The Alvin Show
The Alvin Show is an American animated television series that aired on CBS in the early 1960s. It is the first series to feature the singing characters Alvin and the Chipmunks. "The Alvin Show" aired for two seasons in prime time from October 4, 1961, to September 12, 1962 and was originally sponsored by General Foods through its Jell-O gelatin and Post Cereal brands. Although the series was created in color, it was initially telecast in black and white. It was later rebroadcast in color from 1962-64 for Saturday mornings on CBS and aired again  Saturday mornings in 1979. The series rode the momentum of creator Ross Bagdasarian Sr.'s original hit musical gimmick and developed the singing Chipmunk trio as rambunctious kids–particularly the show's namesake star–whose mischief contrasted to his tall, brainy brother Simon and his chubby, gluttonous brother Theodore, as well as their long-suffering, perpetually put-upon manager-father figure, David Seville. The animation was produced by Herbert Klynn's Format Films. The pilot episode, an early version of the fifth episode "Good Neighbor", was written and produced to sell the show to CBS. The actual show featured a  re-worked version, which aired as part of the fifth episode. The show was followed in 1983 by another Chipmunks series, "Alvin and the Chipmunks". Syndication. CBS reran the series on Saturday mornings for a few years after the show's prime time run ended in 1962. In the mid- and late 1960s, the individual show segments were culled together and sold as a syndication package under the title "Alvin and the Chipmunks". The original episodes began airing under the "Alvin and the Chipmunks" title on NBC Saturday mornings in 1979 for a short period. Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., died of  a heart attack on January 16, 1972, seemingly bringing to an end any further Chipmunk productions. Years later, his son, Ross Jr., picked up on a disc jockey's joke and produced the album "Chipmunk Punk" in 1980. The success of "Chipmunk Punk" spurred renewed interest in a new animated series by Ruby-Spears, which launched in September 1983 on NBC and was titled "Alvin and the Chipmunks", with Ross, Jr. taking over for his father as the voices of Alvin, Simon, and Dave Seville. His wife, Janice Karman, voiced Theodore, as well as The Chipettes, who are the Chipmunks ' female counterparts. The show ran until 1988 when a reboot of the show took place on the same network by Murakami-Wolf-Swenson and later taken over by DIC Entertainment. At the time, the Ruby-Spears episodes were later picked up on mostly FOX and a few independent stations in the same year until as late as early 1994. To coincide with the new series, Viacom Enterprises distributed reruns of "The Alvin Show" to local (mostly independent and future FOX) stations; the rerun package was also carried nationally over superstations WGN and WTBS at various times beginning in September 1983  and ran for mostly a few years on half of the markets. However, some stations continue to run the show at various times as late as 1993. Prior to its superstation runs, The Alvin Show was picked up in a few markets such as New York, Cleveland, and even in Australia and Brazil in the early 1970s. The show made its way to Europe in the United Kingdom when the BBC (now BBC One) began broadcasting the program as well. In 1981, Clyde Crashcup made an appearance during a dream sequence in "A Chipmunk Christmas". During recent network airings of  the special, the sequence has been cut out, due to network time constraints concerning commercial ad time. In 1990, "The Alvin Show" versions of the Chipmunks and Clyde Crashcup reappeared in an episode of "The Chipmunks Go To the Movies" titled "Back to Alvin’s Future" (a spoof of the 1985 movie, "Back to the Future"). A majority of the songs and clips from "The Alvin Show" were featured in the "Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing Along Songs" VHS releases that were released in the mid-1990s. The songs, however, were slightly remixed to sound more modern. The only song that  kept its original broadcast soundtrack was "Alvin's Orchestra" in the 1993 Sing Along video "Ragtime Cowboy Joe". The Bagdasarian closing logo from the show was also remixed in the 1994 Sing Along video, "Working on the Railroad". Nickelodeon picked up US broadcast rights to "The Alvin Show" on March 7, 1994, after the last of a few independent stations pulled the show. The network aired digitally restored versions of each episode as it originally was broadcast (save for the omissions of one song from each episode, due to the necessary commercial timing, commercial plugs and Alvin's addition of  his name to the closing), adding its logo to the opening. The show aired on weekday mornings for approximately a year. During this time, as well as for sometime after the full episodes stopped airing, the individual Chipmunk and Clyde Crashcup cartoons and musical segments were inserted into episodes of "Weinerville". In 1996, Nickelodeon stopped showing "The Alvin Show" segments altogether and no television station has aired them since then. Episodes (1961–1962). 26 episodes each were produced for the "Alvin and the Chipmunks" and "Clyde Crashcup" segments, along with 52 musical segments. General Foods was the show's main sponsor ; as such, Dave Seville and The Chipmunks appeared in several humorous half-minute commercials for Jell-O and Post Cereals. Home media. Other than the two VHS releases from Buena Vista Home Video, both of which featured 11 songs from "The Alvin Show", up until recently, the show has never been released on DVD. However, on September 8, 2009, Paramount Home Entertainment released the first episode of the show, along with two "modern" specials. A future "Complete Series" DVD set of the series has not been planned. In 2014, "The Brave Chipmunks" musical sequence was released as a bonus feature  on "The Chipmunk Adventure" Blu-ray and DVD combo pack. In 2015, three complete episodes (#01, #04, and #10) were released together as "The Alvin Show" on Blu-ray and DVD.