Flintstones Season 3 - Where's the Pebbles sequence? (1 Viewer)

[Paul Pro]

A few days ago I posted the following in Flintsones Season 3 review thread:



Since no one responded to my question earlier I decided to do some digging of my own regarding the opening sequence.

I found an old tape I recorded from TV containing "VENTRILOQUIST BARNEY"(an early Pebbles episode)and YES it has the opening I remember.

Pebbles is playing with toys called BUILDING BLOCKS and Fred pick her up runs out of the house. This sequence has No Rubbles and No Bamm Bamm.

So it looks like all the episodes after "Dress Rehearsal" have the wrong opening sequence on the DVD set which is disappointing.

I think I even heard some one mention that one episode has the later season's Rubbles and Bam Bam sequence!

However there still is hope for Season 4. The tape I have also contains "Ann Margrock Presents" and it apparently still has the Pebbles solo sequence (since Bamm Bamm comes a few episodes later).

Hopefully someone can bring this to Warner Bros.' attention so we can enjoy this sequence in early season 4 at least.

I know that Warner Bros. is currently trying to find all the original bumpers for the Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound cartoons which shows they truly care about the original viewing experience. Perhaps things can get rectified for season 4?

Now it's also possible the Pebbles sequence was added later for syndication and I may be wrong about this (if there's a hardcore Flintstones fan out there who knows please reply.)
If that's the case perhaps they can show it as a bonus feature for season 4?.

 

[Greg Chenoweth]

All I can tell you is that the opens and closes for all the early 1960's H-B shows were switched around umpteen times for syndication and network runs.

For the Flintstones, Bill Hanna made the decision to use one generic open for the show when it went into syndication. They removed "Rise And Shine" from Seasons 1 and 2 and replaced it with the traditional open. After "Rise And Shine" from Seasons 1 & 2, there were about four more opening title sequences made. There is the one starting with Episode 3 on Disk 1 of Season 3 where you hear the bird squawk when the boss pulls his tail. The second one is that the bird squawking part was replaced with a real train whistle blowing sound effect coming out of the bird's mouth. The third one is the one you remember with Pebbles being carried out the door by Fred. The fourth one is with the Rubbles and the Flintstones going to the drive-in.

I haven't watched all of the Season 3 box set yet, but there are three different opens being used so far in that set. #1 - "Rise And Shine." #2 - "Bird Squawking When Tail Is Pulled." #3 - "Bird Sounds Like Train Whistle When Tail Is Pulled." If the one with Pebbles is on there, then I haven't seen it yet.

I'm not sure if anyone remembers specifically which opening was used originally with which episode when the show ran on ABC. I was two years old when the episodes from Season 3 first aired.

I do know that when Turner Home Entertainment released Flintstones episodes on videocassette in 1994, the Pebbles open you mentioned was on one of the tapes. I can't remember which episode it was tied together with though.

Warner Home Video has done a great job with all of the H-B releases so far. Let's give them a little latitude and see where the rest of it goes.

 

[Michael.J.Hayde]

That was a genuine toy, manufactured by Kenner, I believe. My sister and I used to each have a set. As I recall, the original opening described above used the actual packaging design. I think that opening was used in syndication during the sixties because the toy was still being produced!

Another original sponsor was Welch's, which explains two things: Pebbles always requesting grape juice, and the ubiquitous Flintstones glasses obtained from Welch's Jelly.

That's as far as my memory goes, however - I was only three when season 3 debuted on ABC.

Michael

 

[buttmunker]

I might be a little late in the game, but I have been watching Season 3 and noticed that, when Dino pops his head through the car roof, the pop is not in sequence. The pop occurs out of nowhere about five seconds before Dino does his thing.

Another thing I noticed (and I believe it may have been with Season 4 or 5) is that, in the opening, you see just the Flintstone family going to the Drive-In. During the closing credits, you see both the Flintstones and the Rubbles in the Flintstone automobile leaving the drive-in.

Come to think of it, I don't believe I ever, in my whole life, seen a closing with just the Flintstone family leaving the Drive-in. Ain't that something?

 

[Jay Pennington]

Stuff gets thrown out of synch on these opens because of the removal of product placement. In this case, the movie screen used to feature of few seconds of a sponsor product while the song finished up, but the footage was moved so that you just see a glimpse of the empty screen by the time the music ends.

 

[Jack Cleveland]

Thanks for the explanation Jay- I too have wondered over the years why the sound was out of synch-

Jack

 

[Brian GT]

Y'know I often wondered what the purpose of the camera zooming in on the movie screen was. The product placement thing makes a lot of sense.
Wow, you do learn something new every day.

 

[Professor_Echo]

Yes, the building blocks were actually an official FLINTSTONES toy sold at retail. The packaging featured the characters from the show on the box, though it's a plain box on the credits as it would have seemed weird to reproduce the exact box and have Pebbles playing with toys that had her face on the box. The building blocks were made of Styrofoam and interlocked sort of like Legos. They were quite big by kid standards and you could build a fairly good size fort or other imaginative edifice just by continually locking the blocks together. Unfortunately the Styrofoam was fragile and the interlocking knobs on the blocks often broke off very easily.

 

[Garysb]

Off topic but it is amazing what you can find on Youtube. They have two version of the opening of the Huckleberry Hound show, with the sponsor, Kellogg's and one without. On the sponsored one, the chicken from the corn flakes box jumps off the box and jumps around , leads a band etc. On the generic opening Huckleberry Hound does all the action the chicken does.
In fact on the sponsored intro you only see Huckleberry Hound on a picture.
Fun stuff.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

 

[Jack Cleveland]

I remember having those blocks!! Haven't thought of them for years...

 

[Professor_Echo]

Gary, I believe both sets of opening credits are included on the great Hanna-Barbera Golden Collection DVD of THE HUCKLEBERRY HOUND SHOW. There is an option to watch the individual cartoons within the framework of the original 30 minute syndicated show, complete with credits, bumpers, wraparounds and commercials that feature all the Huck characters.

 

[Joe Tor1]

Yes, this is true! It's not true for all the shows on the set -- but it is true for far more of them than I would have expected. Most of the earliest ones.

I've not seen this opening and all the wonderful interstitial stuff since I was a wide-eyed kid in the early-mid sixties. It was great to see it this way again, with footage of Huck, Yogi, Mr. Jinks, etc (as well as the Kelloggs Rooster, Tony the Tiger and others in the closing credits) not seen in decades!

There is similar such material on THE YOGI BEAR SHOW set, with material featuring Yogi, Snagglepuss, and Yakky Doodle.

Just another reason to buy the THE HUCKLEBERRY HOUND SHOW set, though I fear, by now (it was released in 2005) we probably won't see volumes for Seasons 2-4. At least the YOGI set was "The Complete Series". The early H-B cartoons just don't seem to be of interest to WHV anymore.

 

[Mark Y]

Yes and no.

It is a great set. What it really contains are the "Yogi Bear," "Pixie & Dixie" and "Huckleberry Hound" cartoons originally aired during the first season of the Huckleberry Hound show. There are a few "reconstructed episodes" included, which have the show opening and two different versions of the closing (in B&W) and various interstitial segments. One of the shows has some Kellogg's commercials inserted (although chosen at random, not specific to that episode). In fact, that is true of many of the interstitial segments too...apparently, WB does not have records of what originally went where. Word is before WB bought the Turner library, Turner had all the full shows with all of that stuff included, but only in B&W. When WB took over the library, they dumped all the B&W footage. So in the end, some of the bumpers are sourced variously from 35mm or 16mm prints, or multi-generation VHS and/or Beta dupes from the "collector market." I'd rather have them in some form rather than not have them at all...BTW, the color HH show opening and closing are not on the set.

 

[Professor_Echo]

Thanks for the clarification, Mark. It's more or less what I meant to say, but I didn't have the expertise you have with regards to exactly how the show fit together back in the day compared to the DVD reconstruction. I think it's a shame that all the original elements may be lost, yet another victim to this mentality of black and white being commercially undesirable. Never mind its historical value, if it can't be marketed to a desirable demographic NOW it's considered worthless to the studios. The fact is, most people watched these shows in black and white when they originally aired, so seeing it that way would actually be more historically accurate than presenting it in color. I could see why the studio would have no interest in the cartoons being in black and white, but why so readily and apparently casually dispose of the other elements? It's a mindset I'll never understand.

I'm glad to hear that the YOGI set has similar reconstructions on it, but so far I haven't had the temptation to buy it simply because as much as I love YOGI, I am not a fan of SNAGGLEPUSS and can't stand YAKKY DUCK. However, it would be nice to see the original material from the 30 minute show again.

 

[Mark Y]

Yes, the Yogi Bear set was similarly done. One other thing I should point out...while all of the interstitial material included on these sets does not come from the masters, a good chunk of it does and some of it is stunning. (Other segments look like dupes of crappy VHS bootlegs, and some material is in-between.) What gets me about the loss of the B&W masters (which is according to a well-respected animation historian who works in the industry and has some inside knowledge of the H-B archives) is that it didn't happen back in the 60s...it happened in the last ten years. That just floors me. Assuming it's correct.

One interesting thing: the prints of the first three cartoons shown on the first show were sourced from different masters for "reconstructed episode #1" (which as far as I can tell, was reconstructed accurately apart from the random Kellogg's commercials). They use the short individual cartoon title cards, and no end title card (as they would have originally aired). Some of these "short title" versions had some odd variations, like the closing Yogi Bear end title card music being dubbed over the final few seconds of the last scene in the cartoon. Stuff like this fascinates me, and reminds me of the days of trying to tune in a distant UHF station to see if their prints of a particular show were complete, or edited differently, or had any oddball stuff accidentally left in them, etc.

 

[Professor_Echo]

Great information, Mark. Ah yes, how I remember those great nights of Yoga twisting the rabbit ears to try to pick up out of town stations or going on vacation and eagerly checking out the TV in the motel room just to see if they were showing something different than the channels in your town. Nationwide cable more or less wrecked both those pleasures.:frowning:

Okay, Mark, now you have to answer this question: Has there EVER been a cooler cartoon character than Mister Jinks? That guy is just totally coolsville. And they are my favorite HB cartoons of all time just because of him.

 

[Mark Y]

He thinks he's cool, I'll give him that. But now that you mention it, it's not difficult to imagine him snapping his fingers at a "poetry slam"...

 

[Greg Chenoweth]

I remember staying at a motel in Los Angeles at the end of a vacation in 1975. Each morning at 8 a.m., we were treated to "The Yogi Bear Show" on TV. They played the generic Yogi Bear show open each day, and, then, during the end credits, an announcer would gab and when he was done talking, the end credits would stop.

Well, the last day we were there was a Thursday and I hauled out my cassette recorder to tape the day's show. It started with the generic Yogi Bear open and then a Yogi Bear cartoon. Then came a Mister Jinks cartoon. Finally, a Huckleberry Hound cartoon. The closing credits this particular day was the generic Huckleberry Hound show open; not the end credits but the generic show open. This time, there was no announcer talking over the music and it played all the way through to the end. I was in seventh heaven. Not only did I have on tape the Yogi Bear opening theme song but the Huckleberry opening theme song as well. It had been over ten years since I had seen either one. I listened to that tape over and over and over again. Those were the days. An accidental treasure caught on tape.

 

[Lecagr]

Originally Posted by buttmunker

I might be a little late in the game, but I have been watching Season 3 and noticed that, when Dino pops his head through the car roof, the pop is not in sequence. The pop occurs out of nowhere about five seconds before Dino does his thing.

I believe the last five episodes on the season 3 DVD have this opening title sequence. The bird sqwawk is now replaced with the sound of a horn. Then when Fred punches out from work, the "clank" sound effect is gone. And when Fred arrives home, the "beep beep" sound of his car horn is gone also. And the sound of Dino popping his head through the car roof is heard a few seconds too soon.

Another thing of note in the 3rd season DVD- the episode High School Fred has the later opening titles with Pebbles, Bamm Bamm, and the Rubbles. This is obviously wrong because at this point Pebbles and Bamm Bamm were not in the series yet!

I have the uncut episode of The Big Move recorded from Boomerang. The Boomerang airing of this episode has the correct opening title sequence with Fred picking up Pebbles. In this new opening sequence, the part where Fred punches his card at the time clock is no longer seen. Those later 3rd season episodes after Pebbles is born should have the opening titles which include Pebbles. But this is not the case on the season 3 DVD's. The opening title sequence with Pebbles is seen in the season 4 DVD's first five episodes. Starting with the 6th episode, we get the opening titles with Pebbles, Bamm Bamm and the Rubbles. It seems Warner's might have dropped the ball a little with the 3rd season set, one edited episode and oddities in the opening titles. I'll post again if I notice any other discrepancies in the episodes.

 

I wish they would re-release this or release it on blu ray with Season 3 corrected. If they can show the original version of The Big Move on Boomerang, then why not here?