The Banana Splits Adventure Hour (partially found Hanna Barbera live-action-animated TV series; 1968-1969)

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Original title card to the Banana Splits Adventure Hour

Status: Partially Found

The Banana Splits Adventure Hour is a live action-animated hybrid series created by Hanna Barbera that originally aired on NBC from September 7, 1968, to November 29, 1969. The series is named for its hosts, an animal band consisting of Fleegle the dog, Bingo the gorilla, Drooper the lion, and Snorky the elephant. The Splits appeared in no segments of their own, instead appearing in song and comedy sketches in between the show's segments. Although the series aired for two seasons, only the Splits themselves appeared in new material for the second season; the segments they bordered were repeats.

After the series ended, the first-season episodes were edited for syndication, and while the syndicated episodes can be found easily, the same cannot be said for the original episodes.

History

After reruns of the original series were taken off NBC in 1970, the 18 episodes composing the first season were divided into 36 half-hour installments and put into a syndication package composing of it and several other 1960s Hanna Barbera series. This package was originally broadcast from 1971 to 1982, and is the version shown on Cartoon Network and Boomerang. By contrast, the original episodes have not aired since 1970.

Availability

Although the original episodes are extremely rare, they are believed to be held in the Warner Bros. archives - in 2007, Earl Kress reported development for a DVD set of the original Adventure Hour episodes was cancelled due to the materials being too expensive to restore at the time.[1] As of 2021, they have still not been released, with only the first episode being available on the Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1970s Volume 2 DVD.

Of note is the rarity of the second season - since the package contained only the first season's Splits segments, the second-season Splits sketches are considered lost outright.

On February 18, 2021, the first two Adventure Hour episodes were uploaded to the Internet Archive by SirPlays. The episodes were taken off of studio tapes, resulting in their low quality.

References

  1. [1] Retrieved 7 Aug '21