As a child, I was scared by everything from the Blue Meanies from The Beatles‘ Yellow Submarine movie to Waylon Flowers’ wise-cracking Madame puppet.
Admittedly, I was a weird kid.
But in my defense, growing up in the 1970s and ’80s meant that you were bombarded with supposedly lovable characters who were in fact nothing but weaponized nightmare fuel. (See the entire creative output of Sid and Marty Krofft for examples of this, especially, shudder, H.R. Pufnstuf). Chief among these marketable terrors were the characters featured Hanna-Barbera’s variety show/hellscape The Banana Splits.
Airing for two seasons from 1968-70, then repeated in syndication for perpetuity, this series combined the live-action antics of the animal-costumed characters Fleegle, Drooper, Bingo, and Snorky as they had indescrible adventures filmed at amusement parks that were intercut with other segments.
Most of the Splits-centric portions of the program had the animal pals getting into allegedly wacky adventures and singing songs. But due to their psychedelic character designs and the bizarre nonsensical nature of the scripts — you can trace the DNA of Adult Swim cartoons back to the randomness of shows like The Banana Splits — the entire enterprise was head-scratching at best, absolutely terrifying at worst. Seriously. The nightmares I had still come up in therapy from time to time. I wish I were joking. Take a look:
Here’s the official synopsis:
The cast includes Dani Kind (Wyonna Earp) as Beth, Finlay Wojtak-Hissong (The Kindness of Strangers) as Harley, Romeo Carere as Austin, Steve Lund (Street Legal, Schitt’s Creek) as Mitch, and Sara Canning (The Vampire Diaries, A Series of Unfortunate Events, War for the Planet of the Apes) as Rebecca. The press release promises that “the beloved Bingo, Fleegle, Snorky, and Drooper will also appear.”
Chris Cummins is a Philadelphia-based writer, producer, and comics historian. Read more of his work here. You can find him on Twitter at @bionicbigfoot and @scifiexplosion
