Dude, pass the seaweed
It’s not new news that the drug culture was omnipresent in the 70s--showing up in our music, movies, college campuses, and living rooms (well, maybe my living room and not yours…I was a product of young 60s love). Most astonishing though is that it showed up in our cartoons! Yes, during the 70s, it was Saturday mornings of “kids on trips.”The biggest trips were the shows developed by Sid and Marty Krofft. H.R. Pufnstuf and Sigmund And The Sea Monsters were some of the strangest yet mesmerizing television shows ever to be seen by America’s impressionable youth. In a song and dance format, actors played alongside caricatures of colorful creatures and inanimate objects. The shows were part cartoon, part Alice In Wonderland, and part Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.
H.R. Pufnstuf, the story of a boy, a magic flute, and a dragon donning a Southern drawl and white boots, was the more popular of the two shows. I don’t need to say much about the hippie influence on this show. “Pufnstuf” should just about say it all.
For whatever reason, I was more interested in Sigmund And The Sea Monsters. Maybe the attraction was that I, too, wanted a large pile of seaweed to be my best friend. We could’ve hung out on the beach, singing and dancing all day in our world of sun-poisoned delirium.
Hell, I want to do that now! I guess not much has changed for me since I was six-years-old.
The good news is that a new generation of kids will get to experience the dreamscape that is H.R. Pufnstuf. Astonishingly, the Kroffts are bringing Witchiepoo, Jimmy, and the Mayor of Living Island to the big screen in an H.R. Pufnstuf movie. What's more, the entire Krofft catelog is now available on DVD.
This makes me wonder…are we currently living in a drug-influenced culture? Nah! We’re so advanced in 2005, we now have the ability to expand our imaginations through sheer will. How else can we explain the success of Tim Burton?
More by Sid and Marty Krofft:
The Land of the Lost
The Donnie and Marie Show
The Barbara Mandrell Show
posted by tanagrame @ 1:33 PM
6 Comments:
"H.R. Pufnstuf, he's your friend when things get rough..."
You know they're going to CGI him, though. It won't be the same...
Now for another song:
"Marshall, Will and Holly
On a routine expedition
Met the greatest earthquake ever known
High on the rapids
It struck their tiny raft
And plunged them down a thousand feet below
To the Laaa-aaand of the Lost"
...Can't do a little, 'cause you can't do enough.
Yer totally right about the GCI. Damn those new-aged puppeteers!
I loved The Land of the Lost! I'd get so nervous when they'd fall into a big hole.
Of course, I meant to say CGI. ;-)
My poor kids. I think there's some rule now about having child development specialists on staff. Everything's gotta make some sort of sense.
I'm sorry, abishag. I am unfamiliar with these shows. I was a huge Muppets fan. (My parents probably let us watch it so they could go smoke a fatty--though they would NEVER admit this today!)
Thanks for the nostalgia! I just added The Muppets Show season one to my wishlist. Gonna review it and check for hints of psychedelic influence.
I know what you mean about all the "rules" these days. I feel like we were brought up so haphazardly compared to today's structured parenting. My neighbor came by a few weeks back asking me why my kids didn't have their helmets on. Try getting 8 and 9-year-olds to wear helmets all day long. We all remember what it was like! Running from house to house on bikes. Gimme a break! Of course, he didn't like the "bad" example we were setting for his kids. He's a nut. He won't even let them out of the backyard! They might skinned knees or something.
Let me know if you see any hints of psychedelia in the Muppets movies. I'm sure the courtship between a pig and a frog has more to it than meets the eye.
Argh. All the safety equipment. It's why my son doesn't like to ride his bike. Doesn't like the helmet.
We do know a boy who had a terrible accident while jumping his bike, BMX style. He was wearing a helmet, but he landed hard on the handlebars, which pushed his ribs into his heart, severed his aorta. It was awful--but such a freak accident! What was he supposed to be wearing to prevent that? *He's okay now.
Lots of people asked, "What was he doing jumping his bike?"
I dunno. Being a kid? And thanks for making the parents whose son is in a coma feel like s*it, by the way. **Seriously, he's gonna be fine.
Pigs and Frogs. I will keep a sharp eye. Animal has me suspicious, as well.
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