Everything's Archie
Into the SatAm world of caped crusaders in 1968 came the carrot- topped teen from Riverdale, star of radio and comics, the inimitable Archie. The first SatAm cartoon with a laugh track, from the start Filmation's show was all about music. The Archie Show opened with The Archies in a band. Each episode consisted of two ten minute cartoons, a dance and a song by the Archies. One of the songs, "Sugar Sugar", from a later incarnation of the show (there were eight), hit no. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1969.
Anyone who understands how limited were the budgets for kids' TV cartoons, as compared to the lavish resources for theatrical animation, will enjoy watching shows from this era to study what might be called the art of limited animation. As with Hanna- Barbera, it means characters running by the same shops and barber poles repeatedly to minimize backgrounds. It also meant finding clever ways to reuse footage. Here, one way was to use the dance visuals for the song segment. The...
Sugar, Sugar: Where Are The Kids?
One of the best animated children's shows to ever come out of the 60's. This series, which featured a lot of chase songs, which also showed up in the Scooby-Doo TV series, are what made the series a lot more fun and enjoyable and very comical to watch. The following episodes consist of the first show:
1 The Added Distraction
2 Who Is Afraid of Reggie Wolf?
3 Beauty is Only Fur Deep
4 The Disappearing Act
5 Hot Rod Drag
6 Jughead's Double
7 Anchor's Away
8 Snow Business
9 Jughead Simpson Jones
10 The Computer
11 Groovy Ghosts
12 PFC Hot Dog
13 Dilton's Folly
14 Jughead's Girl
15 Hard Day's Knight
16 Cat Next Door
17 Chimp off the Old Block
18 Reggie's Cousin
19 The Circus
20 The Prize Winner
21 Field Trip
22 The Great...
The Archies Come To DVD
The Archies make their DVD debut in this 2-DVD set from Genius Products, which brings us all 17 original Archie cartoons from 1968.
Archie has a long history, first coming on the scene in 1941 as a character in PEP COMICS and continuing as one of history's most well-known teenagers (six and a half decades later, Archie is STILL 17 years old). This series, created by Filmation in 1968 as a relief from their superhero franchises (Lou Schemier mentions on an interview in this set that "if it had a cape, we did it"), is almost a straight translation from the source material, literally presenting Archie and crew as an animated comic, with the characters themselves speaking directly to the viewer and introducing their own stories. (This would carry over into both the ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE and SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH series, creating a feeling of involvement in the show for the viewer.)
The series recounts the misadventures of one Archie Andrews (voiced by Dal...
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