Full-bodied puppetry and bubblegum pop: US Saturday morning television and Kellogg’s Presents the Banana Splits Adventure Hour
By: Kevin Sandler
ARTICLE INFO: Volume: 10 Issue: 01:Summer 2024 ISSN: 2459-2943 DOI: 10.18680/hss.2024.0012 Pages: 229-242 Lic.: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
KEYWORDS: Cel Animation Bubblegum Pop Hanna-Barbera Puppetry Saturday Morning |
ABSTRACT
The creation of full-bodied puppetry series like Kellogg’s Presents the Banana Splits Adventure Hour (1968-1970) on Saturday morning in the United States provides an account of the efforts by production companies, network executives, and advertisers to replace its violent action-adventure programming with comedic fare during the moral panic of 1968. Its production history showcases how the re-introduction of puppetry on Saturday morning was bound up in contemporary cultural discourses involving not only media violence but also industrial strategies shaping children’s programming around cross-media marketing, performative labor, and the bubblegum pop phenomenon.
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