The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an American animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. The series takes place in a romanticized Stone Age setting and follows the activities of the titular family, the Flintstones, and their next-door neighbors, the Rubbles. It was originally broadcast on ABC from September 30, 1960, to April 1, 1966, and was the first animated series to hold a prime-time slot on television. The show follows the lives of Fred and Wilma Flintstone and their pets Dino and Baby Puss, eventually seeing the addition of baby Pebbles Flintstone. Also featured are relatives Pearl Slaghoople  and Uncle Tex Hardrock. The Rubbles are close characters to the Flintstones, including Fred's best friend, Barney Rubble, and his family, Betty Rubble, Bamm-Bamm Rubble and their pet, Hoppy. Producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera drew inspiration for the show's concept and music from popular cartoons of that time, including "The Bugs Bunny Show" and "Tom and Jerry", as well as from the live-action comedy series, "The Honeymooners". The continuing popularity of "The Flintstones" rests heavily on its juxtaposition of modern everyday concerns in the Stone Age setting. "The Flintstones" was the most financially successful and  longest-running network animated television series for three decades, until "The Simpsons" surpassed it in 1997. In 2013, "TV Guide" ranked "The Flintstones" the second-greatest TV cartoon of all time (after "The Simpsons"). Overview. The show is set in a comical version of the Stone Age, but has added features and technologies that resemble mid-20th-century suburban America. The plots deliberately resemble the sitcoms of the era, with the caveman Flintstone and Rubble families getting into minor conflicts characteristic of modern life. The show is set in the Stone Age town of Bedrock (pop. 2,500). Dinosaurs and other prehistoric  creatures are portrayed as co-existing with cavemen, saber-toothed cats, and woolly mammoths. Animation historian Christopher P. Lehman considers that the series draws its humor in part from creative uses of anachronisms. The main one is the placing of a "modern", 20th-century society in prehistory. This society takes inspiration from the suburban sprawl developed in the first two decades of the postwar period. This society has modern home appliances, but they work by employing animals. They have automobiles, but they hardly resemble the cars of the 20th century. These cars are large wooden and rock structures and burn  no fuel. They are powered by people who run while inside them. This depiction is inconsistent, however. On some occasions, the cars are known to have engines (with appropriate sound effects), requiring ignition keys and gasoline. Fred might pull into a gas station and say, "Fill 'er up with Ethel", which is pumped through the trunk of a woolly mammoth marked "ETHEL". Whether the car runs by foot or by gas varies according to the needs of the story. Finally, the stone houses of this society are cookie-cutter homes positioned into neighborhoods typical of mid-20th-century American suburbs. Characters . Other characters. Over 100 other characters appeared throughout the program. Below are those who have made more than one appearance: Voice-actor details. Fred Flintstone physically resembles both the first voice actor who played him, Alan Reed, and Jackie Gleason, whose series, "The Honeymooners", inspired "The Flintstones". The voice of Barney Rubble was provided by voice actor Mel Blanc, except for five episodes during the second season (the first, second, fifth, sixth, and ninth); Hanna-Barbera regular Daws Butler filled in and provided the voice of Barney while Blanc was incapacitated by a near-fatal car accident. Blanc was able  to return to the series much sooner than expected, by virtue of a temporary recording studio for the entire cast set up at Blanc's bedside. Blanc's portrayal of Barney changed considerably after the accident. In the earliest episodes, Blanc had used a much higher pitch and portrayed Barney as a smart-aleck. After his recovery from the accident, Blanc used a deeper voice, quite similar to the voice of the Abominable Snowman he performed in other cartoons, and was shown as somewhat dopier than before. Reed based Fred's voice upon Gleason's "Honeymooners" interpretation of Ralph Kramden , while Blanc, after a season of using a nasal, high-pitched voice for Barney, eventually adopted a style of voice similar to that used by Art Carney in his portrayal of Ed Norton. The first time the Art Carney-like voice was used was for a few seconds in "The Prowler" (the third episode produced). In a 1986 "Playboy" interview, Gleason said Alan Reed had done voice-overs for Gleason in his early movies and that he had considered suing Hanna-Barbera for copying "The Honeymooners", but decided to let it pass. According to Henry Corden, a voice actor and  a friend of Gleason's, "Jackie's lawyers told him he could probably have "The Flintstones" pulled right off the air. But they also told him, 'Do you want to be known as the guy who yanked Fred Flintstone off the air? The guy who took away a show so many kids love and so many parents love, too?'" Henry Corden's voice became Fred's after Reed's death in 1977, starting with "A Flintstone Christmas". Corden had previously provided Fred's singing voice in "The Man Called Flintstone" and later on "The Flintstones" children's records. Since 2000 , Jeff Bergman, James Arnold Taylor, and Scott Innes (performing both Fred and Barney for Toshiba commercials) have performed the voice of Fred. Since Mel Blanc's death in 1989, Barney has been voiced by Jeff Bergman, Frank Welker, and Kevin Michael Richardson. Various additional character voices were created by Hal Smith, Allan Melvin, Janet Waldo, Daws Butler, and Howard Morris, among others. Music. The opening- and closing-credits theme during the first two seasons was called "Rise and Shine", a lively instrumental underscore accompanying Fred on his drive home from work. The tune resembled "The Bugs Bunny Overture (This Is  It!)", the theme song of "The Bugs Bunny Show", also airing on ABC at the time, and may have been the reason the theme was changed in the third season. Starting in season three, episode three ("Barney the Invisible"), the opening- and closing-credits theme was the familiar vocal "Meet the Flintstones". This version was recorded with a 22-piece big band conducted by composer Hoyt Curtin and performed by the Randy Van Horne Singers. The melody is derived from part of the 'B' section of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17 Movement 2, composed in 1801/02. The "Meet the  Flintstones" opening was later added to the first two seasons for syndication. The musical underscores were credited to Hoyt Curtin for the show's first five seasons; Ted Nichols took over in 1965 for the final season. Many early episodes used the underscores composed for "Top Cat" and "The Jetsons". Episodes of the last two seasons used the underscore of "Jonny Quest" for the more adventurous stories. History and production. The idea of "The Flintstones" started after Hanna-Barbera produced "The Huckleberry Hound Show" and "The Quick Draw McGraw Show". Although these programs were successful, they did not have the  same wide audience appeal as their previous theatrical cartoon series "Tom and Jerry", which entertained both children and the adults who accompanied them. Since children did not need their parents' supervision to watch television, though, Hanna-Barbera's output became labeled "kids only". Barbera and Hanna wanted to recapture the adult audience with an animated situation comedy. Barbera and Hanna considered making the two families hillbillies (a hillbilly theme was later incorporated into two "Flintstones" episodes, "The Bedrock Hillbillies" and "The Hatrocks and the Gruesomes"), ancient Romans (Hanna-Barbera eventually created "The Roman Holidays"), pilgrims, or American Indians before deciding  on a Stone Age setting. According to Barbera, they settled on that because "you could take anything that was current, and convert it to stone-age". Under the working title "The Flagstones", a treatment was written by Harry Winkler. The family originally consisted of Fred, Wilma, and their son, Fred, Jr. A brief demonstration film was also created to sell the idea of a "modern stone-age family" to sponsors and the network. It was a difficult sell, and required eight weeks of daily presentations to networks and ad agencies. June Foray and Hanna-Barbera regular Daws Butler voiced the  characters for the demonstration film, but Foray was dropped without warning before production began; Foray was upset about the rejection and refused to work with Hanna-Barbera for many years afterward, despite Barbera's efforts to offer her other work. Animator Kenneth Muse, who worked on the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons, also worked on the early seasons of "The Flintstones". William Hanna admitted that "At that time, "The Honeymooners" was the most popular show on the air, and for my bill, the funniest. The characters, I thought, were terrific. Now, that influenced greatly what we did with "The Flintstones" ... "The  Honeymooners" was there, and we used that as a kind of basis for the concept." Joseph Barbera disavowed these claims in a separate interview, though, stating, "I don't remember mentioning "The Honeymooners" when I sold the show, but if people want to compare "The Flintstones" to "The Honeymooners", then great. It's a total compliment. "The Honeymooners" was one of the greatest shows ever written." Jackie Gleason, creator of "The Honeymooners", considered suing Hanna-Barbera Productions, but decided that he did not want to be known as "the guy who yanked Fred Flintstone off the air". Another influence was  noted during Hanna-Barbera's tenure at MGM, where they were in a friendly competition with fellow cartoon director Tex Avery. In 1955, Avery directed a cartoon entitled "The First Bad Man" (narrated by cowboy legend Tex Ritter). The cartoon concerned the rowdy antics of a bank robber in stone-age Dallas. Many of the sight gags from that series antedated similar situations used by Hanna-Barbera in the Flintstones series by many years. Many students of American animation point to this cartoon as a progenitive seed of the Flintstones. The concept was also antedated by the "Stone Age Cartoons  series of 12 animated cartoons released from January to September 1940 by Fleischer Studios. These cartoons show stone-age people doing modern things with primitive means. One example is Granite Hotel" including characters such as a newsboy, telephone operator, hotel clerk, and a spoof of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Barbera explained that selling the show to a network and sponsors was not an easy task. When the series went into production, the working title "The Flagstones" was changed, possibly to avoid confusion with the Flagstons, characters in the comic strip "Hi and Lois". After spending a brief period in  development as "The Gladstones" (GLadstone being a Los Angeles telephone exchange at the time), Hanna-Barbera settled upon "The Flintstones", and the idea of the Flintstones having a child from the start was discarded, with Fred and Wilma starting out as a childless couple. However, some early "Flintstones" merchandise, such as a 1961 Little Golden Book, included "Fred Jr". Despite the animation and fantasy setting, the series was initially aimed at adult audiences, which was reflected in the comedy writing, that as noted, resembled the average primetime sitcoms of the era, with the usual family issues resolved with a laugh  at the end of each episode, as well as the inclusion of a laugh track. Hanna and Barbera hired many writers from the world of live-action, including two of Jackie Gleason's writers, Herbert Finn and Sydney Zelinka, as well as relative newcomer Joanna Lee, while still using traditional animation story men such as Warren Foster and Michael Maltese. "The Flintstones" premiered on September 30, 1960, at 8:30 pm Eastern time, and quickly became a hit. It was the first American animated show to depict two people of the opposite sex (Fred and Wilma; Barney and Betty) sleeping together  in one bed, although Fred and Wilma are sometimes depicted as sleeping in separate beds. For comparison, the first live-action depiction of this in American TV history was in television's first-ever sitcom: 1947's "Mary Kay and Johnny." The first two seasons were co-sponsored by Winston cigarettes and the characters appeared in several black-and-white television commercials for Winston (dictated by the custom, at that time, that the star(s) of a TV series often "pitched" their sponsor's product in an "integrated commercial" at the end of the episode). During the third season, Hanna and  Barbera decided that Fred and Wilma should have a baby. Originally, Hanna and Barbera intended for the Flintstone family to have a boy, but the head of the marketing department convinced them to change it to a girl since "girl dolls sell a lot better than boy dolls". Although most "Flintstones" episodes were stand-alone storylines, Hanna-Barbera created a story arc surrounding the birth of Pebbles. Beginning with the episode "The Surprise", aired midway through the third season (January 25, 1963), in which Wilma reveals her pregnancy to Fred, the arc continued through the time leading up to Pebbles 's birth in the episode "Dress Rehearsal" (February 22, 1963), and then continued with several episodes showing Fred and Wilma adjusting to the world of parenthood. Around this time, Winston pulled out their sponsorship and Welch's (grape juice and grape jellies) became the primary sponsor, as the show's audience began to shift younger. The integrated commercials for Welch's products feature Pebbles asking for grape juice in her toddler dialect, and Fred explaining to Pebbles Welch's unique process for making the jelly, compared to the competition. Welch's also produced a line of grape jelly packaged in  jars that were reusable as drinking glasses, with painted scenes featuring the Flintstones and characters from the show. In Australia, the Nine Network ran a "Name the Flintstones' baby" competition during the 'pregnancy' episodes—few Australian viewers were expected to have a U.S. connection giving them information about past "Flintstone" episodes. An American won the contest and received an all-expenses-paid trip to tour Hanna-Barbera Studios. Another arc occurred in the fourth season, in which the Rubbles, depressed over being unable to have children of their own (making "The Flintstones" the first animated series in history to address  the issue of infertility, though subtly), adopt Bamm-Bamm. The 100th episode made (but the 90th to air), "Little Bamm-Bamm Rubble" (October 3, 1963), established how Bamm-Bamm was adopted. Nine episodes were produced before it, but aired afterward, which explains why Bamm-Bamm was not seen again until episode 101, "Daddies Anonymous" (Bamm-Bamm was in a teaser on episode 98, "Kleptomaniac Pebbles"). Another story arc, occurring in the final season, centered on Fred and Barney's dealings with the Great Gazoo (voiced by Harvey Korman). After Pebbles's birth, the tone and writing became more juvenile and  ratings from the adult demographic began to decline. The last original episode was broadcast on April 1, 1966. The first three seasons of "The Flintstones" aired Friday nights at 8:30 Eastern time on ABC, with the first two seasons in black-and-white. Beginning with the third season in 1962, ABC televised the "Flintstones" in color, one of the first programs in color on that network. Season four and part of season five aired Thursdays at 7:30. The rest of the series aired Fridays at 7:30. In the U.S., besides being part of NBC Saturday mornings from 1966 to 1970 , the syndicated reruns of the series were offered to local stations until 1997, when E/I regulations and changing tastes in the industry led to the show's move to cable television. From the time of Ted Turner's purchase of Hanna-Barbera in 1991, TBS, TNT, and Cartoon Network aired the program. On April 1, 2000, the program moved to Boomerang, where it aired until March 6, 2017 (in its last years on the channel, it had been relegated to a graveyard slot) and returned to the channel on July 30, 2018. Online, the series was made available on  the In2TV service beginning in 2006, then the online version of Kids' WB until that service was discontinued in 2015. As of 2017, full episodes are only available in the U.S. on Boomerang's subscription video-on-demand service, with select clips made available on the official YouTube account tied to the revamped Kids' WB website. In 2019, MeTV acquired rerun rights to the series, returning the show to broadcast television for the first time in over 20 years. All seasons of this series can currently be streamed on HBO Max, a streaming service Warner Bros. Discovery's and Tubi , a streaming service owned by Fox Corporation. 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. Animation historian Michael Barrier disliked the series, calling it a "dumb sitcom" and stated that "I can readily understand why someone who as a small child enjoyed, say, "The Flintstones" might regard that  show fondly today. I have a lot more trouble understanding why anyone would try to defend anything about it on artistic grounds." Despite the mixed critical reviews, "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." Films and subsequent television series. Following the show's cancellation in 1966, a film based upon the series was created. "The Man Called Flintstone" was a musical spy caper that parodied James Bond and other secret agents. The movie was released to theaters on August 3, 1966, by Columbia Pictures. It was released on DVD by Warner Home Video in Canada in March 2005 and in  United States in December 2008. The show was revived in the early 1970s with Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm having grown into teenagers, and several different series and made-for-TV movies (broadcast mainly on Saturday mornings, with a few shown in primetime), including a series depicting Fred and Barney as police officers, another depicting the characters as children, and yet others featuring Fred and Barney encountering Marvel Comics superhero The Thing and Al Capp's comic strip character The Shmoo—have appeared over the years. The original show also was adapted into a live-action film in 1994, and a  prequel, "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas", which followed in 2000. Unlike its sister show "The Jetsons" (the two shows appeared in a made-for-TV crossover movie in 1987), the revival programs were not widely syndicated or rerun alongside the original series. Television series. Original runs: Compilation shows: Canceled Seth MacFarlane reboot. In 2011, it was announced "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane would be reviving "The Flintstones" for the Fox network, with the first episode airing in 2013. After Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly read the pilot script and "liked it but didn't love it", MacFarlane chose to  abandon work on the project rather than restarting it. Concept art of the series was posted on background artist Andy Clark’s website. Section::::"Yabba-Dabba Dinosaurs". "Yabba-Dabba Dinosaurs" is an American animated web television series spin-off of "The Flintstones" that premiered in 2020, the first to feature them since they appeared in the 2002 series "The Rubbles", and produced by Warner Bros. Animation. It was produced by Mark Marek and Marly Halpern-Graser. Like "Cave Kids", the show focuses on the lives of best friends Pebbles Flintstone and Bamm-Bamm Rubble, who are joined by Dino for many  adventures in the Stone Age. The show was scheduled to be released as a part of the Boomerang IPTV subscription service. On August 19, 2021, it was announced the series would instead be released on HBO Max on September 30, 2021. The series was set to first air on Teletoon as a regular television series in Canada in September 2019, but ended up airing in September 2020. The show started airing on February 3, 2020, on Boomerang UK. Upcoming animated film. In 2014, it was announced that Warner Bros. was developing an animated film with Chris Henchy, Will Ferrell, and  Adam McKay, to write the script for the project. Ferrell and McKay would also be executive producers. In 2018, it was confirmed that the project is still in development and produced by Warner Animation Group, but if the crew members would still be involved is unknown. Section::::"Bedrock". In 2019, it was reported that a new "Flintstones" reboot series, directed to an adult audience, is in development by Elizabeth Banks and her production company Brownstone Productions. In 2021, the series was now co-produced by Fox Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation along with Brownstone and received the title "Bedrock". The new  series takes place two decades after the original series with Fred Flintstone on the verge of retirement and a twenty-something Pebbles (voiced by Banks) trying to find her way in life as the Stone Age comes to an end and the Bronze Age arrives. Theme parks. Two sister "Flintstones"-themed amusement parks exist in the United States: Bedrock City in Custer, South Dakota. It closed in 2015 when the new owner, Mike Tennyson, and Warner Bros. could not come to an agreement over changes. It was too expensive for the repairs and changes that Warner Brother wanted. So Tennyson closed  the park. The entire site was bulldozed in April 2019. Another one near Williams, Arizona, is still open for the summer of 2019, but slated to close by 2020. It cost $5 per person to get in. Both have been in operation for decades. Another existed until the 1990s at Carowinds in Charlotte, North Carolina. In Canada, Flintstone Park in Kelowna, British Columbia, opened in 1968 and closed in 1998; it was notable for the "Forty Foot Fred" billboard of Fred Flintstone which was a well-known Kelowna landmark. Another "Flintstones" park was located in Bridal Falls, British Columbia , which closed in 1990. Calaway Park outside Calgary, Alberta, also opened with a "Flintstones" theme and many of the buildings today have a caveman-like design, though the park no longer licenses the characters. The Australia's Wonderland and Canada's Wonderland theme parks, both featured "Flintstones" characters in their Hanna-Barbera-themed children's sections from 1985 until the mid-1990s. Kings Island (near Cincinnati) and Kings Dominion (near Richmond, Virginia) had a Hanna-Barbera land, in which many Hanna-Barbera characters were featured, including the Flintstones, in the early 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. Bedrock is one of the  themed lands in the indoor Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi park in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, mainly home to the Flintstones Bedrock River Adventure flume ride. Live theater. A stage production opened at Universal Studios Hollywood in 1994 (the year the live-action film was released), developed by Universal and Hanna-Barbera Productions, at the Panasonic Theater, replacing the "Star Trek" show. The story consists of Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty heading for "Hollyrock". The show ran until January 2, 1997. In popular culture. Miles Laboratories (now part of Bayer Corporation) and their One-A-Day vitamin brand was  the alternate sponsor of the original "Flintstones" series during its first two seasons, and in the late 1960s, Miles introduced Flintstones Chewable Vitamins, fruit-flavored multivitamin tablets for children in the shape of the Flintstones characters, which are still currently being sold. "The Simpsons" referenced "The Flintstones" in several episodes. In the episode "Homer's Night Out", Homer's local convenience store clerk, Apu, remarks "You look familiar, sir. Are you on the television or something?", to which Homer replies "Sorry, buddy, you've got me confused with Fred Flintstone." During the couch gag of the opening credits of the  episode "Kamp Krusty", the Simpson family arrive home to find the Flintstone family already sitting on their couch. The same couch gag was reused in syndicated episodes of "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", when "The Simpsons" overtook "The Flintstones" as the longest-running animated series. In "Lady Bouvier's Lover", Homer's boss, Mr. Burns, appears at the family's house and says "Why, it's Fred Flintstone (referring to Homer) and his lovely wife, Wilma! (Marge) Oh, and this must be little Pebbles! (Maggie) Mind if I come in? I brought chocolates." Homer responds by saying "Yabba-dabba-doo !" The opening of "Marge vs. the Monorail" depicts Homer leaving work in a similar way to Fred Flintstone in the opening of "The Flintstones", during which he sings his own version of the latter's opening theme only to slam into a chestnut tree. On September 30, 2010, Google temporarily replaced the logo on its search page with a custom graphic celebrating the 50th anniversary of "The Flintstones" first TV broadcast.