Cartoon fans The Flintstones has been around since before most of us were even born it's a show that alot of us have grown up and without it a certain other show which i'll get into later wouldn't even exist but no one has really took a look at this series and how it came to be that is until now and if this post is successful i might turn this into a series.
As we all know the show was made by Hanna-Barbera but what you don't know is that the duo started toying with the idea for The Flintstones after production had finished on both The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Quick Draw McGraw Show while those shows were indeed popular with Huckleberry spawning it's own spin-off The Yogi Bear Show the two wanted to creat a show that both kids and adults could watch and what better way to do that then making a situation comedy.
As for the characters they weren't originally the characters we all know and love because Hanna and Babers first toyed with using Hillbillies as the main characters but then for that idea got scrapped the hillbilly theme stuck because in a few episodes of the show there are hillbilly characters. Believe or not hillbillies weren't the only ones considered as they also considered using Romans , Pilgrims and Indians but they eventually chose the stone age because according to Barbera "you could take anything that was current, and convert it to stone-age" but the show would go through many more changes before becoming the hit we all and know lot today.
We all know The Flintstones but it could have been called The Flagstones and instead of Fred , Wilma , Pebbles , Dino , Barney , Betty , Hobby and Bam-Bam we would have gotten Fred, Wilma, and their son, Fred, Jr.as the main family but still would have kept Barney and Betty in the pilot you can see a different design for Betty as well as a different voice actress with her voice being done by June Foray Barney and Fred's voices were done by Daws Butler with only Jean Vander Pyl playing Wilma in both the pilot and the TV show.
In the early seasons of the show the show had animator Kenneth Muse who worked on all the Tom & Jerry shorts and had been with the company since the late 50's i really have no other things to say about him but i thought it was interesting that one of the Tom & Jerry guys worked on this show and i wonder if he was ever proud of his work on the show.
This is something you might already know but according to some the show is inspired by The Honeymooners with Fred being the Jackie Gleason character and Barney being his friend but this something that even the creators of the show can't agree on with Hanna saying "At that time, The Honeymooners was the most popular show on the air, and for my bill, it was the funniest show on the air. The characters, I thought, were terrific. Now, that influenced greatly what we did with The Flintstones ... The Honeymooners was there, and we used that as a kind of basis for the concept." but these comments were disavowed by Barbera who said "I don't remember mentioning The Honeymooners when I sold the show. But if people want to compare The Flintstones to The Honeymooners, then great. It's a total compliment. The Honeymooners was one of the greatest shows ever written.". So it's divisive even for the creators of the show altho i personally think there's a degree of truth to both claims i'll leave the rest up to you all to decide if the show was inspired by The Honeymooners or not.
Stepping back to when it was known as The Flagstones not much else is known about the show but before they decided to drop Fred Jr. they had already changed the name to The Flintstones and there was already some merchandise being made up so you can easily find out what the character would have looked up by going onto google images.
If you think pitching a show is easy it isn't and even now we see The Flintstones as a legendary show back then it was hard to pitch the show to anyone with Joe Barbera flying to New York with two half hour storyboards and he was pitching the show five times a day every day for about a week with no one willing to pick up the show that was until the final day when he pitched the show to ABC and after fifteen minuets bought the show.
Now we all know about The Flagstones but another name was briefly considered The Gladstones i can see why they ditched that name quick it just doesn't roll of the tongue as well as The Flintstones and i doubt The Gladstones could get as many celebrity cameos as The Flintstones could this show became so huge they were beating celebrity's of with a stick as they were all trying to get on the show.
Unlike most shows which take a while to build up an audience when The Flintstones debuted on September 30 1960 it was a hit right away now i don't know what the reviews for the show were but i recon they weren't that good as people wouldn't have known what to think here's an animated show that's made for adults and kids so i can see the reviews at first being bad.
This show when it was first being made was aimed to the more mature audience which was seen in the comedy writing and i think the plots of the show since no kids show would have a plot about avoiding your wife so you can go bowling and what i found interesting is that the show had two writers who wrote for Looney Tunes those being Warren Foster and Michael Maltese.
What helped make the show more unique was the fact that it would often have season long plot lines with the most famous being the conception and birth of Pebbles that is something that hadn't been done in cartoons before and it's something that is kinda being done now with South Park but still The Flintstones was the first one to do it.
Now we all know the classic theme song to The Flintstones but that wasn't used until season 3 episode 3 until then the show used a song called "Rise and Shine" and was an upbeat song even the intro was different the intro for those first two seasons followed Fred on his way home and picking up a dress before heading home to watch TV.
The Flintstones is one of those shows that will always by around there will always be someone watching it for the first time and hopefully they will inspired and go on to create a cartoon like The Flintstones but not everything from The Flintstones especially the two live action movies and the recent WWE direct to DVD movie but one creator who not only created a show like The Flintstones but also surpassed it in terms of how long it's been on the air is Matt Groening who created a little show you might have heard of.
