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1 thought on “TV Trash: Fred And Barney Meet The Frankenstones”
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Before the Frankenstones, there were the Gruesomes, a strange family clearly meant to be Bedrock’s answer to the Munsters or the Addams Family, that appeared in at least two episodes of the original series. But they were quickly forgotten about.
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And yes, the Flintstones was never big on continuity. In one episode, they referred to their equivalent of Romeo and Juliet as ‘Rockeo and Juliet’, in another it was ‘Romeorock and Julietstone’ (the latter, I feel, was more than a bit lazy). So it’s not surprising they had two or three different, unrelated Frankenstone characters.
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Anyway, we tend not to be as nostalgic for ‘Teenage Pebbles and Bam-Bamm’, ‘Fred and Barney Meet the Frankenstones’, ‘Fred and Barney Meet the Schmoo’ (in which Fred and Barney were buddy cops for some reason), ‘The Flintstones Meet the Frankenstones’ and other such spinoffs that came along in the 70s/early 80s as we are for the original series.
Similarly, a lot of people forget the Scooby Doo incarnation where it was just Scooby, Shaggy, and Scrappy doing odd jobs and having a few cartoonish misadventures instead of solving mysteries and capturing villains posing as ghosts or monsters with Fred, Daphne and Velma. They remember the original show, they remember ‘Scooby Doo movies’ incarnation where the Scooby gang met with various guest stars to solve mysteries, and they remember ’13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo’. But there’s stuff in between the original introduction of Scrappy (which was like the original show plus Scrappy) and ’13 Ghosts’ back in the 70s/80s that isn’t talked about much or looked back fondly on (and only part of it was Scrappy’s unpopularity).
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One really weird Flintstones animated made for television movie I saw was ‘Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby’, in which a much older Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm are married and expecting a baby. It was weird for several reasons. One: Fred, Wilma, Betty and Barney seemingly haven’t aged a day since Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm were toddlers (even though two episodes of the original series had them older and greyer in episodes where Fred was dreaming of possible futures with the teenage or grownup Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm), and neither has Fred’s mother in law (who’s still alive and well and just the same). Second, Bamm-Bamm uses the word ‘hormonal’ at one point, which is a word I never thought I’d hear in a Flintstones movie.
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Anyway, the Flintstones, like Scooby Doo and Tom and Jerry, has gone through a few of what TV Tropes would call Dork Ages: Major departures from the usual formula that didn’t catch on and just didn’t seem to work for the audience. Eventually, a later revival brings these properties back to basics (Flintstones: ‘modern stone-age family’, Scooby Doo: Teens and their dog solve mysteries usually involving some sort of villain with a monster disguise, Tom and Jerry: Cat and mouse slapstick), and the not so fondly remembered stuff in between isn’t talked about much outside of Internet review shows such as TV Trash.