Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles | |
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Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles title card.
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Directed by |
William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
Starring |
Ted Cassidy Dick Beals Don Messick Hal Smith Paul Frees John Stephenson |
Country of origin | United States |
No. of episodes | 18 |
Production | |
Producer(s) |
William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
Running time | approx. 0:30 (per episode) |
Production company(s) | Hanna-Barbera Productions |
Distributor |
Screen Gems (original) Warner Bros. Television Distribution (current) |
Release | |
Original network | CBS |
Original release | September 10, 1966 – September 7, 1968 |
Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles is an American Saturday morning cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1966. It premiered September 10, 1966 on CBS, and ran for two seasons.
The program contained two segments, which each served as a middle ground between Hanna-Barbera's traditional cartoon early output and its superhero-based late-1960s cartoons.Each episode would feature two segments with The Impossibles,with Frankenstein JR sandwiched inbetween.
The show was the target of complaints about violence in children's television, and was canceled in 1968. The Frankenstein Jr. segments were later recycled in the 1976 series Space Ghost and Frankenstein Jr., which aired on NBC from November 27, 1976 until September 3, 1977, replacing the canceled Big John, Little John.
A single issue of a "Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles" comic was released by Gold Key Comics in 1966 as a tie-in to the TV series, and the contents were reprinted in "The Impossibles Annual" by Atlas Publishing & Distributing Co. Ltd, UK in 1968. The two "Frankenstein Jr." comic stories were titled "The Image Invasion" and "Frankenstein Jr. Meets the Flea Man". A new text-based story, specially written for the annual, was "A Spook in his Wheel". The character reappeared in the comic Hanna-Barbera Presents #8 published by Archie Comics in 1996.
A Big Little Book titled Frankenstein Jr.: The Menace of the Heartless Monster was published in 1968.
The Impossibles' heroic identities were re-used for a later Hanna-Barbera production, The Super Globetrotters (which also featured a similar concept—in this case, the famous Harlem Globetrotters as undercover superheroes):
On April 26, 2011, Warner Archive released Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles: The Complete Series on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna–Barbera Classics Collection. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release, available exclusively through Warner's online store and Amazon.com.