Saturday Morning Memories: Part 5

After reminiscing about Saturday morning superheroes and the quirky, adult-humor shows of the 1980s an 90s in previous blogs, I started thinking about some of my other favorite childhood cartoons of the late 60s and early 70s  It's so strange to think now that when I was a kid, we'd sit in front of the set for hours. From 7AM-1PM we munched on sugary cereal in our pajamas. 

Underdog (1964-67): a satire of superheroes, Underdog (voiced by Wally Cox) was a canine crusader who only spoke in rhyme. His everyday identity was a humble, lovable shoeshine boy with no pants. When danger arises he slips into a telephone booth and downs an "Underdog super energy pill." (I preferred Super Chicken's Super Sauce which was served in a martini glass.) His Lois Lane was Sweet Polly Purebread, a newscaster and apparently the only other human-like dog in this universe. Underdog was fumbling and would often run out of powers before the end of the episode. His nemesis included evil

scientist Simon Bar Sinister (who sounded like Lionel Barrymore and resembled Rudy Giuliani), lupine gangster Riff Raff, the vampire Batty Man (a parody of Batman), and the powerful Overcat.

Tony winner George S. Irving was the narrator. Each story was in four parts. Sometimes they'd show two segments of Underdog and fill the middle with others cartoons such as Major McBragg, a British blowhard constantly boring his fellow club members with fanciful tales, and Klondike Kat, a goofball feline mountie. Tennessee Tuxedo, who had his own TV series, was also used as a supporting feature. This was a sweet and goofy cartoon I enjoyed when I was little.

Jonny Quest (1964-65): This was actually a prime-time series, running on Friday nights on ABC, so it felt special and more mature than your usual Saturday morning fare. Reruns were broadcast on both CBS and NBC. There were certain episodes not reshown. I'm supposing because of excessive violence where bad guys were actually killed on screen. Jonny, his friend Hadji, his dad Dr. Benton Quest and the bodyguard Race Bannon were always on a mission in an exotic locale. We all wished we were like Jonny--never having to go to school, constantly on some adventure, a cool dad and surrogate dad.

Dr. Benton Quest, Bandit, Jonny, Hadji,
and Race Bannon

Star Trek (The Animated Series) (1973-74): Probably the most adult and sophisticated Saturday morning program, employing many of the creative personnel of the original series and almost the entire cast. So it sort of served as a fourth season with 22 segments over two seasons. Also it was a bridge between the original series and the movies. Animation allowed many fantastic storylines unavailable in live action such as the crew shrinking to microscopic size, transforming into underwater aquatic water-breathers and multi-limbed or winged aliens. Budgetary considerations would not allow Walter Koenig as Chekhov to join Shatner, Nimoy, Kelly, Takei, Nichols, Doohan and Barrett. But he did write an episode, The Infinite Vulcan. 

I'm taking a fun class provided by the teachers' union for retirees where we watch old Star Trek episodes on Zoom and discuss them. This inspired me to see the animated series which is available for streaming on Paramount Plus. They have every Star Trek iteration including all the movies. It was fun watching these old cartoons I hadn't seen in maybe 30 or 40 years. The voice acting in marvelous. Doohan and Barrett are particularly moving as otherworldly entities facing existential crises. 

Many of the episodes were sequels to stories from the original show such as The Trouble with Tribbles, Shore Leave, and Mudd's Women featuring the actors from those segments including Mark Lenard (as Spock's father), Stanley Adams and Roger C. Carmel.

Space Ghost (1966-68): The animation was super-cool but the stories were short and sweet. Space Ghost was a masked superhero palling around with two masked teenagers Jan and Jace (the latter voiced by Tim Mattheson who also did Jonny Quest) and their masked monkey Blip. They're in some futuristic outer space world. The character was voiced by Gary Owens who was also the announcer on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Every episode featured two Space Ghost adventures and one dumb filler cartoon called Dino Boy about a smart-aleck kid trapped in a prehistoric valley with a goofy caveman called Ug. Space Ghost later resurfaced as part of an NBC show called Space Stars and later still as the host of a campy parody talk show called Space Ghost Coast to Coast on Cartoon Network.

Tom Slick

George of the Jungle (1967-70): I had previously written about one of the segments on the show--Super Chicken in a blog on animated superheroes. But Super Chicken was only part of this wildly funny satire from Jay Ward, the creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Hoppity Hooper and those marvelous Cap'n Crunch commercials. The titular character was a parody of Tarzan with big muscles but little brains. His friend Ape was more intelligent and sounded like Ronald Coleman. The other weekly feature spotlighted goody-goody race car driver Tom Slick who sounded exactly like Dudley Do-Right. Every episode he pits his Thunderbolt Grease-Slapper against cheating spoilsports like Baron Otto Matic, Sweet Willie Rollbar, and Lucky Pool. The latter was aided by my favorite villainess from the show, Sonia Nar and her Aquanauts who resided in the underwater metropolis Drown Town. 

I found a DVD of the entire series of 17 episodes at a going-out-of-business sale at a video store in Pa. several years ago. I hadn't watched it in ages and am re-watching these funny shows I had forgotten. 

Fantastic Voyage (1968-69): Based on the popular 1966 movie, this adventure from Filmation featured a brave quartet reducing to miniature size to tackle that week's menace. Ted Knight provided the hero's voice (he was also the voice of several supervillains on the Batman animated series.) I loved the weird sound effects as the Voyager was shrunk to microscopic dimensions.