Tra-la-la, La-la-la-la…

Depending on how old you are, you will either be totally confused at that blog headline…

Or, if you’re from my generation, you’ll immediately have an image of four anthromorphic costumed characters partying and dancing around an amusement park.

Yep, I’m taking you all back in time for this.

If you were a kid in the late 1960’s, you did NOT miss an episode of The Banana Splits Show. No you did not. The Banana Splits Show was a mixture of animation, adventure, comedy and music, all presented by Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky.

Remember when I said there was music on the show? Essentially the Banana Splits were a bubblegum “sunshine pop” band, and their music wsa provided by a collection of session musicians – including this track, “Doin’ the Banana Split,” featuring vocals by Barry White. Yes, THAT Barry White.

There was also plenty of animation on the show, and the show’s producers – Hanna-Barbera – had a special lineup of cartoons ready to go for the series. They included this re-imagining of The Three Musketeers, which are now FOUR in total, and possibly training a fifth one.

The Banana Splits Show also had a cartoon called Arabian Knights, which gave magic and super-powers to the characters of legend and lore.

And after all that, if you still weren’t entertained… then I got three words for you. Uh-oh, Chongo!

Yeps, it’s an episode of Danger Island, the action series that was directed by a young Richard Donner – who would later direct the 1970’s Superman films, as well as many of the Lethal Weapon pictures.

The Banana Splits Show was wildly popular at its time, and it was heavily promoted by Kellogg’s Cereals. For example, check out this original intro circa 1969, and you can see the sponsorship all over the show. It’s almost like a one-hour cereal infomercial!

And in the end, that’s most likely what killed off the Banana Splits. That show, along with most of the other programs on Saturday morning, were fully promoting everything from breakfast cereals to vitamins, and using the characters on the show to promote the products. The government argued that kids couldn’t tell the difference between when the show stopped and the commercials began – heck, The Banana Splits Show offered mail-in giveaways if you sent in your Kellogg’s boxtops.

So the networks changed the rules. Advertising companies could not purchase whole blocks of Saturda morning television for their clients – they could, instead, purchase individual commercials on shows. And since Kellogg’s essentially paid for an hour of time to air the Banana Splits, that show fell by the wayside.

And the puppeteers who created the Banana Splits costumes? Those puppeteers – two men named Sid and Marty Krofft – went on to produce two decades worth of classic Saturday morning programs, including H.R. Pufnstuf, The Bugaloos, Land of the Lost and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.

Okay, the show’s over. Now go clean your room, make your bed, and get a bowl of Frosted Flakes out of the cupboard. You need to eat your breakfast!