My Top 4 Favorite Kidvid Cartoon Companies (In No Particular Order)

I was born in 1959, so I grew up with the Saturday Morning Kidvid Phenomenon. It was a time when there were only three major networks (ABC, CBS and NBC, if you must know), and while there were shows in syndication back when I was a kid, the good ones were on during the weekends. There were several kidvid companies competing for our shortening attention spans, but for me, four of them stood out. Here they are.

Hanna-Barbera

So what if classic movie animators called their company "Hanna and the Barberians"? I called them my favorite studio. They created a ton of classic characters that appeared on SatAM and beyond: Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Scooby Doo, the Flintstones, and on and on. And while I liked these classics, my personal favorites were shows that lasted only one season: The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, Wacky Races, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, and my all-time favorite "pro-social values" cartoon, Devlin—because Micky Dolenz of the Monkees voiced Tod, the middle Devlin!

Filmation

Hanna-Barbera's biggest rival on SatAM, Filmation started out with The New Adventures of Superman, which started the 60s trend of "the Supers," superhero cartoons that proliferated until concerned parents got them shut down due to "violence." As usual, though, my personal favorite Filmation cartoons were the lesser-known: The Brady Kids (yeah, those Brady Kids), The New Adventures of Gilligan, Fantastic Voyage (based on the movie about shrinking heroes), M-U-S-H (a "M*A*S*H" ripoff about dog mounties in the Klondike), Lassie's Rescue Rangers, and The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty (a cowardly cat dreams of being a different hero every week).

Jay Ward

This was my earliest introduction to animated cartoons on Saturday Morning, Sunday Morning and the weekdays. Without a doubt, Jay Ward's most popular characters were Rocky and Bullwinkle, the Squirrel, and the Moose, and they were my reasons for not going to church on Sunday Mornings when I could get away with it (hey, I was only five). Of course I didn't get all the puns they detonated at that time—Jay Ward's were the cartoons you grew into, not out of. Ward also animated the ads for Cap'n Crunch, Quisp and Quake cereals, and created George of the Jungle, his only money-losing cartoon show. I sure hope the much-later live action George movies made up for the loss.

DiC Animation

I saved the best for last (or the worst, in some people's opinion). To me, DiC Animation was the Hanna-Barbera of the 80s. Although most of their shows were hot in syndication—like Inspector Gadget and Heathcliff—my favorite DiC show was Kidd Video, a strange and wonderful mix of "MTV Meets The Wizard of Oz." Kidd Video, a live action made-for-TV rock band, is kidnapped and dragged to the musical cartoon dimension of "the Flip Side" by the evil Master Blaster. A friendly little fairy named Glitter, who turns temporarily superstrong after sneezing, frees the Kidds, and they spend episodes in magical lands rescuing various Flip Side citizens from Master Blaster while trying to find a way back home. Oh, and the live action Kidds did their own music video at the end of each episode. This one managed to last two seasons on NBC, with the second season the wilder one. Alas, it got too expensive to make, since they used popular music and music videos in each episode. Ah, but once you see how gorgeous the Kidds look in Season Two, you'll be grateful that it was made in the first place.

Well, that's it. Thank you for putting up with this Hanna-Barberian from Filmation nation living in the Jay Ward. Hope I wasn't too much of a DiC!