 This is the SF Productions podcast network Before all the video was put directly into computer memory and the comnet, people used to tape shows. Let me see. There's a tape already in here. Let me hook this up here and let me see what we got. Back with us to the 60s and 70s, the dwelling place of the lost generation. An era whose heroes, role models, and very lives were molded and formed by weekly installments of favorite television programs. Welcome to the place your parents didn't understand. Welcome to the vast wasteland. Welcome home. Welcome to another exciting episode of Vast Wasteland. I'm your host, Mark Schminbar along with Wilbur Neal and Marty Wiley. We're here to talk about 60s and 70s television. While we jump into the big extravaganza for tonight, I just want to tell you we're on Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, and Thursdays at 3 p.m. Here on ACTV, cable 21. Also, we have a new box number. Yes? We got kicked out of the old one, so here's our brand new box number. Ooh, box. If you want to write into us, we don't know what. Our box number is 15, 14, 11, Columbus, Ohio, 4-3-2-1-5. That's 15, 14-11, Columbus, Ohio, 4-3-2-1-5. And remember, we have that big... Oh, I can never remember the name of this. Our swap meet thing about the video. I hope that we did name it. Did we crystallize it or anything? Write in and tell us what we should call this thing. Where if you've got a show that you really want to see that's not available on video, go and write to us. Say, hey, where is this? And we'll announce it on the air. And from the half-dozen people who actually watch the show, one of them actually have a tape and will work out some sort of deal. No money. No money. This is non-profit. It's just... Friendly swap exchange. Exactly. Video swinging. Yeah. Fan mail from some clowners. Which brings us into tonight's episode. It's on J. Ward cartoons. That's right. And for those of you who don't know who J. Ward is, that's of course things like Boinkal and... Rock. And Rocky and the whole Rocky the Flying Squirrel and the whole J. Ward universe. Exactly. Captain Crunch. Oh yeah. So let's move right into that, Wilbur. What's your first point for the evening? Well, by golly, that Rocky and Boinkal, Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Boinkal J. Moose. Actually, I think it was Rocket J. Squirrel. Rocket J. Squirrel. And Boinkal J. Moose. Not that the J's really meant anything. They were just there. Just like Michael J. Fox. I think they were there because it's J. Ward. So he just read his name in. J. Michael. Rocket J. Squirrel. Boinkal. J. Moose. Anyway, the first show premiered back in 1959. Rocky and his friends. And we have Rocky and Boinkal, who are residents of Frostbite Falls. A lovely little place. And you know, actually, this was going to be... Back when they first spotted up, it was a project called the Frostbite Fall Review. And they were a group of animals that were running a television station in the Northwoods. And among the characters were Oskie Bear, the cameraman, Blackstone Crow, the fiery director, Sylvester Fox, the egotistical actor, and Flora Fana, Fox's leading lady. And there were also two other characters, Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Boinkal, the French-Canadian Moose. And actually, since the other characters, we never got to see them. It just became a Rocky and Boinkal show. So Boinkal was a French-Canadian descent. Yeah. Didn't you ever know that Moose is Canadian? I mean, he's a moose. Right. Well, they have moose at the zoo, fell? They have moose and squirrel. Anyway, so... Oh, my backyard. The show came... Well, it was premiered back in 59. They didn't say A. Not all Canadians say A. Okay. Although it certainly seems so. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I've never been to Canada. He said it. Okay. So we've got... On the show, we've got Rocky and Boinkal. Oh, no! Oh! Oh! We've got... They're the bad guys. No. The Rocky and Boinkal will be the protagonists. And the antagonists would be... But it's bad enough. And Natasha... Natasha Fatali. I never knew she had a last name. I don't think they hardly ever mention her last name. They never do mention her last name. And they're fearless leader. Fearless leader. I remember... What about Mr. Big? I remember I was like... Oh, it's Mr. Big. And Mr. Big was like this two-inch tall guy or something, if I remember correctly. He was the loss of them all, but you saw him just a few times. Yeah. Well... Oh, he smokes! Mr. Big! Okay, Rocky. And Boris and Natasha. And they just had these... What should we say? Pseudo-Soviet accents? Yeah. Yeah. Cold War-era Soviet accent. Exactly. It was 59. Right. And the show came back again in... Well, 61, I believe it was. The Boinkal show. Right. By that point, Rocky had pretty much been pushed out of the spotlight. Because the enormous comedic potential of Boinkal had been realized. Yes, exactly. And that one focused more on... Like their media attention, I guess. Yeah, I think so. Because by then they were doing lots of ads. In fact, Cheerios was a big sponsor of the Alden General Mills serials. In fact, if you were able to get some of the... And this is not the stuff that's out there in video right now, which is the official stuff. Some of the unofficial, I suppose, pirated stuff, you might see at some flea market or something. Not that we would ever go to those places. That's right. If you accidentally showed up at one of those places, and you saw this, you would see things like a lot of commercials for General Mills serials thrown in. Because they were big into that. Go with Cheerios! That's right. Okay, but also on the show we had such characters, such now famous characters as... Well, Peabody and Sherman. Well, let's see. What was their segment actually called now? The Mr. Peabody Show. It's just called Mr. Peabody, I believe. Anyway, Mr. Peabody. Hello out there. Peabody here. And my boy Sherman. Mr. Peabody was a dog, and Sherman was his boy. Mr. Peabody owned Sherman. There was one cartoon where they explained... I'm trying to remember the origin story of why Peabody has a pet boy. Why not? He was walking down the street and maybe Sherman followed him home. Yeah, and he's so incredibly intelligent that they decided that... It was like, I don't know. Sherman, I think, found Peabody and tried to treat him like a dog and realized he was incredibly intelligent, in fact, smarter, a lot smarter than Sherman was. And so somehow there is the... They just reversed the rules. Gee, Mr. Peabody, you're so smart. Yeah, Sherman, now. And Mr. Peabody has this machine called the Wayback Machine, which is a time machine, and they would get in the Wayback Machine, they'd set the dials and just go way, way back in time, and they'd visit famous characters. And it was really... Yeah, it was educational. I mean, it wasn't... It wasn't incredibly accurate, but I mean, my Marco Polo, you learn names and general eras and generally what happened. Exactly. You could go to school and say, Oh yeah, Mr. Peabody and Sherman talked about that. Which is, I get the same thing kids are doing now to go to school. Oh yeah, man, so great. Bill and Ted, they talked about that. You know it. So it was kind of a little Bill and Ted excellent adventure. Yeah, kind of. Both of these two are smart, as Bill and Ted are. Smart. Not necessarily. Actually, I guess Mr. Peabody is smarter in all of them. Well, there we are. And we had other characters on there. Let's take a look at the board, shall we, so you can kind of give an idea of the people at home where the kids at home, they don't know what's going on. Well, let's see. Now along the bottom, I guess you can see Peabody and Sherman. Off to the well by golly the kind of difficult now it would be on my right hand but you at home it would probably be on your left hand. Your left hand side we've got OK, there's over there, way over to the left. With the green complexion. OK, there's Snidely. Right below. Right in back of Dudley, we have Natasha. Yeah, and next to Natasha, we have Wrong Way Peach Fuzz, just a wonderful mixed up sailor kind of character. Actually, very similar to the Wrong Way, try to remember his name, character on Gillingham Island. Conrad Conrad. Yeah. He flew a plane, but he was always landing on the island, so he was like one of the only people that could find the island. Anyway, oh boy. Back to our show here. Down in the right hand corner, I suppose, we've got there's Bordy's body and off. Right, there's Boris. And then right next to him or up above him, I guess, actually we have Esop and son. Which was, yeah, that's certainly one of the big things that was that in the Fraction Fairy Tales. Right. That also got into the literary aspect of the cartoon. It wasn't just fun. You actually learned names, you learned things. Right. So, and then next to them we will kind of in back of them over their shoulder there's No, who was Dudley's girl. No. And his horse. Horse. Right. And then over there on the other side of Esop, they're a fearless leader. Right. And then of course on top of the trash can there is Rocket J. Squirrel. Holding the what's-a-matter-you. Exactly. Bullwinkle's Alma Mater. Alma Mater. What's-a-matter-you. And then over there, they've got these two little green guys. Skidney and Chloe, who are the Moon men that appeared on the... And brought that wonderful element, Upsidasium. Upsidasium, the anti-gravity element that they brought from the Moon and just caused a whole big furor over that, I suppose. Trying to get a hold of that too. Oh, yeah. That and the Mooseberry Bush. Right. But now the Skidney and Chloe here, they're interesting characters in the fact that from them we have another offshoot of another J. Ward kind of thing that happened a few years later there, like toward the middle lens of the 60s, late 60s, early 70s actually I guess would be, when he was doing well he did some commercial products that spawned kind of commercial cartoons. There was Captain Crunch, the old Captain Crunch thing, and then there were two characters who were kind of at odds with each other. Quisp and Quake. Oh, yeah. Well, Quisp looked very much like the enormous Moon men here. Oh, yeah. When Quisp pink with a green suit, though. Yes, he was, but he was, it's the same kind of little puffy hair dude that comes out of there. He had a green turtle neck out there. He had a little blue on it, and he had a little good, and he had a little... I used to have a Quisp Cosmic Shooter Good shot bacon powder. And he had a little guy that was with him for a while there, but they kind of lost him somewhere. Of course Quake had a grandmother with him for a while. Quake had a girlfriend kind of like Nell here, and Quake himself went through a, well Quake started, let me see, now Quisp was from the Moon or some planet. Yeah. Moon or some planet. His little cereal shaped like flying saucers. Yes, his cereal shaped like flying saucers. And Quake lived underground. He was a minor kind of guy, and he would... His cereal looked like a rock. Exactly. He was a minor kind of in a volcano or something. He's a Moon man. He's a minor their detective. No, no. They were always in the odds with each other because they thought, well they each one thought that cereal was better than the other one. And then he went through this whole big change thing where well Quake started off, he was this big muscular guy wearing a little minors hat, had a little cape on the back, had like blue jeans on, and then he, when they he fell into this machine because they were reworking his cereal to make it leaner and nicer and better. And he came out as a leaner, nicer better Quake, he had on a safari hat. And he was he was shapelier, and he was more, he was like a shapelier muscle guy, instead of just a big husky muscle guy, he was a, he was a shapelier muscle guy. It was kind of funny anyway. That was, that was back in the 60s. So, when they had good commercial. They had wonderful commercial. And we, well Captain Crunch by golly, he started off, he's still going. Of course, now he's turned into and, and, and Spectre Gadget for some reason, stuff comes out of his head and he's like a robot now. What is that? Well, they're, they're trying to pick up on the things that are popular. I mean, I, I wouldn't be surprised if I saw Captain Crunch jump around and pull out a ninja sword. Oh, yeah. That's not a question. They start doing kicks and things. Against those, what are the the soggy's now that he's fighting against? Yeah, the soggy's. Cause they were, they just got through a whole list of things. There was the Crunchberry Beast, there's the, um, the peanut butter, whatever thing. Those were darn good. The peanut butter crunch, I love those. Okay. I don't think they make them anymore. No, they don't. They do not make the peanut butter crunch anymore. It's too unhealthy, I guess. They make it with NutriSleep. Yeah. It's like crap. Right. Just wouldn't be the same thrill at all. And this is in no way to, uh, detriment the, uh, Back in the early 80s, I did find Quisp on a shelf and it didn't taste like Quisp anymore. It was, it was sad. It broke my heart. Well, that was, that was like the... Who did you do a whole show? Who did you do a whole show on cereal? Sure. That, that, that would actually be interesting. Cereal heroes. Food. Yeah. We'll plan our shows not on the air. Anyway, on with, on with this bullwinkle thing here. Well, you know about bullwinkles, it's a... When I saw it as a little kid, it was like... Oh, yeah. Way over my head. And then, well, older and I watched it. Ah, it's funny. Oh, yeah. And there's lots of, there's lots of adult jokes in it. Yeah. Yes, it's a lot of adult humor. There's two different levels there. And it's like little kids watch it. You watch as a girl going, 20 years ago. That's right. That's right. So, well, let's see there. We'll jump up here to the 60s. About in, um, 64, another J. Ward introduced another show, another character. The Hoppity Hooper Show. Oh, yeah. Hoppity Hooper was a frog. At my house, he was a toad. Okay. Frog toad. Let's see if you can kind of zoom in there. There he is. He's a, he's a frog. There's a little Hoppity right there. And there's Phenomore, well, Phenomore. Well, let's see here. Let me get these characters together. Waldo Wigglesworth there. And Phenomore the Bear, Philmore Bear, excuse me. And Commander McBrag. He was always around. He went on to be an underdog, too. Well, see, that was interesting because he, um... The place was India. McBrag wound up on underdog. I think I have time to just... Which, are they still running underdogs? Oh, yeah. They do run underdogs. It's like really cool. I think it's running right now in NBC, like 11.30 in the morning. This is what happens every year on Saturday morning cartoons anymore. They bring out a whole bunch of whatever the big movie or whatever the big TV show was, they flop instantaneously. They show them just long enough to pay them off. And then every year around, oh, say, March or so, you see now, every year, because they know they make money and yet they never want to start with them. It doesn't make any sense. So what they should really just do is just show the classics. Retroactive Saturday morning. Retro Saturday. Oh, man. It was great. We're available to host it. Retro Saturday. That's just hopping away back and go way, way back into 1967. Thank you so much. Oh, cartoons. Bullwinkle. You got Underdog. You got Jetsons. Some classic ones out there. Let's get on here with this show. In 1967, he came out with another show, another Introduce the More Characters, which have just gone on into comic classics. You can catch these on like TBS or something. The George of the Jungle show was just great. We have George, who lived in the Inguigui Valley of Africa. He had an elephant named Shep, who we thought was a dog. And he had the Tukitukibird, who was just kind of hung around. Ersela. There were Bella and Ersela, who were like twins. Right. And an ape named Ape. And he had the Tukitukibird, who was kind of sitting around, he was his telephone ring, Tukitukibird Ape. And I think like George of the Jungle had like, one of the coolest theme songs. Yeah. George of the Jungle Super Chicken, and Tom Slick, had like, the coolest, or probably his best theme songs that got put together. I think there was like the only theme songs. Well, Underdog had a real good one. really is. Not really? No. How did McBragg wind up on underdog? That's what I'm wondering here. Because McBragg has certainly put on the dog. That's how my kids know it. What's the name of the company? TTV. TTV. I'm assuming something like that. Something. Something happened because I know I've seen it all. Yeah, because I saw that guy on the other show and I was like, that looks a lot like the friend that come in to McBragg. Yeah. So go the Braggs of McBragg. You're a liar. You watch the show now and bust around. You're a liar. Quiet. Be quiet. But Georgia the Jungle was just this great guy and then there was Super Chicken who was, well, what, well, let me see. Oh, Super Chicken. Let me find the whole thing here on Super Chicken. It was just a great show, golly. Super Chicken. Here we are. Henry Cabot Hithouse III. He was a scientist who discovered Super Sauce, the liquid that turns him into a crime fighter with superpowers whenever he drinks it. When he drinks a Super Sauce, he put the bag as for a lesson. He will bring them in alive and kicking. There was one thing you should learn with. There was no one else to turn to. All for Super Chicken. So he's Super Chicken and Fred. Fred was this lion and they flew around in the Super Coupe and they would just solve crimes and it was just a great show. And there was Tom Slick. I don't think I really have a picture of Tom Slick. Tom Slick in the Thunderbolt Grease Slapper. Yeah. His Thunderbolt Grease Slapper with Granny and, oh, come on. It's not that bad. Granny and they had a girlfriend like Mel also. And he would go around and he'd just be in different races and he always raced against. When there's just one guy, he always raced against. But it's like their vehicles changed. It was like if it was a water race. Yeah, he would turn the Thunderbolt Grease Slapper into a boat or they would race on a snowy Thunderbolt Grease Slapper into a snowmobile or just whatever they needed. And he would always race against a bad guy which he didn't always know. Oh, yeah. Well, there's, I mean, this was around the big racing era. I mean, a great race kind of idea, but... Yeah, the great, rather, the wacky races kind of thing here, you know, it ain't just... But much shorter and easier to watch. Because there were only two main characters. There would be other characters, but there were only two main characters, so you didn't get lost in them. And Tom always won. Exactly. Well... Well? You didn't see Boykel and Rocky Luz too often. They always were on a cliffhanger though. Right. They always... Well, that's true. The Boykel thing did pick up the serial idea from... Yeah. The announcer was William Conrad, wasn't it? Wasn't it? Yeah, William Conrad, I believe, was the announcer for that. And it was always the serious title for the next episode and the pun episode. Or... Yeah, or... Well, our friends... I think we've got a great appreciation of puns from that show. Oh, yeah. Because, you know, when you're a little kid, you're too little to really understand what's going on. Next week will it be Frostbite Falls or Upsidazio, you know? Yeah. That's right. William Conrad did that. Oh, yeah. Oh, Cannonball. Yeah. Yeah. Jake in the family. Well... The grumpy detector. Oh, wow. Well, they've got a picture of it. Bullwinkle balloon. I don't know if you can see this real well. It's just a little crummy thing. The backside of the Boykel balloon. It's the backside of a wonderful... The Boykel balloon in the main parade. I'm gonna take a picture. What a lovely picture. Take that picture. Take the picture. What? Picture. Oh, okay. I got him. I got him. No problem. I'm having a whole new generation. Yeah. We feel it's adult humor, but NBC can't understand the joke so they think it's a children's show. Yeah. That's a quote from J. Ward. When you consider the fact that, no, was Rocking Ball even ever on Prime Time? Or I think it was it something. Well, now let's see. I'm starting off... I'm really sure it was. Well, if it was, it was on past our bedtime. Well, now... I'm pretty sure it was, and then they took it off and it's like, you know, it's like, well, I don't like the Flintstones, which is really, you know, it was an attempt for adult humor that really didn't go past kid humor, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, this is kind of... Which was also on on Prime Time and really didn't deserve to be, but this show did. But they both went to the same fate of Saturday morning. I don't know. You know, I bet if our parents had watched it back then... Well, by golly, it did start off at Prime Time, you're right. I thought so. You know, I bet if our parents had watched it then, though, it wouldn't have lasted because it probably would have been considered controversial. That's true. And it would be canned and we wouldn't have got to watch it. That's true. And all that, you know. It used to be on it from 7 to 730 on Sunday nights in DC. I mean, now it's very mild, but back then it probably would have been controversial. No, everything was controversial back then. You can walk down the street without controversy. I remember one thing about the fractured fairy tales. I remember one, they always would do a different take on the favorite fairy tales. And the one was, they did Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack was a baseball player. And what he'd do is he was in the outfield and he became this really famous because what he'd do is he'd see a fly ball and he'd dig a hole really fast, throw the bean in and the Beanstalk would go up and he'd be able to catch the ball in the air. And then this big guy comes up at the end and it's like, he's going to just hit it really high. So Jack panics and throws like 20 beans, you know, into this thing and just goes nuts and the guy like bumps it into his area. By this point he's like 100 feet up and he's unable to get at it. Did Bo Winkle ever pull a rabbit out of his hat? No, it's not for sure. He pulled a lion out of that hat. He pulled a tiger out of that. He put a rhino out of that hat. Well, never a rabbit. And he pulled a rocky out. A rocky out, yeah. There's something we hope you'll really like. Three. So what else we got? Well, let's see. Okay. There's something through here. I think that's almost all that he really had. And of course, now you can see, like we mentioned earlier, the classic Bo Winkles really are now available pretty much any place on the planet. At your local gas station on video it seems like. And the first six volumes, which, and again, and another Flintstones parallel, they've gone ahead and said, hey, this Bo Winkle thing's selling like hotcakes. So now they're putting out for the 30th anniversary of the Flintstones, classic Flintstones, which I think is far too available anyways. Yeah. But. I think it was really a few years ago at this theater that's not a theater anymore because it's like a health club for the broth on campus. And remember, we took the kids and we went to see the J. Ward tribute. J. Ward festival. And it really was weird because like a lot of it's in black and white. Right. And my kids are watching it and they don't have the concept of black and white TV and they felt incredibly sorry for me and Robert because it's like. You had to watch it in black and white. You had to watch it in black and white. Where's the photo? That's so sad. Captain Crunch isn't black and white. You were deprived. You were deprived. You were so deprived. Terribly deprived. Such terribly deprived childhoods. They could hardly watch it because it was in black and white. You know, that's funny. Children born after the middle 60's like 68, 69 sounding. When everybody went and got a couple of years. When color TV was just the norm, they just have no concept really of black and white which is just really funny to me. It's like Ted Turner is their patron saint. He's laid everything in color. Now we can watch it. What I consider interesting, we mentioned that about Ted Turner, they're colorizing TV shows right now and they have not picked Steve Allen not picked Texaco Star Theater or Playhouse 90. They've picked Mikhail's Navy and Gilligan's Island. Well, they're starting small. Thank goodness they picked the absolute top of the heat. You know, the pinnacle of television. When our civilization is dust, they'll still be colorized episodes of Mikhail's Navy. You know, that colorization by Gally, I'll bet there's some radio activity in there. They'll still be seeing those from now on and it's like it's going to be imprinted on TV screens. Gilligan. Mikhail. You'll turn off your TV, it'll still be there. That's right. I won't be around. I guess it's time for us to kind of wrap it. Yeah, I think it is. Well, for our next episode, very exciting, we're very excited about this. We're so excited. NBC, the Silverman years. The late 70s, you'll see such hits as Super Train. Marvelous, fantastic shows. Wonderful shows. Wonderful use of video change. That's right. So again, want to tell you, Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, Thursdays at 3 p.m. here on ACTV Cable 21. And now I think it's time to go to the credits. Oh. And here they are, our highly technical credit.