In my current line of work as a grocery store clerk, I have lots of time in my day with which to ponder the mascots used on various food products. While restocking the cereal aisle today I was moving a bunch of cases of Cocoa Pebbles and Fruity Pebbles around, and I noticed how prominent Fred Flintstone is on the box. It occured to me that between that, and Flintstones vitamins, and Flintstones fruit snacks, that makes at least three kinds of products, targeted towards young kids, which use as their mascots characters from a TV show that went off the air close to half a century ago.
Is the Flintstones something that’s still RELEVANT to preteens these days? It was old-hat when I was a kid in the late '80s, and by the time I started outgrowing kid’s cartoons the only place you could watch it was on Cartoon Network. According to the programming guide on my DVR, they don’t even air it anymore either - the only match I found for “Flintstones” was an airing of the 1994 John Goodman/Rick Moranis movie that is better left forgotten, so the only way a kid would even see it is if their parents bought the DVD or rented it from Netflix (they don’t stream it).
I guess the question is twofold;
Are pre-teen kids these days familiar with the Flintstones and do they watch it? Parents, do you seek out the Flintstones and show it to your kids?
Are the products I mentioned above really profiting off the Flintstones license at this point?
I think the Flintsones are run on Boomerang now. I don’t think Boomerang is carried on too many cable systems, but people with Dish Network or DirecTV should be able to pick it up. Fox TV announced that Seth MacFarlane will be remaking the Flintstones.
By the way, the movie with Goodman and Moranis rocked.
The Flintstones wasn’t a children’s show in the beginning. In any case, however, the characters have taken on iconic status for adults and children alike–kind of like Betty Boop–simply because they’re animated and prevalent, so “relevance” isn’t really that important for marketing things like vitamins. Is Tony the Tiger “relevant” to anybody at all?
Isn’t there a new version in the pipeline? One by Seth MacFarlane, who originally started out as a Hanna Barbara animator, and has promised to be faithful to the type of humor of the old series?
This exact thing occurred to me just last week when I was standing, with my kids (5 & 8), looking at the kids’ vitamins. I asked them if they’d ever heard of The Flinstones and they hadn’t. No idea. And they are totally in the know about all the popular cartoons.
One cartoon that is still relevant to them is Scooby Doo, which I watched with them all summer, mainly because I loved Scooby Doo when I was a kid and also because they now use Ramones songs in their soundtrack .
My kids know of the Flintstones and Jetsons but don’t look for them, but they both love Scooby Doo. For Scooby they love the early ones from when I was a kid and the recent ones from 2000+. The newest series is one of their favorites.
They are also big fans of Looney Tunes and even the new Looney Tune show. My son likes Tom & Jerry.
I doubt it. I used to, when I was a kid. It was on TBS. As someone said earlier, I think the only station that carries it today is Boomerang, a premium channel. The fact that the source material, The Honeymooners, isn’t seen as much either these days takes some of the perspective away, too.
My kids LOVE Tom & Jerry, too. My mom did not allow me to watch that when I was a kid because she thought it was too violent. They also watch Bugs Bunny and they have a four or five disc DVD collection of classic Looney Tunes that they like. Yes, my kids do watch too much tv.
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