I might have been a little old by the time it came out but Land of the Lost really WAS a cut above most of the Saturday morning fare, even the other Sid and Marty Croft productions. Of course the cartoon that I really liked that few seem to remember was Skyhawks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlOF1CG6vsk
5 Likes
What is it with old men in caves giving out weapons to every one but me? All I ever got from them were therapy bills.
3 Likes
“Does anyone here have an aardvark?”
I only got to see Bob McAllister as a host, but I loved him.
1 Like
I just barely remember Sonny Fox*. McAllister was great; funny, never smarmy, gamely kept up the formula year after year.
Channel 5 WNEW had some cool weekday kid live-action shows. Sandy Becker, Chuck McCann, and Paul Winchell’s ventriloquist show. (Which Wikipedia says only ran three years, but that was an eternity when you were a kid.)
I loved cartoons as a kid, but there was something neat about those hosted shows.
*O.M.F.G. Sonny Fox is STILL ALIVE
1 Like
Call me Ishmael!
2 Likes
Watching tv with my 2 yo, its damn hard to find meaningless entertainment. Even Blaze and the Monster Machines is ham-fistedly laden with math and morality interjections.
You have to be careful with trying to actively waste time though, it might turn out to be a prodictivity booster, no matter how hard you try…
2 Likes
Why didn’t the old man just use the magic club himself and become Mighty Mightor? Show ends right there… I love throwing sticks in the bike spokes.
3 Likes
Yeah, I was a huge fan of Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff and I thought Paul Winchell was great. I remember reading somewhere that - besides being the original voice of Disney’s version of Tigger, he held a patent on an artificial heart valve or some other fancy medical equipment.
OK… It was an entire artificial heart:
I don’t think that I discovered Chuck McCann until I was an adult, but the guy is hilarious in the videos that I’ve seen.
3 Likes
“I’m pretty sure this cartoon was a complete waste of time.”
It definitely was for me; just Jonny Quest and Space Ghost sufficed. Nothing else worked.
3 Likes
And yet another brainy celebrity; that’s Hedy… not Hedley:
3 Likes
For cell phone chimes?
2 Likes
I’d like to get an email to McCann, just to say “thanks man!”
With a few exceptions* (that I know of) kid shows these days are the products of many hands. Those old hosted shows were largely shaped by the guy (almost always) in charge. Grown-ups working on cheap sets with puppets and sometimes a studio audiences of unpredictable kids. There time won’t come again.
(Fun Fact: “Krusty the Clown” was based on a Portland-area TV host, a clown named Rusty Nails. Way before my time – the host died a few years after I moved to the area – but I read that Matt Groening was vaguely frightened by the name (which screamed blood and tetanus), if not the actual character.)
*Bill Nye comes to mind.
2 Likes
…ping pong balls, seltzer bottles, and even cream pies. 
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
