Saturday mornings: 1976 – CliqueClack Kids

Cartoons? What cartoons?

For those viewers who grew up with the cartoon-heavy Saturday mornings of previous years, the 1976-77 season was a shock to the system. Each network aired at least one (if not more) live action series during the year, with CBS and NBC featuring the most. To make matters worse for animation fans, only four new cartoons (two of them rehashes of older series)  premiered during this time, the lowest since Saturday morning programming began in 1965.

It would be a short-lived phenomenon, though. By the next season another generation of animated fare would suck the life out of sugared-up toddlers and tweens. Until then, regular attendees to the Church of Saturday Morning would be fed a heaping helping of variety, science fiction, glam rockers, and Fred Grandy.

ABC

The Old: The New Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape Show

The New: Jabberjaw, The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour, The Kroftt Supershow, Junior Almost Anything Goes

1976 an important year for ABC. After eight season on CBS, Scooby-Doo and the gang moved over to the Alphabeet Network and remained until the era of Saturday morning cartoons ended. How fitting, then, that the first new series on the ABC schedule would come right from the Scooby-Doo mold of teenage detectives and their talking pets.

Jabberjaw had all the elements of a typical Scooby-Doo/Josie and the Pussycats episode: a band of musical teenagers traipses around the world and, by happenstance, ends up in the middle of some type of crime or misdemeanor that, by sheer luck, they resolve by bringing the criminals to justice. Jabberjaw’s uniqueness came from the show’s venue, the underwater cities of Earth in 2076, and Jabberjaw himself. More human than the standard Hanna-Barbera talking pets, old Jab was very reminiscent of one Curly Howard from The Three Stooges. There was also a bit of Rodney Dangerfield to him as well as he was prone to utter ‘No Respect’ everytime someone ran away in terror over his appearance.

After the Scooby-inspired Jabberjaw came the actual Scooby-Doo in The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour. This third series incarnation featured Mystery, Inc. in all new adventures as well as introduced Scooby’s cousin, the Forrest Gump-like Scooby-Dum. This version of the Scooby-Doo Showlasted for three years on ABC and constituted the longest running run of the show before Scrappy-Doo destroyed the franchise.

Joining Scooby was Dynomutt, Dog Wonder. Dynomutt was a bumbling robotic dog who was partnered with the Batman-style hero Blue Falcon (voiced by Gary Owens). Patrolling the skies over Big City, Blue Falcon and Dynomutt would battle the numerous supervillains who cropped up. Usually, the case would take longer to be wrapped up thanks to Dynomutt’s ineptitude at using the infinite gadgets stored in his robotic body. Think a four-legged version of Inspector Gadget.

Next was, perhaps, the strangest live action program to grace Saturday mornings. Not surprising, since The Kroftt Supershow was created and produced by Sid & Marty Kroftt. Supershowwas a variety program starring Captain Kool (future One Day at a Time star Michael Lembeck) and his gang of Kongs. Their role was to perform skits and songs as well as introduce the live action segments.

During the two seasons of Kroftt Supershow there were five original segments — all dreadfully corny and cheap by today’s standards.  The most memorable of these was Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, which starred Days of Our Lives alum Diedre Hall. Other segments include Wonderbug (sort of a live action Speed Buggy), Dr. Shrinker, and Magic Mongo.

Rounding out the schedule was Junior Almost Anything Goes. A spin-off of the primetime version of this 1975 game show, the Soupy Sales-hosted version featured three teams of kids competing in various wacky games. Think of it as a combination between Wipeout and Double Dare. Like it’s primetime parent, Junior Almost Anything Goes lasted only one season.

CBS

The Old: Sylvester and Tweety (well, technically new, but really just old cartoons pulled out of Bugs Bunny/Road Runner), The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, The Shazam/Isis Hour, Clue Club, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, CBS Children’s Film Festival

The New: Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle,  Ark II, Way Out Games

CBS continued it’s relationship with Filmation Studios in 1976 with two new series that amounted to two-thirds of the network’s new offerings. First was the animated Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle. Taken more from the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs rather than the movies of the ’30s and ’40s, this version of Tarzan was an intelligent Lord of the Jungle whose adventures had a mythical nature to them. With four seasons of original cartoons, Tarzan was one of Filmation’s more successful outings.

The studio’s other offering was the live action Ark II. One of the first post-apocalyptic series featured on Saturday mornings, Ark II was the story of a group of scientists (and their monkey, of course) who travelled the devastated Earth of the 25th century in a huge RV-like vehicle. Their goal: restore ideas of humanity and technology to a society thrown back into the Stone Age. Though only producing 15 episodes for the 1976-77 season, Ark II remained on CBS for many years afterward.

The last new entry for CBS was Way Out Games. Fifty-one teams representing the U.S. and Puerto Rico competed in a series of athletic competitions, with the winner of each show would coming back to compete against another set of teams. By the end of the series two teams battled it out for the championship. While an interesting concept, Way Out Games ended after just one season.

NBC

The Old: The Woody Woodpecker Show, Land of the Lost

The New: It’s the All New Pink Panther Laugh-and-a-Half Hour-and-a-Half Show; McDuff, the Talking Dog; Monster Squad; Big John, Little John; The Kids from C.A.P.E.R; Mugsy

After failing miserably for years on Saturday mornings, NBC overhauled its schedule by stripping out most animated fare in favor of three hours of live-action programming. Unfortunately, the experiment would be a failure and the network would return to cartoons in the spring.

The only ‘new’ animated entry on the schedule was another incarnation of Pink Panther. Ninety minutes long, this version featured older Pink Panther cartoons as well as the new character Misterjaw — a great white shark (voiced by Arte Johnson) who lived to jump out of the water and scare people.

Once Pink Panther ended the live-action began. It started with McDuff, The Talking Dog (not to be confused with McGruff, the Crime Dog), which centered around the ghost of a 100-year-old sheepdog that haunted the house of a vet.  After McDuff came Monster Squad, whcih starred Fred Grandy as the leader of three horror movie monsters – Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Werewolf – who became superheroes in order to pay for their past evil deeds.

Next, after episodes of Land of the Lost, was Big John, Little John. Starring Robbie Rist and produced by Sherwood Schwartz, the series focused on a science teacher who, after drinking from the Fountain of Youth, uncontrollably turned into a 12-year-old boy. This was followed by The Kids from C.A.P.E.R, which featured four youths who solved crimes, ogled over girls, and performed as a rock n’ roll band.

The last show to air during this live action block was Mugsy. Taking a more somber tone than the other shows, Mugsy focused on the life of a young girl living in the inner city (in a furnished truck-turned apartment). Other than the truck apartment thing, Mugsy was the most realistic of the reality block, taking a look at contemporary issues like drugs and gangs. Like most of the shows on NBC’s schedule, Mugsy lasted only one season.

And, that’s the 1976 Saturday morning season. Next time, we’ll take a look at the 1977 lineups.