Remember that one day when you could wake up without an alarm? When you would get your favorite bowl of cereal and sit between the hours of 8 and 12? This is a blog dedicated to the greatest time of our childhood: Saturday mornings. The television programs you watched, the memories attached to them, and maybe introducing you to something you didn't realize existed. Updated every weekend.
For a history of The Flintstones franchise, check out the post here.
They grow up so fast.
The characters of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm.
With The
Flintstonesdoing well in syndicated reruns—particularly on Saturdays—CBS executive Fred Silverman approached Hanna-Barbera in 1970 about doing a revival. However, he wanted to
make it a teen-oriented and musical series to try and duplicate the successes
of Filmation’s Archieseries and their
own Josie
and the Pussycats. Joe Ruby and Ken
Spears were assigned the task of making the
modern Stone Age family even more modern. They radically aged the children of
their principle characters to teenagers, and gave them a gang of friends that
could play together as a band whenever the story required it. The result was The
Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.
Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm and their gang cruising around Bedrock.
The
Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show debuted on CBS on September 11, 1971. It focused
on the wacky misadventures of teenaged Pebbles Flintstone (Sally Struthers),
her neighbor and boyfriend Bamm-Bamm Rubble (Jay North), and their friends:
Moonrock Crater (Lenny Weinrib), a genius inventor; Penny Pillar (Mitzi
McCall), an overweight girl obsessed with being thin; and Wiggy Rockstone (Gay
Hartwig), a girl who lived by the daily horoscopes. Often, they would find
themselves in sticky situations made even stickier by Pebbles’ schemes to get
them out of trouble, which often backfired (a callback to the schemes of her
father in the original series). Other times, they were at odds with Pebbles’
rival, snobbish Cindy Curbstone (Hartwig), and a biker gang called The Bronto
Bunch. The elder Flintstones and Rubbles made the occasional appearances on the
show, but they were no longer the focus. Another thing of note is that while
Bamm-Bamm did seem to pull off the occasional impossible feat here and there,
the super strength he was originally depicted with as a baby was significantly
played down.
Groovin' to the beat.
As The Flintstones focused on
the juxtaposition of the modern world set amongst a Stone Age backdrop, so too
did Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. Along with everything viewers had come
to expect of the franchise, the show was heavily influenced by its time period.
Lingo, teen idols, drag racing and various activities the kids did for fun were
taken from the trends of the 1970s. The series was written by Neal
Barbera, Walter Black, Larz Bourne, Tom Dagenais, Bob
Ogle, Larry Rhine and Dick
Robbins, with story direction by Brad Case, Carl
Fallberg, Cullen Houghtaling, Alex
Lovy, Lew Marshall, Paul
Sommer and Irv Spector. The music was composed by Hoyt Curtin and Ted
Nichols. It was one of the first Hanna-Barbera
productions to utilize their new limited laugh track.
Proving
successful, CBS decided to expand their Flintstones franchise with the
creation of The Flintstone Comedy Hour. Along with new adventures
featuring the elder characters, the Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm characters
were given new shorts and a band called “The Bedrock Rockers” that performed
during the show in between segments. Reruns of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm aired
as the second half-hour of the Comedy Hour. As Struthers had become
committed to her role on the sitcom All in the Family before the original first episode ever even aired, Mickey Stevens replaced her for all the new material produced for
the Comedy Hour. When the show was renamed The Flintstone
Comedy Show, ThePebbles and Bamm-Bamm reruns were
dropped from its format and later aired as part of the weekday syndicated Fred Flintstone and
Friends. It would make the rounds later on
cable channel Boomerang.
“Gridiron Girl Trouble” (9/11/71) – Bamm-Bamm’s dogosaurus follows
them to school, and hiding him from the dogcatcher lands Pebbles into playing
in the big football game.
“Putty in Her Hands” (9/18/71) – Pebble’s attempt at sculpting falls
flat. She convinces Bamm-Bamm to pose as her sculpture to fool Cindy, but
statue Bamm-Bamm ends up stolen crooks.
“Frog for a Day” (9/25/71) – Pebbles studies witchcraft to prove her
authenticity when her role in a play is cut back resulting in her believing she
accidentally turned Barney into a frog.
“The Golden Voice” (10/2/71) – Pebbles forces Bamm-Bamm to sing for
her band after hearing him in the shower. Unfortunately, the only place
Bamm-Bamm CAN sing is in the shower.
“Daddy’s Little Helper” (10/9/71) – Believing Fred about to be fired,
Pebbles gets a job at the gravel pit in order to help save his job. However,
she ends up costing him a promotion instead.
“Focus Foolery” (10/16/71) – Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm stumble on a bank
robbery, forcing them to hide out in a baby pageant with Bamm-Bamm posing as a
baby.
“Pebble’s Big Boast” (10/23/71) – Pebble’s brags about knowing a big
rock group to Cindy and is tasked with getting them to play at her party.
“The Grand Prix Pebles” (10/30/71) – Pebbles accidentally gives away
Fred and Barney’s new super fuel. Retrieving it, the kids discover a flaw in
the formula they must fix before the big race.
“The Terrible Snorkosaurus” (11/6/71) – Pebbles fails to sell a
snorkosaurus to Sea Rock World and hides it in her swimming pool, forgetting
Fred has a pool party planned for his boss.
“Schleprock’s New Image” (11/13/71) – Pebbles tries to help jinx
Schleprock change his luck, but her help only leads to endless mishaps
befalling the gang.
“Coach Pebbles” (11/20/71) – Pebbles and her girl friends takes over
coaching the little league team when Fred loses his voice, but their lack of
baseball knowledge brings the team down.
“No Cash and Carry” (11/27/71) – A con man posing as chief of store
security convinces the gang to steal from a department store as part of an
effort to help test his operatives.
“Wooly the Great” (12/4/71) – Moonrock’s super shampoo gives Pebble’s
pet elephant the ability to fly. After Wooly causes Fred to get angry at him,
Wooly runs away to join the circus.
“Mayor May Not” (12/11/71) – Pebbles becomes honorary Mayor of Bedrock
and attempts to improve the city…with disastrous results.
“They Went That Away” (12/18/71) – Pebbles volunteers her friends and
family to watch Uncle Hatrock’s ranch while he’s away, and she unknowingly
hires cattle rustlers as ranch hands.
“The Birthday Present” (1/1/72) – Wooly buries Wilma’s present,
causing Pebbles to believe it was stolen by their neighbors, the creepy
Gruesomes.
The second of three Jim Carrey movies turned into
cartoons, based on the film Ace Ventura:
Pet Detective.
Ace
Ventura (Carrey) was a private investigator residing in Miami, Florida.
However, he was unique in that the only cases he took involved animals; missing
pets and the like. Ace’s clientele choice is second only to his choice of
wardrobe (striped pants, boots and loud shirts), hair styles (a sweeping upward
wave), and loud, crude and eccentric personality. All of that together left Ace
with insufficient work to pay the bills and the joke of police officers he
frequently came in contact with. Regardless, Ace was hired to find out what
happened to Snowflake, the bottlenose dolphin mascot of the Miami Dolphins, who had suddenly
disappeared from his tank.
Ace Ventura movie poster.
The movie was conceived by Jack Bernstein, who wanted to
do a comedic take on Sherlock
Holmes and gained additional inspiration from one of the “Stupid Pet
Tricks” segments on Late Night with David Letterman. Carrey
was cast in the role after it was offered to and turned down by Rick Moranis. Ace’s mannerisms
and personality was cultivated from one of Carrey’s earlier characters, Overly Confident Gay Man,
when Carrey found the script read funnier when done in that style. Carrey also based
his performance on the movements of a bird, rounding out Ace’s bizarre persona.
Co-written and directed by Tom
Shadyac the film was released on February 4, 1994 to mixed reviews.
However, it became a box office success and put a sequel on a fast track.
Carrey was paid $15 million to reprise his role, and the following year Ace Ventura: When Nature Callswas released on November 10th. This would be Carrey’s
first and only sequel to one of his movies until 2014’s Dumb and Dumber To, citing
the lack of challenge he faced as an actor returning to the same character. It
was also the last installment of the Ace franchise featuring Carrey,
with a poorly-received 2009 televised sequel/spin-off film, Ace Ventura Jr.: Pet
Detective, capping things off entirely.
Ace, even more animated than before.
While the second movie was in
production, an animated series was in the works from Nelvana, developed by Duane Capizzi. The series
carried on from the movies, following Ace (Michael Daingerfield, who provided a
few of Carrey’s ADR lines for the sequel when Carrey was unavailable) and his
monkey sidekick, Spike (Richard Binsley), as they investigated a series of
animal-related crimes. Other characters from the first movie carried over
included police officers Emilio (Greg
Burson) and Aguado (Al
Waxman) and Ace’s landlord, Schickadance (Vince Corazza), whom Ace always
had to avoid when he came around to collect the rent in a running gag.
The actual brains of the operation.
Despite being toned down for the Saturday morning audience, Ace retained
a good deal of his crude humor--from making his butt talk to shoving various
items up his nose and showing a general lack of disrespect towards, well,
everyone. A large part of the tonality could be attributed to the writing staff
including one Seth MacFarlane,
who would go on to fame upon creating Family Guy. Butch Hartman, who would find
great success with The
Fairly OddParentsin 2001, also contributed a script to an
episode. All the memorable catchphrases were in the show, including
“Allllllllllllrighty, then!”, “Like a glove!” (whenever Ace crashed his car
into a tight parking spot), and “Spank you very much” (instead of a straight
“thank you”).
When you're the only pet detective, you get some really famous clients.
The show’s final episode on CBS
featured a crossover with other Jim Carrey-based show: The Mask: The Animated Series (which
incidentally shared several of the writers). The crossover began on the earlier
The Mask episode “The Aceman Cometh,”
which dealt with Ace being hired by Stanley Ipkiss (Rob Paulsen), aka The Mask, to find his
dog, Milo (Frank Welker), who was kidnapped after his brain was switched with
that of a scientist. At the end of the episode, Spike stole the mask, forcing
Stanley to travel to Florida to retrieve it in “Have Mask, Will Travel.” Both
characters retained their distinctive animation styles while appearing on each
other’s shows; The Mask’s being a more realistic comic book style while Ace was
more stylized to match his cartoonish personality.
Despite Ace’s inability to find a substantial audience, its ultimate
cancellation was a matter of circumstance and timing. CBS had decided to
jettison its Saturday morning cartoons in 1997 and turn to outside companies to
provide their content. Nickelodeon
acquired the broadcast rights to air reruns of the show and commissioned a
third season that began on September 13, 1999. While essentially the same show,
there were several notable differences between the two runs. The Nick version
included a new intro and animated title cards introducing the episode names and
their writers, whereas the CBS version just superimposed them over the
beginning of the episode. The character designs received some tweaks and
brighter colors; in particular making Ace’s features more exaggerated. Ace also
moved his operations from his apartment to an actual office, although he
retained the menagerie of animals that lived with him while jettisoning the
running gag with his landlord. After those these final 13 episodes, the series
ended permanently in 2000.
In 1996, a CD-ROM game based on the
series was developed by 7th
Level, Inc. and released by Bomico
Entertainment Software GmbH. It was a point and click adventure game with
adult-level jokes, actions and dialogue. In 1997, Troll Books
published an adaptation
of the episode “The Parrot Who Knew Too Much” while in 2000 Scholastic
published three
books based on the series by Jesse
Leon McCann. Although the series had not been released to home video, three
episodes were included in the two-movie
bundle as a bonus disc. At Toy Fair
2019, Neca revealed that they would be
releasing an action
figure based on Ace from the cartoon as part of their 6” Toony Classics
line in 2020.
EPISODE GUIDE:
Season 1:
“The Reindeer Hunter” (12/13/95) – Santa calls on Ace to find his
reindeer on Christmas Eve.
“Bowling for Bear” (1/20/96) – Ace sets out to save a bowling grizzly
bear’s life.
“Pet Food” (1/27/96) – Endangered species are in trouble in Miami, and
Ace is tasked to find out why.
“The Parrot Who knew Too Much” (2/3/96) – A parrot who knows some
important secrets must be kept out of the wrong hands.
“French Dip” (2/10/96) – Ace needs to figure out why a gentle blue
whale tries to kill a nature show host.
“Natural Born Koalas” (2/17/96) – Ace tries to find out why a normally
nice koala goes aggressive.
“The Hounds of D’Ubervilles” (2/24/96) – Ace heads to England to find
a missing hound before an annual fox hunt.
“Remembrance of Trunks Past” (3/2/96) – Ace has to save the city from
being overrun by elephants.
“Night of the Gorilla” (3/9/96) – Ace has to clear the name of a cute
gorilla framed for a crime.
“Day of the Groundhog” (3/30/96) – A groundhog is in danger on
Groundhog Day.
“The Big Stink” (4/6/96) – Ace must rescue a little boy’s kidnapped
skunk.
“The Gator Gal” (4/23/96) – Legendary poacher Gator Jane has stolen
one of Doc’s gators, putting Ace on the trail.
“The Bull Market” (4/30/96) – Ace is called to the Circle F Ranch to
find a missing bull, the pet of the owner’s son.
Season 2:
“Panda-monium” (6/7/97) – Saving some pandas turns out to be
problematic.
“Snow Job” (6/14/97) – Ace heads to Siberia to find an Eskimo tribe’s
huskies and ends up caught in the middle of a Cold War plot.
“Salmon Rush Hour” (6/21/97) – Aguado’s vacation is ruined by a bear
attack, which Ace attributes to the sudden disappearance of the bears’ salmon
supply.
“The Search for Spike” (6/28/97) – Spike is nabbed by a smuggler by
mistake, setting Ace on the hunt to get him back.
“The Milky Way” (7/5/97) – Aliens seemingly abduct some cows, but Ace
discovers their disappearance may be more terrestrial in origin.
“The Golden Kitten” (7/12/97) – Ace discovers a rare breed of cat that
leads him to a gold statue and a curse.
“Thunderballrighty Then” (7/19/97) – Ace must protect a dog from a dangerous
criminal mastermind.
“Dragon Guy” (7/26/97) – Ace tells the story about a man who saves a
dragon from an evil sorcerer.
“Bad Hare Day” (8/2/97) – Ace has to retrieve a magic rabbit stolen by
a magician’s rival.
“Robo West” (8/9/97) – NO SYNOPSIS AVAILABLE.
“Howl of the Weremoose” (8/16/97) – Ace must keep innocent moose from
being harmed as hunters look for the legendary weremoose terrorizing the woods.
“Bald Courage” (8/23/97) – The Secret Service hires Ace to investigate
the mysterious disappearances of America’s bald eagles.
“Have Mask, Will Travel” (8/30/97) – Ace heads to the space station to
find a lost hamster while Stanley Ipkiss retrieves his mask from Spike and
joins Ace on his mission.
Season 3:
“Witch’s Brew” (10/29/99) – Ace scours a high school looking for a
missing pet bat.
“Bird is the Word” (11/30/99) – Ace must find a golden falcon by midnight
so that it can go on its annual display.
“Dino Mite” (12/1/99) – Ace is invited to a remote island to find a
revolutionary theme park’s main attraction: living dinosaurs.
“Ace in Space” (12/2/99) – Ace is abducted by aliens in order to find
a horse before it gives a bad alien the information he needs to conquer all.
“Get Piggy” (12/3/99) – Ace’s favorite animal star is kidnapped and
Ace takes it upon himself to rescue him.
“Ace Off” (12/6/99) – Ace is put on the trail of a general’s kidnapped
dog only to discover the kidnapper is…his clone!
“Shell Shock” (12/7/99) – Ace has one hour to find the band Turtle
Soup’s pet turtle.
“Beware the Fly” (12/8/99) – A scientist is knocked out and his matter
transporter stolen, but not before his molecules were scrambled with that of a
housefly.
“Ace in Time” (12/9/99) – On the trail of panther thieves, Ace is
sucked through a time vortex and ends up in ancient Rome.
“Putt Detective” (12/10/99) – Ace takes an insane amount of money to
remove a gopher from a country club’s golf course before a big tournament.
“Exor-Kitty” (1/7/00) – Ace is hired to deal with a possessed kitty.
“Ace of the Jungle” (1/14/00) – Ace bails out over a jungle and
becomes entangled with a group of gorillas while Spike enjoys his time alone.
“Cyber Ace” (1/21/00) – Looking for a virtual puppy leads to Ace being
zapped into cyberspace.
