Love Me (T)o..ony Tuesday 2015: The Beatles (The 1960s Cartoon)

Hi everyone.
Andrew here welcoming you to another edition of Toony Tuesday.

And wouldn't you know it, this one is something you may have never known about, despite the subject being the biggest and most influential musical band of all time.
And what it churned out is one of the most craziest, wackiest, absurd, surreal...and brightest, charming, funniest and underrated classic cartoons of all time.

It's 1960s animated series The Beatles.



This series, created and produced by Al Brodax, is exactly what you think: It’s about the Beatles going on tours, recording music, having fun, torturing Ringo and getting mobbed by fangirls. But under the surface, there’s more than that. There’s helping two octopuses fall in love, going down a hole to another (Aztec) world, a battle inside the Eiffel Tower for fashion designs, going gaga for ghosts and aliens, being a makeshift version of The Three Musketeers and many many examples of plots that the writers may have pulled out of their asses but are based on the legendary discography of the Fab Four themselves.

And now, a history of me with this series:
One day, a few years ago, I was screwing around on Wikipedia, looking at schedules for Saturday Morning cartoons on the Big Three Networks (NBC, ABC and CBS), and under the schedule for the Alphabet was a certain cartoon I . And would change the way I saw cartoons forever.
When I first watched the series, I didn’t know what I’ve gotten myself into. A cartoon starring The Beatles? Awesome! But I saw more. The Beatles getting into some crazy situations and barely getting out of them with the Power of Music--their music. Hilarious. I was instantly hooked, and would watch many times since. I’ve enjoyed everything this show offered.

The Fab Four are caricatures of the real band in the show.
They all lack a Liverpudlian accent, wear mop-tops and Edwardian suits (at the time where the band doesn’t even do that anymore in real life), and travel to some part of the world where some shit happens to them, and they saved the day with performing some song with instruments that just appear out of freaking thin air.


And now, a bit about the Cartoony Beatles themselves:
John is the leader--a bad one. He’s also lazy, slouchy and doesn’t do his leader job justice.
Paul is the neat, poised and stylish, yet devious, happy and excited second-in-command.
George is occasionally superstitious, appreciative of other cultures and usually leans on something with slyness and weird crooked smile. He also has one of the strangest accents any foreign character has in all of television animation; his accent isn’t Liverpudlian...or even British. Instead, it’s some mix of other European accents--but what is it? Irish? Scottish? Asian? Who could tell which?
Ringo rounds out the band as the goofy-looking idiot of the four. His shaggy mop-top, larger-in-size clothes, scatterbrained mind and big-ass nose aren’t the only factors make him the butt of many a joke.
(Seriously, my main gripe with this show is that their treatment of Ringo is so irritating. I know he's stupid sometimes, but does he really deserve their crap on him? Sometimes makes me think they deserve their own abuse in the Sing-Along segment.)
Between the off-putting misadventures and brutal dry humor between them, it’s clear that all four of the Beatles enjoy being friends and are always looking out for each other. It’s few times in between, but moments like them are wonderful to watch. The band themselves makes this show.

I’ll be honest about the animation: it’s very shoddy and messy. It’s understandable when the ink and paint is outsourced to three different studios in three different countries (Artransa Park Studios in Australia, TVC Animation in the United Kingdom, and some studio in Hollywood, CA in the USA), but it helps in that it gives some wonderful colorful scenes and moments that are just fantastic to see, especially the songs they make. So much effort paying off in such a grand way.
Even if some of the movements are the same damn ones in every short.

The humor is extremely off the wall. It’s hard to explain, but almost everything you see here will either make you laugh or wonder what odd, twisted, warped version of reality this show is. But I think that adds to the humor, and makes it work great.

What makes this series extra special is the Sing-Alongs.
In this segment, spliced between the half-episodes, a member of the Fab Four, usually either Paul George or John, introduces one of their songs and asks the viewers to join them with lyrics appearing on-screen. Ringo appears in the place of the stage "prop-man" to try to set-up the performance, but because of his incompetence, always makes it a large mess. And it really makes no sense whatsoever when this is happening in their own apartment in Season 3--but hey, Rule of Funny.
What makes these so great is, not only because of the music playing, but also because of the influence it set upon its young viewers, when the lyrics helped them learn to read. Which was a wonderful thing to hear about.
Also, no bouncing ball here. Just lyrics. All Awesome-ness.

The Beatles Cartoon became a big hit on ABC during its’ original run. Many viewers, young and old(er) turned in every Saturday morning (or afternoon, where Season 3 aired) to see what misadventure the Fabs got into, and what song they played to get out of it (or what strange-as-shit plan they succeeded with to escape with a song playing in the background). And in many respects, it works. The humor is still very hilarious, the animation (while crap) is still perfectly happy and colorful, the songs are still timeless, the episodes are still worth your time, and the Fab Four are still Fab-y half a century later. And even though this came way before my time (and barely came after my parents times), I can still appreciate this series for being what it was--an animated series based on The Beatles and their songs, but also being the earliest example of writers possibly being high for writing such out-there yet balls-out and gut-busting humor. Must be the songs from the band that'll explain it. Yep.

It's not on DVD, but it still isn't hard to find; it's on YT. All episodes, Sing-Alongs and Beatlemania madness are there for you to consume.
So yeah, check out these series.
It's hilarious, it's rockin', it's colorful, and it's ready of your attention.
I highly recommend it, especially 50 years after its debut.
I love it, and I hope you all it too.

See you guys later.