I preferred The Munsters, but among my circle of friends I am the only one.
Which one did you prefer?
Mary Ann.
Bailey
Addams by a mile.
Morticia was hot.
I watched the Munsters for a year or two before I saw the Addams Family, so I always prefred the Munsters. (Both were in syndication by this point.)
As a young kid, I always thought Herman was more likeable than Gomez.
I vote for Weirdly and Creepella Gruesome.
The Munsters was a fine show but the Addams Family (and the later movies) were truly great so it gets the edge. The Addams Family was a lot darker yet still funny and that was something unique. The Munsters was more a straight up theme comedy.
As a kid in the 70s both shows in syndication were a staple of our watching (along with Gilligan’s Island, Star Trek, Hogan’s Heroes etc.). But even as a kid I sort of ‘knew’ there was more to The Addams Family than The Munsters. Munsters was more silly and kid-friendly. Addams had a hip, smart, adult, twistedness to it. The Munsters were very traditional, blue-collar working class (albeit ghouls) while the Addams were wealthy and gleefully eccentric. Sure, The Munsters had a laboratory/dungeon in the basement & a pet dragon under the stairs, but the Addams had more refined horrors like Gomez’s model train set where he would set two trains to collide head-on, but then detonate them with explosives just before they did! Or the way Lurch seemed to always know the real deal by shaking his head and making that worrisome moan whenever they asked him to do something.
Also note how during the 90s and the heyday of the ‘make-every-60s-TV-show-into-a-movie’ phase it was The Addams Family that got picked, not The Munsters (they were too much of a one trick pony).
I enjoyed both shows, but the Addams Family was just better and more intelligently written – I sensed that, even as a child.
Yvonne De Carlo, baby!
No contest. Addams Family. I always thought the Munsters was pretty much a conventional sitcom with the cast dressed up funny. The Addams Family was much more eccentric and even subversive.
It has been said that the Addams family thought that everyone else was like them (altogether ooky), while the Munsters thought that they were like everyone else (just plain folks).
I preferred the Munsters. I recognize the difference between the shows, the Addams Family was more sophisticated humor, Munsters was more basic sitcom stuff. But I was a kid when I watched them, and the Munsters appealed to me more.
I loved both shows, but I’ll give the edge to the Addam Family. But not to the movies. They left me less than overwhelmed. I loved John Astin’s portrayal of Gomez. He always seemed to have a Groucho Marx like attitude about him, cheerily oblivious to people’s opinions of him and his family. Jackie Coogan was a better Fester than Christopher Lloyd. I loved his squeaky voice, and Lloyd always seemed to play the same character, whether it was Doc Brown, Judge Doom, or even Kruge. And Ted Cassidy’s Lurch was the best character ever. Lurch was originally supposed to be silent, but when he ad-libbed “Youuuuu rannnngggg?” he cracked up the crew so much, it was decided to give Lurch more dialogue.
The Addams Family was created by artists who knew exactly what they wanted to do, and how to do it. The Munsters was created by people who looked over those artists’ shoulders and said “Ooh, we should do that too!”, but without understanding just what it was they were doing.
Munsters. I had an Addams Family book when I was a kid, but don’t remember ever actually watching the show.
I was older when I first saw The Addams Family, whereas The Munsters was as much a staple of my childhood as the Adam West Batman.
As my dad puts it, The Munsters were more “user-friendly”–probably inversely related to its relative artistic merit, but also why I find it more enjoyable.
The Addams Family for all the reasons mentioned above.