The Flintstones

The Flintstones, an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, is one of the most successful animated television series of all time. more...

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Loosely based upon the 1950s live-action sitcom The Honeymooners, The Flintstones originally ran in American prime time for six seasons, from 1960 to 1966, on the ABC network. While the show was originally syndicated by Screen Gems (and later by Worldvision Enterprises and then Turner Program Services), Warner Bros. Television has the current distribution rights (through parent Time Warner's purchase of Turner).

Overview

The show is set in a town called Bedrock in the Stone Age era. The show is an allegory to American society of the mid-to-late 20th century; in the Flintstones' fantasy version of the prehistoric past, dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, and other long extinct animals co-exist with cavemen, who use technology equivalent to that of the 20th century, largely through the use of various animals. The characters drive automobiles made out of stone or wood and animal skins and powered by foot. Although the characters were set in the Stone Age, that never stopped the show's creators from producing a Christmas episode during the original series' run, as well as several more Christmas specials in the decades that followed.

One source of the show's humor was the ways animals were used for technology. For example, when the characters took photographs with an instant camera, the inside of the camera box would be shown to contain a bird carving the picture on a stone tablet with its bill. In a running gag, the animals powering such technology would, breaking the fourth wall, look directly into the camera at the audience, shrug, and remark, "It's a living," or some similar phrase. Another commonly seen gadget in the series was a baby woolly mammoth being used as a vacuum cleaner. Travel to "Hollyrock," a parody of Hollywood, California, usually involved an "airplane" flight—the "plane" in this case often shown as a giant pterodactyl. (Other familiar place names are similarly contorted: San Antonio becomes Sand-and-Stony-o; the country to the south of Bedrock's land is called Mexirock; and so forth.) Elevators are raised and lowered by ropes around brontosaurs' necks; "automatic" windows are powered by monkeys that dwell on the outside windowsill; birds configured as "car horns" are activated by pulling on their tails. An electric razor is depicted as a clam shell housing a bumble-bee vibrating it as the edges are rubbed against the character's face.

Being set in the Stone Age allowed for endless gags and puns that involved rocks in one way or another, including the names of the various characters being "rock" puns; some such names included celebrities such as "Rock Quarry", "Cary Granite", "Stony Curtis", "Ed Sulleystone", "Rock Hudstone", and "Ann-Margrock." Other celebritiy/puns on the "Flintstones" were "Alvin Brickrock" (Alfred Hitchcock); "Perry Masonery" (Perry Mason); and a new neighbor lady "Sam" (Samantha) from Bewitched.

Read more at Wikipedia.org