Blast from the Past

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

A fav of mine in the 60s. No idea if they were popular after that. Tiny wax bottles filled with a flavored drink. Sometimes I'd pop the whole thing in my mouth, chew it till the drink was gone, then swallow the wax. Living on the fringe, even back then.

We bought these and candy cigarettes at Tradeway on laundry day.

Here are some of my favorite cartoon characters and shows from the 1960s, in no particular order. Some were from the 1950s and when I watched them in the 1960s they were already long into syndication. Many of the cartoons in that era used classical and orchestra music because it wasn't copyright protected. I occasionally watched the super hero cartoons, but I never really got into any of them on TV or in the comic books. We also had some really old cartoons that aired from the 1940s and even earlier.

• Jetsons
• Flintstones
• Top Cat
• Rocky and Bullwinkle
• Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner
• Yogi Bear
• Scooby Doo
• Dastardly and Muttley
• Quick Draw McGraw
• Underdog
• Tom and Jerry
• The Archies
• Secret Squirrel
• Mr. Magoo
• Popeye the Sailor Man
• Space Ghost
• Woody Woodpecker
• Heckle and Jeckle
• Mr. Peabody and Sherman

ETA: I don't remember much about Space Ghost other than I watched it and I seem to recall some kind of ray gun built into his wrist bracelet. I mostly just remember the name. And as far as Tom and Jerry, I often wonder if they were the inspiration behind the Simpson's characters of Itchy and Scratchy. Years later I would come to understand that the Flintstones were inspired heavily by Jackie Gleason's 1950s TV series called the Honeymooners which we watched in syndication during the 1960s, along with his variety series. Many of these shows are definitely politically incorrect by today's standards, but my childhood was in a whole different era...

[Cinisajoy]

I don't remember Space Ghost but I do remember Casper.
Top Cat also isn't ringing any bells but I remember Felix the cat with his bag of tricks.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

I don't remember Space Ghost but I do remember Casper.
Top Cat also isn't ringing any bells but I remember Felix the cat with his bag of tricks.

[Cinisajoy]

Now I remember Top Cat.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Now I remember Top Cat.

Many of the cartoons in the 50s and 60s were based on popular TV shows. Top Cat, for example, was based on the Phil Silvers Show and Top Cat's voice was an impression of Phil Silvers.

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Many of the cartoons in the 50s and 60s were based on popular TV shows. Top Cat, for example, was based on the Phil Silvers Show and Top Cat's voice was an impression of Phil Silvers.

Cool, that makes sense. Unfortunately I never saw the Phil Silvers show until probably the 1980s or 1990s when it was featured on TV Land or some other classic TV channel. That was when I first saw Sgt. Bilko too. Both were great shows. But we only had one commercial TV station in the mid-1960s in Austin, so there were a lot of good shows we never saw until years later. By 1970 we had three commercial TV stations in Austin covering ABC, NBC, and CBS. We had a shared PBS station with San Antonio, but unfortunately it was located about 60 miles south of our home, so it didn't always come in very well. We are talking antenna TV in those days as we lived in a small rural town of 2800 people about 20 miles north of Austin with no cable company. I had never even heard of cable TV until I went off to Texas A&M University in the 1976. My roommate and I managed to get cable TV with HBO for less than $15/mo. We thought that was so cool as we had always been limited to antenna reception and only about 5 local stations.

We also got a lot of old 1950s TV series in syndication in the 1960s, especially in the late afternoon after school. I remember watching Sky King my favorite after school show, Perry Mason, and a lot of old serial shows like The Lone Ranger, Superman, Zorro, The Cisco Kid, Fury (about the black horse), Lassie, I Love Lucy (which is still funny today, though politically incorrect these days), The Honeymooners, etc. Plus we had more westerns on during the 1950s and 1960s than I could possibly ever remember. And thankfully I missed out on the Howdy Doody Show! But we had several versions of Bozo the Clown over the years. Never cared for clown shows though. Also shorts from the Three Stooges and the Keystone Kops (not misspelled) were still popular, but I never got into the slapstick comedy stuff.

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

I don't remember Space Ghost but I do remember Casper.
Top Cat also isn't ringing any bells but I remember Felix the cat with his bag of tricks.

I think Space Ghost was pretty forgettable!



I also remember the Fantastic Four cartoon series. Now a days they make movies out of old 1960s cartoon series. Meh....

[Cinisajoy]

I don't know the price but we got cable in 1972.
The locals+hbo+pbs+2 or 3 stations out of Dallas.
I remember Hbo was channel 6, Dallas was 11 and PBS also out of Dallas was 13.
Our locals were 3 (2 with antenna), 4 (7 with antenna) and 9. NBC was the only one that stayed the same.
I was 6 and my parents (ok technically my 2 year old brother) ran a cable line to my room.
Now why did we have to hide the splitter when the cable company came out?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Cool, that makes sense. Unfortunately I never saw the Phil Silvers show until probably the 1980s or 1990s when it was featured on TV Land or some other classic TV channel. That was when I first saw Sgt. Bilko too. Both were great shows.

Another one is the Flintstones, which was based on the Honeymooners.

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Another one is the Flintstones, which was based on the Honeymooners.

Yep, I mentioned that in post #92.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Yep, I mentioned that in post #92.

...sorry 'bout that; I missed it.

[crich70]

Some of the earliest cartoons weren't actually even made for TV, but for the movie theater. The Looney Tunes for example. Also we don't think about it now but The Flintstones was originally intended for adults not kids. I mean Fred and Barney drank 'cactus juice' (i.e. beer) and would get into trouble where the girls would think they were running around with other women (they were taking dancing lessons) or other such situations. Plus there was the episode where Wilma had Pebbles. That has to be a first for cartoons.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I think Space Ghost was pretty forgettable!

I never liked Space Ghost, but I did like the early 60s sci-fi cartoon, Space Angel. The actor who voiced the Scottish engineer was none other than Hal Smith (Otis Campbell on the Andy Griffith Show).

Space Angel was an animated science fiction television series produced in the United States from early 1962 through 1964. It used the same Synchro-Vox lip technique as Clutch Cargo, the first cartoon produced by the same studio, Cambria Productions.

The series chronicled the adventures of three astronauts who worked for the Earth Bureau of Investigation's Interplanetary Space Force on board the spaceship Starduster: Captain/Pilot Scott McCloud, also known as "The Space Angel" (voiced by Ned Lefebver), Electronics/Communications expert Crystal Mace (voiced by Margaret Kerry), and the immensely strong Scottish born Gunner/Engineer Taurus (voiced by Hal Smith).