The Trivia section in the IMDBlisting for Coronet Blue is interesting (I added paragraph breaks, ‘cause it was a wall o’ text):
I loved Tomfoolery as a kid, so that’s three here so far. I’ve rarely met anyone who remembers that at all.
I also really enjoyed the TV play The Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Dinner which hardly anyone remembers.
a) in Valdosta GA circa 1967-69 in the early hours of Saturday morning, pre-cartoons and just post-test-pattern, don’t recall which network, the day would start with a proto music video. The chorus of the lyrics, and probably song title, were “Space Space a-Go-Go”. The video featured dancers in plasticky-looking costumes. Haven’t ever found a trace of it outside of my own memory.
b) Cereal boxes sometimes used to come with 45 RPM flexible plastic phonograph records. In New Mexico circa 1965 I had one such prize that was a promotion for forest fire awareness; the A side had Alvin and the Chipmunks singing a song about Smokey the Bear in their usual 3-part harmony. (was not the famous Smokey the Bear “dunno why they call him Smokey but I’m sure he deserves the name” song,a different one instead; in the middle of the song, the chipmunks sing the letters “A”, “B”, and “C” while Dave provides the bullet-point narration of the three most important things to do to put your campfire out safely). The B side of the little record was a more grown-up ballad, “The Sigh of the Dying Trees”.
c) For years I could not convince people I had once watched a Hanna-Barbera cartoon called “Top Cat” in a time slot that was later occupied by the Flintstones. (YouTube and Wikipedia etc have rescued me on that one)
When I was a kid I watched a Christopher Columbus mini-series (1985) starring Gabriel Byrne that was 6 hours long. We taped it so I re-watched it several times growing up. Of course those tapes are long gone.
Anyone who has seen it acknowledges it was much better than any other of the Christopher Columbus movies around that time.
It did eventually come out in a DVD, but:
- It was only released for non-US regions and so wouldn’t plan on US DVD players, and
- They chopped out 1.5 hours of the story!
But apparently know one cares so I will probably never see it again.
.
I remember Top Cat.
I remember watching it in prime time on Saturday or Sunday evening when I had chicken pox in the second grade. Usually, though, it was on in the late afternoon on schooldays.
It was Sergeant Bilko with alley cats. 
So do I. My husband’s a fan, and I bought him a DVD of the complete series for his birthday last year.
I grew up in the Dark Ages, before Google and Wikipedia and having the whole panoply of pop culture at one’s fingertips, so I questioned for years whether I had actually seen a short-lived series called Run, Joe, Run, about an Army dog fleeing across the country. In my memory, he was trying to find his master, but Wikipedia tells me he was fleeing a $200.00 bounty put on his head after he was falsely accused of attacking his handler, and that the handler, knowing Joe was innocent, was trying to reunite with him.
No one, and I mean no one, had ever heard of or remembered the show, so it wasn’t until the intertoobz came along that I was sure I wasn’t just imagining the whole thing.
Another 70’s kid show that seemingly I alone recall was called Zoom. I can still recall the silly theme song: " I wanna zoom, I wanna zoom zoom zoom, zoom-zoom, zoom".
Weird, the things that stay in your mind.
My husband and I both remember Zoom fondly. We can even sing the zip code of the address to send mail to Zoom: “Oh-two-one-three-four!”
PBS rebooted the show briefly a few years ago. The reboot was pretty good.
Thanks. That must be it. I had no illusions that I would still like it 41 years later. It’s just that being the only one who remembers it has been bugging me for 84% of my life.
I wouldn’t have thought of Top Cat as being all that obscure. It’s not like it was Quick Draw McGraw, Jabberjaws, or Speed Buggy. Or Laff-a-Lympics. Or The Hillbilly Bears. Or Lippy the Lion.
Don’t remember “Run, Joe, Run” but I definitely remember “Zoom.” I was right in the targeted age group for its first run, and many old episodes are on You Tube - both the 1970s series, and the ca. 2000 reboot.
Around the same time, there was a PBS series called “Inside Out” which we used to watch at school. They were episodes about 15 minutes long where kids were faced with age-appropriate moral dilemmas that were deliberately left unresolved, and then we would have a class discussion about it.
There was also a Saturday-morning show called “Isis”, about a woman who had superpowers that involved her calling upon the goddess Isis and transforming into a female superhero. It was probably awful but we kids loved it.
I vaguely remember Coronet Blue, and how disappointed we were when it was cut off and we didn’t know how the story ended. I think my cousins and I had crushes on Frank Converse.
The Trials of O’Brien. All I remember of it was Peter Falk shooting pool. I’d like to see a few episodes of that.
Oh, another of that ilk: Ruff and Reddy (a cat and dog cartoon). No one I mentioned it to remembered ever seeing it.
I watched Ruff and Ready. It was Hannah-Barbera’s first TV cartoon, before even Huckleberry Hound. Not particularly memorable, though.
*Get set,
get ready,
here come Ruff and Reddy!
They’re tough,
but steady,
here come Ruff and Reddy!
They sometimes have their little spats,
even fight like dogs and cats,
but when they need each other,
that’s when they’re rough and ready!*
Zoom (“Write ZOOM, zee-double-oh-em, Box 430, Boston, Mass. OH two ONE three FOUR! Send it to Zoom!”) was where I learned such games as whistling with crackers in your mouth.
What I remember from Zoom is this (or another version of it that they did):
We discussed this twenty years ago (and why don't you remember that?):Amendment:
They’re tough,
but steady,
always rough and ready!
Long before Vikings, there was Tales of the Vikings:
The kick-ass theme song:
Patrick McGoohan was a member of the cast as well.