TFTP Kids: Openings for "Captain Kangaroo" from CBS (1960s & 1980s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MUSICOM PRODUCTIONS' (top), 'BlastFromTheePast' (bottom)
Length - 0:47 (top), 0:56 (bottom)

"Captain Kangaroo" was a very long-running kids' program on CBS that lasted for thirty years from the mid-1950s through the mid-1980s, long enough that the show's viewers at the end of its run were the children of the viewers who watched it towards the beginning of its run. Bob Keeshan played the Captain, who in the program's earliest years was portrayed as a sort of custodian (and a somewhat gruff one) of what was called the "Treasure House". By the '70s, the character of the Captain had softened and become more of a grandfatherly or avuncular figure and the Treasure House locale of the show had become the "Captain's Place".

Above are two opening sequences from "Captain Kangaroo", one from probably about the early-1960s, the other from the late-1970s or early-1980s. Apart from the fact that the early one is in black-and-white and the later one in color, the two sequences show a consistency in the playful nature of Keeshan's portrayal of the Captain, what with the opening and closing of many tiny doors in the larger door in the 1960s opening and the clips of many different scenes from the program in the later opening. Both openings show the program's basic set as it had evolved: a counter (behind which puppets, especially Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit, could appear) flanked by shelves on one side and a grandfather clock on the other.

TFTP Kids: "Howdy Doody" from NBC (Jul. 2, 1948)

Kids' shows like "Howdy Doody" that aired daily on weekdays often had a structure similar to soap operas in which a continuing storyline would carry over from one day to the next. Many such storylines on "Howdy Doody" involved villain Phineas T. Bluster, as in this episode where Bluster has an ongoing threat to take over Doodyville unless Howdy and Buffalo Bob give him 500 marbles a day. Here, they offer to provide 500 marbles worth of entertainment per day instead, with Bluster willing to give that scheme a tryout. (Sometimes, the logic of these ongoing storylines made about as much sense as in soap operas.)

"Howdy Doody" was the iconic children's program of early television, starting on NBC in the fall of 1947 and continuing until 1960. Each day's half-hour episode included a few short scenes advancing the current storyline as well as some musical numbers--always kicked off by the "peanut gallery" (the audience of kids in the studio) singing "It's Howdy Doody Time". Later this same year, Howdy Doody "ran" for president for the first of several times--a canny storyline that both played on current events and helped propel the "Howdy Doody" show's popularity.

"Buffalo" Bob Smith, once a radio DJ before coming to Doodyville, hosted the proceedings, joined by a mute Clarabell the Clown (played in the early years by Bob Keeshan, soon to become another iconic kids' show host, Captain Kangaroo) and an assortment of other human sidekicks. A variety of marionette puppets led by the vaguely Western-themed Howdy Doody filled out the non-human cast of the show.