1) Mary, Mungo and Midge…
Aww, little Mary, Mungo and Midgedy Midge.
Mary was a 5 year old girl, Mungo was a dog and Midge was a mouse (of the non-ewww kind).
And together, they lived in a town with streets (wow!), cars (double wow!) and buses (triple frikkin wow!).
At the tippity top of a tall block of flats (8th floor) is where they lived with Mary’s mummy and daddy.
And every episode, the three M’s would venture out of the flat and go on one heck of an adventure – wheeeeeeeeeeee – then come back home safe and sound.
2) Tom and Jerry…
Now, if Midge the mouse was up against Tom, Midge wouldn’t have stood a chance in hell. Splattered, I tell you, splattered.
Tom and Jerry hated each other with a passion. The cartoon’s a classic case of ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again’ …even when the credits stop rolling.
The sheer vigour and mischievousness in which both cat and mouse constantly got back at each other was mind-blowing …and hilarious!
3) The Flintstones…
Flintstones, meet the Flintstones…
The Flintstones were like ‘The Simpsons’ or ‘Family Guy’ but without the swearing or the cut-throat bitchy satire.
Two caveman-like couples, Fred and Wilma Flintstone, and Barney and Betty Rubble – lived in a prehistoric village called Bedrock. The creatures were cool too! – a bird’s beak used as a can opener, a baby woolly mammoth being used as a hoover, and a large mammoth’s trunk served as a shower. They also had drop-in guests, but were given names like Stony Curtis (Tony Curtis), Alvin Brickrock (Alfred Hitchcock) and Rock Hudstone (Rock Hudson).
Wilma always reminded me of Mrs Cunnigham in Happy Days. What do you think?
4) Bugs Bunny…
He’d usually go ‘Eeeeeeerrr…what’s up, doc?, while chomping down casually on a carrot. (I wonder if it was organic. Hmm.)
Bugs Bunny, the rabbit (wabbit) with bucket-loads of attitude and wit. Well, what do you expect from a bunny from Brooklyn? If he wasn’t falling out with Daffy Duck, then it was with Elmer Fudd. If it wasn’t Elmer, then it was the Tasmanian Devil.
Bugs Bunny always won, of course. It’s just the way he was built.
Before he’d go to battle, he’d look over at the screen all self-assured and go ‘Of course you realise, this means war?’ - I remember always nodding in agreement as if he was personally waiting for a response from me.
5) The Pink Panther…
A cartoon that initially started out as an opening and closing credit for the film of the same name, no one realised just how popular the animation would become (it became more popular than the film). I found myself not really liking the film actually because I became so used to the animated version.
Pink Panther was super-duper cool and super-duper slick, like the James Bond of the cat world! And then there was his nemesis, French Inspector Clouseau who was always on his trail, always thinking he was onto something, but failing every time. Pink Panther was just too smooth and savvy for him, escaping him at every turn.
6) Huckleberry Hound…
Huckleberry Hound was a blue, droopy-eyed, laid-back, mild-mannered dog with a Southern accent. Every episode, he tried his hand paw at being something - a rocket scientist, a detective, a gladiator. I, for one, found him inspirational (odd, I know) because as messily as he muddled his way through trying to be something, he always seemed to make it in the end.
And he used to sing this song…Oh My Darling, oh my darling, oh my darling, Clementine… in his own uniquely bad way, his Southern drawl just as evident.
7) Charlie Brown…
With a beach-balled head that was bigger than the rest of his body, accentuated by a couple of strands of hair, the often-unfortunate Charlie Brown was as lovable as lovable can be. With his gang of 12 mates in tow (not forgetting Snoopy the dog and Woodstock), your heart went out to him every time he’d encounter one mishap or the other - being teased by other kids, never getting a card for Christmas or Valentine’s or losing a game when he was soooo close to winning.
Remember Schroeder and his obsession with Beethoven?! And the eccentric Linus? I wanted to be like him! And remember Lucy who was a bit of a cow in the making? I used to think that as critical as she was of Charlie, she had a bit of a crush on him – she just didn’t know how to express it.
8 ) Wacky Races…
Wacky cars and wacky characters made for wacky races! What I remember the most was Muttley the dog with his devious little laugh. It was a strange laugh, like a combination of 70% laugh and 30% cough. Him and his race partner, Dick Dastardly, were always concocting one plan or the other to win the race.
And then there was Penelope Pitstop who was your Female Stereotype Extraordinaire. Blonde hair, pink car, pink racing clothes, white goggles, white boots, white gloves - with a car that was a beauty salon on the move!
Then there were other characters like the scary Gruesome Twosome - one was Frankenstein’s monster, the other a vampire. They drove a hearse-looking race car.
And there were two boulder-holding cavemen, the Slag Brothers, in their cave mobile (called BoulderMobile). They were like human shaggy dogs, covered from head to toe in hair apart from their pokey noses.
This cartoon was like a Formula One race on crack. Loved it!
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