At quitting time, a foreman yanks the tail of a baby pterodactyl, who squawks like a steam whistle.
Sam Slagheap usually serves as Grand Poobah, although others have held the position briefly, including Fred and Barney. However, Slagheap always returns as the leader.
Exiled from his home planet Zetox for inventing a weapon capable of destroying the universe, Gazoo's punishment is to serve prehistoric "dumb-dumbs" Fred and Barney. Invisible to other adults, Gazoo provides questionable advice to his two charges and occasionally reports to his leader, the Great Gazam. The character is somewhat controversial among diehard Flintstones fans as he adds a futuristic element to the otherwise prehistoric cartoon.
Wilma's maiden name is the subject of a continuity error. In the second-season episode "The Entertainer", Wilma's old friend Greta Gravel remembers her as "Wilma Pebble", and in the third-season episode "Dial S for Suspicion", one of Wilma's old boyfriends, calls her "Wilma Pebble". But later episodes and spin-offs confirm her maiden name as "Slaghoople", based on the name of her mother, Pearl Slaghoople. Flintstones writer Earl Kress explained the discrepancy as Hanna-Barbera simply "not caring about the continuity."
In the 1963 episode "Swedish Visitors", the Flintstones take a trip to Jellyrock Park, but the vacation is a disaster with thunderstorms, workmen felling trees to build a new road through the wilderness, and Yogi Bear stealing Fred's picnic basket. "I'm smarter than the average Fred Flintstone," Yogi quips.
Hanna-Barbera was responsible for the famous animated opening sequence of Bewitched, and in 1965, they brought Darrin and Samantha to Bedrock for an animated crossover.
The Flintstones, which debuted in 1960, was the first animated series to hold a prime-time slot on television. It was the most financially successful and longest-running network animated television series for three decades, until The Simpsons, which debuted in 1989, eventually outlasted it.
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