My Top 8 Saturday Morning Cartoons Based on Primetime TV Shows

How do you enhance the popularity of a primetime TV show? Make a Saturday Morning cartoon out of it! Here are my picks for the Top 8 Saturday Morning Cartoons Based on Primetime TV Shows.

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF GILLIGAN

This Filmation cartoon was part of a wave of kidvid of the Seventies designed to teach "pro-social values" to kids. You know, lessons like, "Don't judge a book by its cover," "Cheaters never win," stuff like that.

The cartoon picks up where the primetime show left off, with most of the TV cast voicing their cartoon counterparts, except for Ginger and Mary Ann (both voiced by Jane Webb; Mary Ann credited to Jane Edwards). And for some odd reason, animated Ginger goes from a redhead in an evening gown to a platinum blonde in a minidress--she looked like Sabrina the Teenage Witch's older sister! Oh, and there's an eighth main character on the show: Gilligan's pet monkey Snubby, who always shrugged his shoulders at the humans' goings-on.

Each episode had a lesson in it--otherwise, it was just like the live action show, except the Skipper never hit Gilligan on the head with his captain's hat. The show always ended with Gilligan and the Skipper in their hammocks discussing the episode's message, then saying good night to each other. Gilligan would then turn to the TV audience and say, "See you!"

This cartoon would have an Eighties spinoff: GILLIGAN'S PLANET, with the Castaways blasting off from the island and lost on a deserted planet with no educational value whatsoever. This time, the entire primetime cast did the voice work, with the exception of Tina Louise (Dawn Wells voiced Ginger and Mary Ann).

THE BRADY KIDS

This Seventies Filmation series (the only show on this list that lasted two seasons) featured the six kids and replaced Dad Mike, Mom Carol and housekeeper Alice with Moptop the Dog, Ping and Pong the Baby Pandas and Marlon the Magical Mynah Bird, whose magic always was always wonky but who did fantastic vocal impressions. Most of the action took place in the Kids' treehouse, and of course, they had a little rock band. Didn't all Seventies cartoons have a little rock band?

Season One had guest stars like Superman, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, and Wonder Woman making her animated debut. There was time travel, body switching and mad scientists--and Marlon's mixed-up magic! Season Two had a Women's Lib episode, and one featuring Miss Tickle, the magical schoolteacher from the cartoon series MISSION: MAGIC.

THE BRADY KIDS started out as an hour-long feature of ABC's THE SATURDAY SUPERSTAR MOVIE called "Jungle Bungle," which introduced the cast of the series.

M-U-S-H

Once upon a time in the Seventies, there was a Filmation live-action SatAM series called UNCLE CROC'S BLOCK, which starred game-show celebrity Charles Nelson Reilly as Croc, the alligator-suited host of a live local kiddie show he hated hosting--but it at least paid for his condo! Like a real local kiddie show, it featured animated cartoons, and one of those cartoons was M-U-S-H.

M-U-S-H, which stood for Mangy Unwanted Shabby Heroes, was a canine spoof of M*A*S*H, but instead of surgeons in South Korea, it had Mounties in the Klondike. The main characters were slackers Bullseye and Trooper Joe, whose base Commander was easygoing Colonel Flake, assisted by little company clerk Sonar. Bullseye and Trooper's foils were the uptight Major Sideburns and his female counterpart Cold Lips. There was also Nurse Hilda and a moose.

I don't remember any episodes, except one where Bullseye and Trooper threw a surprise birthday party for Maj. Sideburns, who had trouble saying "Thank You" to them.

The other cartoons on UNCLE CROC'S BLOCK were "Fraidy Cat" (about a cowardly feline), "Wacky and Packy" (a caveman and his mammoth lost in the Twentieth Century) and "SuperFiends" (edited segments from THE GROOVIE GOOLIES).

PARTRIDGE FAMILY: 2200 A.D.

If the Bradys can have their own Saturday Morning cartoon, why not the Partridges? And why not set it in the future? This Hanna-Barbera offering from 1974 was pretty much like the live-action sitcom, only with a science fiction tone as the Partridges performed gigs on faraway planets. Plus Keith and Laurie had alien best friends Veenie the Venusian and Marian the Martian, respectively. Danny Partridge had a thing for science that always went wrong, including a robot dog named Orbit that took orders literally.

Two of Danny's failed experiments were shrinking Keith down to the size of a Ken doll and using an invisibility watch called the Molex which started making bits and pieces of Danny's body disappear involuntarily. And of course, widowed mom Shirley, who liked baking cakes from scratch instead of "using the cake button," kept the family together with tough love.

PARTRIDGE FAMILY: 2200 A.D. reappeared later as part of a syndicated umbrella series called FRED FLINTSTONE AND FRIENDS under the title THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY IN OUTER SPACE.

THE DUKES

This Eighties Hanna-Barbera cartoon started out with a dilemma: On the live-action DUKES OF HAZZARD, John Schneider and Tom Wopat (Bo and Luke Duke) had been fired due to a salary dispute and replaced with Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer as Coy and Vance Duke. So who was going to star in the cartoon? Cherry and Mayer as Coy and Vance, of course, replaced by Schneider and Wopat's Bo and Luke when they returned to the primetime show.

Either way, the cartoon had the Duke Boys and Cousin Daisy in the "General Lee" running an around-the-world race against Boss Hogg, Sheriff Roscoe and Flash the Hound Dog in Boss Hogg's Cadillac, having fantastic adventures at every stop. Back home in Hazzard County, Uncle Jesse would read letters from Daisy to his pet raccoon Smokey.

My favorite episode was the Christmas one, where the race was postponed until after the holidays. Boss Hogg decided to race on Christmas Day anyway until he was visited by three ghosts (as in Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL) who persuade him to play fair for once and join the Dukes in their Christmas celebration.

The final DUKES episode, " A Hogg in Foggy Bog," had Uncle Jesse and Smokey fly out to join the Duke Cousins as Boss Hogg raced to find a treasure--which turned out to be worthless Confederate money!

JEANNIE

This animated version of I DREAM OF JEANNIE has Jeannie and her Master as teenagers. Corry Anders, Center City's most popular guy, goes surfing and wipes out next to a strange bottle. He opens it, and out pops Jeannie--along with her big, bumbling apprentice genie Babu (voiced by Joe Besser of the Three Stooges). Only Henry Glopp, Corry's best friend, knew of Jeannie and Babu's existence.

Stories had Corry trying to live a normal teen life while keeping Jeannie a secret (always introducing her as "a friend of Henry's"), and Jeannie helping her Master deal with spoiled rich boy S. Melvin Farthingdale (aka "Smelvin") and various "wily and predatory" teen girls. Unlike Barbara Eden's Jeannie, who crossed her arms and blinked to produce magic, this Jeannie snapped her ponytail to do so.

Comedienne Julie McWhirter was the voice of Jeannie, while Corry was voiced by Mark Hamill, who would go on to voice the Joker in BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES and also do some little movie called STAR WARS.

EMERGENCY+ 4

Now that I think of it, the premise of this animated spinoff of the medical drama EMERGENCY! is kind of troubling: Firemen Gage and DeSoto (voiced by Kevin Tighe and Randolph Mantooth from the primetime series) assisted in emergencies by four young kids with a dog, a bird of prey and a monkey. I thought SatAM shows were supposed to keep kids out of danger!

Sally, Matt, Jason and Randy were the Plus Four team, but there were no appearances from the rest of the Station 51 team nor the staff at Rampart General Hospital. All I remember from this series is a scene where DeSoto decides to start cooking and Gage brings out the fire extinguisher!

Also, I remember the monkey's name was Bananas. Very original.

STAR TREK ANIMATED

I'm saving the best for last. The animated STAR TREK was the bridge between the cancellation of the primetime series and the growth of TREK fandom. It was the continuation of the Starship ENTERPRISE's five-year mission, with the primetime cast voicing their characters and the addition of two new alien crew members: Lt. Mress, a feline-like female; and Lt. Arex, a skinny, red-skinned alien male.

What is more interesting than the cartoon itself are a couple of stories associated with its creation: Since the original cast had gone on to do other things, voice-acting was recorded wherever possible, including STAR TREK conventions and public restrooms! And when the producers decided not to hire Nichelle Nichols and George Takei to voice Uhuru and Sulu, respectively, Leonard Nimoy took a stand and refused to voice Spock if they weren't. They were.

And there you have it: animated versions of primetime hit shows. Nowadays we have animated primetime hit shows and barely any SatAM cartoons. My, how things change!