CARTOONS: Cartoons That Never Should Have Been: #2: Fonz & The Happy Days Gang

I’ve been grabbing a lot of episodes of “cartoons that never should have been” lately. Not for watching, but mostly for having. And laughing at. And fast-forwarding through. And getting a feel of how bad they were. I present you with screenshots from “The Fonz & The Happy Days Gang”(1980) (imdb).

Here in the opening credits, they make a reference to Jumping The Shark, a TV idiom popularized by the show and discussed extensively (for every show ever) at JumpTheShark.com. Only instead of jumping over a shark on a motorcycle, Fonz & The Gang are in a hot air balloon which inexplicably disappears. As they fall towards the sharks, a plane comes and saves them. And no, I don’t get it:

But watch the theme song for yourself to truly experience the horror:

Apparently, the series is more inspired by Dr. Who than by the original Happy Days, because they are stuck in a time traveling ship. Thus, none of these “adventures” happen in the setting of Happy Days, the inspiration for this series:

The time-travel effect could even be construed as a pathetic rip-off of the Dr. Who effect:

Here they are outside the timeship. Fonz elbows it to get the door open. I believe this is something he did in Happy Days to get the jukebox going. Notice his dog friend below…Of course he is played by Frank Welker, like every animated animal character in the last 30 years (from Odie to The Simpsons to Gargoyles, his filmography on IMDB is over 550 entries!)…

Frank should get a lifetime achievement award. He is way more talented than Henry Winkler, who voiced The Fonz in this series — as well as played him in the original Happy Days.

In the time-honored tradition of annoyingly anthromorphosized animalian sidekicks played by Frank Welker, the dog copies Fonz, coming his hair in unison (not that it’s Frank Welker’s fault):

Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyy… Sit on it:

His pathetic gang:

Yup. We definitely don’t need this. And yet, the networks disagreed. This piece of trash lasted *two* 13-episode seasons.

Oh, the humanity.

See Cartoons That Never Should Have Been, part 1 HERE.

(NOTE: Images are actually 720×480, not 500×333. Right-click and view the original image to see it in it’s full “glory”.)