We’re all tired at Thunderbean as we get all the Van Beuren Classics orders out the door, late but happily on their way.
As I’ve been cleaning up archives and hard drives here, I been thinking a lot about how our internal hard drives hold on to a lot of seemingly useless information that we never think about or retrieve- well, ALMOST never. Once you start taking a path down the wormhole of past memories, a visit to youtube will continue to lead you further and further down. Things you had forgotten (or *thought* you had) have been remembered by others too, and you’ll keep finding one after the other if you keep looking. Here’s some of mine, animation related, and a few other new discoveries also animation related. Many of these are stuck in my mind in a permanent way, as a child of the 70s into the early 80s. Maybe some of these will be familiar to you. Youtube is the oddest library of all time- you never know if these will be here short term or longer term. Many of these live or lived as ear-worms for me…. what are some of yours?
This ‘Funshine Saturday on ABC‘ theme from 1974 stuck in my head since childhood somehow- I remember this, but funny enough couldn’t remember ANY of the cartoons that were part of it:
Donald Duck Presents. The Disney Channel’s simple branding from the early 80s must have made a big impression on me. It was the first time I saw a lot of these cartoons since the only way you’d see them in the 70s and early 80s was on ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’.
Disco Mickey Mouse album promo. My mother bought this album for me as a gift; I lied to my friends as a kid and told them I *didn’t *have this record. If you look a little, you’ll find the whole record on Youtube.
‘Disco Duck‘, a popular hit from the mid-70s by Rick Dees, was of course the inspiration for Disney’s own record. It really isn’t Ducky Nash doing the voice here, though it’s a pretty good imitation. This clip from ‘Midnight Special’ is a great little find.
In the mid to late 70s, there were always lots of albums being promoted during the afternoon cartoon shows.
K-Tel presenting ‘Dumb Ditties‘ and ‘Goofy Greats‘ were two commercials I saw over and over as a kid. Sometimes you’d see the same commercial 2 or 3 times in the course of a half hour cartoon show. I wonder who animated these things?
Just like the promos from the Disney Channel, some of the late 80s/early 90s promos and them songs are stuck in my head, too. Here’s a ‘Down with Droppy D‘ promo, for a show of classic MGM cartoons on the Cartoon Network:
..and the real opening.. nearly as brief:
Local TV promos all seem to have a similarity in feel on their show promos. Here’s a little Casper TV promo, from channel 32 in Chicago. The ones in Detroit were almost identical:
Int he 70s and 80s, Sunday morning in Detroit featured the ‘Hot Fudge‘ show. While not animated, I
often saw this show because it was surrounded by shows that were animated. The show’s opening was super
cool:
Here’s a really cool bumper for WFLD’s cartoon lineup (Super Cartoon Sunday) featuring the grooviest version of ‘Hail! Hail! The gang’s all here’ I’ve ever heard:
….and here’s one for ‘Super Cartoon Sunrise… with Hot Fudge followed by Magilla Gorilla:
The opening for Patches and Pockets (broadcast from Toledo and clearly seen in Ann Arbor in the 70s into the 80s) used music from the Citizen Kane soundtrack for the opening. When I saw Kane as a 13 year old, I was incredibly surprised to hear the Patches and Pockets music! This show almost always ran the recolored Warner Brothers cartoons:
I absolutely love this local Popeye show opening from 1975:
And, for good measure, a few other less-categorized things:
….a really fun TV broadcast performance featuring the Raymond Scott Quintette’ performing ‘Powerhouse’ in the mid-50s, complete with groovy abstract graphic superimposed over the picture…
On a bigger, later neat little promo for ‘Tom and Jerry’ on the Cartoon Network. I’m not sure if this spot was shown over here in the states- I imagine it was, but I had never seen it. Here’s a somewhat blurry copy. Does anyone know if this was show state-side?
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Nice to see mention of Hot Fudge on here. A friend of mine was actually one of the puppeteers on it, and received a couple of Emmy awards when the show won them. The show I remember more that has been mentioned on this site before was Chuck Jones’ Curiosity Shop, which I would love to see video of, as it was one of my earliest influences into the world of puppetry.
There was one I remembered from 1980 , It was the promo for the “Chipmunk Punk” LP record marking the return of Alvin and the Chipmunks from a long long hiatus after the death of David Seville in 1972. There were two versions of the promo one that was broadcasted here in the states and a rarely seen version only shown on British TV.
There was one promo that I’ve seen in on TV Azteca of Mexico featuring The Simpsons in September in the mid 1990’s during Mexico’s “Independence Month” celebrating the Mexican Independence of 1810 featuring “El Grito” or “The Cry of Delores” but showing Bart Simpson screaming in terror from the forth instalment of “The Treehouse of Horror” episode. It was very clever on the part of TV Azteca on airing that promo.
Reminded of the first time I noticed “The Simpsons” on a channel outside the US (Canada) and noticed the one alteration they did to the opening title was inserting “On Global” beneath the name of the show, as this network did that to all it’s exclusive American programming plucked from the US networks.
I loved the Popeye Show theme way back when it was the Alvin Show theme…
I hadn’t seen Donald Duck Presents in ages! That program was always a treat whenever the Disney Channel ran a free promo weekend (the only time our house got it!)
I guess I was the happy camper this way, my folks got The Disney Channel the moment it was added to our cable service during the spring of ’84! Loved that channel, if not for the usual Disney offerings, but for the more obscure stuff they played like Asterix/Lucky Luke movies or Tezuka’s “Unico” and this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJz6VR6jACY (I could never get that theme tune out of my head for years)
Which brings me up to the memories I have the most, cable TV, namely, the cable TV of that period. I learned early on how much Saturday morning sucked (except for the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show on CBS) and how much more interesting and unique the stuff coming on channels like Nickelodeon were. I’m sure I brought up “Pinwheel” a few times before, but that had plenty of interesting stuff to see at a young age I wasn’t able to see again until YouTube and other venues came around. Here’s one such short to share of my memories. Some goofy little Hungarian cartoon of a couch potato owl having to learn the hard way why TV isn’t good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuMmux0MDGk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg7-9dgrrVM
The song from this 45-year-promo still runs through my head today….
Back in the early days of cable (set-top A/B switches and sound-but-no-picture premium channels), Gil Cable in San Jose had a Classic Movie Channel dedicated to public domain titles. The schedule included “Cartoon Carnival”, introduced by the title superimposed in white letters over worn stock footage of a carnival at night. It looked — intentionally? — like something from the dawn of television. The cartoons were the usual washed-out PD titles, with the occasional novelty of then-unknown relics like the Toddle Toons and random foreign and student shorts, some of which were inappropriate for a kiddie show. This would have been late 70s – early 80s. Anyone else remember?
Back in the early days of cable (set-top A/B switches and sound-but-no-picture premium channels),
I see you had that racket too. My cable company continued that “A/B” nonsense up until ’97. It was pretty awkward especially when programming VCR’s.
Gil Cable in San Jose had a Classic Movie Channel dedicated to public domain titles. The schedule included “Cartoon Carnival”, introduced by the title superimposed in white letters over worn stock footage of a carnival at night. It looked — intentionally? — like something from the dawn of television. The cartoons were the usual washed-out PD titles, with the occasional novelty of then-unknown relics like the Toddle Toons and random foreign and student shorts, some of which were inappropriate for a kiddie show. This would have been late 70s – early 80s. Anyone else remember?
I guess they scraped the bottom of the barrel then.
I suspect that Casper clip was provided by the syndicator for promo purposes if it was running in different markets.
And dang, Jeff Missinne is right. That IS a blatant reuse of the Alvin Show theme. I wonder if they had permission?
..I wondered how long it would take for someone to notice that! Thanks Jeff!
It was flat-out obvious. I suppose it’s a case of hoping nobody would sue for the guys behind that show, or a case of “Great Minds Think Alike” as I put it.
Both WFLD and WKBD were owned by the same company at the time, Field Communications, and it wouldn’t surprise me if promotions often used the same templates/formats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0xNq7sdyXA
Wow! Where do I begin, here. “HOT FUDGE” reminded me of a local show we had here around the late 1980’s/early 1990’s, if I recall correctly, called “THE D.J. CAT SHOW” which featured a puppet cat dressed in 1950’s “cool” Fonzie type garb, and he had a couple of human female co-hosts, one who called herself, cutely, Jenni-Fur. Not having sight, I can’t tell you what she looked like, but she and D.J. Cat performed these elaborate skits together. Jenni-Fur was the best of the two girls who co-hosted. You could tell the man behind the voice and characteristics of D.J. knew his popp culture, because he and Jenni-Fur did perform a LAUREL & HARDY and a THREE STOOGES skit, and the show did briefly play some assorted MGM cartoons before the show finally went off the air. Here it ran on what is now our Fox affiliate but what used to be WNEW-TV Metromedia, Channel 5, formerly the comfortable home of Soupy Sales, Sandy Becker and Sonny Fox as the host of “WONDERAMA” which eventually also showed classic pre-1948 LOONEY TUNES and MERRIE MELODIES. I’ve gotta admit to liking what I saw of the “PATCHES AND POCKETS” show. It reminded me of a bit on SCTV in which the cast, including John Candy and Katherine O’Hara, played kids doing a telethon to save their educational children’s show. Man, someday, someone should do a DVD set around local kids’ TV back when you could be incredibly creative, moving from the days of Sandy Becker (who eventually ended up doing animation voice over on some Total Television shows and the Marvel Super Heroes *VERY* limited cartoon episodes) right on up to this intriguing “PATCHES AND POCKETS” program. I wonder how much of the stuff actually exists in its purest form. I know that Chuck McCann found it difficult to find his material dating back to when I used to watch every day, unfortunately, but local kids’ programs are finding their way to You Tube. Some of ’em, although well-meaning, were absolutely strange, and I was always drawn to the strangest as I watched in my childhood, and it carries over to now as I’m introduced to new and interesting entries, like “THE LAND OF ZIGGY-ZOGGO” with hostess Nancy Berg. I’m not saying “strange” in a derogatory fashion. Many of these hosts are truly talented at finding the child in themselves as they perform in skits as alter-egos…and, well, of course I have to again mention “THE EARLY BIRD CARTOON SHOW” which was my introduction to the world of cartoons, with a great montage at the beginning featuring everything from “COURAGEOUS CAT” and “Q. T. HUSH” to *ALL* the classic MGM cartoons, including Bosko, Captain & the Kids, Tex Avery–yes, they did air “UNCLE TOM’S CABANA” once, and many, many others, even including silent Terrytoons *AND* assorted Van Buren cartoons! Oh, and I did just receive your Van Buren disks. Can’t wait to rip this puppy open and play for the rest of the day!! Ain’t it great how I segued into that ? Hope a lot of you out there bought this set! Anyway, thanks for the memories, but I think that, by the 1980’s, I’d sadly felt that the true golden age of local TV had gone to that grand and fading memory bank in my head somewhere. That is why I still say that someone should do an archeological dig somewhere for the local TV stuff like you’ve done here with “POCKETS AND PATCHES” and the like. It’s a looney idea on the surface, I guess, but I thought that local kids’ shows were sometimes incredibly creative *AND* silly at the same time.
Wow! Where do I begin, here. “HOT FUDGE” reminded me of a local show we had here around the late 1980′s/early 1990′s, if I recall correctly, called “THE D.J. CAT SHOW” which featured a puppet cat dressed in 1950′s “cool” Fonzie type garb, and he had a couple of human female co-hosts, one who called herself, cutely, Jenni-Fur. Not having sight, I can’t tell you what she looked like, but she and D.J. Cat performed these elaborate skits together. Jenni-Fur was the best of the two girls who co-hosted. You could tell the man behind the voice and characteristics of D.J. knew his popp culture, because he and Jenni-Fur did perform a LAUREL & HARDY and a THREE STOOGES skit, and the show did briefly play some assorted MGM cartoons before the show finally went off the air. Here it ran on what is now our Fox affiliate but what used to be WNEW-TV Metromedia, Channel 5, formerly the comfortable home of Soupy Sales, Sandy Becker and Sonny Fox as the host of “WONDERAMA” which eventually also showed classic pre-1948 LOONEY TUNES and MERRIE MELODIES.
I know someone who puppeteered on that one, Craig Marin. He originally got his start on Nickelodeon’s “Pinwheel” series years before (never knew that until I saw his portfolio).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWOoLpiw1PI
Ironically, while DK Kat may have seem like a local think only New Yorkers would know of, the character himself was also used by Sky Channel in the UK and was seen throughout Europe where the show/character originated first, and lasted much longer (produced by the familiar Dutch company Endemol) .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DJ_Kat_Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNdaK4doGTg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klu9Lmau08g
I’ve gotta admit to liking what I saw of the “PATCHES AND POCKETS” show. It reminded me of a bit on SCTV in which the cast, including John Candy and Katherine O’Hara, played kids doing a telethon to save their educational children’s show.
SCTV pretty much is what local TV use to be like. When I saw their sketch called “High Q”, I immediately thought of a similar show I saw locally that was on WTVG (ch. 13) simply called “High School Quiz”. It was pretty much spot-on (though technically SCTV was riffing on a program CBC aired for years called “Reach For The Top”, which Alex Trebek once emceed)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3C_MsGPkEQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb3n_AjF1YM
Man, someday, someone should do a DVD set around local kids’ TV back when you could be incredibly creative, moving from the days of Sandy Becker (who eventually ended up doing animation voice over on some Total Television shows and the Marvel Super Heroes *VERY* limited cartoon episodes) right on up to this intriguing “PATCHES AND POCKETS” program.
if anything is deserving of recognition, it would be Patches & Pockets (and maybe Mystery Science Theater 3000). Of course the sets they had for this show was tacky at best. I recall them using those big lavalier mics for a while when they stopped moving a boom mike around and you could see microphone cords all over the place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpGVVNKW7q4
Reminded myself of another show that was produced locally in my hometown called “Uncle Ben”, no relation to the rice guy!
http://vintagetoledotv.squarespace.com/random-pages/single-gallery/13278393
I wonder how much of the stuff actually exists in its purest form. I know that Chuck McCann found it difficult to find his material dating back to when I used to watch every day, unfortunately, but local kids’ programs are finding their way to You Tube. Some of ‘em, although well-meaning, were absolutely strange, and I was always drawn to the strangest as I watched in my childhood, and it carries over to now as I’m introduced to new and interesting entries, like “THE LAND OF ZIGGY-ZOGGO” with hostess Nancy Berg. I’m not saying “strange” in a derogatory fashion. Many of these hosts are truly talented at finding the child in themselves as they perform in skits as alter-egos…and, well, of course I have to again mention “THE EARLY BIRD CARTOON SHOW” which was my introduction to the world of cartoons, with a great montage at the beginning featuring everything from “COURAGEOUS CAT” and “Q. T. HUSH” to *ALL* the classic MGM cartoons, including Bosko, Captain & the Kids, Tex Avery–yes, they did air “UNCLE TOM’S CABANA” once, and many, many others, even including silent Terrytoons *AND* assorted Van Buren cartoons! Oh, and I did just receive your Van Buren disks. Can’t wait to rip this puppy open and play for the rest of the day!! Ain’t it great how I segued into that ? Hope a lot of you out there bought this set! Anyway, thanks for the memories, but I think that, by the 1980′s, I’d sadly felt that the true golden age of local TV had gone to that grand and fading memory bank in my head somewhere. That is why I still say that someone should do an archeological dig somewhere for the local TV stuff like you’ve done here with “POCKETS AND PATCHES” and the like. It’s a looney idea on the surface, I guess, but I thought that local kids’ shows were sometimes incredibly creative *AND* silly at the same time.
Too often, and over the years, stations simply lose interest in whatever they may have saved of these programs and a good majority either got erased or thrown out. I was left with a gaping jaw at once learning from a station employee at WTVG that most of their recordings and other material was destroyed after they were bought by ABC in ’95 (they have since been sold to someone else recently but it was fun to think Disney once owned my local ABC station for a while).
Best I’ve seen of someone who bothered to care enough to highlight this phenomenon was an internet reviewer on YT who did this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pdgeB1Lm1k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mJXKlqrp5A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuPg2jS_Xdc
Disco Mickey Mouse album promo. My mother bought this album for me as a gift; I lied to my friends as a kid and told them I *didn’t *have this record. If you look a little, you’ll find the whole record on Youtube.
I found it last week at a flea market for a buck. I would’ve gotten it if it weren’t for one or two deep scratches on the darn thing. I just couldn’t see to waste a buck on it but glad to find a copy at all (they had one of the “Childrens’ Favorites” albums going for $13 at one person’s booth, and that had some serious scuff marks on it). Maybe someday a more “G/VG vinyl copy will show up. I don’t want to waste my time on surface marks getting in the way.
K-Tel presenting ‘Dumb Ditties‘ and ‘Goofy Greats‘ were two commercials I saw over and over as a kid. Sometimes you’d see the same commercial 2 or 3 times in the course of a half hour cartoon show.
They even put out an album blatently called “Looney Tunes”!
http://www.iwilldare.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/2432517469_f36e36e1e6_z.jpg
In the 70s and 80s, Sunday morning in Detroit featured the ‘Hot Fudge‘ show. While not animated, I
often saw this show because it was surrounded by shows that were animated. The show’s opening was super
cool:
Sure is, I’ve read WXYZ was responsible for producing this.
Here’s a really cool bumper for WFLD’s cartoon lineup (Super Cartoon Sunday) featuring the grooviest version of ‘Hail! Hail! The gang’s all here’ I’ve ever heard:
I don’t suppose Fields station WKBD was blessed with this over in Detroit. That is a pretty funky tune, totally, that would’ve gotten me pumped to watch “The Great Space Coaster” and “Battle of the Planets”!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDasuAc9GNA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JodgvPGy30M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGWZ05H3XiA
The opening for Patches and Pockets (broadcast from Toledo and clearly seen in Ann Arbor in the 70s into the 80s) used music from the Citizen Kane soundtrack for the opening. When I saw Kane as a 13 year old, I was incredibly surprised to hear the Patches and Pockets music! This show almost always ran the recolored Warner Brothers cartoons:
Much of the TV entertainment of that era was shared througout the Southeast Michigan, Northwest Ohio and Southwestern Ontario regions thanks to stations like WTOL breaking through the skies. I never realized how lucky it was to have been a part of that.
BTW, that clip you’re showing came from my video collection! Thank me for bothering to tape this one bit when WTOL can’t even be bothered to do much with it’s library at all. Here’s another clip with them pantomiming a kiddie record entitled “The Carrot Seed”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OijHzJDTujs
For years before seeing Citizen Kane, I had that same impression too. At least it works as a cool tune to open up a show about two ragdolls that aren’t Raggedy Ann & Andy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6l95KMnN1c
Aside from recolored WB cartoons (which I don’t remember on WTOL at all, this was probably before the 1980’s), there were several other packages that were aired during the program. I recall in the early 80’s they used the KFS Popeye cartoons of the 60’s and by it’s final years (1987-90) they had on Terrytoons (though mostly the later years as I recall a lot of Possible Possum playing on there).
Prior to Patches & Pockets, WTOL had on another kids show in the 60’s called “Mr. T”, not to be confused with a more familiar Mr. T.
http://vintagetoledotv.squarespace.com/picture/mrt651207.jpg?pictureId=9608006
Footage of this Mr. T was used for a local public TV documentary on Toledo’s broadcast history produced by WGTE some years ago. It can be watched here.
http://www.wgte.org/wgte/item.asp?item_id=113
Although not covered here, another WTOL production I have memories of as well was a Christian kiddie show called “Three Cheers For Life”. It was basic Sunday School stuff, though they did play “Jot” cartoons on it, and that’s what I remember best!
On a bigger, later neat little promo for ‘Tom and Jerry’ on the Cartoon Network. I’m not sure if this spot was shown over here in the states- I imagine it was, but I had never seen it. Here’s a somewhat blurry copy. Does anyone know if this was show state-side?
I don’t think it was Steve, but here’s a decent copy from Vimeo if you like to update the video!
https://vimeo.com/31169228
K-Tel apparently did license the Looney Tunes logo from Warners; the cover includes the “Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.” trademark notice, and it probably wouldn’t have been too difficult for them to arrange that as they were licensing tons of music from Warner record labels at the time. Warners themselves released “Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies” as one of their famous early-70’s two-dollar direct mail “Loss Leader” LP collections of hard rock album cuts. The cover featured an angry-looking Elmer Fudd in a police uniform, brandishing a billy club. (They MUST have been tempted to use Porky Pig instead…)
I suppose Jeff, (just didn’t see a mention for that though I’m sure one or two tracks from WB records were used for the LP otherwise, having a copy of that personally).
The Mickey Mouse Disco album is available, fairly inexpensively, from the iTunes store.
There was also a CD, but used copies of it are no longer inexpensive.
I don’t remember that long “Funshine Saturday on ABC” song, but I do remember 2 very short versions: “Funshine Saturday on ABC…Wheeee!” and “Funshine Saturday on ABCDEFG…”. These accompanied animation of a man with a sun for a head, who wore a bright pink suit.
The NBC Saturday morning promo I remember the most was animation of a pinball machine, accompanied by “Fun Machine! It’s a Fun Machine! N-B-C’s Fun Machine!”. I’m pretty sure I saw this while watching The Young Sentinels/The Space Sentinels.
The commercial I saw for the Mickey Mouse Disco LP was shorter and slightly different. These are the parts I remember:
“Mickey, She’s Got A Crush On You” (clip from “Mickey’s Birthday Party”)
“Macho Duck” (same clips from “Mr. Duck Steps Out”)
“Watch Out For Goofy” (clip from “The Olympic Champ”
“The Greatest Band” (same clip from “The Band Concert”)
(Of course, in those pre-Disney Channel days, I hadn’t yet seen any of these cartoons and didn’t recognize them.)
Having no memory of Mickey Mouse Disco being hawked on TV, I do recall the later album “Mickey Mouse Splashdance” having a commercial that ran over and over on Nickelodeon a lot during the mid 80’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5fUZq5h_5Y
The songs weren’t too memorable, but the thing I liked about this was it’s cover art alone. I always wanted that damn poster advertised but never got one. I picked up one on eBay some years back, but it was worth the wait!
It looks like my memory was mixing up the songs on Mickey Mouse Disco and Splashdance. “Mickey, She’s Got A Crush On You” isn’t on Mickey Mouse Disco. Also, my memory may have been mismatching the clip from “The Olympic Champ”in the Splashdance commercial with “Watch Out For Goofy” instead of “You Can Always Be Number One”.
Here’s another commercial for a Disney record that I saw when it originally aired. My main memory of it was of Chip & Dale singing a song more associated with other cartoon chipmunks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrz3ryuOwFI
It looks like my memory was mixing up the songs on Mickey Mouse Disco and Splashdance. “Mickey, She’s Got A Crush On You” isn’t on Mickey Mouse Disco. Also, my memory may have been mismatching the clip from “The Olympic Champ”in the Splashdance commercial with “Watch Out For Goofy” instead of “You Can Always Be Number One”.
Glad to have demystified it for you!
Here’s another commercial for a Disney record that I saw when it originally aired. My main memory of it was of Chip & Dale singing a song more associated with other cartoon chipmunks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrz3ryuOwFI
These albums were always around year after year back then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IodFq4uyzQg
I had never seen the commercial for the Mousercise record before today.
(I do remember the Mousercise show on the Disney Channel. So it was quite a shock to find out from another post in this thread that Kellyn died.)
I actually mail-ordered that K-Tel “Dumb Ditties” LP. As the years went by, I would find out that some of the songs weren’t by the original artists (most notably, “I Tawt I Taw A Putty Tat” was NOT Mel Blanc) and some songs had been shortened. So I suppose it wasn’t much of a loss when it got thrown out when my mom moved in 2002. But I wish I did still have the catalog that came with it. Besides records (and 8 track tapes), it also had stuff like T-shirts. I particularly remember a T-shirt of a female foosball figurine that had the foosball wedged between her breasts.
Didn’t know K-Tel sold tees..
I’d watch the network previews of their Saturday morning long after I’d drifted away from Saturday morning aside from an occasional channel surf. In ’74, ABC had the Six Million Dollar Man stiffly interacting with a tall clown done up as Funshine and “TV Comedy Sensations Ace Trucking Company.” The latter played a bunch of guys who opposed Saturday morning fun and stole all the shows. They reformed when convinced that ABC’s shows were uplifting as well as fun.
Evidence that this existed:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kerrytoonz/6034041243/
Who else remembers those network specials where performers from the network’s prime time schedule would be dragged in to express enthusiasm for shows even Boomerang forgot? I remember them running as late as the 80s, when the Smurfs were featured.
“Fun Fun Fun Funtastic on CBS!”
“Super Saturday on ABC . . . Smokey the Bear is now on TV . . .”
“No school today, no school for me! It’s Saturday morning on NBC!”
One member of the Ace Trucking Company comedy troupe was Bill Saluga, better known as “Raymond J. Johnson Jr. – but you can call me Ray… or you can call me Jay…”
I know that NBC kept doing them at least into the late 1980’s, because I watched one hosted by ALF, titled “ALF Loves A Mystery”, in 1987. And I think there was one hosted by the cast of Saved by the Bell.
I read on a message board that ABC kept doing them into the 1990’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were ones hosted by cast members of Full House and Family Matters.
The one I remember the most was one for CBS from the 1980’s that starred Joyce DeWitt as a reporter who had to do an article about a cartoon studio. She didn’t like cartoons, because she didn’t “believe in them”. So the cartoonist broke out some kind of vacuum device that sucked her into the Xerox machine, which put her on a cel. He then took the cel to his drawing board and started putting her into cartoons. I can’t remember all of it, but I do remember her being in a cartoon biplane that gets shot down by Snoopy as the WWI Flying Ace. She crashes into a snowy area, and starts walking until she ends up in a desert, where she almost gets hit by the Road Runner. It turns out to all be a dream, but she promises to give the studio a glowing review, then gets the hell out of there.
That sounds rather cool Bobby, still doesn’t excuse them for some of the forgettable offerings during the early 80’s!
Back in the 1970’s when KTTV CH11 had the old Bugs Bunny cartoons I remember the opening of The Bugs Bunny and Friends Show it was live action showing a “push button Bugs Bunny puppet” spinning on a bar in the background while a HO gauge train with a cartoon drawing of Yosemite Sam smiling on the steam locomotive’s cab shunting freight cars around with the Bugs Bunny and Friends logo on the freight cars and on the end sequence the freight cars had the words ” See You Next Time!” On them. Also when KCOP TV 13 had the MGM Tom & Jerry cartoons they had a odd opening that looks like a TelePrompTer was used to create the opening
As the late Jim Harmon once said: “My nostalgia is better than your nostalgia.” I liked the Raymond Scott bit, the rest…a vast wasteland.
My post-college travels and travails found me washed ashore in Toledo for a while, and I remember Patches and Pockets. I was sharing a house with a couple of guys (one of whom reads Cartoon Research and occasionally posts here), and we’d sometimes watch Patches and Pockets just to marvel at how awful it was. Seeing that clip after all these years brings back the memories… and they aren’t good ones!
You’re not alone Dwight! I remember watching this one a lot and could attest to the production values on display. At least WTOL had studio space at all to use up back then besides news. The show kinda reminded me a little of New York station WPIX’s”The Magic Garden”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKof_Lgz0kk
At least that show had ‘original music’ and a thought-out set design, if not for similar tree and red toy box.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKof_Lgz0kk
Is that Joe Raposo’s music in the ABC Funshine Saturday promo? It was around that time that he left (or got fired from) CTW.
4/17/15
RobGems.ca wrote:
Nice of you to mention “Hot Fudge”,which was videotaped right here in Detroit,and originally aired on Channel 7 (WXYZ-ABC telecast.) I used to watch it a lot as a kid in the 1970’s. I have no recollection of whatever happened to co-star Larry Santos,but co-star Ron Coden is alive and well,and performs his comedy & folk music in the Detroit metropolitan area of Berkley, Michigan at a restaurant/tavern called “O’Mara’s”. He’s now 70 years of age, but is still talented as ever (his characters on “Hot Fudge” were the clumsy private eye Detective Tomato, and the hapless protagonist getting hit with pies (borrowed from Soupy Sales) and doused with water on the “Holey Moley” skits. I just saw him in February at O’Mara’s Tavern;he still can put on an entertaining act. Thanks for bringing up this childhood memory.
Thanks Steve for sending myself down a similar Internet nostalgia rabbit hole…
Here’s one of those songs that takes me back to exercising to the Mousercise VHS tape. It’s a huge shame that a) Kellyn Plasscheart passed away a couple years ago, and b) that Disney has YET to rerelease this in ANY format and we have to rely on people who completely cleaned the VHS tape they put out (also on laserdisc) up and then posted the results to YouTube: https://youtu.be/8AfUO8xCbbU
This is one of those shows that I remember quite vividly, but I need to buy Noreen Young’s Under the Umbrella Tree thingie and revisit it soonish… https://youtu.be/zkBkR5jb6u0
This… this is one of my all time favorite TV shows. Please, please please can we have this on DVD?? Seriously… I’ll even take a Complete Series Collection that I have to pay Time-Life in installments for. https://youtu.be/EwaddpsKdKg
….And now I’m looking at the 80s/early 90s intros compiled on YouTube… thanks again Steve.
Thanks Steve for sending myself down a similar Internet nostalgia rabbit hole…
Here’s one of those songs that takes me back to exercising to the Mousercise VHS tape. It’s a huge shame that a) Kellyn Plasscheart passed away a couple years ago, and b) that Disney has YET to rerelease this in ANY format and we have to rely on people who completely cleaned the VHS tape they put out (also on laserdisc) up and then posted the results to YouTube: https://youtu.be/8AfUO8xCbbU
I use to wake up to this every morning before school! I think it came on around 6:30 but I could be wrong, but it was before “Good Morning Mickey”.
This is one of those shows that I remember quite vividly, but I need to buy Noreen Young’s Under the Umbrella Tree thingie and revisit it soonish… https://youtu.be/zkBkR5jb6u0
Don’t have memories of this, though I see it aired on CBC. To me, CBC was best known in my childhood for these three things…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6bbDCao9NA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLwH1CJE5Ws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jaz_CxQMWKo (of course this one shouldn’t be that obvious, but it was like an alternate world as a kid to see these outside the normal show)
Of course other Canadian children’s classics some may recall are Fred Penner’s Place and Sharon, Lois & Bram’s Elephant Show.
This… this is one of my all time favorite TV shows. Please, please please can we have this on DVD?? Seriously… I’ll even take a Complete Series Collection that I have to pay Time-Life in installments for. https://youtu.be/EwaddpsKdKg
The only reason why this will never see a DVD release is the amount of rights clearances they’d have to go through in order to get the episodes out at all (given the amount of stock footage that’s in every episode, and we’re not talking the opening alone using Ghostbusters and one of the Star Wars flicks).
One of my oddest memories of Saturday morning “bridges,” etc. was NBC’s “Pop Ups.” These were one of the educational features all 3 networks added in the wake of the criticism kidvid received around 1970. But unlike ABC’s fun “Schoolhouse Rock” and CBS’s genial “In The News,” “Pop Ups” were austere to a creepily Orwellian degree, consisting solely of letters on a black background, a disembodied female voice, and electronic tones. Sure enough, someone has posted the whole series to You Tube. Got 20 minutes? Don’t say I didn’t warn ya…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFG1SrOAws0
I don’t mind. It surely doesn’t doesn’t have the endearing longevity of Schoolhouse Rock or the reality check of In The News. Still I suppose it was a nice try for what could be done with the TV medium.
I certainly remember “Pop Up”! Its starkness was certainly creepy. I think I was in 6th grade at the time; I remember sharing a TV Guide article about “Pop Up” with my classmates. NBC later had a feature called “Ask NBC News” that ran inbetween the Saturday shows.
Hi Steve, Thank you so much for all your work and the cartoon goodies Thunderbean has produced!
Can you please bring your new Willy Whopper DVD to the big Columbus CineVent to sell Memorial Day weekend?
Thank you.
I had “Dumb Ditties” on 8-Track. And I used to play it on my 2-XL 8-Track Playing Robot.
Do I win “Most 80’s Childhood?””
I used to watch “Hot Fudge” when I was little (I’m 42 now). Ron Coden used to live across the street from us in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park, and his son was in my second-grade class 1980-81. My mother nicknamed him “Hot Fudge.”