Hey kids (of all ages), it's Saturday Morning Cartoon time again!
From the earliest days of their partnership, Hanna-Barbera pretty much specialized in rehashing tried-and-true characters and concepts. They only occasionally delved into licen…
Hey kids (of all ages), it's Saturday Morning Cartoon time again!
From the earliest days of their partnership, Hanna-Barbera pretty much specialized in rehashing tried-and-true characters and concepts. They only occasionally delved into licensed properties, preferring knock-offs and recombinations that they could own themselves. In fact, they went so far as to copy their own programs. Repeatedly.
This show was a weird combo of rehash and licensing. The former was a reprise of the studio's own hit SCOOBY-DOO. The latter was no-doubt inspired by Filmation's BRADY KIDS (see last Saturday Morning's upload) which launched the year before.
Like Scooby, we have Meddling Kids and their semi-anthropomorphic canine mascot. To change things up a little, the dog was butt-ugly, had poorly controlled powers of invisibility, and spoke with Paul Winchell's "Tigger" voice from Disney's WINNIE THE POOH. But only when addressing the home viewers. He didn't speak to other characters in the show. And real ghosts were a thing, unlike the original Scooby series.
Hanna-Barbera's answer to the Bradys cartoon was obviously to get the kids from the prime-time sitcom PARTRIDGE FAMILY into this Scooby clone. Actually voiced by their live-action actors, no-less. But they only appear in half the episodes... The next year they'd be off to a new show of their own on another network.
We wouldn't have animated Partridges competing against one-another though. This show had a typical production season of sixteen episodes, the second (all rerun) season was moved to Sunday. This indicates a below-average reception, but not a flop. About what it deserved, given the lackluster animation and character design (how can you draw Laurie Partridge plain-looking?!), and weak writing that had characters doing and saying things that seemed disconnected from what was supposed to be going-on.
So here is the first episode of GOOBER AND THE GHOST CHASERS from Sept. 1973. Weirdly enough, it wound-up being the lead-in for the second season of the Brady 'toon. Goober's series would be folded into later weekday syndication packages from Hanna-Barbera, where it was probably seen by more kids than during its original Saturday Morning run.
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