Flintstones Theme Edited

[howilu]

Anyone notice on some of the early syndicated reruns and NBC rerun prints that the Flintstones theme was edited? After the line "Let's ride with the family down the street", the line "through the courtesy of Fred's two feet" was cut.

That was one thing I noticed when I use to watch the Flintstones reruns on Channel 5 in New York. Anyone else notice that over the years on other stations?

[stevea]

I hadn't noticed that edit, but the Flintstones openings and closings in syndication are heavily altered compared to the originals.

The worst alteration, which affects all the Hanna-Barbera prime time cartoons of that era, is the substitution of generic closing credits, which don't show the voice credits of each individual episode. This may have made it easier to produce color prints, since many of the original ABC network broadcasts were in black and white.

[Wiseguy2]

Originally Posted by howilu

Anyone notice on some of the early syndicated reruns and NBC rerun prints that the Flintstones theme was edited? After the line "Let's ride with the family down the street", the line "through the courtesy of Fred's two feet" was cut.

That was one thing I noticed when I use to watch the Flintstones reruns on Channel 5 in New York. Anyone else notice that over the years on other stations?

I've seen those too, but I don't recall whether it was network Saturday morning reruns or syndicated broadcasts. It's worth noting however that the line was only removed in the audio. The video was still full length so the theme song ended too soon (with the sound of Dino's head popping through the car top also too soon) and the last few video seconds were silent. Also I think these are the same openings which had a ©1966 notice in the opening credits (shown when Fred is clocking out from work, which wasn't shown on actual 1966 episodes).