So far, the Krofft brothers, Sid and Marty, successful puppeteers branching into their first television with this show, have invested $350,000 of their own money in the show.
HR PUFFIN STUFF TV
There are 86 different characters.ĪLSO SEE: Sid & Marty Krofft’s ‘Land of the Lost’ TV show & their amazing amusement park (1975) There are 38 different sets which can be used, and they, cost $1 million. Pufnstuf, pronounced “puffin’ stuff,” is the name of a dragon, the mayor of Living Island, to which Jimmy (Jack Wild) comes after a storm shipwrecks him.Įverything on the island is alive, including the forest, which has hippie trees, social trees, old-men trees, Indian trees. I visited the set in Hollywood and met the show’s star, Jack Wild, an Academy Award nominee for his performance as the Artful Dodger in “Oliver.” The result: Enchantment!ĪLSO SEE: The Banana Splits Adventure Hour intro, theme song, lyrics & more on this trippy retro kids’ show In a new children’s TV fantasy the only “real” character is a boy, Jimmy, played by Jack Wild, shown here with show’s namesake, Pufnstuf (right), and some other puppet friendlies. Pufnstuf will have to change the viewing of habits of adult America if he is going to grab them for an audience.įor Pufnstuf and his friends visit NBC-TV for 30 minutes at 10 a.m. Pufnstuf may be the greatest boon to adult television viewing since Kukla, Fran and Ollie.īut unlike that delightful children’s show, which was telecast in the early evening and which had such a huge following of sophisticated adults, H. HR Pufnstuf: Saturday morning dragon could attract adults (1969)īy Joan Crosby, The Times Herald (Port Huron, Michigan) September 19, 1969 The show is the creation of Puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft. Blinkey mixes a potion to soften and bend Witchiepoo’s magic wand. Jimmy tangles with Talking Skull in a lab where Dr. Pufnstuf is an Oz-like fantasy about a real boy, Jimmy, who is kidnapped and spirited to an isle of people-sized puppets (played by real people) where the mayor, Pufnstuf, is a friendly dragon, his constituents forest types like Judy Frog, an owl, and some talking trees.įor 30 minutes, houses sneeze, doors flirt and a way-out witch is lightly thwarted.Įlsewhere, the old violent TV scene is not exactly vaporized - outer-space maniacs are still trying to suck nitrogen from the universe.īut Pufnstuf saves Saturday - and other puppets should make kids’ weekday TV worthwhile, too. Pufnstuf, a million-dollar puppet show that bowls over kids as effectively as any biff, pow or zap. Though routine cartoon violence has been replaced often by shows that are merely routine, one children’s program substitutes genuine charm for alarm - NBC’s H. The bad old times may be going bye-bye this year on Saturday morning TV.
Pufnstuf charms away the Saturday morning violence: Bye-bye to biff, pow and zap (1969) The program - with its human-sized puppets, garish sets, and cartoonish antics - really earned its cult status through reruns that aired through the ’70s and into the ’80s. The kitschy kiddie TV show debuted in September 1969… and the final episode aired just four months later. Robinson, or John Wayne.Despite its oversized spot in the memory banks of Gen Xers, there were actually only 17 episodes of H. Everything was alive on the island, including houses, boats, clocks, candles, and so forth virtually any part of the Living Island sets could become a character, usually voiced in a parody of a famous film star such as Mae West, Edward G. The dragon rescued Jimmy and protected him from Witchiepoo, as his cave was the only place where her magic had no effect.Īll of the characters on Living Island were realized by large cumbersome costumes or puppetry of anthropomorphic animals and objects. Pufnstuf, performed by Roberto Gamonet and voiced by the show's writer Lennie Weinrib, who also voices many of the other characters. The Mayor of Living Island was a friendly and helpful anthropomorphic dragon named H.R.
She used the boat to lure Jimmy and Freddy to her castle on Living Island, where she was going to take Jimmy prisoner and steal Freddy for her own purposes. Witchiepoo (played by Billie Hayes) who rode on a broomstick-vehicle called the Vroom Broom. Jimmy and a talking flute named Freddy take a ride on a mysterious boat, but the boat was actually owned by a wicked witch named Wilhelmina W. He is 11 years old when he arrives on the island and turns 12 in the episode called "The Birthday Party".
The show centered on a shipwrecked boy named Jimmy, played by teenage actor Jack Wild. Pufnstuf introduced the Kroffts' most-used plot scenario of a fairy tale of good versus evil, as well as their second plot scenario of the stranger in a strange land.
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