Archive for the ‘Wacky and Packy’ Category

Uncle Croc’s Block clips

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

More and more Uncle Croc’s Block clips are being uploaded to Youtube, so instead of putting up a new link to each one, I made a Youtube playlist for all the various clips related to the show, including the various segments, and will add any new clips that get posted.


Uncle Croc’s Block clips surface on Youtube

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Several clips of the “lost” Filmation series, Uncle Croc’s Block, have recently shown up on Youtube.

Uncle Croc’s Block was a live action spoof of children’s television hosts that aired on Saturday mornings in the fall of 1975 on ABC. The hour long show featured former Lidsville star Charles Nelson Reilly as the title character who hated his job and future Space Academy star Jonathan Harris as the show within a show’s director, Basil Bitterbottom.

Each episode featured both the on camera kid’s show, Uncle Croc’s Block, as well as the behind the scenes battles between the host and the director. Here’s the opening:


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Each episode featured a guest star segment called Star Time. In keeping with the parody, the guests were spoofs of pop culture characters ranging from Billy Batson/Captain Marvel from Shazam! to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. This clip features a spoof on the title character of the then-popular prime time series, The Six Million Dollar Man, with one of Filmation’s regular voice actors, Robert Ridgely playing Steve Exhaustion, the $6.95 Man.


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More Star Time segments can be found at Muttley16’s Youtube page.

Besides the live action segments, the show featured three animated segments:

Wacky and Packy

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Fraidy Cat

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M.U.S.H. (a parody of M.A.S.H.)

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The show suffered from poor ratings, so after a few months on the air, the network condensed the series into a half hour format. Cuts included the removal of the M.U.S.H. and Fraidy Cat segments. The ratings didn’t improve, so the show was yanked from the schedule.

The failure of the show hurt the relationship between the network and Filmation and the network never bought another series from Filmation.

The three animated segments later appeared as part of Filmation’s syndicated package, Groovie Goolies and Friends, which combined several of Filmation’s animated series, which also included the New Adventures of Gilligan, My Favorite Martians, and Waldo Kitty. Here’s the opening of that show:

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To my knowledge, the Uncle Croc segments were never rerun in the United States after their original airings and appear to be lost. According to a couple of sources, the master tapes were destroyed sometime in the 90s. When Hallmark bought a large part of the Filmation library, they digitized the master tapes/films and then discarded them. For whatever reason, the Uncle Croc segments were not digitized, so these clips might be all that is left of the show.

The three animated segments were saved. Each got their own one hour compilation VHS video released in the 1980s. The Fraidy Cat one was released on DVD in 2001, making it the first Filmation series to be released on DVD in the US. Fraidy Cat and Wacky and Packy later showed on other budget DVD releases and a two volume set combining Fraidy Cat episodes with episodes of Filmation’s other feline series, Waldo Kitty, is tentatively scheduled for release by BCI/Eclipse sometime in the next year.