Saturday Morning Cartoons: The Hardy Boys

Saturday Morning Cartoons: The Hardy Boys
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Saturday Morning Cartoons: The Hardy Boys
The advent of color television sets in the United States and around the world correlated with an equally flourishing era in the film production industry. For instance, the animation industry featured a wide range of cartoon productions targeting the young generation of teenagers and pre-teens across the U.S. and worldwide. The different cartoon productions aired continuously on Saturdays from around 8.am to 12-noon, with most kids across different households glued to their television sets for the comic and adventure or mystery series aired on most television stations. Among such series of cartoon productions aired on Saturday morning television included the 1955 CBS production Mighty Mouse Playhouse and a highly successful 1960 cartoon production, The Flinstones. Besides providing entertainment to the young generation, cartoon production also created a lucrative economic platform for the manufacturers of toys and other playing gadgets for kids. The toy-manufacturing companies would form partnerships with the production companies to produce and deliver content that promotes their toys in the market. In essence, the rise and success of Saturday morning cartoons not only played the role of entertaining the young audience but also created a revenue generation platform for toy-manufacturing organizations in the U.S. However, the animation industry would also expand to capturing the emerging trends in the socio-cultural domain by venturing into the pop music scene in its diverse productions. For instance, Saturday morning cartoon productions account for the rise to prominence of the bubblegum pop music genre between the late 60s to early 70s. Among the cartoon productions that influenced the rise to prominence of the bubblegum pop music genre was The Hardy Boys by Filmation. Filmation, one of the leading animation companies in the 1950s era, adapted the Hardy Boys book series for the animated TV series in 1969. However, the animated series would not enjoy much success as it was canceled after running for only two years. However, the animated series was popular with the bubblegum pop music genre owing to the different sets of musical interludes featuring on each episode of the show. Provided herein is detailed analysis of the Hardy Boys cartoon series highlighting the historical background of the show based on the fictional accounts presented in the show and the real-life accounts of the band members.[McCray, M. 2015. The Best Saturdays of Our Lives. iUniverse.] [McCray, M. 2015. The Best Saturdays of Our Lives. iUniverse.] [Scheimer, L., & Andy Mangels. 2012. Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation. TwoMorrows Publishing.]
The Hardy Boys
The Hardy Boys was a popular book series featuring a crime-solving boy band created by Franklin Stratemeyer in 1927, and further written by different authors under the pseudonym of Franklin W. Dixon. Filmation adopted the book series for a television production in 1969 with the hope of making it a successful television series thriving on the public’s love for the famous bubblegum pop music rocking across the nation during the late 60s and early 70s. The cartoon television series aired on Saturday mornings on the ABC network and ran for two years before being canceled in 1971. The production company, Filmation Associates, had enjoyed remarkable success in the Saturday morning television, with earlier productions such as Fat Albert, Flash Gordon, Star Trek, The Archie Show, and Blackstar. The Archie cartoon show premiered in 1968 based on a popular comic book by the same title and enjoyed much success in the television industry. The cartoon series features its regular book comic characters coupled with a rock band referred to as The Archies. The rock group would play popular songs during the show, winning the attention of its audience in the United States and around the world. Filmation’s attempt to relieve its previous success with The Archies led to the production of another cartoon series, The Hardy Boys in 1969.[Ehrbar, G. 2017. "Filmation's "The Hardy Boys" on Records." Cartoon Research. June 20. Accessed June 19, 2022. https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/filmations-the-hardy-boys-on-records...