The Alvin Show was the first television series to feature the singing characters Alvin and the Chipmunks, although a series with a similar concept The Nutty Squirrels Present had aired a year earlier. It lasted for just one season in prime time. The series rode the momentum of creator Ross Bagdasa...

Meet The Flintstones in this prehistoric Hanna-Barbera production. Primetime's first animated series was also the longest running until The Simpsons came along. Not so coincidentally, the two shows aren't all that different--even if the former emerged in the sixties, the latter in the eighties. ...

When The Huckleberry Hound Show debuted in syndication on October 2, 1958, it launched the Hanna-Barbera empire--and radically changed the course of American animation. After MGM closed its cartoon studio in 1957, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the Oscar-winning directors of the "Tom and Jerry" sho...

The Jetsons (1962) was the third primetime series from the Hanna-Barbera Studio, after The Flintstones (1960) and Top Cat (1961). Although the show was cancelled after its first season, it proved a durable Saturday-morning favorite, running for more than 14 years on all three networks.

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"No one buys gorillas anymore," laments Mr. Peebles in the initial installment ("Big Game") of this Hanna-Barbera animation. The shop owner has looked after Magilla (Allan Melvin, The Brady Bunch) since he was a baby. Customers take the snappily-dressed simian home, he messes everything up--they...

So the swinging theme song immortalizes, "the chief, he's the king, but above everything: he's the most tiptop Top Cat!"... In the tradition of great screen conmen--one of the few with a visible tail--"Top Cat" holds a top spot in the hearts of cartoon fans. The smooth-talking New York City cat,...

Quick Draw was usually depicted in his shorts (which were set in the American Old West) as a sheriff. Quick Draw was often accompanied by his deputy, a Mexican burro with a stereotypical Spanish accent named Baba Looey.

Quick Draw was depicted as a satire of the westerns that were popular amo...

Spider-Man ran from 1967 through 1970 on ABC, and imprinted its theme song, "Spider-Man, Spider-Man/ Does whatever a spider can / Spins a web, any size / Catches thieves--just like flies" on a generation of viewers.

The comic book Spider-Man, who debuted in Marvel's Amazing Fantasy in 1962, ...

A spoof of superhero melodramas, the cartoon Underdog has a similar Clark Kent-style character, the ordinary dog Shoeshine Boy. But whenever there is trouble afoot, Shoeshine Boy ducks into a phone booth to don his uniform and become Underdog (his quick change routine usually accompanied by the ...

Yogi Bear began as a secondary character on The Huckleberry Hound Show (1958), but he proved so popular, he was given his own series in 1961. A conniver and a schemer, Yogi frequently proclaimed he was "smarter than the average bear." His gentle pal Boo Boo always pointed out that Ranger Smith w...