Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles
Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. It premiered on September 10, 1966 on CBS, and ran on Saturday mornings.
Characters and overview
The program contained two segments, which each served as a middle ground between Hanna-Barbera's traditional early output and its superhero-based late-1960s cartoons. Each episode would feature two segments with The Impossibles, and Frankenstein Jr. in between.Frankenstein Jr.: Taking place in Civic City, boy scientist Buzz Conroy and his father Professor Conroy fight supervillains with the aid of a powerful heroic robot named "Frankenstein Jr.". Buzz built "Frankie" and activated him through an energy ring. Frankenstein Jr. appears to be reminscient of the anime character Tetsujin 28-go.The Impossibles: The title characters are a trio of superheroes who pose undercover as a Beatlesesque rock music band. The characters' names are descriptive of their powers: Multi-Man can create identical copies of himself; Coil-Man can form into a super-springy coil; and Fluid-Man can transform his body into any fluid. The heroes receive assignments from "Big D", who contacts them via a receiver in the base of Coil-Man's left-handed guitar. During the development of the show, this group was called "The Incredibles," but was changed to "The Impossibles" by the time of production.The show was one of several that were the target of complaints about violence in children's television in the late 1960s, and was pulled from reruns in 1968. The Frankenstein Jr. segments returned to television in the 1976 series Space Ghost and Frankenstein Jr., which aired on NBC from November 27, 1976 to September 3, 1977, replacing the canceled Big John, Little John.
Voice cast
- Dick Beals as Buzz Conroy
- Ted Cassidy as Frankenstein Jr.
- John Stephenson as Professor Conroy
- Paul Frees as Fluid-Man, Big D
- Don Messick as Multi-Man
- Hal Smith as Coil-Man
Home media
On April 26, 2011, Warner Home Video released Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles: The Complete Series on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna–Barbera Classics Collection. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand release, available exclusively through Warner's online store and Amazon.com. A Blu-ray version of the complete series was released on January 28, 2025.Other appearances
- Buzz Conroy and Frankenstein Jr. appeared in the Yogi's Space Race episode "Race Through the Planet of the Monsters".
- Frankenstein Jr. appeared in the Johnny Bravo episode "Johnny Makeover".
- Frankenstein Jr. appeared in the 2013 film Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon.
- Frankenstein Jr. appeared on one of the Halloween parade floats in the 2020 film Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!
- Also in 2020, Frankenstein Jr. has a cameo in Scoob!, appearing in the end credits.
- Buzz Conroy and Frankenstein Jr. appear in the 2021 film Space Jam: A New Legacy. They are among the Warner Bros. 3000 Server-Verse inhabitants that watch the basketball game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.
- Buzz Conroy appeared in the third season of Jellystone! Frankenstein Jr. will also appear in season 3.
Adaptations
- A single issue of a Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles comic was released by Gold Key Comics in 1966 as a tie-in to the TV series, and the contents were reprinted in The Impossibles Annual by Atlas Publishing & Distributing Co. Ltd, UK in 1968. The two Frankenstein Jr. comic stories were titled "The Image Invasion" and "Frankenstein Jr. Meets the Flea Man". A new text-based story, specially written for the annual, was "A Spook in his Wheel". The character reappeared in the comic Hanna-Barbera Presents #8 published by Archie Comics in 1996. The front cover featured Frankenstein Jr. battling the Impossibles in an homage to the front cover of the original Fantastic Four #1 by Marvel Comics.
- A Big Little Book titled Frankenstein Jr.: The Menace of the Heartless Monster was published in 1968.
- The Impossibles' heroic identities were re-used for a later Hanna-Barbera production, The Super Globetrotters :
- * Nate Branch's heroic identity was alternately known as "Fluid Man" or "Liquid Man", with powers similar to the Impossibles' Fluid-Man.
- * "Twiggy" Sanders became "Spaghetti Man", with coiling and stretching abilities similar to Coil-Man.
- * "Geese" Ausbie as "Multi Man" had virtually identical powers as his Impossibles counterpart and a similar costume.
- In 2016, Buzz and Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles played a major role in the DC Comics series Future Quest, that also featured characters from various animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera such as Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, The Herculoids, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio and Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor. In this series, the team gained a new female member named Cobalt and the character of Big D is a woman named Deva Sumadi who's also Falcon-7.