H.R. Pufnstuf...WTF???

[Taverner]

OK...So on this show we have a boy protecting his magic flute from a psycho old lady (Freudian undertones...) but helping him is a Dragon with serious insomnia (check out the bags) who suffers from gigantism, and is a refugee himself, being an insomniac dragon who happens to be gay from the south.

Did anyone else find this show to be as out there as I do?

[jandrok]

1. Just sprinkle the magic dust and it all begins to make sense.

Big mushrooms. Kooky characters. Sid and Marty Krofft were some strange dudes, man.

[Taverner]

4. Yes - Canadians at that!

[eeyore]

6. Well, there you go....

Crazy assed Canucks will get you every time. ;)

[bridgit]

2. Witchy Poo!!!

:thumbsup:

[Heidi]

7. WitchyPoo rules!

Right on, bridgit! But you're too young to remember WitchyPoo! :hug: :loveya:

[bridgit]

10. oh honey please @ 37 i can only thank you for that comment...

:hug: she was the very most non-stop hyper witch and unforgettable in so doing B-)

[noonwitch]

13. Billie Hayes was the actress-she was on General Hospital circa 1981

She was great as Witchie-poo and as the genie on "Lidsville".

She played O'Reilly on GH-Robert's first partner during the show's golden years.

[bridgit]

14. that sounds right to me, talk about bringing the whole of yourself...

to the part, thanks for your post :hi:

[Heidi]

18. You're most welcome, my pretty.

[bridgit]

20. great pic, that be her...

B-)

[xmas74]

28. I loved Witchy Poo!

[bridgit]

34. Witchy Poo was da bomb diggity...

:hi:

[eeyore]

3. I'd say Sid and Marty Krofft must have been on some serious drugs....

But I actually think that they weren't. Pretty out there shit, no doubt.

Land of the Lost and Sigmund and the Sea Monster were also pretty nuts.

But the show of theirs that I hear takes the cake is Lidsville. Haven't seen it, but I'd like to check it out.



--edit cuz i kant spel--

[Taverner]

8. Did you know they were responsible for Donny and Marie

As well as Pink Lady and Jeff?

[jane_pippin]

9. Ha! Lidsville is where everyone is a hat. Or something. It's the one

that was around when I was little. I only have vague memories of a derby hat and a policeman hat wobbling around, (and I'm not positive that that's where those memories came from but it's the most likely spot). My mom says I freaked out with joy every time Lidsville came on. (But then, who wouldn't.)

[CanuckAmok]

33. A friend rented them for his kids a few years ago...and we watched, too.,

I had forgotten how FUCKING WEIRD they were.

Yeah, the boy goes backstage after a magic show, and the magician's hat begins to grow, until the kid falls into it and lands in Lidsville.

CNR is the evil guy, and everybody is a hat.

:wtf:

[ET Awful]

11. The flying tophad in Lidsville was freakin' WEIRD!

I remember that show :)

[LeftHander]

12. Charles Nelson Rielly's greatest role....

I think that was him....I vaugley remeber wathcing this but Icouldn;t stand CNR then so didn't watch.

Now sigmund...I did watch that. And land of the lost. We all secretly had a crush on the girl...

[eeyore]

17. Is that what Charles Nelson Reilly did?

I could never figure him out. Same with Paul Lynde.

I just figured they were both token closeted fabulous gay guys on teevee. Like no one could figure it out? Helllllooooo!

[m_welby]

21. actually paul lynde was uncle arthur

on bewitched. (Lotsa closeted gays on that show apparently)

Charles Nelson Reilly must have done something as well, but I can't remember anything significant (except liddsville).

[jane_pippin]

5. Pufnstuf isn't *just* a dragon with gigantism and insomnia...

he's the Mayor too.

[skooooo]

15. I loved this show as a kid!!

It rocked my world when I was about 5 or 6. Don't mess with the Puf, man!

[RevCheesehead]

16. "He's your friend when things get rough."

And really, if you had a mean ol' witch constantly after your magic flute, wouldn't you want a friend around?

[ucmike]

19. i even thought that was weird as a kid.

i was more of a "banana splits" fan.

although it has inspired a great name for at least one head shop.

[SoCalDem]

22. I think those shows were gone by the time I had kids..

Never watched them myself (no TV)..By the time I had kids, they were enamored with "Contact 3-2-1" , Big Blue Marble & The Electric Company... Those were great kids' shows..A little of Sesame Street too. The Count scared my son so much that he insisted on wearing his "Count" sweatshirt inside-out.. "He would look down at the count and say "Scares MEEE".. Grandma always asked why his sweatshirt was inside-out :)

[long_green]

23. some one put it back on recently and I couldn't believe

how totally middle aged Southern gay H.R. sounded. What would James Dobson have to say about this show if it were on now.

[flamingyouth]

24. That show scared me as a kid.

I was especially terrified by the flute.

[ForrestGump]

25. I miss kidhood. And "HR Pufnstuf." And "The Banana Splits," "Hong Kong

Phooey," "The Hair Bear Bunch," "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp," "Sigmund and The Sea Monsters," "Zorro," "The Virginian," "Make A Wish" ("if you want it/you can get it/but to get it/you've got to want it..."), "Alias Smith And Jones," "Captain Scarlet," "Thunderbirds," "Stingray," "UFO," "The Bugaloos," "Julia" (mmmmmmmmmm...Diahann Caroll.....mmmmmm), "The Quest" (anyone remember this? I think Kurt Russell's character was Quentin Bodine), Jon Pertwee's "Dr Who," "Land Of The Giants," "Hogan's Heroes," "Get Smart," "Star Trek," "Cannon," "Bronk," "Eischeid," "California Fever," "Three For The Road," "Moving On," "That's My Mama," "Skippy The Bush Kangaroo," "CHiPs," "Lassie," "Hec Ramsey," and so on.

And, of course, Steve Austin...boobooboobooboo....astronaut...boobooboobooboo....a man barely alive...gentlemen, we can rebuild him...we have the technology...we have the capability to build the world's first bionic man...Steve Austin will be that man...better than he was before: better..stronger...faster.

I can't hold her! She's breaking up! She's breaking up!

Where did the f***ing years go? :-(

[AlienGirl]

30. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo!!

Oh, wow, I haven't thought of that show in a long time! :rofl: It was, in retrospect, so bad--low production value--but at the time it rocked ass!

Tucker

[ForrestGump]

31. Dude, Skippy totally rockz!!

What a bounder...



All the blokes at Waratah National Park say Gidday!

[CanuckAmok]

32. The guy on Make A Wish was Harry Chapin's brother

I didn't like it, though... it was live action.

[ForrestGump]

37. I still like his song

:D

Good sentiments, too.

I suspect vast quantities of drugs were ingested during the making of the show, though (this also goes for every other show made in that period....for that matter, in the '80s, too)

[hfojvt]

36. dude

you wasted them in front of the tube
just like I did, but you left out The Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, and My Three Sons, Lassie, Flipper, and The Price is Right
We used to watch that in the summer because the grass was too wet with dew in the morning to go outside. And no I am not sure why we didn't ride our bikes somewhere or read books. Maybe because the TV was on.

[ForrestGump]

39. That's the thing, though...

I practically lived outside, growing up primarily in rural areas and being into hiking, camping, rampaging around in nature, kayaking, sailing, building rafts, climbing...and, of course, playing war and cowboys, etc...just about every possible thing. Yet I still managed to catch all those shows. :shrug:

I must have been better at multitasking than than I am now.

I never saw The Price Is Right, but the others on your list bring back some memories. And reminded me of a few more: Gentle Ben, Dusty's Trail, and F-Troop. :-)

And some show, I'm guessing from '76, called (I think) The Young Patriots. And Fat albert And The Cosby Kids as well as the Cos' early-70s Cosby Show (circa '71?).

And, of course, timeless classics like Hawaii Five-O!

EDIT: Planet Of The Apes!...the series!

[hfojvt]

40. you do all the outside stuff in the summer

You only watch TV during the school year so you don't have to do homework. School gets out at three so there are at least five hours of watching possible before bedtime.

What I remember more than Five-O is The Rockford Files, Mary Tyler Moore/Lou Grant, Sonny and Cher, and Carol Burnett, and Little House on the Prairie, and All in the Family, Good Times, Wonder Woman, and on and on.

[chiffon]

26. lived by the sea...and frolicked in.. the land called...

Golly gee!

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Frolick


:bounce:

[electron_blue]

27. I used to love that show as a kid, but haven't thought of it in years

It is mighty bizarre.

[Patsy Stone]

29. Here's two articles.

http://cannabisculture.com/articles/2926.html

<snip>

H.R. Pufnstuf
by Dana Larsen (27 May, 2003) Innocent childhood TV series revealed as pro-pot psychedelia!

Readers who were watching kids' TV during the early 1970's will remember a psychedelically strange show called H.R. Pufnstuf. Like many good things from that era, H.R. Pufnstuf was full of nods to the prevailing stoner counter-culture, and included many sly pot and drug references which most of us likely missed as children.

Launched in 1969, the Summer of Love, the show revolved around the adventures of Jimmy, a young boy trapped on the magical Living Island, where virtually every object, animal and plant can talk and move. In each of the 17 zany episodes, the evil Witchiepoo tries to steal Jimmy's talking golden flute, named Freddy, while Jimmy tries to escape the island and return home. Jimmy is protected and guided by the island's Mayor – a friendly dragon named H.R. Pufnstuf – and his many friends.

Aside from the extremely colorful and trippy imagery, there were many aspects to the popular show which, to the initiated, revealed its essentially stoney nature.

The main clue is the title character, H.R. Pufnstuf, whose last name sounds a lot like "Puffing stuff." The title "H.R." is never explained on the show, and many interpreted it as code for "Hand Rolled," with Pufnstuf's title of Mayor also being short for "marijuana." Pufnstuf is green with red hair, just like cannabis buds.

<snip>

And:

http://www.albany.net/~genxtv/krofft.html

<snip>

Like many of the Krofft programs that would follow, "H.R. Pufnstuf" had a psychedelic quality that some have speculated was inspired by drug use by the show's producers. For instance, doesn't the name Pufnstuf suggest a slang term for marijuana? And why a magic flute that Witchiepoo constantly craves? Did the talking flute symbolize a massive joint? A September 1995 America Online chat session suggested that there may have been some underlying drug themes in the Krofft shows. Someone on AOL asked, "Your creations (characters, sets, songs..) are beautiful, psychedelic, and horrifying, often all at the same time. What were/are some of your influences? Be honest...did you guys take a lot of drugs in the late '60's?"

Sid and Marty responded, "The question should be: Do we take drugs in the '90s?"

In a later interview, Marty Krofft said that drugs really didn't play a role in the creation of their programs. "That was our look, those were the colors, everything we did had vivid colors, but there was no acid involved," Krofft said. "That shit scared me. I'm no goody two-shoes, but you can't create this stuff stoned."

<snip>

[Lex]

35. To understand it, you have to PUFF n' stuff.

Ya know?

[Neshanic]

38. There were many large mushrooms in the land of HR....just saying.