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grillmeister Long before the Dark Knight roamed Gotham City, Adam West fought the Joker without a body sculpted bat suit...just polyester. It seems he had a tool for every kind of job...the Bob Vila of comic book crimefighters! The show had a visual style that I've not appreciated until today (note the slanted camera angle when the bad guys come on the screen). While the TV show was great, the first Batman movie was better! Kids were literally rioting outside the Texas Theater in downtown Sherman, Texas trying to get
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister An Irwin Allen time travel thriller! Two scientists get trapped in a top-secret time travel experiment and are thrown all over the space-time continuum. Just when our heros would get the historical situation under control the folks back at the lab would monkey around with the controls and shoot them off into another time and place. Many kids played Time Tunnel by pretending to fly around through the ozone and come crashing down into another time/dimension.
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister An Irwin Allen classic, Land of the Giants centers around the Earth ship Spindrift that is sucked into a time/space vortex only to return back to the Earth...a GIANT EARTH! The series which ran from 1968 to 1970, was mainly about how the ships' valiant crew and passengers dealt with a world of giant tormentors...the most perfect and believable story premise for a kid! In the series, the characters had to deal with a hostile, authoritarian world and survive to find their way back home. Similiarly in a world
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister The beating of the jungle drums was the signal for kids to get in front of the TV for another Clutch Cargo adventure! Clutch, and his pals Spinner and Paddlefoot, were always traveling to the edges of human understanding to deal with some trivial matter. They always had access to the coolest "Space Age" equipment and vehicles leading me to believe they must have had a DoD size budget! The most memorable feature of this cartoon were the mouths of the characters. Human-like lips were strangely superimposed o
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister The one that started it all. James T. Kirk didn't worry much about Political Correctness...he had a job to do. Actually I didn't get to see much of the original Star Trek during it's prime time network run (remember dads controlled the TV so it was usually Bonanza for us). I picked it up later during syndication like most people. There were two distinct popular culture genres for boys in the 1950's and 1960's. The 50's tended to focus on the past (cowboys and Indians, Davy Crockett, etc.), and the 60's focu
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister The evil forces of C.H.U.M.P. (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan) didn't stand a chance against Agent Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp! Good thing P.E.T.A. wasn't around then or the world would be under C.H.U.M.P.'s hegemony right now! Lancelot Link and his lovely assistant, Marta Hari, worked for A.P.E. (The Agency to Prevent Evil) under the direction of Darwin their chief. Yep, you guessed it...Link was a simian version of "Get Smart" and probably the farthest the 1960's international spy genre
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister Get Smart is proof that not all spy shows of the time were drama. Maxwell Smart, Agent 89, could be successful against the evil forces of C.H.A.O.S. (an analogy for Communism) while being totally inept. With the help of the lovely Agent 99, Smart actually pulled off a bumbling kind of cool, not to be seen again until Austin Powers. Kid interest was always aroused by the cool secret spy gadgets. Smart had access to such things as the Cone of Silence, shoe phones, a multi-door security labyrinth for a headqua
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister Felix the Cat, The wonderful, wonderful cat. You'll laugh so much your sides will ache, Your heart'll go piddy-pat, All for Felix, the wonderful cat. Felix was a pretty laid back kind of cat, that is until his neighbors the Professor and Rock Bottom started scheming. Sometimes the Master Cylinder (who lived on Mars) would get into the action as well. No problem for Felix. He would just reach into his yellow bag of tricks and viola--what ever was needed to take care of the bad guys was there! He also had
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister Television's answer to the Beatles. The "Pre-Fab Four" cruised around in the customized jalopy looking for adventure and hijinks. The rather light plot lines would be interspersed with live music concert footage. As goofy as this show seems today, I can remember when KDSX-AM radio (Sherman-Denison, TX) was inundated with calls from eager pre-teen Monkees fans to play their latest hit. On a Saturday it wouldn't be uncommon for the old kitchen wall radio to play "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone" and "I'm a Believ
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister This Hal Roach classic was produced from the 1920s through the 1940s and is another example of how television saved old movie theater shorts. Evolving from the Little Rascals of the 1920s, Our Gang's cast of characters is best know from the 1940s when it featured Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Mickey, Froggy, Buckwheat and Butch. It was made into a full length feature movie recently which fortunately preserved the spirit of a more innocent time.
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister Simply put, Popeye was the man! Not only was he able to survive life visually impared, but he was able to dominate the forces of evil given the infusion of a a few Vitamans! While his debut in the comics was in 1929, Popeye first appeared on the big screen in 1933 with the help of Max and Dave Fleischer. The series reached its technical zenith by the 1950's, and by the 1960's production was taken over by a new producer, Al Brodax. The simpler, and cheaper animation may not have the same technical appeal, b
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister Based on the more serious movie Stalag 17, Hogan's Heros made being a prisoner of war look like summer camp! Although they were in a Luftstalag deep inside Nazi Germany, Col. Hogan and the gang managed to conduct an elaborate sabotage operation while having a great time to-boot. Many kids, myself included, tried to dangerously recreate the show's cool underground tunnel system only to give up after they had dug down only about a foot or so. Real 1960's events eventually encroached on the show when I saw R
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister Leave it to our band of castaways to make what would be in real life, a dire situation, into a fun-filled adventure. That's probably how the youthful patio generation would have reacted in a similiar situation. Despite the improbable plots, inexhaustable resources, and the negative depictions of Polynesian culture, the show kept the kids glued to the TV thinking. "What will the professor come up with next, and how can we build it without getting into trouble? Will the show end if they are rescued? Wow, loo
Jul 16, 2008

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grillmeister It's a Swing Wing!
Jul 15, 2008