I am too young to remember Gilligan’s Island in its original run. I saw it on reruns on weekday afternoons in the 1970s and early 1980s, when it was regularly broadcast by local TV stations and could be watched by kids returning home from school. That led me to wonder if children were actually GI’s core audience.

I guess the same situation applies to the Warner Brothers cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s. Children who watched them on weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings didn’t see what the original adult audiences did, which were parodies of contemporary celebrities.