about “Sesame Street” as well.
A mean-spirited kids show with purposely bad cartoons sounds like the kind of thing that would play well on Adult Swim. Of course, The Simpsons already did it to perfection with Krusty the Klown and Itchy and Scratchy. There’s probably a lot of Uncle Croc in Herschel Krustofsky.
I took Packy and Wacky as a comic twist on the cliche of moderns sent back to the stone age, or at least dropped into a dino-infested setting. On Saturday mornings that vein was tapped by Dino Boy, Valley of the Dinosaurs, and Land of the Lost, and elsewhere on the TV schedule were innumerable old movies, ranging from “King Kong” to drive-in fodder with stock footage of iguanas.
The show itself was decidedly odd. By the 70s how many hosted kiddie shows were left that preteens would get the joke? The Simpsons targeted viewers old enough to remember local Krustys.
I recall one funny bit: The “special guest” was a Brooklynesque Cinderella seeking her prince, who went out for pizza and never came back. Instead of a glass slipper she produces a pair of transparent boxer shorts and chases Uncle Croc around the set.
In the world of prehistoric toons, nothing tops The Flintstones. Captain Caveman runs a distant second. But Wacky & Packy should have stayed buried deep in the Le Brea tar pits!
I’m old enough to remember watching the entire Uncle Crock’s Block series. The Charles Nelson Reilly host segments were better than those 3 cartoons. “Bowery Boy” Huntz Hall (Mr. Mean Jeans), Phyllis Diller (Witchie Goo Goo), Robert Ridgely (The $6.95 Man), Alice Ghostly (Junie the Teenage Jeanie) and others did guest shot spoofs of popular TV characters.
I’m on the same boat with Dan Lega and his brother. “Uncle Croc’s Bloc” deserves honorable mention for being way ahead of it’s time in terms of it’s approach to satirizing the tropes associated with local kiddie show hosts, at a time when there were few and far between seen on the TV screen (you’ll pardon my unintentional alliteration). The fact that ABC hastily cancelled the show should be considered a testament and a badge of honor for Prescott & Filmation as proof of this bold attempt at stripping down the “fiber board veneer” to reveal all the unseemly goings-on behind the scenes, mean-spirited as it was. And like Mr. Chavers, I too watched the entire series, bad cartoons and all, as my 10-year old self kept in mind that it was all intended to be a satire. Surprising enough that it had to come from Filmation, a studio that has made a reputation of putting out bland, rehashed story ideas and had relied majorly on licensed properties since it’s founding to achieve the success they garnered. I can only speculate that the show likely served as a conduit for Filmation’s head staff as a way of venting their collective frustrations over having to be put in compromising positions by TV execs to put out what was considered “quality programming” in those days while simultaneously being pressured by parent group watchdogs to add some element of educational content within each of their shows.
Incidentally, 25 years after playing Basil Bitterbottom on “Unle Croc’s Bloc”, Johnathan Harris went on to play a similar role in the fully-animated WB Kids series “Channel Umpty-Three”. Also, Scaredy Cat got something of a revival when he was used as an occasional gag on “SWAT Kats”, as it turns out to be Jake Clawson’s favorite cartoon show.
I should add that the reuse of the idea behind the premise of “Uncle Croc’s Block” didn’t just stop at “The Simpsons” and “Garfield And Friends” (which had Binky The Clown as their own take on the trope). It was also appropriated for subsequent series’ that centered on the worlds of puppets-as-sentient-beings, such as “The Muppet Show” and, two decades later, Fox’s “Greg The Bunny” (as well as, to an extent, “The Larry Sanders Show”).
And I wonder if Pee Wee Herman was influenced by Uncle Croc?