Channel Frederator Blog

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94×9RO8JgTA]
While most people can name the Flintstones pretty easily, there are some really strange characters who are tied to the series who may not be so easily remembered.

The Great Gazoo first appeared on the show on October 29, 1965. He is a small, green, alien character who was voiced by Harvey Korman. The Great Gazoo, or Gazoo for short, appeared in front of Fred and Barney at seemingly random times. Even when he attempts to help Fred and Barney out, he usually ends up causing more trouble. The only people who are able to see him are Fred, Barney, and the children (because they believe in him).

Gazoo’s backstory is that he was exiled to Earth from his home planet Botox as punishment for having invented a doomsday machine, a weapon of immense destructive power, and was discovered by Fred and Barney when his flying saucer crashed. His invention was a button which would destroy the universe if pressed, though he insists he made it on a whim with no intent of using it.

Gazoo was introduced during the last season of the series, and then never mentioned again in any of the follow up cartoons.

Captain Caveman was not a part of the Flintstones universe at first. He was the star of his own series, “Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels” which first aired September 10, 1977.

It wasn’t until November 1980, that Captain Caveman began to star in segments of his own on “The Flintstone Comedy Show”, one of many spin-offs of Hanna Barbera’s popular prime-time show “The Flintstones”, often in a role similar to that of Superman. Captain Caveman worked at The Daily Granite newspaper with Wilma and Betty. His “secret identity” was Chester, the office boy. To disguise himself as Chester, Captain Caveman wore a pair of glasses and a tie. Despite the simplicity of his disguise, he required a coat rack and an elaborate transformation sequence to become Captain Caveman. I can’t think of another character in the Hanna Barbera universe who belonged with the Flintstones more than Captain Caveman.

The Shmoo may be a bit of a stretch (no pun intended) as a Flintstones character, but I’m including him anyway. The Shmoo gained its own animated series in the late 1970s, as part of the animated series “Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo” (which consisted of reruns of “The New Fred and Barney Show” mixed with the Shmoo’s own cartoons; the two pairs of characters didn’t actually “meet”). The two pairs of characters did meet, however, in the early 1980s Flintstones spinoff “The Flintstone Comedy Show”. The Shmoo appeared in the segment “Bedrock Cops” as a police officer alongside part-time officers Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.

The Shmoo was created and first drawn by the cartoonist Al Capp in his newspaper comic strip “Li’l Abner”. Their first appearance occurred on August 31, 1948, making him the oldest (created first) character in the Flintstone universe.

The Shmoo also had his own show that was basically a clone of Scooby Doo (as was the Captain Caveman show). His animated appearances have little, if anything, in common with his comic strip counterpart.
-Floyd Bishop