"Hi, I'm a Madman and I'm addicted to cross-overs..."
If there was a group for folks who were addicted to cross-overs, this is where the other folks in the room would say 'Hi, Madman!"
Not everyday during this 1-year study on 1977 and how that year has made me the person I am today, is going to be filled with 'This Date in History' posts. The first ever Winnie The Pooh day in England 40 years ago didn't really impact my life. My sister, who loved Pooh as a little tyke, maybe. Me, not so much.
But doing the research for today's blog, I came across a cartoon show that I haven't seen in years- decades really. Yet, it's fleeting time on air impacted me greatly. The show in question is called Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics.
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| The 3 team line-ups. Snagglepuss performed the play-by-play of each event. |
When the show aired from 1977-79, I obviously wasn't watching the show. I was either not born yet or too young to watch it. When it was originally broadcast, the Laff-A-Lympics was just a small part of the 2-hour long Saturday morning toon show. (Captain Caveman, the Blue Faclon and Dyna-mutt, and reruns of Scooby-Doo also filled the other 90 remaining minutes) But sometime after 1980, the show was repackaged as Laff-A-Lympics in syndicated reruns as a 30-minute show. It's this format that changed my life forever.
The idea behind Laff-A-Lympics was that all of the cartoon characters of the Hanna-Barbera universe competed against each other in their version of the Olympic games. In reality, there were only a total of 45 different characters, divided over 3 teams, seeking to win gold, silver, or bronze in a variety of odd-ball activities. I don't remember the events but having Scooby-Doo on the same screen as Speed Buggy, Grape Ape, and Hong Kong Phooey was pretty sweet. There was also a bad guy team called the Really Rottens, who were always trying to cheat in order to win. Only 24 episodes were ever made but again, this cartoon really changed my life.
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| The Scooby Doobys team. The girl on the back of Speed Buggy is from an animated version of I Dream of Jeannie. She never appeared on any of the LALs, just this model sheet. |
The concept of the cross-over was such a wondrous thing to me thanks to this show. Overtime, I've found that my favorite TV shows, movies, comics, and now t-shirts all seem to involve the combination of two or more characters that in normal circumstances never meet. Yes, I know that superheroes were doing this thing for decades, but that always seemed normal to me. But I can't pass up that old episode of I Love Lucy where she meets Superman or Happy Days where the Fonz meets Mork or Laverne & Shirley for that matter. (All Three of which ended up teaming together on a animated series circa 1981-82!)
Ya know, I just realized that I have a very tattered copy of a Laff-A-Lympics comic book in my collection somewhere. So stay tuned folks, as a reading and review of that comic will be happening any day now...
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| The character on the right, Mumbly, was actually an honest detective with his own series. For the sake of Laff-A-Lympics, he was made into a villain. |
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