TFTP Kids: "Calvin and the Colonel" from ABC (Feb. 3, 1962)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Tomorrowpictures.TV'
Length - 28:00

The early-1960s cartoon series "Calvin and the Colonel" is one of the more interesting phenomena of media history. The show, created and voiced by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll of "Amos n' Andy" fame, is an obvious adaptation of that earlier, more famous and more controversial program.

Created shortly after "Amos n' Andy" ended on radio in 1960, and several years after the "Amos n' Andy" television show's brief but controversial run, "Calvin and the Colonel" is a clear attempt on the part of Gosden and Correll to take the elements that had become questionable about "Amos n' Andy"--the voice characterizations of white men impersonating blacks, the stereotypical situations the characters found themselves in--and transplant them to a less threatening cartoon format where the characters were animals.

The episode above, titled "Wheeling and Dealing" and originally aired on February 3, 1962, is from about midway through the program's one-season 1961-62 run. At a time when prime-time cartoon programs were prevalent (this was the height of the popularity of "The Flintstones"), "Calvin and the Colonel" started out in prime-time in October and November of 1961 before being transferred to Saturday morning until its June 1962 cancellation.

The two lead characters are Calvin T. Burnside, a dimwitted bear (voiced by Correll), and Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon, a wily fox (voiced by Gosden). Calvin and the Colonel propagate an insurance scam in which they try to get and cash in on auto insurance for the Colonel's nephew's car--after it had already been in an accident. This plot was one that would have been right at home in "Amos n' Andy".

TFTP Kids: "Ray Rayner and His Friends" from WGN/Chicago (May 16, 1980)

Posted to YouTube by user 'The Museum of Classic Chicago Television'

"Ray Rayner and His Friends", despite the fact that it seems incredibly bizarre to us now, was a venerable and long-running children's program on Chicago independent station WGN. Many local stations had similar programs in the 1960s and '70s, in which a human host interacts with puppets or other anthropomorphic characters while introducing cartoon short subjects. This episode is from 1980, the final year (due to Rayner's retirement) of a run that started in 1962.

There is a certain slapdash quality to the show--from Rayner's strange coveralls (upon which he has pinned various notes, a Rayner trademark) and the laughably low-budget set, to the decidedly low-tech (even for 1980) use of a chalkboard for displaying weather info and sports scores. Rayner brings a definite improvisational feel to his performance as MC, seemingly (and probably actually) making it all up as he goes along. Kids most likely didn't care, as the Rayner segments were just interstitial to the cartoons they tuned in to see--and which also provided adults in the room with a little weather info with which to plan their day.

This episode has most of the cartoons themselves cut out (except the bulk of a 1930s-era "Flash Gordon" serial), but some of the commercials included (such as a great McDonald's ad featuring Ronald himself).