Depending on your perspective or your age group, if someone said “The Hardy Boys” to you, you might think of the hundreds of mystery novels featuring the adventures of Frank and Joe Hardy, all penned by the Stratemeyer Syndicate under the pseudonym of Franklin W. Dixon (who never truly existed, that’s a mystery in and of itself).
Other people might remember a late 1970’s TV teen drama that starred Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson as Frank and Joe Hardy, teen detectives (along with their friend Nancy Drew in a few episodes). There was also a series of Walt Disney shorts featuring the two detectives that aired during episodes of the Mickey Mouse club.
And yes, I know there’s a wrestling duo known as the Hardy Boyz, but I’m not sure they solved any mysteries. Except maybe the mystery of how they’ve broken nearly every bone in their bodies and can still walk today.
No, I’m talking about this group of Hardy Boys.
Wait, what?? I don’t recall the Hardy Boys ever starting a sunshine pop band – perhaps I had too many Flintstones Chewables as a kid and it’s finally caught up to me.
No, this iteration of The Hardy Boys was a rock band – and yes, they also traveled around the country and solved mysteries. It looks and sounds like an amalgamation of the Scooby-Doo show and whatever the Archies were doing at the time.
And … oh, man, the voice acting in this is just rough. It sounds like three actors are doing all the voices, complete with falsettos and grumbles and whatever trickery they can do with their vocals. Yikes.
And the crazy thing is … to promote this show, there was actually a real-life flesh-and-blood Hardy Boys rock band that toured the country and released a couple of albums. And, to be fair, the albums sounded better than the cartoon show … which is kinda like saying you can high-jump over a snake’s belly.
Yep. They had two albums. Somebody had faith in this group as a stand-alone rock band.
So, yeah. I tried to watch one of these episodes. But I needed aspirin halfway through. Owie. And no matter how halfway decent the rock music was (at least by Saturday morning cartoon standards), the stories and visuals in this show are straight-up epilepsy warnings.
I mean, as a curiosity of the Saturday morning world, it’s definitely a curiosity. But I’m not exactly begging for a reboot of this series. Not really.
Now if someone made a series about Nancy Drew solving mysteries and later working as a go-go dancer … maybe …
Chuck The Writer 