Retro Toons #2: Fred and Barney Meet The Thing
The show was an hour long show later turned into a 90 minute show that featured at first 2 and subsequently 3 half hour cartoon segments featuring the title characters.
Fred and Barney from the Flintstones, the subsequent Shmoo from the Li'l Abner comic strip back in the late 40's and the Marvel Comics character The Thing.
However my main point of interest wasn't Fred and Barney from the Flintstones, or the subsequent addition of the amorphous white blob called the Shmoo. No, the segment I liked was The Thing.
Yes the Marvel Comics character had his own solo 30 minute cartoon show for a while.
Surprisingly there's very little info about this show, its almost as if it only exists in the minds of a select few. None of the other Fantastic 4 appear in this show, but I guess Hannah Barbera decided that since they still had the character rights to him they might as well use them now that the 70's Fantastic Four show a.k.a The Fantastic 3 and the annoying talking robot had ended a year prior.
Anyway the premise goes something like this: Ben Grimm goes to seek the help of a scientist friend to see if he can help him control his powers, (why Reed couldn't do this? Who knows) and turn him back into a human being. The Experiment is partially successful as Ben is again human, however he is now a teenager. He does however now have the ability to change into and from the Thing at will by pressing two rings together and shouting the phrase: "Thing rings do your thing!". This causes him to be enveloped in a flash of light as orange rocks fly towards him.
In his Thing form, he sports a gravelly voice that's very close to Jimmy Durante's, all he's missing is the big stogie. As the Thing he had... well a "thing"... for shouting out bad puns relating to the situation. For example in the clip above he purports he'll go for a new track record as he stops a train and and breaks the wooden segments of the tracks in the process.
As a teenager, Ben now calls himself Benji. He runs around with a few friends in Centerville Highschool battling different threats including the Yancy Street Gang which are portrayed as prank pulling bikers. He's a tall lanky kid in the vein of Shaggy Rogers from the Scooby Doo shows. He doesn't do much other than transform into the Thing to save the day.
Among the supporting cast are Betty, her boyfriend Ronald, her sister Kelly, and Miss Twilly the high school teacher.
Kelly was the only one that knew about Benji's secret identity and helped him get away to transform into the rock skinned Thing when the need arose. If you think about their relationship a bit it was a little creepy, as Benji even though he looked like a teenager was really a 40 something year old man trying to get it on with a 16 year old kid.
Miss Twilly was somewhat infatuated with the thing if I remember correctly and was always fainting when he appeared. So this was a 40-something year old teacher infatuated with am orange rock-skinned Thing that was actually a 16 year old kid that was really a 40-something year old man; Gets confusing doesn't it?
The 30 minute segment featured two 11 minute shorts each with a different adventure.
The cartoons weren't too bad at least to the perception of my then child mind, however seeing as there is no current way of getting these cartoons in any format, I can't really judge it now objectively as an adult. I suspect they are campy as heel and filled with bad puns as most shows back then were.
In any case the cartoon left a standing impression on me, as I really liked the transformation sequence, it was one of those things like He-man's transformation tht was just awesome too behold. I used to get my dads old football rings and put them together pretending to transform.
The question I always asked myself is why did they pair it up with Fred and Barney? What sense does that make? Couldn't they find something else to put with Fred and Barney? At the time the Flintstones had already decayed into a variety of poorly constructed spin offs like the Pebbles and Bambam show where they are now teenagers and have a band, the infamous Frankenstones, as well as the Captain Caveman show with Wilma and Betty (a further decomposition of the Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels show). Any of the myriad of Flintstones derived characters that existed at the time would have made much more sense. I suspect had this cartoon been shown by itself it would have been much more successful. As it stands it only lasted a couple of moths before being scaled back for the Shmoo, and then completely forgotten.
Most Marvel comics purists will say this is a travesty of their beloved character, but I think it was a good example of how a good twist to a character can make for fun cartoons. It was a decent segment of the show that I truly liked.
If you can track it down this is a worthy lost classic you may want to check out.
Fred and Barney from the Flintstones, the subsequent Shmoo from the Li'l Abner comic strip back in the late 40's and the Marvel Comics character The Thing.
However my main point of interest wasn't Fred and Barney from the Flintstones, or the subsequent addition of the amorphous white blob called the Shmoo. No, the segment I liked was The Thing.
Yes the Marvel Comics character had his own solo 30 minute cartoon show for a while.
Surprisingly there's very little info about this show, its almost as if it only exists in the minds of a select few. None of the other Fantastic 4 appear in this show, but I guess Hannah Barbera decided that since they still had the character rights to him they might as well use them now that the 70's Fantastic Four show a.k.a The Fantastic 3 and the annoying talking robot had ended a year prior.
Anyway the premise goes something like this: Ben Grimm goes to seek the help of a scientist friend to see if he can help him control his powers, (why Reed couldn't do this? Who knows) and turn him back into a human being. The Experiment is partially successful as Ben is again human, however he is now a teenager. He does however now have the ability to change into and from the Thing at will by pressing two rings together and shouting the phrase: "Thing rings do your thing!". This causes him to be enveloped in a flash of light as orange rocks fly towards him.
In his Thing form, he sports a gravelly voice that's very close to Jimmy Durante's, all he's missing is the big stogie. As the Thing he had... well a "thing"... for shouting out bad puns relating to the situation. For example in the clip above he purports he'll go for a new track record as he stops a train and and breaks the wooden segments of the tracks in the process.
As a teenager, Ben now calls himself Benji. He runs around with a few friends in Centerville Highschool battling different threats including the Yancy Street Gang which are portrayed as prank pulling bikers. He's a tall lanky kid in the vein of Shaggy Rogers from the Scooby Doo shows. He doesn't do much other than transform into the Thing to save the day.
Among the supporting cast are Betty, her boyfriend Ronald, her sister Kelly, and Miss Twilly the high school teacher.
Kelly was the only one that knew about Benji's secret identity and helped him get away to transform into the rock skinned Thing when the need arose. If you think about their relationship a bit it was a little creepy, as Benji even though he looked like a teenager was really a 40 something year old man trying to get it on with a 16 year old kid.
Miss Twilly was somewhat infatuated with the thing if I remember correctly and was always fainting when he appeared. So this was a 40-something year old teacher infatuated with am orange rock-skinned Thing that was actually a 16 year old kid that was really a 40-something year old man; Gets confusing doesn't it?
The 30 minute segment featured two 11 minute shorts each with a different adventure.
The cartoons weren't too bad at least to the perception of my then child mind, however seeing as there is no current way of getting these cartoons in any format, I can't really judge it now objectively as an adult. I suspect they are campy as heel and filled with bad puns as most shows back then were.
In any case the cartoon left a standing impression on me, as I really liked the transformation sequence, it was one of those things like He-man's transformation tht was just awesome too behold. I used to get my dads old football rings and put them together pretending to transform.
The question I always asked myself is why did they pair it up with Fred and Barney? What sense does that make? Couldn't they find something else to put with Fred and Barney? At the time the Flintstones had already decayed into a variety of poorly constructed spin offs like the Pebbles and Bambam show where they are now teenagers and have a band, the infamous Frankenstones, as well as the Captain Caveman show with Wilma and Betty (a further decomposition of the Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels show). Any of the myriad of Flintstones derived characters that existed at the time would have made much more sense. I suspect had this cartoon been shown by itself it would have been much more successful. As it stands it only lasted a couple of moths before being scaled back for the Shmoo, and then completely forgotten.
Most Marvel comics purists will say this is a travesty of their beloved character, but I think it was a good example of how a good twist to a character can make for fun cartoons. It was a decent segment of the show that I truly liked.
If you can track it down this is a worthy lost classic you may want to check out.
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