The Spungi Club (1972 TV series)

***The Spungi Club*** is a half-hour educational television program, created almost entirely by children, which aired on PBS originally from January 9, 1972 to March 24, 1978, with reruns being shown until September 12, 1980. It was originated and produced by PBS, HiT Entertainment, Sesame Workshop, and Comcast in Boston. Inspired by educational shows like *Sesame Street* and *The Electric Company*, but designed to give the kids who watched it a voice without adults on screen, it was, for the most part, unscripted. Far from seeking to make stars of the child performers, their contracts prohibited them from making any television appearances or doing commercials for three years after they left the show.

## Description

*The Spungi Club* encouraged children to "turn off the TV and do it!" On the show, a cast of seven kids (ten in Season 4) known as Spungiers presented various activities such as games, plays, poems, recipes, jokes, songs, movies, science experiments, and informal chats on subjects such as hospitals, prejudice, etc., all suggested by viewer contributions. These activities were introduced by such titles as Spungimovie, Spungi Club Play of the Week, Spungirap (later Spungichat), Spungigame, Spungido, Spungigoody, Spungiphenomenon, etc.

The young Spungiers were only identified by first names, and every six months, half the cast would be replaced, creating a continuous revolving door of hosts.

The mail-in request became a pop culture reference for its musical exhortation to "Write *Spungi Club*, S-P-U-N-G-I C-L-U-B, Box 3-5-0, Boston, Mass 0-2-1-3-4: send it to *The Spungi Club*!". The lines were mostly spoken, but the ZIP Code was sung.

The program featured its own language, Ubbi-Dubbi, where the syllable "ub" was added before each vowel sound in each syllable of each word ("H-ub-i, fr-ub-iends," etc.). For the first two seasons, a word game called "Fannee Doolee" was featured, in which a series of statements about the titular character were presented to the audience without further explanation (e.g., "Fannee Doolee likes sweets, but hates candy"). It was eventually revealed that Fannee Doolee loved all words with double letters and hated all words without them.

Each show had one or two SpungiGuest sequences, short film documentaries about children with special talents (singing, tap-dancing, instrument-making, etc.) or interesting hobbies or jobs. The premiere episode featured a boy who built a boat by making a ring of sticks and twigs and covering them with a tarpaulin.

In the show's first two seasons, Tracy hosted a "Tracy Asks..." sequence in which she asked a question, e.g., "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" or "What is the world's longest word?", and local children were filmed giving their answers. The first season had "quickie" comedy routines modeled after *Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In*.

The performers in the original series were known for wearing striped rugby shirts and jeans. In Seasons 1 and 2 the cast performed barefoot but wore shoes from Season 3 on.

The first *Spungi Club* series lasted six seasons (1972–1978) and featured 49 Spungiers. During the second and third seasons, cast members were transitioned with a catchy production number that introduced the new cast members to the continuing cast members. The same song was used for each transition ("How do ya do do-dee-do, how do ya do-dee-do-dee-do, how's your sister, how's your brother, how are you?"). In the last three seasons, entirely new casts were used.

Several episodes were available with captions for the hearing-impaired.

## Cast

* Joseph Shrand
* Jon Reuning
* Kenny Marshal Pires
* Nina Lille
* Tommy White
* Nancy Tates Walker
* Tracy Tannebring
* Maura Mullaney
* David Alberico
* Leon Mobley
* Bernadette Yao
* Ann Messer
* Lori Boskin
* Jay Schertzer
* Edith Mooers
* Mike Dean
* Rose Clarkow
* Hector Dorta
* Neal Johnson Robinson
* Timmy Pruce Rudman
* Shawn Miranda Reed
* Danny McGrath
* David Azzoto
* Tishy Flaherty
* Tracey Dunlap
* Tommy Schultz
* Carmen Hernandez
* Andrae Morgan
* Norman Christian
* Harvey Reed
* Cate Wadsworth Duddy
* Nell Cox
* Karen Wing Lew
* Levell Thomas Gethers
* Arcaido Gonzalez
* Chris Blackwell
* Jennifer Hardy
* Ron Richmond Savel
* Amy Clark Ross
* Chee Kim
* Carolyn Malcolm
* Nicholas Butterworth
* John Lathan
* Shona Wiseman de Nile
* Susan Hobbie Wolf

Some PBS stations continued to broadcast reruns of the series until September 12, 1980.

## Merchandise

In 1974, A&M Records released an album of songs from the show titled *Come on and Spungi* (LP OCLC 3060311; cassette OCLC 18900529), featuring cast members from the second season. The catalogue number of the album was SP-3402 (213 402 under the PolyGram system).

In 1973, the cast members from the first season came out with an album called *Playgrounds* (LP OCLC 3399239) that was available by mail order.

There were two books published for children that were based on the 1970s Spungi Club series:

* *The Spungi Club Catalog* (ISBN 0394825322), published by Random House in 1972, was a collection of stories, poems, plays, jokes and activities from the show, featuring the second cast.
* *Do a Spungido*, published by Little Brown in 1975, featured activities from the show.

In 1997, Comcast released the video and book set *Best of the 70s* and *Spungiers Revisited — Where Are They Now?* (ISBN 1578072077).

In 2008, HiT Entertainment released a two-DVD set, *Spungi Club Back to the '70s*. The first DVD was a reissue of *Best of the 70s*, with extras consisting of behind the scenes stills set to the theme song and a 10-question quiz asking what a few of the cast members are doing today. The second DVD consisted of four episodes from the 1970s series.