Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions.[1] It premiered on September 10, 1966 on CBS, and ran for two seasons on Saturday mornings.[2]
Characters and overview
The program contained two segments, which each served as a middle ground between Hanna-Barbera's traditional early output and its superhero-based late-1960s cartoons. Each episode would feature two segments with The Impossibles, and Frankenstein Jr. in between.
Frankenstein Jr.: Taking place in Civic City, boy scientist Buzz Conroy (voiced by Dick Beals) and his father Professor Conroy (voiced by John Stephenson) fight supervillains with the aid of a powerful heroic robot named "Frankenstein Jr." (voiced by Ted Cassidy).[3] Buzz built "Frankie" and activated him through an energy ring. Frankenstein Jr. appears to be reminscient of the anime character Tetsujin 28-go (also known as Gigantor).[4]
The Impossibles: The title characters are a trio of superheroes (Multi-Man, Fluid-Man, and Coil-Man) who pose undercover as a Beatlesesquerock music band.[3] The characters' names are descriptive of their powers: Multi-Man (voiced by Don Messick) can create identical copies of himself; Coil-Man (voiced by Hal Smith) can form into a super-springy coil; and Fluid-Man (voiced by Paul Frees) can transform his body into any fluid. The heroes receive assignments from "Big D" (also voiced by Frees), who contacts them via a receiver in the base of Coil-Man's left-handedguitar. During the development of the show, this group was called "The Incredibles," but was changed to "The Impossibles" by the time of production. The team's pre-production name was later given to the superhero family from the 2004 Disney/Pixarfilm of the same name.
The show was one of several that were the target of complaints about violence in children's television in the late 1960s, and was pulled from reruns in 1968 (its initial run had already ended the previous year). The Frankenstein Jr. segments returned to television in the 1976 series Space Ghost and Frankenstein Jr., which aired on NBC from November 27, 1976 to September 3, 1977, replacing the canceled Big John, Little John.
On April 26, 2011, Warner Home Video (via the Warner Archive Collection) released Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles: The Complete Series on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna–Barbera Classics Collection. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release, available exclusively through Warner's online store and Amazon.com.[5]
Other appearances
Buzz Conroy and Frankenstein Jr. appeared in the Yogi's Space Race episode "Race Through the Planet of the Monsters".
Frankenstein Jr. appeared in the Johnny Bravo episode "Johnny Makeover".
Also in 2020, Frankenstein Jr. has a cameo in Scoob!, appearing in the end credits.
Buzz Conroy and Frankenstein Jr. appear in the 2021 film Space Jam: A New Legacy. They are among the Warner Bros. 3000 Server-Verse inhabitants (which included other Hanna-Barbera characters) that watch the basketball game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.
Buzz Conroy appeared in the third season of Jellystone! Frankenstein Jr. will also appear in season 3.
A single issue of a Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles comic was released by Gold Key Comics in 1966 as a tie-in to the TV series, and the contents were reprinted in The Impossibles Annual by Atlas Publishing & Distributing Co. Ltd, UK in 1968.[6] The two Frankenstein Jr. comic stories were titled "The Image Invasion" and "Frankenstein Jr. Meets the Flea Man". A new text-based story, specially written for the annual, was "A Spook in his Wheel". The character reappeared in the comic Hanna-Barbera Presents #8 published by Archie Comics in 1996. The front cover featured Frankenstein Jr. battling the Impossibles in an homage to the front cover of the original Fantastic Four #1 by Marvel Comics.
A Big Little Book titled Frankenstein Jr.: The Menace of the Heartless Monster was published in 1968.
The Impossibles' heroic identities were re-used for a later Hanna-Barbera production, The Super Globetrotters (which also featured a similar concept—in this case, the famous Harlem Globetrotters as undercover superheroes):
Nate Branch's heroic identity was alternately known as "Fluid Man" or "Liquid Man", with powers (and a flippered costume) similar to the Impossibles' Fluid-Man.
"Twiggy" Sanders became "Spaghetti Man", with coiling and stretching abilities similar to Coil-Man.
"Geese" Ausbie as "Multi Man" had virtually identical powers as his Impossibles counterpart and a similar costume.
In 2016, Buzz and Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles played a major role in the DC Comics series Future Quest, that also featured characters from various animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera such as Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, The Herculoids, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio and Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor.[7] In this series, the team gained a new female member named Cobalt and the character of Big D is a woman named Deva Sumadi who's also Falcon-7.
^Perlmutter, David (2018). The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 218–219. ISBN 978-1538103739.
^Woolery, George W. (1983). Children's Television: The First Thirty-Five Years, 1946-1981. Scarecrow Press. pp. 110–112. ISBN 0-8108-1557-5. Retrieved 14 March 2020.
^ a bErickson, Hal (2005). Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 Through 2003 (2nd ed.). McFarland & Co. pp. 347–348. ISBN 978-1476665993.
^"Frankenstein Jr. And the Impossibles: The Complete Series – Animated Views".
^"Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles - 'The Complete Series' Now For Sale: Cost, Box, Video Clip, EXTRAS!". Archived from the original on 2011-11-12.
^Markstein, Don. "Frankenstein Jr". Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
^"Future Quest (DC Comics)". DC Comics. June 27, 2016. Retrieved December 15, 2016.
