There's been a lot of bad animated adaptations of TV shows over the years, most of them from the 70's and early 80's. First, there's "Fonz and the Happy Days Gang" where we still have The Fonz, Ralph and Richie... but who's that girl in pink? Well, her name's Cupcake and she's from the future. Of course, you've also got the obligatory animal sidekick, Mr. Cool.
In 1974 we were supposed to be treated to an updated version of "The Jetsons" with a teenage Elroy. Instead they went with "Partridge Family 2200 AD" which featured the obligatory animal sidekick, a robot dog named Orbit.
Then there's "The Brady Kids" which chunked Mike, Carol and Alice in favor of two obligatory animal sidekicks, Ping and Pong (they were pandas in case you were wondering).
And let's not forget "The Dukes". Do you remember when Tom Wopat and John Schneider were replaced suddenly by Coy and Vance? It seems the Duke boys were seeing dollar signs. Well, the cartoon happened to start during these ugly salary negotiations and subsequently featured Coy and Vance instead of Bo and Luke. By the time Wopat at Schneider realized they had blown a good thing and returned to the show, it was too damn late. The show was cancelled and the animated version was replaced by Plastic Man reruns... how humiliating.
Also, "Laverne & Shirley" had a cartoon called "Laverne & Shirley in the Army" as well as another animated show featuring The Fonz. Not surprisingly, "Mork & Mindy" was made into a cartoon as well. Both had the obligatory animal sidekick: Mork had an pink alien that looked like a poodle, and Laverne and Shirley had a little pig in a military uniform.
Explain this to me: the Professor can't fix a hole on the S.S. Minnow, yet somehow he's able to build the castaways a space ship? In the animated series "Gilligan's Planet" Dawn Wells had to do double duty as the voice of both Mary-Ann and Ginger (with white hair!) since Tina Louise wisely wouldn't participate. By the way, it features an obligatory animal sidekick named Bumper.
"Yapple Dapple!" was the idiotic catchphrase of Babu, the bumbling fat genie friend on "Jeannie". Many may remember Babu from his participation in the Laugh-O-Lympics. As a youngster, this character annoyed me more than The Great Gazoo and Scrappy Doo combined, indeed my hatred of Babu was white hot. Interesting fact: the boy who finds the bottle is none other than Mark Hamill!
In 1972, ABC released a number of animated rip-offs from TV under the title "The ABC Saturday Superstar Movies". The program featured animated versions of "Gidget", "Lost in Space" and, my favorite, a "Bewitched" spin-off called "Tabatha and Adam and the Clown Family".For some reason, I find the strangest of all to be "That Girl in Wonderland" by Rankin-Bass (the same guys that brought you those Christmas specials like "Rudolph's Shiny New Year"). It just seems an odd TV show to adapt to a Saturday cartoon... sort of akin to making "The Odd Couple" or "Green Acres" into a cartoon. Anyway, here's a YouTube of it, if you don't mind a rather poor picture quality.
Oh, and to you Trekkies out there - I know there was a "Star Trek" cartoon. I just wanted to make you wait till the end of the post. Mercifully, there were no obligatory animal sidekicks.
