Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Teenage Toons: The Archie-Sabrina Hour (1977)

Archie and friends, including Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, moved to NBC in 1977 in the hour-long Archie-Sabrina Hour. That was the good news. The bad? It was slotted opposite The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour on CBS and the start of Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics on ABC. Just a couple of months in, the series was split into two component parts: Super Witch (Sabrina), which we previously reviewed, and The Bang Shang Lallapalooza Show (Archie). Both were gone by April 1978. NBC was having trouble generating hits on Saturday mornings, and would dismiss The Pink Panther, who moved to ABC for the final 2 years of his TV run the following fall.

The series was a mix of new and old material, with the new shorts featuring a Latino teen, Carlos (Jose Flores), who to my knowledge never appeared in the comics, and was never seen again after the series was cancelled.

There was an attempt to market this as part of the syndication package in half-hour increments under the title, The Archie-Sabrina Surprise Package. Hewey1972 offers the intro:



Never saw it, so there's no rating.

No comments: