Friday, May 18, 2007

Jonny Quest was homeschooled!


As a kid, I loved the old Jonny Quest cartoon. Recently, I've found that you can watch old episodes on the internet for free here.




Today I watched the very first epidose. I was delighted to realize that Jonny Quest was homeschooled.

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Here's a little info from Wikipedia.

Jonny Quest (often referred to as The Adventures of Jonny Quest) was a science fiction American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, and created and designed by comic book artist Doug Wildey, about the adventures of a young boy who accompanies his father on extraordinary adventures.


I was surprised to learn this little factoid:

Jonny Quest first aired on September 18, 1964 on the ABC network, and was an almost instant success, both critically and ratings-wise. It was canceled after one season, not because of poor ratings, but because each episode of the show went over budget.


I was sad to here that there are only 26 original episodes. I also didn't realize that it was so controversial.

Saturday morning reruns and controversy

Reruns of the show were broadcast on various networks’ Saturday morning lineups beginning in 1967. On Saturday morning, Jonny Quest became one of the main targets of parental watchdog groups such as Action for Children's Television (ACT). With its multiple on-screen deaths, murder attempts, uses of firearms and deadly weapons, and tense moments, Jonny Quest was decried as the epitome of what was wrong with Saturday morning cartoons, regardless of the fact that it indeed was not an original Saturday morning cartoon. The reruns were taken off the air in 1972, but returned to Saturday morning, in edited form, periodically afterwards.


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5 comments:

Idaho Dad said...

One of the most-played DVD sets in our house is Jonny Quest. My son has literally worn out the packaging. The show was way ahead of its time in terms of action and plot. Parts of it are so campy, though, but that's from an adult perspective.

Chris Fritz said...

For something interesting, you can read about a couple of audio censorships from later runnings of the show, changes which carried over to the DVD release.

By the way, is that proper use of the word factoid? I see it used improperly a lot, and used it imporperly myself before I looked it up in a dictionary nly to learn t has the opposite meaning I thought (meaning something is not a fact).

Janine Cate said...

I thought a factoid was a little know fact. Hmmm.

Chris Fritz said...

Yeah, that's what I thought a factoid was, until I read in a dictionary that it's (basically) false information repeated enough that it's widely held as true.

If you look up the suffix "oid" in the dictionary, it means resembling something. A "humanoid" resembles a human, but is not one. A "factoid" resembles a fact, but is not one.

Its meaning is being changed by misused, however: "However, CNN and other sources have taken to treating the '-oid' as if it were a mere diminutive, and using the term to mean 'trivial but true fact.'"

For good or for bad, our language is ever-changing.

(By the way, I enjoy reading your blog very much!)

Sherry said...

JQ was one of my favorites when I was a kid. All those adventures he had--how fun and exciting! And well, of course, he was home schooled on the road. I hadn't thought about it before, so thanks for that.