Saturday Morning Cartoon: Pinocchio

The company behind Christmas classics like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town made some strange little TV shows back in the day.

Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass' shop was responsible for the bizarro stop-motion animated series The New Adventures Of Pinocchio, based on Carlo Collodi's famous fictional puppet. I used to watch it all the time as a kid--if I remember it was on right after another weird Rankin/Bass show, Tales Of The Wizard Of Oz.

But that's a cartoon for another day. Here's a yootubed clip from the New Adventures Of Pinocchio:




Zachary Zombie, by the way, was voiced by Canadian actor Paul Kligman who was also the voice of J. Jonah Jameson in the classic '60s Spider-Man cartoon. Kligman apparently went to college in Winnipeg, the city all cartoon newspapermen come from.

Anyway, In addition to ghouls and witches the show also had scary invisible ogres, leprechauns, talking trains and a friendly Loch Ness Monster. Here's another clip, with Rankin/Bass spins on several of the characters from the book including Geppetto, Cricket, and Cat and Fox.




Weird stuff!