The Banana Splits: Season 1 [DVD] [1968]

At this point in time, the appeal of The Banana Splits and Friends Show (1968), a Saturday morning kids program, hosted by four guys wearing oversized, padded, goofy looking, animal suits, would seem to be limited mostly to those familiar with the forty year old program. This could be why the series has yet to be released on Region 1 DVD. The Banana Splits, told corny jokes, engaged in some silly comedy skits, and performed in some musical video type numbers similar to The Monkees. The rest of their program consisted of a series of cartoons "The Arabian Nights", "The Three Musketeers", and "Micro Ventures", and the serial adventure "Danger Island". For those with some memory of it, watching The Banana Splits could be like taking a trip back to childhood times, when silliness and innocent fun, mixed freely with adventure, excitement, and hints of psychedelia. The show was a semi-structured romp, where you were never quite sure what might happen, but you knew it would be goofy and fun. The musical numbers, which ranged from funk and soul, to pop, and psychedelic rock, reflect an openness to many genres. The Banana Splits, were led by Fleegle, a beagle voiced by Paul Winchell. Drooper was a lion, and Bingo a gorilla. Snorky, an elephant, was the only member who did not speak, but communicated by making honking noises. While all the members wore a red helmet, Fleegle was the only one who did not wear sunglasses. The program originally ran for an hour, but was later repackaged into half hour segments for replay in syndication, which is the format that the program is presented in this release, with 36 episodes from Season One of the program, on 6 discs. An interesting feature available on the menu, is playing only the segments featuring the Banana Splits, and skipping the cartoons. Among the silly skits are those featuring the dancing messenger girls from The Sour Grapes bunch, the goofy Q&A of Dear Drooper, Fleegle conducting his extravagant music making machine, and the Banana Splits riding or racing, in their cool customized dune buggies. The animated features are actually quite good, with The Arabian Knights being kind of an action adventure series with a little magic thrown in. The Three Musketeers is historically based, but more of a straightforward action oriented cartoon, featuring Alexandre Dumas' three musketeers, and D'Artagnan, along with a young boy name Tooly. Only four episodes of Micro Ventures were produced, but it was a pretty cool series which featured a miniaturized family exploring nature. The serial Danger Island is particularly memorable for its strong characters, lively action scenes, and great incidental music. Shot in Mexico, and directed by Richard Donner ( Lethal Weapon , The Goonies , Superman , the storyline consists mostly of an almost continuous series of chase scenes, fights, and escapes, as a group looking for the lost city of Tobanya, encounter opposition from pirates, and some very unfriendly natives. The action/comedy features a cast that includes Frank Aletter, Jan-Michael Vincent ( Airwolf , The Mechanic ), Rockne Tarkington (Black Samson), Kim Kahana, Ronne Troup (My Three Sons), and Victor Eberg. The DVD features the adventure complete adventure broken up into 36 parts. As one who resides in the USA, it was truly a delight to find this "long lost" program at Amazon UK, and revisit it after some 40 years, as the image quality is better than you might expect for a show from 1968. The cost was quite reasonable, and it was a blast viewing the animated features, and the conclusion of Danger Island. I have nothing but good memories about the show, which remains whimsical fun, and a warm nugget from my childhood to be remembered with much fondness, as the Banana Splits theme song occasionally plays in my head.

This product excellent to watch . I remember watching this as child on television.. The banana splits.

Very 👍 good

Fantastic reminder of early Saturday morning TV

Watch this as a kid, still fun watching it many years later.

This is a must buy. World Class

Brilliant dvd for my 70s mad fella. He's enjoying going back to his childhood

Fantastic. I watched this over thirty years ago and it was old then. Made from 1968 this manic childrens comedy show can only have been written in a time when LSD was viewed as being an aid to creativity. The banana splits themselves are ageless , the costumes will never be out of fashion because they were never in fashion. The humour ranges from slapstick to self mocking and my son found the same silly jokes as hilarious as I did years ago. A must see is "Danger Island" , a series within the show,with acting so bad and a plot so dire that I found myself rewinding the DVD to remind myself that production values could be so wonderfully woeful. It is so bad it is good. Aload of DVD'S in the one box , this is a great buy and within three to four episodes you will be singing along to the theme tune.