ABC Weekend Special Season 4: 1980 - 1981

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Been meaning to do this for quite some time, figured I'll make it my regular Saturday Morning Thing for a while...

The ABC Weekend Special was a weekly 30-minute anthology TV series that aired Saturday mornings on ABC from 1977 to 1997, and was generally known in my home as "The last chance to see some cartoons before American Bandstand. It featured a wide variety of stories that were both live-action and animated.

I'm going to start cataloguing the different seasons for us here so we can really appreciate which year our favorite one-shot Saturday morning shows may have come from. I get lots of questions about "mystery shows" that people vaguely remember from their childhood, and I'd say a good 90% of them were ABC Weekend Specials!

The 1980/1981 season of this show was the fourth season over all. Notable episodes that had come before this included the introduction of The Puppy (1977 "The Puppy Who Wanted A Boy", 1978 "The Puppy's Great Adventure" and 1979 "The Puppy's Amazing Rescue") and Miss Switch (1979 "The Trouble With Miss Switch"), both of which would make multiple appearances on 1980's Saturday Mornings.

The 1980/1981 season featured:

• "Scruffy" parts 1 thru 3 (which I've embedded the first part of above), the super-depressing story of a homeless puppy trying to find a home (produced by Ruby-Spears)
• "Arthur The Kid", a live-action tale of a kid who helps some old west outlaws become famous
• "Zack & The Magic Factory" parts 1 and 2, a live-action tale where a nerdy kid puts on a magic show for bullies
• "Mayday! Mayday!" parts 1 and 2, two kids have to go and find help after their family crashes their plane in the Sierra mountains.

Comments

[volare.livejournal.com]

Oh, now this stirs some ghosts alright... WOW

[maggies-lens.livejournal.com]

There was another one which I only vaguely remember, not sure if you guys got it where you are (I'm in Australia),I'd love it if anyone could tell me what it was. It was pretty old when I first saw it in the late 1980's, I THINK it was drawn in either France or Japan using their old styles of animation. It was a fairy (I think? Maybe an angel?) trying to earn her wings by helping fairy-tale characters by doing what she thought were good deeds, but usually ended up messing it up. She had a sort of helper, who referred to letters they got regarding how many "points" she'd earned. I remember I utterly adored the show, but despite searching for years I've never been able to find the name of it. Does it sound familiar to anyone?

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a syndicated show to me, possibly more closely associated with the 1970's. Those Italianime (I kust made up me own word that's PERFECT!) were EVERYWHERE on the non-affiliate channels! Prince Of The Sea, Cities Of Gold, Voltron... that particular cartoon doesn't ring a bell, though. Sorry :( But good luck!

[maggies-lens.livejournal.com]

*steals Italianime* that's...brilliant!

[aurora77]

Wow, Scruffy! I'm going to have to sit down and watch that soon.

Yeah, this was usually the Last Chance for Cartoons, but it was definitely a random grab bag. I was usually disappointed with the Live Action stuff, and they seemed to repeat shows an awful lot.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the liberal repeat policy of this show was both a blessing and a curse - only 4 hours of new content each year (give or take, 8 half-hours of programming) to spread over 52 Saturdays per year lead to lots of recycling, BUT it also meant that we got to see a bunch of the episodes from the previous 3 seasons peppered in to the line-up, like "The Ransom Of Red Chief", "Miss Switch", all of the Puppy adventures, and the prolonged Time-For-Timer movie "The Incredible, Indelible, Magical, Physical Mystery Trip". I think it was a good trade-off :)