I want to write about something that has nothing to to with anything I usually write about, as I'm completely fed up with just about everything right now.
Long ago, as a tot, I used to watch a cartoon. It was black and white, and had three animals in it, and there was something about outer space. I used to watch it in the far corner of the house where I could watch tv and be forgotten about.
One day my parents came in and said let's go, we're going to buy a new car, and they turned off the tv. Well, I just howled because I loved that show and now I was going to miss it! My parents weren't too interested in my hysteria, for God sake I could watch it tomorrow. Or next week. Whenever it was on.
Off we went to the Chrysler dealership, with the new car smells and those little colored flags that fluttered all over the parking lot. My brother was probably still in blob-stage. It was Los Angeles 1969.
The next time I tuned into that show--It was called the Incredible 3, or the Amazing 3, it wasn't on. In fact, it was never on again! Yes, this is true, never! I remember crying more to my parents but of course they had no answers and obviously weren't going to pursue what happened to a cartoon. I missed it though! The characters we all animals and they did good things!
But it never came back on!
Worse, it completely disappeared! As I grew older, and would occasionally ask people if they remembered it, none did. Ever. I couldn't even rememer the name exactly.
Maybe I was making it up.
For the next 40 years I wondered, intermittently, about this show, if it ever existed. No one ever knew. I asked a couple of animator friends. Nope. Asked people from Disney. Nothing. Even the ones who grew up in LA like me. Not like I was obsessed, but if I met someone really into animation, I sometimes asked. It just seemed weird and kind of nightmarish that not only was it never on again, and never in the TV guide, but that no one ever knew about it.
I asked a film archivist. And a few other people at PBS, and various studios over the years. Obviously, I had made it up, and it's only a cartoon anyway. Even though it's not important it disturbed me on a deep level because if this was not true, then what else??!
Once or twice I asked people who were really interested, as they were cartoon mavens and thought they knew every one of them but hadn't heard of this. And these people would really look! But no one ever found anything.
Until one day Stacy did! On the internet of course. God knows how.
It was a Japanese cartoon! The Amazing 3. A cartoon that took on very progressive subjects, peace, poverty etc. This was during the American war in Vietnam. The idea being some space travelers were visiting the earth to see if it had to be destroyed to keep peace in the rest of the universe! They sucked up the first three creatures they found, and used their bodies as disguises: a horse, a duck and a rabbit. Needless to say, there was no hope for us, too warlike, and we were scheduled for demolition, but given a temporary reprieve at the last minute until the earth kid who pleaded our case said we could grow to love each other if we had time to mature up and so we were given the same time it would take him to grow up.
Apparently, the entire English-dubbed series in America was lost in a studio fire, probably right after I watched that last episode when my parents hauled me off to the Chrysler lot! Years later some surfaced in Australia, somehow, and the clips you can see on the internet are those. The show in Japanese ran for years, I think. It started in 1965 but LA didn't receive it until 1969.
I think it was only shown in LA and NY and only for a short time. So if you weren't a little kid in 1969, and didn't have a TV you could get away with watching on your own, then you didn't know about this show and even though there are apparently some fans out there eager to see the series anew, I don't think it has critical interest.
But for many Americans of a certain age, and perhaps a certain geographical area, those childhood TV shows for the bulk of our collective cultural memory. Sad perhaps but true. If you live in a country with traditions, you might find this funny, or sad or laughable, and even if you live in other parts of the US, like the Midwest or east. But for some of us.....those TV shows were a pretty big deal and still made up a large percent of collective memory. Not all, but plenty. I stopped watching TV in 1974. Maybe that's why I turned out like this.
Anyway, I found the whole thing interesting. Mostly I think because it feeds my sense of paranoia. And how a kids fears can so easily materialize. How do you know there aren't monsters under your bed? Or some freak hiding in the closet? Has it ever happened to you? Something that was important disappearing, and no one else recollecting it?
Amazing 3 anime site
Amazing 3 wiki
1 remarks:
Although I've never seen this one, the TV of my youth is definitely a strong cultural reference. I must have had hundreds of conversations about the TV of the 70s and 80s, and for me it's one of the shortest routes to nostalgia.
I remember watched a police show from the 70s a while back, and getting a tear in my eye because I recognised the old fashioned police radio from my father's work when I was about five.
Maybe children now are so exposed to choice and multimedia stimulation on demand that it won't be the same for them. But growing up with three channels to choose from and only an hour of "children's TV" each day, it seems to have been more powerful for our generation.
Thanks for sharing the memory. :)
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