1971 saw such wretched entries as The Groovie Goolies, another Filmation/Archie spin-off featuring a moronic band comprised of monsters. The Flintstone and Rubble offspring managed to front the blandest band in the land in Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, and the Jackson 5ive checked in as animated versions of themselves. The series was poorly written and animated, but the Jackson’s fusion of bubblegum and the Motown sound lent at least a little bounce to the ABC lineup. Far worse was to come; the animated lineup from 1972-1973 was enough to ruin a generation of audiophiles.

As the fad died down, outlandish shows straggled in, including a band fronted by a cartoon shark-cum-drummer in Jabberjaw. Courtesy of Cartoon Network.

The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan featured the clan at their musical worst. Audiences discovered that The Brady Kids (late of the Brady Bunch) were totally bereft of both songwriting ability and any modicum of talent. The Osmonds, every grandmother’s ideal version of a rock band, took their cue from the Jackson 5ive and sullied the reputations of both the Rankin-Bass studios and the venerable house of Halas-Batchelor. The most appealing maestros of the bunch were Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, who performed their rock offerings on improvised junkyard instruments. Were the songs not undercut by repetitive animation or burdened with moralistic messages, the entire presentation might have had more appeal.

By 1973, the fad was virtually over. Hanna-Barbera produced an atrocity called Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kids for NBC. The following year, the last entry in the genre of live-action bands transferred to cartoon form straggled in. Partridge Family: 2200 AD was every bit as ridiculous as it sounded, but by then no one cared. The last surviving rock band appeared in 1976, and it was fronted by a cartoon shark-cum-drummer named Jabberjaw. At this point, I invite the readers to visualize an actual shark behind a set of drums. With the advent of the music video around 1980, there was brief revival of the animated rock band, notably with Jem, New Kids on the Block and a silly entry called Kidd Video. Still, the format was essentially dead.

Even now in an age where kids are hardwired to their iPods, today’s commercial cartoon characters are not musically inclined, except for an occasional show like Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi. Courtesy of Cartoon Network.

Why should this be, especially in an age where kids seemingly have iPods and MP3 players surgically grafted on to their bodies? Music seems to be reaching into increasingly diverse demographics; why aren’t today’s commercial cartoon characters more musically inclined? There have been a few, such as the gals of Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi, Atomic Betty and the “fly” fly featured in The Buzz on Maggie. Those would be minor chords when one compares the amount of animated fare available today as opposed to the amount aired in 1972. The answer is actually quite simple, but it still took some time to dawn on the networks — he gimmick of having animated characters playing in a rock band never enhanced a single cartoon.

If anything, the music detracted from the quality. First, the action (such as it was) often had to be halted to wedge in musical numbers, or a repetitive chase scene had to take place for the music to play behind. Second, the rock band format tended to make the characters less, rather than more believable. It taxed the imagination that anyone could simply pick up instruments and burst into carefully rehearsed song at any given moment; it is (one of) the reasons that the musical is a defunct cinematic form today. Third, the quality of the music was generally putrid. Bubblegum was not exactly the most interesting and flexible form of rock music to begin with; when turned out under the deadlines of television series production; it sank to an even lower level. Fourth, when many series were tossing rock bands into the format, the novelty wore off rapidly. Recall that The Archie Show predated the heyday of animated rock bands by five years.

Finally, having everyone cast as a musician or rock star did not always fit the character of the cartoons. Did having a band make the Hardy Boys more proficient detectives, or did Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm really need re-casting as rockers to retain the appeal they had for decades?

Thus, we come full circle. Once upon a time, there was an animated show called The Beatles. The series was a very good one, fondly remembered by many today. The animated musicians were very believable, because they were depictions of real musicians. The writing was built around the music: The music was excellent. The animated series was the first of its kind, derivative of nothing else. Since the series never got around to depicting the post-1967 version of the band, everything could be good, clean fun. In other words, The Beatles contained none of the flaws described above, and stands as the best of the genre. Granted, the Beatles were gods, whereas the Sun Dance Kids were idiosyncratic footnotes to animation history. Still, in viewing the wreckage, the saga of animated rock bands during the 1960s and 1970s is a rather sad one unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.

Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.