The most cursed crossover in TV history: The Thing from Marvel meets... Flintstones? They never actually meet.
6.060 minSeason 1 • Episode 26
LatestBenjy and his friends attend Centerville's annual inventors show where they meet the absent-minded Fenwick Twilly (Miss Twilly's uncle) who unveils his gigantic vacuum cleaner Supervac, which sucks everything in sight and destroys all the other inventions during its rampage.
Fred and Barney Meet The Thing is a 60-minute Saturday morning animated package show produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions from September 8, 1979 to December 1, 1979 on NBC. It contained the following segments: ⁕The New Fred and Barney Show ⁕The Thing Despite the title, the two segments remained separate and did not crossover with one another. Fred, Barney and the Thing were only featured together during the show's opening title sequence and in brief bumpers between segments. The unusual combination of a Marvel superhero and The Flintstones was possible because, at this time, Marvel Comics owned the rights to several Hanna-Barbera franchises and were, in fact, publishing comic books based upon them; The Flintstones was one of these. For the 1979-80 season, the series was expanded to ninety-minutes with the addition of The New Shmoo episodes and retitled Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo.
Production
The audacious lie of that title card
Writing
Zero crossover episodes in a crossover show
Creators
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joseph Barbera, William Hanna
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Marvel's 1970s licensing deal let them publish Flintstones comics, which somehow birthed this televised Frankenstein.
This format—two unrelated shows stitched together—was common for syndication, but the misleading 'Meet' title was uniquely shameless.
No ratings yet
Sign in to join the discussion — comments are spoiler-gated to your watch progress.
Discussion starters
US
