Today, I’m asking you what you think is/was the weirdest kids cartoon that was based on a live action TV show.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
While it is not very common at all nowadays, back in the day, a VERY common thing was for the networks to greenlight kids cartoons based on live action TV shows. And, almost always, they were terrible. They were also often very, very odd, as they typically had the characters from the TV show team-up with, like, magical creatures or talking animals (LOTS of talking animals). There were so many weird ones that I was wondering what you thought was THE weirdest.
My pick is 1972’s Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family, which only aired a pilot (as an episode of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie), which somehow aged up Tabitha and Adam Stephens from Bewitched (who each inherited their mother’s magical powers) and sent them to go stay a summer with their Aunt Georgia, the mortal sister of their mortal father, Darrin, who runs a circus. Their cousins are in a band known as The Clown Family.
Tabitha and Adam have to use their powers to help stop a warlock who means trouble for both the circus and the band. Here’s one of the very-much-of-the-era tunes…
Just pure insanity. Bewitched wasn’t even on the air anymore (granted, the pilot might have been commissioned earlier in the year, while Bewitched was still on the air)! And you’re spinning of Samantha’s KIDS, and aging them up to do so? So weird.
Okay, so that’s my pick. What’s yours?
Also, feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at my new, much shorter e-mail, brian@poprefs.com!
Gilligan’s Planet was pretty damned odd. They shot the castaways into space. The article mentions that Bewitched was off the air when they spun off Tabitha and Adam, well Gilligan’s Island had been off the air (not counting syndication) for 15 years when Gilligan’s Planet aired.
The time travel cartoon Fonz and the Happy Days Gang was weird enough, but its companion series, Laverne and Shirley Join the Army, featured a drill sergeant who was a talking pig voiced by Ron “Horshak” Palillo. One episode ended with the pig becoming a werewolf. I was very disturbed that the next episode ignored these events.
I also watched segments of The Partridges in Outer Space in the series Fred Flintstone and Friends. The seventies and early eighties were a weird time.
The Brady Kids got very strange, what with a magical mynah bird and twin pandas. Also had Superman and the first screen appearance of Wonder Woman.
it always struck me as of today there was a cartoon of Rambo.
The live action Tabitha spin-off was not significantly less weird than this.
Partridge family 2200 A.D.
Partridge crossed with Jetsons weird.
definitely the time-travelling Fonz and Happy Days one for me.
It was weird Rambo and Robocop got kids cartoons, but I never saw them and don’t know how weird they were compared to the source movies, but that one I mentioned is up there for the sheer bizarreness compared to the source.
Rambo: The Force of Freedom was a G.I. Joe knockoff with Rambo and his sidekicks fighting against General Warhawk and the forces of SCAR. It’s interesting in that SCAR is such a grab-bag of America’s bogeymen from the last century: Nazis, Arab terrorists, ninjas, and street punks with Mohawks.
l completely missed this Tabitha cartoon, though I’ve often wondered why Bewitched didn’t get a cartoon takeoff when so many other paranormal sitcoms did. As for being off the air, so were My Favorite Martian and I Dream of Jeannie when My Favorite Martians and Jeannie became cartoons. Then again, like Gilligan they were in syndication so plenty of kids would have known them.
The Mr.T cartoon from the 80s, where he was the coach of a traveling kids gymnastic team that solved mysteries on the side. Longest half-hour wait to see the Spider-man and his amazing friends/Hulk hour.
Wow, there’s lots of options here. One not mentioned above is the WWF (now WWE) had some weird cartoon called Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling that featured Hulk Hogan and company going on wacky adventures.