Ken's Gateway Scares - Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles

And so the Impossibles, ordinary singing group, become the Impossibles crimefighters in the war against crime…

There is a joy and beauty in the timelessness of cartoons to a child. By the time I was growing up in the 70’s, I had no idea that so many of the programs I loved and treasured had actually come and gone before I was even born. One such cartoon treasure is Hanna Barbera’s Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles. The beauty of these Saturday morning cartoons is that they made the transition to afternoon cartoon series seamlessly. And these were beautiful cartoons that walked the line between horror, hero, and humor so very well.

Frankenstein Jr. was the story of a father and son scientist team who create a super crime fighting robot. The boy Buzz Conroy (Dick Beals) would control and “energize” the powerful robot (Frankie, played by Ted Cassidy) with the use of his energizer ring, while his father Professor Conroy (John Stephenson) would monitor their “demon detector” and remotely figure out how to fight and defeat the demon du jour. Yes folks there were monsters on Saturday morning all the time for our action hero’s to fight. No wonder I love them so much today.

The Impossibles were a singing group named the Impossibles who could transform into a crime fighting superhero group called the Impossibles. (Ironically in pre-production they were originally going to be the Incredibles…and Pixar used that name to great success much later.) The trio Multi-Man (Don Messick), Fluid-Man (Paul Frees), and Coil-Man (Hal Smith) were aptly named based on their unique power. Multi-Man made identical copies of himself, Coil-Man (or Coilly as they often called him) had a spring like torso and could super stretch, and Fluid-man could take liquid form. They received their orders through a video screen hidden in Coil-man’s guitar, from the mysterious “Big D” (Paul Frees)

Some beautiful things about this series…there was no origin story for any of these characters, it is simply enough to know that Frankenstein Jr. was created by Buzz and his father, and that the Impossibles just have their powers. We never see the Impossibles transform, they just jump into their flying car and off they go to fight crime. The colors and character design are bright and beautiful and really represent the 70’s Hanna Barbera fingerprint style so well. The stories all started and wrapped in typical 7 minute segment style allowing me to play and concentrate on other toys while I still enjoyed them on my friend and nurturer (the T.V.)

There are also a lot of joyful unknown discoveries digging through my childhood memories and researching these articles. For instance if you read last weeks article about Adventures Through Inner Space, you might have spotted the fact that Paul Frees was the source of a lot of childhood terror for me as the narrator of the journey into the mighty microscope, and he played multiple roles in the Impossible series as both hero and villain. And Frankie was voiced by Ted Cassidy who you might recall from my Addams Family TV Series Article, played the lovable giant Lurch in that series.