Uncle Croc's Block - 1975


Uncle Croc's Block was a ferocious lampooning of other children's shows, with Charles Nelson Riley playing the disgruntled titular part, who hated his job as a children's show host.

Also featured were Alfie Wise as his sidekick Mr. Rabbit Ears and Jonathan Harris as the show's director Basil Bitterbottom.

Centered around skits were Uncle Croc and a wide variety of parodied characters such as Captain Klangeroo, Bogey Bear, Steve Exhaustion/The $6.95 Man and Captain Marbles, a play on Filmation's live action Shazam! series.


The very popular Evel Kneievel was also parodied. Koo-koo Kneivel was a wild puppet bird in a giant coo-coo clock, and would occasionally pop out of the clock to introduce a segment in bizarre fashion.

Between these live-action segments were three cartoon shorts: M-U-S-H (Mangy Unwanted Shabby Heroes), an obvious tongue-in-cheek canine version of M*A*S*H; Fraidy Cat a cat down to his last (of 9, of course!) lives; and Wacky and Packy (perhaps a titular allusion to Topps extremely poplular line of stickers), a prehistoric man and his pet pachyderm trapped in modern times.

Unfortunately for Filmation, the ratings were extremely low for Uncle Croc, despite its innovative format, and the series was cut down, then scrapped after a few brief months on the air.

In an attempt to attemtpt to save ratings, Filmation had planned to repackage the repeated Groovie Goolies episodes as a "new" segment, redubbed the "Super Fiends", but the show was shelved before the change could be incorporated.

The popularity of the Goolies and its wild, all out style might well have helped the sagging ratings. The animated segments were featured in the Filmation syndicated package, The Groovie Goolies and Friends, and would also resurface in the home video market in the 80s, but tragically none of the live-action segments have been re-aired or found to this date."

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