This, basically. There were a gazillion sitcoms back then, and The Munsters was just another one with the gimmick of “family of monsters”.
It seemed like the Addams Family had unique monsters as well as traditional ones. However, the creators of the Munsters just seemed to have gone down a checklist: vampire, werewolf, witch, etc., plus they threw in the poor “normal” girl who was there to show just how goofy the rest of the family was.
I’ve always preferred the Addams Family. For the most part, the stories made sense in the Addams Family universe. The Munsters insulted my intelligence, even when I was a kid, and it relied far too heavily on idiot plots, and the writers were pretty lazy.
We’d had a big collection of New Yorker cartoons at home as long as I could remember. So I had met the Addams Family long before the TV show. And I loved the movies…
That sums it up for me too. I haven’t seen either of them in decades, and I would probably pick up on some more subtle humour in the Addams now that I missed as a kid, but at the time the Munsters were more fun.
You know, I like The Addams Family quite well, but I think it has an overblown reputation for quirkiness and subversiveness. They recycled a lot of gags. More of the gags than you perhaps remember accurately were just as juvenile as anything on The Munsters. Try watching 2 or three episodes of The Addams Family back-to-back and note just how quickly things start to seem not quite as clever as you remember them.
Now, you want real subversive, surreal humor from the '60s, watch some Green Acres.
The appeal of the Addams Family was the characters, which is why it could be adapted to a fine movie with a new and enjoyable cast. The appeal of the Munsters was the actors; without Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis, there’s nothing there.
They were, but you’re right that they recycled the gags all the time. Someone would go into the house and do a double take at the shark with the leg in it, or the paintings. Then Kitty would show up and they’d vanish out the door. Gomez would blow up a model train. Morticia would feed Cleopatra.
Still there were plenty of good, weird gags in the show (I was a fan of the cartoons before the show aired). Most memorable was “Do you mind if I smoke?”
Definitely Addam’s Family. I had a couple of old books of the original comics when I was a kid, and loved those before I saw either (syndicated) show, so I was predisposed toward the Addams. The Munsters always struck me as a cheap knock-off.
