I’m not crazy about the Pebbles-centricity. The Flintstones cartoon series, to me, wasn’t about a talking baby. And the newspaper comics, by 1964, have both Pebbles and Dino talking to themselves in thought balloons. But you might be interested in looking at these, so here they are. The artwork is very attractive.
The Christmas season cartoons have been posted on the blog before, but I’ve put them up again just so the whole month is intact. And it gives us all another chance to see Baby Puss.
Click on each week of comics to make it larger.
November 30-December 5, 1964
December 7-12, 1964
December 14-19, 1964
December 21-26, 1964
December 28, 1964-January 2, 1965
Interesting that Peanuts kinda went the opposite way with Snoopy et al. from thought balloons in the strips to later using unintelligible noises as fake speech in the animated cartoons.
ReplyDeleteThe use of "thinking" Pebbles in the strip seems to be largely inspired by her predecessor, Trixie, of "Hi and Lois".
ReplyDeleteLOL....Loved all of those dailies....the thinking bit can be traced from "The People's Choice" with "talking/thinking" basset hound "Cleo", and the baby "Happy" from the title show, 1960.
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ReplyDeleteRobGems.ca Wrote:
Ironic statement about the Trixie/ Pebbles connection, Top Cat James. When Bill and Joe initially wanted to call their project "The Flagstones", they had to change the family name to "The Flintstones" to avoid confusion with Hi & Lois, whose last names are "Flagston".
Rod, forgot about Trixie.... Rob, correct about THE "Hi & Lois" connection between the pilot (now on about a hundred online outlets including Dailymotion and YouTube) of "The Flintstones' called The Flagstons and "Hi and Lois"'s family name Flagstone.:)
DeleteI think that giving Pebbles a “voice”, would have made the TV series just a little too gimmicky, before The Great Gazoo did exactly that. I guess Jean Vander Pyl would have had to create a voice that would have been heard in echo, to simulate thought.
ReplyDeleteAnd, once Bamm-Bamm began “think-talking” too, it could have become like the comic book “Sugar and Spike” – where they understand EACH OTHER, but the adults are completely unaware.
I did like this approach for the comic strip – and they also did this in the comic books – because it worked in a medium in which one commonly reads the characters’ thoughts.
Pebbles’ “baby’s-eye view” of things was actually quite entertaining. Absolutely loved the “Christmas Card” strip, and was glad to see Santa was “over his cold” in another strip.
Like Joe, I also enjoy the role of Pebbles as "commentator" in the comic strip, a role she decidedly did not play in animation.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Yowp, for giving me my latest Flintstones comics fix--and just in time for Christmas, too!
It's fun to see the Christmas-themed strips in context with the rest of the month. No problem on my part seeing them re-run here--if it was good once, it's good twice! Love that single-panel opening Christmas gifts scene. It grounds the strip in a kind of "reality" with everyone just kicking back and enjoying the holiday. Baby Puss and Dino even get into the "Pebbles" act by acting as commentators.
The dailies are a little different from the Sundays, especially with much shorter content, but they also seem a little more skewed toward social commentary and more adult-themed humor, although the beauty of those days was that kids could enjoy humor aimed at adults, and vice-versa.
Joy & Peace!
Joe and Scarecrow noticed the appeal of Pebbles's thinking just as I do....the "Sugar and Spike" thing was done, on a one way street, anyhow, by Snoopy and Woodstock in the late 60s-early 70s "Peanuts" onwards (only Woodstock used "bird scratches"
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