Fraidy Cat (TV series)


Fraidy Cat is a 1975 American children's comedy cartoon show that originally appeared as a segment on Filmation's short-lived ABC series Uncle Croc's Block. 18 episodes were commissioned and planned for inclusion on Uncle Croc's Block; 12 were ultimately made. The remaining six were scrapped due to the show getting removed from Uncle Croc's Block when the latter was shortened to a half-hour. Episodes would be aired in short 6-7 minute story formats.
The premise revolves around a paranoid alley cat who is haunted by his eight past ancestors, all from different time periods. He tries to avoid saying any single-digit number, as doing so will cause one of the corresponding ghosts to appear and make the situation he is in worse. The ghosts depicted include a saber-toothed tiger with a caveman motif and a pet Brontosaurus, a befuddled wizard, a pirate who self-identifies as a buccaneer and habitually steals anything of value, a foppish nobleman and swordsman from the Elizabethan era, a cowboy from the Western frontier, a undertaker who keeps trying to expedite the main character's passing to the afterlife, a fighter pilot from World War I, and an unusually intelligent zoot-suited jive-talking street cat with a beatnik accent who serves as the intellectual of the group.
The show aired in the United States on ABC, Canal+ in France, Junior in Germany, TV2 in Portugal, Super Écran in French-speaking regions of Canada, and RTÉ2 in Ireland. It has also been translated into Spanish, French, Norwegian, and German.

Background

The show stars Fraidy Cat, an unlucky, stuttering, miserable cat who, like all cats, has nine lives, but has used up eight of them and is on his ninth and last life, which he wants to make last the longest.
The show is centered around the fact that as if Fraidy's life was not miserable enough, nearly every time Fraidy inadvertently says out loud any single-digit number, or any word/homonym that correlates to said number, a ghost representing one of his previous lives will appear from the Other Side and mistakenly tend to make things even worse for the hopeless cat.
In each episode, Fraidy gets himself into a predicament caused by his desire for sleep or food, or something else, such as a dog, or another aggressor. This can include ending up into a sketchy town, a junkyard, or a bird shop, and usually has the character inhabiting said area to interact with or harm Fraidy in some sort of action against him. Fraidy always ends up saying a number "one" through "eight" out of pure accident, and each ghost cat corresponding to that number tries to help Fraidy in the situation. Saying "nine" however, summons Cloud Nine, an evil storm cloud whose purpose is to electrocute Fraidy.
The spirits in the series include:
  1. Elafunt is an overweight prehistoric saber-toothed tiger with a caveman motif. He owns a huge pet Brontosaurus named "Ant". Fraidy often uses Ant as a hiding place in his times of need.
  2. Kitty Wizard is a befuddled wizard whose magic wand is often on the wrong setting. He is the most problematic of the ghosts, with his goofing up causing Fraidy more hindering than help.
  3. Captain Kitt is a pirate who is the self-proclaimed "buccaneer's buccaneer". Anything he sees that has value to it or is important he steals, such as keys, and money.
  4. Sir Walter Cat is a foppish Elizabethan nobleman who is also an expert swordsman. He tends to look out for Fraidy the most and is the most loyal of the spirits.
  5. Billy the Kit is a western cowboy with a very loud voice who carries a very problematic lasso. His name is a play on Billy the Kid.
  6. Jasper Catdaver is an undertaker who is Fraidy's cousin and prefers to expedite his passing to the Other Side, though not out of spite. Ironically, despite his nature as an undertaker, Jasper is the least troublesome of the ghosts.
  7. Captain Eddie Kittenbacker is a pilot who is a very erratic flier, usually resulting in his plane flying upside-down or sideways. His name is a play on Eddie Rickenbacker, a WWI fighter ace.
  8. Hep Cat is a zoot-suited jive-talking street cat with a beatnik accent. He seems to be the smartest of the lives, often providing actual assistance to Fraidy.
  9. Whilst accidentally uttering any of the aforementioned numbers gives Fraidy a ghost, saying the number nine materializes Cloud Nine, a malevolent anthropomorphic deific number nine made from a storm cloud. Cloud Nine is always seen trying to electrocute him with his lightning bolts and he can regenerate if he mistakenly electrocutes himself.

Episodes

The twelve existing episodes listed were made before the cancellation of Uncle Croc's Block. The episodes listed after "A Semi-Star is Born" were in production and eventually scrapped after Uncle Croc's Block was shortened to a half-hour, but excerpts of synopses for two of the scrapped episodes, "Fraidy Gone Fishin'" and "Double Trouble", have turned up in online eBay listings containing storyboards for said episodes.

Production

Fraidy Cat is one of the few original series to be produced by Filmation. Among the three cartoon segments released on Uncle Croc's Block, Fraidy Cat had the longest continued existence, with the Frightfully Funny Collection Volume 2 DVD set being the last release to officially contain all of the episodes, released in 2008 by BCI.
The series was supposed to conclude in 1976, with six more episodes commissioned by the network left to produce. ABC's Uncle Croc's Block was shortened to a half-hour time slot and, consequently, ultimately cancelled. Two of the segments, Fraidy Cat and Wacky and Packy, were cut from the shortened episodes, and only episodes of M-U-S-H were shown from then on. The remaining six episodes never made it past the writing and storyboard stage, as Filmation chose to pocket the money rather than finish production. There is still debate as to whether the show has twelve or eighteen episodes.
After Uncle Croc's Block ceased production and was cancelled, Fraidy Cat was later syndicated as part of the 1977 Groovie Goolies and Friends series, along with the other segments such as Wacky and Packy ''and M-U-S-H, alongside numerous other Filmation properties.
In 1995, Hallmark acquired Filmation, and a mass conversion of NTSC to PAL of the master tapes sped the tapes up by 0.5%, which ultimately resulted in nearly every existing copy of the masters being disposed of by Hallmark, supposedly because the company hated Filmation's library. Most of the original NTSC versions of Fraidy Cat'' are on many public domain DVDs. All surviving NTSC episodes were ripped from VHS tapes, with three episodes being exceptions. The original NTSC master tapes of the show are considered lost media.

Home media

In 1985, Fraidy Cat saw an officially licensed video release by The Video Collection in the United Kingdom. After the show was released on VHS in the US, numerous low-end tapes of the show surfaced in the American video market, many without the proper licensing information seen on authorized tapes.

Status of copyright

Contrary to popular belief, Fraidy Cat is not in the public domain. Instead, an unknown buyer, who had bought aged prints of the show, had erroneously claimed that the show was in the public domain. Fraidy Cat ended up being released on several DVDs without Filmation's sanction. In spite of this, Fraidy Cat became the first Filmation property to be released on DVD, officially or not.
Several unofficial DVDs of the show incorrectly attribute the name of one of the unproduced episodes, "This Cat for Hire", to the fifth episode, "Puss 'n' Boats". This error has still not been corrected to this day.
Hallmark had owned the rights to the show, which were then passed onto Sony. Now, the show resides under the copyright of NBCUniversal in their DreamWorks Classics division, who are said to currently own the Filmation catalogue. Fraidy Cat is currently streaming on Tubi unofficially, but the show has yet to properly resurface on streaming services and home video.