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| - After “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” ended in 1970, the series was syndicated in half-hour form as “The Banana Splits And Friends Show.” The syndicated series consisted of 125 half-hour episodes. These combined “Banana Splits” episodes with those of other Hanna-Barbera cartoon series (“Atom Ant,” “Secret Squirrel,” “The New Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures Of Gulliver”). (“Atom Ant” was supported by “Precious Pupp” and “The Hillbilly Bears,” and “Secret Squirrel” featured “Squiddly Diddly” and “Winsome Witch.”) Aside from having been produced by the same studio, these series originally were unrelated to “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” (except for “The Hillbilly Bears,” whose cartoons were repeated during Season 2). The syndicated series included 36 half-hour episo
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| abstract
| - After “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” ended in 1970, the series was syndicated in half-hour form as “The Banana Splits And Friends Show.” The syndicated series consisted of 125 half-hour episodes. These combined “Banana Splits” episodes with those of other Hanna-Barbera cartoon series (“Atom Ant,” “Secret Squirrel,” “The New Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures Of Gulliver”). (“Atom Ant” was supported by “Precious Pupp” and “The Hillbilly Bears,” and “Secret Squirrel” featured “Squiddly Diddly” and “Winsome Witch.”) Aside from having been produced by the same studio, these series originally were unrelated to “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” (except for “The Hillbilly Bears,” whose cartoons were repeated during Season 2). The syndicated series included 36 half-hour episodes derived from the first season of “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” (essentially the first eighteen hours cut into half-hours, with a couple minutes edited from each one). The thirteen Season 2 episodes were excluded from the package, and indeed have not been shown since 1970 (perhaps because all the cartoon segments and “Danger Island” chapters were repeats), but eight brief (ten to fifteen seconds long) clips of the Banana Splits scenes were edited into the “Atom Ant,” “Secret Squirrel” and “Gulliver” episodes to introduce the various cartoon segments, repeating throughout the series (curiously, other than the opening title sequence, the Banana Splits characters did not appear in the “Huckleberry Finn” episodes at all; those episodes even retained their original closing credits). A few more Season 2 clips surfaced in the 1995 special, “Saturday Morning Cartoons Greatest Hits” (during the music video of “The Tra La La Song” performed by Liz Phair and Material Issue). The repackaging of these series as part of the syndicated "Banana Splits And Friends Show" has led to some confusion over the years, with some viewers insisting, for instance, that "Huck Finn" was a segment on "The Banana Splits" show. Actually, this was not unlike other syndicated packages mixing episodes of more than one series together (the Filmation cartoons "The New Adventures Of Gilligan" and "Lassie's Rescue Rangers" were not originally part of "The Groovy Goolies" either.) Nevertheless, the inclusion of five different series in the syndicated "Banana Splits And Friends" package not only padded out the episode number count, but also worked well for weekday scheduling; in Chicago, WFLD-Channel 32 aired “Atom Ant” on Monday, “Secret Squirrel” on Tuesday, “Banana Splits Adventures” on Wednesday, “Huckleberry Finn” on Thursday, and “Gulliver” on Friday. Other stations aired the episodes in sequence with, for example, all the “Secret Squirrel” episodes followed by all the “Atom Ant” episodes (as cable superstation WGN did in the early 1990s). By 1980, Worldvision Enterprises was offering the various series to stations separately, and also offered a choice of a half-hour or one-hour version of the "Banana Splits" episodes (but still only the Season 1 shows). In the mid-1980s, WPWR-TV in Chicago carried the “Atom Ant” and “Secret Squirrel” episodes (only), usually airing them under the “Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel” title (with the Banana Splits titles and bumpers left out), but sometimes under the “Banana Splits And Friends” title as well. As aired on Cartoon Network and Boomerang, “The Banana Splits And Friends Show” today consists solely of the 36 “Banana Splits Adventure Hour” cutdowns. The various cartoons originally featured on the "Atom Ant" and "Secret Squirrel" shows have periodically appeared on the Cartoon Network and Boomerang channels, sometimes including the original "Atom Ant" and "Secret Squirrel" show openings and closings (both of which were also included in early 1980s home video compilations released by Worldvision Home Video). One "Gulliver" episode ("The Forbidden Pool") appeared with its original opening and closing (even including the ABC "in color" opening logo) during the WGN cable run of "The Banana Splits And Friends Show" in 1990-1991 ("The Adventures Of Gulliver" subsequently has appeared from time to time on Cartoon Network and Boomerang with its original opening and closing intact). Boomerang also has shown episodes of "The New Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn," but those showings have not included the opening titles (any opening titles, in fact).
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