1980's Saturday Morning Historical Preservation Society

Last week we voted on the best ABC Cartoon of 1980 and you all voted THE WORLD'S GREATEST SUPER FRIENDS a the best thing on 1980 ABC Saturday Morning TV, with THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN coming in a close second. This week, we move on to 1980 CBS!

[Poll #1917846]

At 11 in the morning on CBS in 1981, you could find an... *interesting* little show that I can only assume was created by a committee of Time Traveling Marketing Executives at Filmation, BLACKSTAR.

Buck Rogers crash-lands on He-Man's planet (Eternia) and teams-up with characters from Thundarr and a small platoon of Smurfs so he can fight The Thundercats foe (Mum-Ra) for the other half of a magic sword, because there should always be a sword.

Or, in the words of the narration:

"John Blackstar, astronaut, is swept through a black hole, into an ancient alien universe. Trapped on the planet Sagar, Blackstar is rescued by the tiny Trobbit people. In turn, he joins their fight for freedom against the cruel Overlord, who rules by the might of the Powerstar. The Powerstar is split into the Powersword and the Starsword. And so with Starsword in hand, Blackstar, together with his allies, sets out to save the planet Sagar. This is his destiny".

In later years when I was watching this on VHS, every time the end of the narration came and he says "I am John Blackstar", I liked to follow it up with "...And I'm an alcoholic." HI, JOHN. "It's been one week since my last drink, the last time I saw a Trobbit, but I feel like I might lapse and..." and then the episode would start and it was all just hi drunken nightmare/fantasy, week after week.

Never had much use for this cartoon... sorry I don't know much more about it. It was on opposite two other shows that I liked a heck of a lot better, and it was on a channel that we didn't receive very well with our antenna :/

Although there were only 13 episodes produced (a single season), the reruns continued to air at 1:00 in 1982 and 1983.

Please leave your memories/opinions/thoughts in the comment below :)

The Kwicky Koala show from Hanna-Barbera aired at 8am on your local CBS station starting in 1981, and only lasted one season. The show is a pretty forgettable comedy anthology, mostly notable for being among legendary cartoon director Tex Avery's final works. Avery died during production in 1980.

The show consisted of a mish-mash of relatively fresh and original comedy concepts that were unfortunate victims of an overzealous network of censors, corporate interests and parental watch-dog groups who feared anything that might even come close to being actually funny (I'M BIASED).

Kwicky Koala was a cross between Tex Avery's "Droopy" cartoons of the past and a Road Runner/Speedy Gonzalez theme. Wilfred Wolf was always trying to catch Kwicky for some undisclosed reason (either money or cartoonibalism, I think?), and Kwicky used the natural faster-than-light capabilities of a Koala(?!) to outsmart him and escape.

The Bungle Brothers were the vaudeville dogs who kind of hosted the show, and/or were always trying to sell their vaudeville act and become big stars. They didn't really have a PART in the show, just the little intros and endings of each episode.

Crazy Claws was a wildcat who used his sharp wits and equally sharp claws to evade the fur trapper Rawhide Clyde and his dog Bristletooth in a National Park run by Ranger Rangerfield. I don't remember much about this one other than how my buddy Kevin always said that Crazy Claws reminded him of his favorite X-Man, Wolverine (he bought a copy of Incredible Hulk #181 for $8 and back in 1981 that was just stupid-expensive for one comic book, but I digress...)

Dirty Dawg was the story of a homeless vagrant dog and his best friend (a rat named Ratso) as they tried to better their lives, and Officer Bullhorn as "The Man" who constantly foiled them.

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids was a Filmation animated series created, produced, and hosted (in live action bookends) by comedian Bill Cosby, who also did a huge chunk of the voices for the show (including Fat Albert himself). The show premiered in 1972 and *kind of* ran until 1985... See, up till 1983 they had been doing short-order seasons of the show - 6 to 8 new episodes per season - but then between 1984 and 1985 the cranked out some FIFTY NEW EPISODES of the cheaper, lower-quality "The Adventures of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids".

It should also be noted that this was the year that they replaced the "Junkyard Rock Band" segments of the show with Fat Albert and the gang rushing to their clubhouse to watch the latest episode of "The Brown Hornet" (Also voiced by Cosby).

What do you think? Have any good memories or thoughts to share about Fat Albert and the gang? Come at me with comments and fun, and if you're not careful you might just learn something before we're done. So let's get ready, okay? Hey, hey, HEY!

So here's something interesting - Oh, not the cartoon mind you... The All-New Popeye Hour (Saturday Morning at 10:30 on CBS in 1980) was your average hour-long animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions that had been on the air since 1978. This show tried its best to retain the style of the original Thimble Theatre comic strip (Popeye returned to his original costume and "Brutus" to his original name of Bluto), while complying with the prevailing content restrictions on violence. Because of those helpful parental watchdog groups and their restrictions on violence in TV cartoons for children at the time, in this version Popeye did not throw punches to get back at Bluto; he often lifted him, with his own hands or with machinery, and hurled him away. This series marked the last time that Jack Mercer would voice the spinach-eating sailor. Mercer died in 1984, one year after the show was cancelled by CBS.

...But that's not the part that I find interesting.

No, what's REALLY interesting (to me, at least) is that all three networks - ABC, NBC and CBS - programmed their Saturday morning of 1980 so that NO CARTOONS WOULD START AT 10AM!!! They all programmed 90-minute blocks for 9am, or a half-hour block followed by a full hour block so that NO SHOW would start at 10am!

That's WEIRD!

In 1981, this show kept the 10:30 time slot but was cut down to 30 minutes and renamed "The Popeye & Olive Comedy Show". Oddly enough, I can't confirm or deny that they ever actually made a new opening title sequence for "The Popeye & Olive Comedy Show" and I distinctly remember being confused when I would tune in on Saturday morning only to see the "The All-New Popeye Hour" opening and thinking I had a full hour till the next cartoons started on this channel. Imagine my HORROR when I flipped back to this channel during the first commercial break of the 11:00 hour only to find that the cartoon had changed at 11 and I missed the first 5 minute of the new show!

In The New Adventures of Batman & Robin, the "Dynamic Duo" fights crime in Gotham City, encountering the classic Batman rogues gallery as well as some original villains. Complicating matters is Bat-Mite, a well-meaning imp from another dimension called Ergo, who considers himself Batman's biggest fan. As a result, he wears a variant of Batman’s costume and attempts to help him, only to often create more problems (although he is occasionally an asset). Missing is Alfred, the faithful butler of Batman's alter ego Bruce Wayne; also notable in this series are the inverted colors of the "R" on Robin's costume.

This was an excellent Filmation cartoon from 1977 featuring the voices of Adam West and Burt Ward (the live-action Batman & Robin from the 1960's Batman TV show). This cartoon stayed closer to the more serious Batman comics that were being published by DC Comics at the time, with the glaring exception of BAT-MITE (who is an honorary member of the Scrappy-Doo Club).

Only one season of this show was ever made, and it was then re-packaged over and over again till some undetermined year of the early 80's.

Once they figured that they could shuffle the episodes in to the Super 7, they kind of abused it and over-ran the show. Still awesome, though!

(Cross posted from Tumblr)

Starting at 9am on Saturday Morning at your local CBS affiliate, you could see the long-running Bugs Bunny / Road Runner Show! This cartoon show, which was just a repackaging of Warner Brothers cartoons that had been produced up till 1962, bounced around the Saturday Morning TV dial so often you never really knew what channel it was going to show up on. But in the morning of 1980, it was on CBS...and it was like a Rosetta Stone of Childhood Memories. Parents, grandparents, older siblings... EVERYBODY knew the 5-to-8-minute adventures of Bugs Bunny and friends and so this cartoon was a common language that could bring generations together :)

(Also ran at 9:00 in 1981, 9:30 in 1982/1983)

(Cross-Posted from Tumblr)
Going to start chronologically here, for posterity sake! If you were to go ahead and wake up bright-n-early at 8am Saturday morning in 1980 and tune in to your local CBS affiliate, odds are you would have seen 'The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle' produced by Filmation, and aired from 1979 to 1981 on CBS with over 32 episodes produced. These cartoons were, quite frankly, terrible. They were part of a glut of revived classic cartoon characters that included the likes of Tom & Jerry with “Adventures” that were so over-censored that they were barely watchable.