1980's Saturday Morning Historical Preservation Society

Moving right along on this project! This list includes all the new 1981 cartoons as well as the returning ones from the previous seasons.

So here's the hotlink-filled OFFICIAL SATURDAY MORNING MASTER LIST OF 1981:

ABC

8:00 - The Richie Rich / Scooby Doo Show (And Scrappy Too!)
9:00 - Fonz And The Happy Days Gang
9:30 - Laverne & Shirley In The Army
10:00 - Goldie Gold & Action Jack
10:30 - Thundarr The Barbarian
11:00 - Super Friends
11:30 - Heathcliff & Marmaduke
12:00 - ABC Weekend Special

CBS

8:00 - The Kwicky Koala Show
8:30 - Trollkins
9:00 - The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Show
10:30 - The Popeye and Olive Comedy Show
11:00 - Blackstar
11:30 - The Tarzan / Lone Ranger / Zorro Adventure Hour
12:30 - The Tom & Jerry Comedy Show
1:00 - Fat Albert & The Cosby Kids

NBC

8:00 - Flintstone Comedy Show
8:30 - Smurfs
9:30 - The Kid Super-Power Hour With SHAZAM!
10:30 - Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends
11:00 - Space Stars
12:00 - The Daffy / Speedy Show

Starting at 10:30 Saturday morning on NBC in 1981, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends debuted. It followed the adventures of Spider-Man, Iceman and Firestar as they fought crime in New York while also occasionally I don't think I've ever met a person over the age of 30 who hasn't seen this show and has at least one favorite episode :) What most people *don't* know is that it was the animated world's first (and possibly only?) *sequel*.

It all started in 1978, with the DePatie-Freleng Studios (founded by two Warner Bros. Cartoons alumni, director/producer Friz Freleng and executive David H. DePatie) producing a few higher-quality Marvel Comics cartoons such as The New Fantastic Four and Spider-Woman (previous incarnations of Marvel characters in cartoon form had been somewhat pathetic in their animation). In 1980 they made a single season of a new Spider-Man cartoon for syndication that was VERY well received. SO WELL RECEIVED, in fact, that it inspired the buy-out of the animation department of DePatie-Freleng and renaming it to MARVEL PRODUCTIONS (the folks who were behind dang near every beloved cartoon of the 80's.

Recognize any of these?

• Muppet Babies
  
• Transformers
  
• GI Joe
  
• Jem
  
• My Little Pony
  
• Inhumanoids
  
• Fraggle Rock (animated)
  
• Dungeons & Dragons
  
• RoboCop: The Animated Series
  
• Dino Riders
  
• Defenders Of The Earth

It all started right here, with Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends :) Often teaming with Sunbow Entertainment, these guys pretty much defined 1980's action/adventure animation!

So anywho, about it being a sequel. Unlike other cartoons that change the model sheets from season to season or from series to series in order to keep things unique (see the artistic and design evolution through animated Batman, Justice League, modern Spider-Man shows, etc) and copy-rightable as distinctly different properties, Marvel Productions used the existing model sheets and backgrounds from their syndicated Spider-Man cartoon and added just a few new characters.

This paid off BIG for Marvel Productions in 1984 when they decided to repackage the previous three seasons with the syndicated Spider-Man episodes, instead of making new episodes.

This show had many different incarnations over the course of the 80's, and each on will get their own entry in this community because they had a distinctly different opening title sequence for each one. In one way or another, Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends was on Saturday Morning TV all the way through 1986.

Batman & The Super 7, Saturday mornings at 11am on NBC in 1980. Sorry that the quality is so lame, but this is a kind of rare opening to find...

This show was like a Lego Set of re-runs that they just kept reconstructing over and over again.

It all started in 1976 with the Filmation animated series "Tarzan, Lord Of The Jungle" and 1977 with "The New Adventures of Batman & Robin".

In the short season between 1977 and 1978, they slapped reruns of those two shows together and called it "The Tarzan/Batman Adventure Hour". No new content, and they only ran for a fistful of episodes before becoming "Tarzan & The Super 7" in 1978. And then in 1980, by changing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT THE OPENING CREDITS by the SLIGHTEST BIT, the show became "Batman & The Super 7".

"The Super 7" where just seemingly random episodes of Tarzan and Batman, mixed in with some new cartoons that nobody had every heard of before or ever would hear from again except for in the future Lego Set incarnations of this show over the next few years (each of these other cartoons will be getting it's own entry in our archives this week).

This is going to be really fun to follow the genealogy of... it's all very exciting :)

The Flintstones Comedy Show (not to be confused with the Flintstones Comedy HOUR of 1973) was on the air Saturday mornings from 9am till 10:30 (AN HOUR AND A HALF?!?!?) on your local NBC affiliate in 1980. This revival of the classic Hanna-Barbera stone-age family featured six different segments: The Flintstone Family Adventures (standard Flintstones stories featuring the Flinstones & the Rubbles doing late-70's/early-80's stuff), Bedrock Cops (Fred and Barney are now police officers assisted by the Shmoo as a trainee under the direction of Sgt. Boulder), Pebbles, Dino and Bamm-Bamm (Teenage Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm solving mysteries with Dino, in the tried-and-true HB Scooby-Doo formula), Captain Caveman (a prequel to the 1970's "Captain Cave-Man & The Teen-Angels" cartoon that showed Captain Caveman in his natural stone-age setting), Dino and Cavemouse (The Flintstones version of Tom & Jerry), and The Frankenstones (a hybrid of The Addams Family, The Munsters and The Flintstones).

My biggest complaint about this cartoon was that it seemed to be on ALL MORNING LONG. Flintstones were okay in small doses, but 90 MINUTES??? Three different half-hour time slots where I could have been seeing ANYTHING ELSE??? Nope, that's too much.

(Also aired in a much shorter 30-minute version at 8:00 in 1981/1982, and then as "The Flintstone Funnies" from 1982 till 1984 - check out the hilariously inept re-working of the intro!)

GODZILLA - At 8am on Saturday morning in 1980, you could tune in to your local NBC affiliate and see The Godzilla / Dynomutt Hour, which was part of a long standing tradition of the 1980’s Saturday Morning where the animation studio (usually Hannah-Barberra or Filmation) would repackage re-runs of a few different cartoons, animate a new opening credits and then BAM! BRAND-NEW SATURDAY MORNING CONTENT! This particular version of Godzilla ran from 1978 till 1981 and featured Godzilla’s little cousin, “Godzooki” (one of the many, MANY annoying side-kicks of the 1980’s that came from the same mold as Scrappy-Doo). Godzilla could be summoned by his human friends, sea-explorers on the ship USS Calico, with a signaling device or by the cry of Godzooki for some reason.