The Flintstones (Season 1-5)

**The Flintstones** is a Hanna-Barbera show produced from 1960 to 1966. The show focuses on a caveman family named the Flintstones who live in Bedrock and are friends with the Rubbles loosely based on the comedy show; The Honeymooners. It was also the first animated show to hold it's own prime time slot. As of today, The Flintstones is one of Hanna-Barbera's most memorable cartoons.

## Why It Rocks

1. A lot of great and memorable characters such as Fred, Barney, Wilma, and Betty.
2. Great voice acting by Alan Reed, Mel Blanc, Jean Vander Pyl, and Bea Benaderet.
3. Received great foreign dubs (that could match or exceed the original), like the Latin America dub and the Hungarian original dub.
4. The show has left a huge impact and influence on later adult animated shows such as The Simpsons. Hell, without The Flintstones, The Simpsons wouldn’t have existed!
5. A lot of clever jokes and funny moments.
6. Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm are very likable characters.
7. Like most of Hanna-Barbera's shows at the time, the show has colorful and unique backgrounds.
8. The opening theme song from the third season is very catchy.
9. Spawned many spinoffs such as:
	* *The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show* (1971–72) (one season)
	* *The Flintstone Comedy Hour* (1972–73) (one season)
	* *The New Fred and Barney Show* (1979) (one season)
	* *The Flintstone Comedy Show* (1980–82) (two seasons)
	* *The Flintstone Kids* (1986–88) (two seasons)
	* *What a Cartoon!* – featuring *Dino: Stay Out!* (1995) and *Dino: The Great Egg-Scape* (1997)
	* *Cave Kids* (1996) (one season)
	* *The Rubbles* (2002–03)
	* *Yabba-Dabba Dinosaurs* (2020)
10. Appropriate use of music and sound effects.
11. The character designs look very good.
12. Decent animation.
13. "Yabba-Dabba-Doo!"

## Bad Qualities

1. There are some episodes that (depending on your point of view) unintentionally have bad morals like:
	* It's okay for other persons to do things for you, and not learn to do them on your own ("The Happy Household")
2. There were ads involving the characters from the show promoting Winston Cigarettes which caused a lot of controversy (But it may be understandable, because in the beginning, the program was not aimed specifically at children).
3. Season 6 marked the time when the show jumped the shark due to the introduction of the Great Gazoo.
4. Its 1994 movie sadly did not do as well as this show. Same can be said about the sequel.
5. In the episode "The Babysitters", Fred could get disgusting for some viewers because he yells "Shut up" at a crying baby (although it's actually in a comical tone, depending on your point of view)

## Reception

The night after *The Flintstones* premiered, *Variety* called it "a pen-and-ink disaster", and the series was among many that debuted in a "vast wasteland" of a 1960–61 television season considered one of the worst in television history up to that point. As late as the 1980s, highbrow critics derided the show's limited animation and derivative plots. Despite the mixed critical reviews at first, *The Flintstones* has generally been considered a television classic and was rerun continuously for five decades after its end. In 1961, *The Flintstones* became the first animated series to be nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, but lost out to *The Jack Benny Program*. In January 2009, IGN named *The Flintstones* as the ninth-best in its "Top 100 Animated TV Shows". The first season of the series received an approval rating of 100% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on five reviews. Common Sense Media gave the series a three out of five stars, saying: "Still a classic, but times have changed." *The Flintstones* was the most financially successful and longest-running network animated television series for three decades, until *The Simpsons*, which debuted in late 1989, outlasted it. In 2013, *TV Guide* ranked *The Flintstones* the second-greatest TV cartoon of all time (after *The Simpsons*).