{"id":1384,"date":"2008-04-26T09:48:17","date_gmt":"2008-04-26T09:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1384"},"modified":"2008-04-26T09:48:17","modified_gmt":"2008-04-26T09:48:17","slug":"saturday_mornings_back_in_the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2008\/04\/26\/saturday_mornings_back_in_the\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Mornings Back in the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/images\/Sat_Morning_Action_Smaller_by_dusty_abell.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Saturday Morning Live Action Televison by Dusty Abell\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/images\/Sat_Morning_Action_Smaller_by_dusty_abell-thumb.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"178\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrisroberson.net\/2008\/04\/saturday-morning-action-adventure.html\">Chris Roberson<\/a>, here&#8217;s an awesome piece of art by a guy named <a href=\"http:\/\/dusty-abell.deviantart.com\/\">Dusty Abell<\/a> that probably won&#8217;t mean a damn thing to any of the younger folks out there in InternetLand, but ought to bring a smile to the faces of all us aging thirtysomethings.<br \/>\nIn case you&#8217;ve forgotten (or never knew them), these are the heroes and villains of all those great live-action TV adventures that used to alternate with cartoons on Saturday mornings back in the &#8217;70s. Children&#8217;s television back then was blissfully un-self-conscious, utterly lacking in the cynical sense of irony, marketing potential, and self-aware references to other pop culture that infest today&#8217;s kidvid stuff. It was also incredibly low-budget, heartbreakingly earnest, and broadly (i.e., poorly) acted. But it was wonderful stuff anyhow. Mostly fantasy or science fiction in nature, it stretched the imaginations of many a wide-eyed young viewer, and I didn&#8217;t realize how much I missed these shows until just now. I feel sorry for modern-day kids; Saturday mornings these days just suck.<\/p>\n<p>Click on the image to blow it up large and see how many of these characters you can name. The complete roster is below the fold&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nFront row, left to right:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Morgan (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Danger_Island_%28TV_series%29\"><i>Danger Island<\/i><\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Chongo (<i>Danger Island<\/i>)<br \/>\n[Ed. note: I&#8217;ve got to confess, some of these shows are pretty dim in my memory, but I have absolutely <i>zero<\/i> recollection of <i>Danger Island<\/i>. I&#8217;m guessing it didn&#8217;t air in the Salt Lake market. Too bad, because these character s look like exactly the high-adventure pulp stuff I&#8217;ve always grooved on. Pirates and scary tribespeople!]<\/li>\n<li>Isis (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Secrets_of_Isis\"><i>Isis<\/i><\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Jason (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jason_of_Star_Command\"><i>Jason of Star Command<\/i><\/a>)<br \/>\n[Ed. note: I <i>really<\/i> liked <i>Jason of Star Command<\/i>. I believe it probably had the highest budget of any of these shows and was a real slam-bang space opera, complete with stop-motion monsters and even Jimmy Doohan from<i>Star Trek<\/i>!. It didn&#8217;t hurt that my name appeared in the title. It gave me hope that one day I, too, could be a swashbuckling space hero. Jason is holding W1K1, pronounced &#8220;Wiki,&#8221; not to be confused with either this <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Main_Page\">wiki<\/a> or that <a href=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/7\/7c\/Twiki.jpg\">Twiki<\/a>.]<\/li>\n<li>Jonah (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ark_II\"><i>Ark II<\/i><\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Peepo (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Space_Academy\"><i>Space Academy<\/i><\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Shazam (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shazam%21_%28TV_series%29\"><i>Shazam!<\/i><\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Cha-ka, and Rick, Holly, and Will Marshall (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Land_of_the_Lost_%281974_TV_series%29\"><i>Land of the Lost<\/i><\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Second row, left to right:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A pair of Skeleton Men (<i>Danger Island<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>Dragos (<i>Jason of Star Command<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>Enik and his pylon (<i>Land of the Lost<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>A Sleestak (<i>Land of the Lost<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>Dyna Girl and Electra Woman (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Electra_Woman_and_Dyna_Girl\"><i>Electra Woman and Dyna Girl<\/i><\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Billy Batson (<i>Shazam!<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>WildBoy (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bigfoot_And_Wildboy\"><i>Bigfoot and Wildboy<\/i><\/a>)<br \/>\n[Ed. note: I&#8217;m pretty fuzzy on this series as well, but still not the complete blank of <i>Danger Island<\/i>&#8230;]<\/li>\n<li>Queen Medusa (<i>Jason of Star Command<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>Another Sleestak<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Back row, left to right:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A Ghost Man (standing atop The Ark, <i>Danger Island<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>Captain Mu-Tan (standing atop The Ark, <i>Danger Island<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>Grumpy the T-Rex (looking a lot more <i>Jurassic Park<\/i>-y than he actually did on <i>Land of the Lost<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>Bigfoot (<i>Bigfoot and Wild Boy<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>Another Skeleton Man (<i>Danger Island<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>Mentor (in the doorway of the motor home, <i>Shazam!<\/i>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The vehicles, left to right:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jason&#8217;s <i>Starfire<\/i> (<i>Jason of Star Command<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>The Ark (<i>Ark II<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>The &#8220;Open Road&#8221; motor home (<i>Shazam!<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>A Seeker shuttlecraft (<i>Space Academy<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>The Space Academy (duh, <i>Space Academy<\/i>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via Chris Roberson, here&#8217;s an awesome piece of art by a guy named Dusty Abell that probably won&#8217;t mean a damn thing to any of the younger folks out there in InternetLand, but ought to bring a smile to the faces of all us aging thirtysomethings. In case you&#8217;ve forgotten (or never knew them), these [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-glass-teat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}