The Fonz and the Happy Days gang time traveling with a talking dog named "Mr. Cool"? The Three Stooges as cyborg superheroes? Laverne and Shirley join the army? The Dukes of Hazzard in a race around the world to save the family farm from Boss Hogg... for some reason or another.
Yep!! It all happened on Saturday Morning thanks to Hanna-Barbera making these really bizarre cartoons based on popular television shows at time.
And yes!! There was even a Mork and Mindy cartoon believe it or not.
It really seems bizarre now looking at it but it seemed perfectly normal to me at the time to see these shows squashed in between Hanna-Barbera's World of Super Adventures at around 6am and the Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner Show sometime later in the afternoon.
But at the time Hanna-Barbera pretty much had the monopoly of the Saturday Morning time slot. The animation was pretty awful but I'm amazed to find out that the people who played the characters on these shows actually did the voice over work. So it was actually Robin Williams and not someone like Frank Welker trying to imitate Robin Williams.
Although, yes. You could probably find Frank Welker in most of these (if not all of these) cartoons. The 1980's seemed to be very kind to old FW since he was in demand the most during that era. You could probably open a cereal box and find his voice coming out of it.
Naturally, I would never compare him to a Mel Blanc. But at the same time he's built his own respectable reputation as a voice talent with the body of work he's done.
Work is work and you have to be doing something right if you're still in demand.
But honestly, as bad as the cartoons I mentioned look when I see them now, it really was a fun childhood and it really isn't as much fun since they pretty much did away with Saturday Morning Cartoons.
And yes, I think a time traveling Arthur Fonzarelli is a pretty awful concept.
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