The Beatles

I first saw the cartoon when I was 14 at Beatlefest 2000 of Chicago, IL. My first cartoon was "Got To Get You Into My Life", and it's really funny. I got the cartoon on the video I got from ebay.com called "Best of The Beatles Cartoon Show". There were 11 cartoons and 10 sing-alongs on the tape. My dad saw the cartoon when he was 11-years-old. My favoritest Beatle of all is Ringo. He's VERY funny from the way he laughs, the way he walks like Groucho Marx, and the way he talks. I've been Ringo's fan since I was 8. I also like the REAL Ringo besides the CARTOON Ringo. I've seen 43 cartoons so far. There were 78 cartoons. 2 cartoons in each episode, which is 39 episodes. I'm still gonna love the cartoon forever.

I remember watching episodes of this on Sunday mornings on KPLR, channel 11 in St. Louis in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The one that sticks out in my mind for some reason was "Ticket to Ride". I loved the singalongs, and as my father only had the later Beatles albums, it got me familiar with their earlier work. All I've seen is crummy copies of copies sold on Ebay and at Beatlefest...when will this actually be released on video/DVD, good quality copies? You know there's a market for it...there's even a wonderful book about the cartoon series!

In 1965 Ed Vane took over as head of daytime programming at ABC. Saturday mornings were dominated by CBS- Vane wanted to change that. He felt the best bet was a Beatles cartoon. Working with Al Brodax at King Features, a deal was made for 26 shows with 2 cartoons per show at a budget of $32,000/show (cheap for 1965). And Brodax had just 5 months before the premiere. Result was a rush job with all the animation outsourced outside the U. S. Results were as you would expect-simple animation with lots of cycles repeating. Still, "The Beatles" was the top rated cartoon for the year, and ABC came in #1 on Saturday mornings. That shocked CBS into opening its wallet and spending millions on a complete revamp of their lineup.

13 more Beatles cartoons were made over the next two seasons- since they're not as rushed the quality is noticeably better. Al Brodax went on to produce the Yellow Submarine film.

I remember several of this show's episodes because it replayed on Teletoon in Canada (I think, it might've been the Family Channel). Anyways, the cartoons were very Monkey-esque, that is they usually ended up in some sort of a jam or situation, but then they sang a song and everything worked out well. I realize that it's silly to describe the Beatles' cartoons as Monkey-esque, because the Beatles predated the Monkees, however that seems like the most apt way to describe these cartoons. They were NOT very good. They typically invoked rarer songs that really didn't get a lot of airplay (not the hits). For the longest time I understood that the Beatles actually voiced themselves, however this apparently was not the case. They don't really voice themselves in 'Yellow Submarine' either, except in the live-action epilogue. These cartoons seemed very formulaic for the time, and the basic premise was often redone to correspond to the musical group of the time. For example, I recall large similarities between the Beatles cartoons and the Jackson 5 cartoons, however the Jackson 5 typically had a more 'futuristic' viewpoint (they went into space and encountered aliens and stuff like that). I'm also reminded of old Scooby-Doo cartoons, where there were those interminable chase scenes over the dubbing of a musical number. Apparently the Beatles themselves were not overly enamoured with these pieces either. Having said that, I'm sure that now is a good time to get these cartoons out as a DVD collection to span the entire Beatles' media contributions. I'm sure that a lot of people would be all over them purely for the sake of nostalgia, entertainment, and curiosity.

I recall only bits and pieces of the show and would love to see it again on TV. It probably is dated but would bring back a lot of memories. I remember the scene where the Beatles were performing in the Roman Coliseum and the beat was causing it to fall apart.