My boyfriend and I recently came across this show airing very late at night on TV Land - Lidsville. Now I’m no TV show expert, and most shows probably deserve a second chance but all I have to say is WHAT THE HECK is this?
It’s about a boy who ends up in this world popupated by giant hats. Seriously, people walk around in giant foam hat costumes. All different kinds of hats. It’s disturbingly twisted. And there’s an evil green guy who rides around in a squashed top hat trying to snatch the boy or something - I was too busy laughing at the weirdness of it all to actually figure out a plot. Plus, it seems like all of the dialogue is dubbed over so half of the time the hat’s mouths don’t even move when they’re talking. It was made in the 70s so I guess some weirdness is to be expected. And to top it all off, the kid has a horrid British-type accent and brown pants that don’t even reach his ankles.
Yup. Part of the weird and wonderful world of Sid and Marty Krofft–two twisted geniuses who warped a whole generation of Saturday Morning TV viewers.
They also did H.R. Pufnstuf (about a kid who ends up on an island where everything (rocks, trees, houses) is alive…see there’s this witch who wants the kid’s magic flute and the mayor is a dragon who sounds like Jim Neigbors…um…
Th’ two shows also crossed over.
They also did “Land of the Lost” (the first season of which had some great SF writers doing the scripts), “The Bugaloos” (about a group of insects that were pop-stars and Martha Raye (as Bonita Bizarre) as an evil record producer who wanted to sign them up.
They also did the fondly remembered “Sid And Marty Krofft Variety Show” (not quite the right title) which included segments like “Dr. Shrinker” (he’s a mad scientist who shrinks people…could you guess?) “Wonderbug” (a talking, magical VW Bug) and the hormone-carbonating “Electro-Woman and Dyna-Girl” (yowza! Spandex and boobs!)
That page leaves off the last bit of the theme song. After the “falling and falling” verse, it switches to :
*
Lidsville is the koo-koo-kookiest
Lidsville is the ki-ki-kickiest
Lidsville is the guh-guh-grooviest
Lidsville is the living end!
If you get a chance to go, go there
You’ll be glad you did, 'cause…
Everybody who goes to Lidsville really flips his lid
(Hoodoo laughs and says) “How’s that for a topper?”
*
Good God.
I did that from memory. I’m not sure whether that’s pathetic or impressive.
I remember all of those from my childhood. The Bugaloos was the first and I only barely remember it. They talked in British accents but I was too young to know what an accent was and I couldn’t figure out why they spoke so strangely.
You see there was a magician who performed at a magic show. This boy wanted to figure out how the magician did his tricks so he snuck into the dressing room and picked up the magician’s top hat. Then things got a little weird and the hat grew to an enormous size. The kid fell inside of the giant hat and floated for a while until he ended up in an alternate reality where hats are alive and take on the personality of the type of hat they are. The magician lives in the alternate reality but he is a powerful and malevolent, but incompetent, wizard.
Not sure why the kid would have a British accent. He’s Butch Patrick, who was at that time attempting to salvage the disintegrating remains of his child-actor career by trying to become a teen crush idol, a gambit which failed horribly.
He is, today, best remembered as Eddie Munster. If he’s British, it’s news to me.
Yea, I saw this, Sigmund and the sea monsters and H.R Pufnstuf for the first time last night on tvland. All three of these shows were incredibly weird, but for some reason I couldn’t stop watching. What I want to know is how people took them the first time around. I did some searching and found an article that the Onion wrote on an adult still having nightmares Lidsville*, so I’m assuming that a lot people thought that the show was at least slightly creepy during it’s first run right?
*I know that the onion isn’t a real news source, but some of their articles are based on stuff that people can relate to. I doubt we’d see many jokes about people being scarred for life by the Flintstones or something.
He didn’t have an accent, IIRC. I think he’s being confused with Jimmy, from H.R. Pufnstuf who was played by um…The Artful Dodger from OLIVER! (Jack Wilde?).
Heck yes. As a small child in the early 1970s, I was both fascinated and terrified by most of the Kroft stuff, but especially Lidsville. It was one of those things where I hated it, but I couldn’t look away. The opening sequence, of the kid falling into a giant hat, is burned into my memory. Just seeing the thread title gave me the creeps.
I saw this for the first time last night and have to say I was traumatised by the akward pubescentness of Butch Patrick. (Gah! The Peter Brady hair!) Luckily the episode required him to slick back his hair (to become the great Whizzo) and I was able to revert to my quasi-pedophilic Butch Patrick widow’s peak lust.
There was also a line where he said “Wait until I whip out my big one!” and I nearly fell off my chair laughing.
I was surprisingly amused by Charles Nelson Reilly.
I watched about 5 minutes of the following show (Sigmund and the Sea Monster) and nearly died of boredom. I might tune in again to Lidsville & the original H.R. Puffinstuff, but Sigmund won’t be getting a second look from me.
(Be sure to check out Cecil’s column about how the McDonaldland characters are thinly-veiled ripoffs of the H.R. Puffinstuff characters!)
Another kid in the 70s here. I remember avidly watching Lidsville and, for some reason, loving Tonsillini the tenor top hat most of all. And I saw them all in black-and-white, at that, because we didn’t get a color TV until 1978, so the colors! the colors! were lost on me and a lot of other kids. Color TVs were pretty expensive and most people didn’t have them then. Pop culture in general, however, and kids programming (of which there was a lot less than there is now–maybe an hour or two on weekday afternoons, the rest only on Saturday mornings) was a lot more colorful with big cheerful fat letters and Peter Max graphics. Someday, if I think you’re ready to handle it, we will tell you of the clothes we wore–but, grasshopper, not yet.
You have to put it in context–there was no anime yet, also no VCRs, so it was a ritual of Saturday mornings to watch these shows, that one time. We didn’t know from special effects or good voice acting so we just took them at face value. I remember thinking Sigmund was a wimp, but otherwise I enjoyed all of the shows mentioned and now have their theme songs running thru my head. Thanks a bunch.
There were murmers among the drug generation at the time about these shows. I can’t say for sure but I do know watching them under the influence of a certain leafy substance made them all that much better.
Oh yeah, Lidsville! Takes me back. I remember a crossover episode where Witchiepoo from H.R. Puffenstuff was on there. I was not happy about that. I was little and I was *really afraid * of Witchiepoo.
Girl Next Door is right - there was a cross over episode. Witchiepoo and the Wizard give fake lonely hearts club applications, meet and fall in love.
[sub] Embarrassing admission: I have all of HR Puffinstuff, including the movie, on video. Plus other Sid and Marty Krofft stuff, including the episode of Lidsville mentioned above. Saw Lidsville this morning for the first time. Not good. However, Bugaloos is worse. Bleeech [/sub]
I watched, and liked, Lidsville when I was a little kid; but I didn’t think it was as good as H.R. Pufnstuf* or The Bugaloos. (I totally had a crush on “Joy”, played by Caroline Ellis.)
What did kids think when these shows were first aired? Kids liked the colours (sorry, Mehitabel), the frenetic action, the music (which was kinds rockin’ – check out *Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits *), and the imaginative settings. We all wanted to go to Living Island or Lidsville where things were so much more interesting than at home.
And they were just the shows to watch whilst eating a big bowl of Freakies
