The Hardy Boys Saturday mourning cartoon
 

Here's an obscure Filmation cartoon that aired on ABC from 1969 to 1971 based (rather loosely) on the Hardy Boys books. It's never been *officially* released on DVD or VHS, although 2 DVD's (one with 5 episodes, and another with 10) have popped up at toy conventions and online. Seems like this would make an interesting preservation project ;)

The basic premise of the show turned the Hardy Boys into a rock band, which is used as a front to investigate crimes. The group consisted of Joe and Frank Hardy (Joe being the blond/brown haired one, Frank being the black haired guy), Pete Jones (the African American), Chet ("Chubby") Morton (guess), and Wanda-Kay (once again, take a wild guess). The show is notable for being the first cartoon to ever feature a regular Black character, but other than that it's just the bastard child of "Scooby Doo" (which ran in the same timeslot) and "The Archie Show". Each episode consisted of two mysteries based on the books, plus a music video that played in between.

View at your own risk. The "Mourning" part of the thread title isn't a typo[xx(]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNS6HhtElLo (intro)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfJrB7IQmnM (a music video that played between the two mysteries)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA0mkvmEHsA (a clip of an episode as well as the outro)

That's just crazy campy. :)

It reminds me of the Archies, mixed with Jabberjaw (instead of Scooby).
I'm guessing those clips came from 16mm reels.
Those Youtube clips actually don't look very rough. I wonder how it compares to the DVDs?

I've seen ads for this show in my late 60's Archie comics.

Actually, the guy who uploaded the clips said that he bought a DVD of the show at a toy convention several years ago. They appear to be sourced from a VHS which was copied from a film reel (whether it was a telecine reel or some rare 16mm release I'm not sure :confused: ). He says he had to filter them quite a bit before he uploaded them.

I took a little stab at trying to clean up one of the clips myself. However, the audio/video quality was too low to really do much with it :(

Filtered version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erQss-3NlfI
Original version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfJrB7IQmnM

Well, I took another stab at trying to filter a clip, and I think I did a way better job this time :)

Original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMNk3Sryz5c

Filtered video is in the attachment box.

Pretty catchy song. Show looks interesting.

I need to look at this when I get a bit more free time.
Audio isn't an issue for me, even when it's rough. It's generally fixable in some way.

Found some!
http://shop.toonarific.com/product.php?productid=16283
It's probably from the same set as the YT videos, and probably super crap. I'd be willing to give this a shot sometime. Anyone else?

@ shop.toonarific.com

I realize some of those shows/episodes/specials are rare, but given that it's low quality homemade bootlegs, that person is a real ***. Some of the DVDs are $99 each, which is ridiculous. He's not a collector, or trying to help other collectors, he's a profiteering opportunist. Those are the kind of people who really piss me off. He and his wife have been around for many years (mid/late 90s), and I remember complaints about them as far back as the newsgroup era.

I really hope one or you will be able to pursue this venture and make some kind of a set of this show. Please keep us informed on the progress! I'd absolutely LOVE to work something out to get a copy of this! I recently met the guy who played Frank (well, more accurately, Frank when the band was singing/playing) and would love to give him a copy of this!

In case anyone is interested in a glimpse of what the members of the Hardy Boys BAND looked like...here ya go! (At least I hope I did this right...)

http://reedkailing.com/userfiles/ima...omophoto_a.JPG

Frank (Reed Kailing) is the good looking guy in the center. Reed was also a member of several other bands including my all time favorite The Grass Roots.

Someone have episodes of the show to upload somewhere ?

Has this group pretty much died since LS had the stroke?

I wish. Never saw it, but it sounds interesting. I forget his name off-hand, but there's a 16mm print collector who dumped to VHS (then DVD), and I think he may have at least 4 episodes.

Do yourself a favor, and avoid scam sites claiming to have the complete series.

Somewhat. It's a mix of health...

...but also simply some progression of the hobby. When this site started back in 1999, we didn't really have DVD box sets, and the best VHS releases were from Columbia House. From about 1999 to 2003, too many hobbyists were creating terrible VCDs that were worse than the VHS tapes -- and that's the reason I got involved here, to raise the quality bar. And I succeeded -- better homebrew sets, locating rare/OOP, seeking shows from overseas. For at least a decade, we had an active community.

Now everybody has Netflix (or Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Apple TV, etc), and a bottomless pit of shows to watch. More shows than they can watch in their lifetime, watching 24/7/365. Rarely does anybody seek out rare shows anymore, they just watch whatever is on their Netflix playlist.

I have some ideas to align the site with the times -- as well as better align it with the name "TVPast" -- but I just lack the time and energy to do it. For now. I do want to at least touch base with all members on a more regular basis, something I got away from some time back.

It didn't help that both a co-admin, and a mod, disappeared some years ago.