Heyyy, It's The King! was a component of NBC's 1977 anthology series, C. B. Bears, which we discussed a few days ago. The King (Len Weinrib) was clearly modeled after Fonzie (Henry Winkler) from ABC's iconic Happy Days, but the rest of his crew weren't exactly on a par with Richie Cunningham and his buds from 50's Milwaukee. Of course, as we noted before, Fonzie would become a cartoon star himself in 1980.
Right now, scope out "The Blue Kangaroo", as The King and his pals are looking to win a big meet.
Rating: B-.
3 comments:
Bob Keeshan (a.k.a. Captain Kangaroo), who used to have a strong disdain for Saturday morning cartoons, wound up running components from The C.B. Bears on his show. (This happened as CK was being squeezed out the CBS lineup to make room for a news show to compete with Today and GMA.)
As things go, Heyyy, It's The King!, like all the cartoons under the C.B. Bears umbrella, had the concepts and characters refined better than the scripts. Maybe these creations deserve a new interpetation on Adult Swim!
Wasn't Len Weinrib the first voice of Scrappy-Doo before Don Messick?
Yes, he was.
Mark Evanier (who wrote "The Blue Scarab Lives!" the episode that introduced Scrappy) described how TPTB constantly went back and forth between Don and Lenny during auditions. They finally settled on Lenny but as we know a few seasons later, Don Messick took over.
Sometimes it's a big gamble to parody pop culture like this show tried to do; it seems so outdated to watch a show mocking "The Fonz" when most folks under 30 probably never even saw Happy Days!
Magicdog: I think the under-30 crowd was watching Happy Days, and still does, considering it airs on Me-TV and The Hub these days.
RAM: I don't even want the Adult Swim morons getting their hands on anything else from the H-B vaults. They've done enough damage!
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