Fred and Wilma had sex!

They did. They really did, or they wouldn't have gotten Pebbles.

You know. Pebbles. She happened round about the third season, The Flintstones was beginning to sag a bit in the ratings, so the show's writers decided to add a new wrinkle. They took a truly bold step for a cartoon series.

They made Wilma pregnant.

Imagine it. A PREGNANT cartoon character! Wilma went around for a number of episodes with a big jutting fertility-goddess belly covered by a demure white maternity blouse. What does it all mean? If we're going to imagine this is any kind of normal scenario, we'll have to think of it in the same way we do in real life.

If anyone dares go there, we have to come to the conclusion that Fred and Wilma were - you know. THEY WERE HAVING SEX! Try to picture it. No, don't go there! But try. They are merely cartoon characters, after all, and not real. But they had a "real" baby, didn't they?

Picture it.

How good a lover would Fred Flintstone be? How long would he last? How adept would Wilma be at pleasing her man and keeping him satisfied so he wouldn't go after some cheap floozie in the gravel pit? I cannot imagine. I cannot imagine Fred Flintstone having sex, and deciding one day to just throw the rubber away and wing it. Or was Pebbles really just Daddy's little accident?

Another bizarre issue: the Rubbles, becoming envious upon seeing the adorable new Flintstone baby, began to sigh over the fact that they couldn't have babies of their own.

INFERTILITY! The writers had broken yet another major taboo.

Cartoon characters struggling with infertility: it seems unthinkable, especially in the early '60s. Betty had blown her ovaries somehow-or-other, or else Barney must have had a low sperm count. Picture him in the fertility clinic with a plastic beaker and a Playboy.

Well. IF the writers were going to introduce such ideas into a cartoon series, aren't we within our rights to just sort of sit here and think about how it all went down?

So there was no IVF then, no surrogacy, and a cartoon character masturbating in a clinic is just too weird to contemplate. So the Rubbles wish upon a star, and. . . voila! Bamm Bamm appears on their doorstep, his biological parents abandoning him because he is such a little freak.

It's good for Barney, because it means he never has to have sex again. And Betty no longer has to keep track of her cycles on a calendar to see when she's ovulating. (Hey, they ARE talking about having babies here!) She doesn't have to think about breastfeeding either. The advantages of a baby on your doorstep!

So Pebbles turned out to be the Flintstones' only child, at least for the duration of the show. Does that mean Fred and Wilma no longer had sex? Did they use birth control after that? Was Wilma orgasmic? Did Fred suffer from premature ejaculation?

These are the things that perplex my soul.

BLOGGER'S SOURCE OF ASTONISHMENT. This is an exact transcription of that sappy "Let the Sunshine In" song that Pebbles and Bamm Bamm sing in one of the episodes. I was - gobsmacked. It's religious! I mean, REALLY religious, in a creepy kind of fundamentalist way that was unusual even back then.

Open Up Your Heart and

Let the Sun Shine In

Mommy told me something

A little kid should know

It's all about the devil

And I've learned to hate him so

She said he causes trouble

When you let him in the room,

He will never ever leave you

If your heart is filled with gloom

So let the sun shine in

Face it with a grin

Smilers never lose

And frowners never win

So let the sun shine in

Face it with a grin

Open up your heart and let the sun shine in

When you are unhappy

The devil wears a grin

But oh, he starts to running

When the light comes pouring in

I know he'll be unhappy

'Cause I'll never wear a frown

Maybe if we keep on smiling

He'll get tired of hanging 'round.

If I forget to say my prayers

The devil jumps with glee

But he feels so awful awful

When he sees me on my knees

So if you're full of trouble

And you never seem to win

Just open up your heart and let the sun shine in

So let the sun shine in

Face it with a grin

Smilers never lose

And frowners never win

So let the sun shine in

Face it with a grin

Open up your heart

And let the sun shine in

(YouTube random comments): 50 years later, it's still timeless. And still true :) Thank God for Pebbles and BamBam.

If the Almighty and Powerful God didn't create Pebbles and Bam Bam on the 8th day where would we be now. Praise baby Jesus.

I had never realized how religious this song was. Creepy.

Me neither until tonight. I heard the written lyrics and it was wonderful for me too! And I'm 59!

i love it, and i am 62

WHY CANT PEOPLE JUST ENJOY LI'L CUTE THINGS,INSTEAD OF READING TOO MUCH INTO THEM/GAWD!!!!

AMEN!

You don't hear songs like this anymore, such wholesome lovely songs. Compared to today's garbage.

Top Cat: Forever Choo Choo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PUFFINS!

                             Puffins!

Bentley on the bed

 

This cat changed my life.

Hercules vs. the Giant Bug Thingammy

Hercules cartoons are horrible. They were horrible then, and they're horrible now, but what gets me is how excited we got about them. People wax very sentimental on YouTube about watching these when they were ten, though in some cases that was only about five years ago. These things are shown over and over again because they are a particular kind of bad that sort of tries to be good, and people like that. Kids in particular like that.

This is The Worst Hercules cartoon ever - it has to be - and I don't remember the title. This thing, this insect has a pink, vaguely humanlike body and limbs, which makes it especially disgusting, but it surely must have been easier to draw. I think silent gifs are preferable to the original, because what was there to listen to in these things? A horrendous theme song about "softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs"; three or four stock pieces of music played over and over and over again (bucolic shot of Caledon; theme of dark urgency, signalling arrival of Daedalus; thunder-and-lightning "magic ring shot" when Herc finally remembers, again, that he has to put the stupid ring on to get his super-strength; and that's about it, really). The dialogue is equally stilted. The very early ones had one set of actors, then abruptly changed to another set, probably at lower cost, and in one instance they change voices mid-cartoon. It's funny in a mildewed kind of way. And whenever Pegasus arrives, Herc goes through the same old ritual of "taming" him while he heaves and bucks around, emitting the same high-pitched stock-sound-effect whinny over and over and OVER again.

There's a youth called Timon, kind of a clone of King Dorian only not royal, and I used to wonder about him. He's the kind of kid who gets the crap beaten out of him in the schoolyard. He was always going to Hercules' gladiator school or whatever it was, to try to learn how to Be A Man, or else trying to save his sick mother who lay there all the time in the sickly thatched cottage he lived in. Poor but noble. Hercules has a special fondness for him, and I wonder about that, just as I wonder about the fact that he has no nipples.

Helena may just be the worst. She is The Female plugged in "wherever", particularly when Herc needed to rescue someone, though there is also a Bad Female with a mean cat (what was her name? Wilhemena or Willemena or however they spelled it). The rest of them are males, and I am sorry to say that not all of them are human.

But we watched The Mighty Hercules every day, and considered it on a par with all the other stuff we watched, whether it was slickly-produced Disney or quirky, inspired Max Fleischer, or Rankin-Bass with their stiffly-moving stick-figures. The Canadian-produced Wizard of Oz series was weak and badly animated, but we watched it. We just did. That was what was "on".

What if Louis Wain painted. . . Choo Choo?

Snap out of it!

Weird for sale

The pink cat

Back from Orlando by melaniethebobcat
http://www.deviantart.com/tag/melaniethebobcat

Choo Choo by melaniethebobcat

http://www.deviantart.com/tag/melaniethebobcat

Hey Chooch by bamboodog

http://bamboodog.deviantart.com/

now i haz cheezburger by ladysomnambule

http://ladysomnambule.deviantart.com/

Choo Choo by iraccoon

http://iraccoon.deviantart.com/gallery/

Choo Choo from Top Cat by phraggle

http://phraggle.deviantart.com/

Choo Choo mug shot by hognatius

http://hognatius.deviantart.com/

Untitled by bobthetanuk

http://bobthedalek.deviantart.com/gallery/

Le chat rose by rafael gonzales

http://rafaelgonzalez.deviantart.com/

The DeviantArt site never fails to knock me out with the calibre of talent and imagination therein. Just dipping into the Top Cat section was overwhelming, so I tried to keep to my favorite character.

Looking at all these, I am reminded of how spectacularly untalented I am! But I am also delighted to see that people remember and love Choo Choo and all the other Top Cat characters (but especially Choo Choo, because he is, let's face it, frankly adorable).

I can't, however, identify these last two.  They had been posted and reposted, likely on the Satanic Pinterest site (which makes me want to slit my wrists every time it forces its way into my image searches) and proved to be unidentifiable, at least by me. But if anyone knows who did them. . . For sure, I know one thing. I didn't make them, and I wish I had.