1982 12:30 on NBC: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF FLASH GORDON

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You may notice that the title of this video is "The New Adventures of Flash Gordon 1979" and wonder why the heck it's being listed in 1982, ESPECIALLY since you probably don't remember seeing this cartoon on Saturday Morning in the 80's! Trust me, it belong here and it has one of my favorite Saturday Morning Behind-The-Scenes tales attached to it :)

Although the character and story of Flash Gordon has been around since 1934, our story begins in 1977 with the release of the movie STAR WARS. As soon as Star Wars made it's first million dollars, Filmation was on it making an animated movie for NBC. NBC *liked* it, but thought it would do better as a Saturday Morning cartoon so the movie was put on a shelf and work on the first season of The Adventures Of Flash Gordon cartoon were begun. Again, NBC *liked* it and even put it on Saturday mornings in 1979, but they hated the serialized "Episode 1, episode 2, etc" nature of the show because it didn't fit with their "Infinite Re-Runs" mode of Saturday Morning Programming (13 episodes, 52 Saturdays, you do the math) and so for the second season they asked for a few changes... changes that took 2 years.

During those two years, the big-screen "Flash Gordon" movie came to theaters, and the original Flash Gordon animated film (no called "Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure Of All" aired in prime-time on NBC the Friday before the new cartoons debuted in September 1982, along with a great "Be sure to watch the FURTHER adventures of Flash Gordon starting tomorrow morning and EVERY Saturday morning right here on NBC".

Unfortunately, NBC's requested changes had been put in to effect and made the previous series and the animated movie kind of a moot point. The serial format be dropped and the stories were more episodic. They also added a Scrappy-Doo pet dragon named Gremlin who made art with his mouth-smoke. The second season was not so well received (and was not seen in some areas, due to being scheduled in the 12:30 time slot and thus often being pre-empted for sportsball coverage) and the program was cancelled shortly after its completion.