I’m 63 years old and I just finished listening to “Puffin Billy”, the theme from Captain Kangaroo on YouTube. I wasn’t expecting it, but by the end, I had tears in my eyes. I was not expecting such a powerful emotional reaction to hearing a children’s TV theme for the first time since I was a kid…
I get a fairly powerful emotional reaction but probably a different one than yours. I found him to be a condescending jackass when I was a little kid. Didn’t like much that was intended as kid’s fare, to be honest. Romper Room sure wasn’t an improvement. I did like Friendly Giant. Go figure.
Wow–after reading the thread title,I immediately started to hum the tune. I had no idea it was still there, buried somewhere in my brain
But now–another important topic:
Am I weird because I never knew why Mr. Green Jeans had that name?
I only saw the show in black and white. And everybody knew that there was only one kind of pants: “blue jeans”.
So obviously, “Greenjeans” was just his last name, like, say, Smith .
I loved the show as a child, and learned a LOT on it.
I can still remember how to spell Massachusetts without looking it up, because of a song on that show.
Once when I was perusing an article on China in the National Geographic there was a picture of a guy fishing with a cormorant. The bird dives for a fish and brings it up without swallowing it because a cord has been tied loosely around it’s neck. On the show there was a story about a Chinese boy who fished that way, and I always thought it couldn’t be real.
Ping-pong balls, carrots, Dancing bear, those two sheepdogs the Captain had for a while,
I watched CK as a child but couldn’t recall a trace of the theme before listening to the Youtube link–which I recognized instantly. (If I had heard the music without context I wouldn’t have been able to name the source if my life depended on it, though. In fact, I swear I’ve heard it somewhere else more recently.)
Not a big fan as a kid. I preferred cartoons. Later, when we got cable, I would watch Chuck McCann and Sandy Becker from NYC ( Didn’t care for Wonderama). The Captain was just too bland.
My wife was a fan, though, and we got a chance to meet him with my daughter when he moved to PBS.
More of a Mr. Greenjeans fan myself. Always liked it when they went down to the barn.
So many books were so firmly driven into my being from that show. Not only the cormorant, but the steamshovel one? Would be interesting to see a list of the books from the show.
And didn’t CK have Tom Terrific?
I also preferred cartoons, but my mom didn’t think them “appropriate.” So I had to switch between Captain Kangaroo when my mom was around, and Ray Rayner when she wasn’t. Not all that easy in the days before remote control! And today’s kids think THEY have it hard!
Still can hear him reading about “the Yaangg see river”, or “the first corner, nice and square”. And the identical Chinese brothers with the remarkable talents.
See, to me this is the Captain “selling out” to modernism. I hated the changes. Maybe at heart I’m really a conservative.:eek:
Of course, maybe it was really me who changed.
Are there no surviving complete episodes? I’d love to see some again, just for fun.