Pink Panther 1 Hour

[Kimbery Challacombe]

WhenThe Pink Panther Show first aired in 1969, it consisted of one cartoon featuring The Inspector, sandwiched by two Pink Panther entries. Due to the number of shorts produced, two episodes feature a Pink Panther cartoon sandwiched by two Inspector entries. The 30-minute show was then connected via bumper sequences featuring both the panther and Inspector together, with announcer Marvin Miller acting as an off-camera narrator talking to the panther. Bumper sequences consisted of newly animated segments as well as recycled footage from existing cartoons We Give Pink Stamps, Reel Pink, Pink Outs and Super Pink, fitted with new incidental music and voice-over work from Miller.[1]

By this time, due to the violent nature of some of the cartoons, they were re-edited for television by omitting the cartoon violent scenes from their broadcasts, in order to make them more family friendly.

In 1976, the half-hour series was revamped into a 90-minute format, as The Pink Panther Laugh And A Half, Hour And A Half Show; this version included a live-action segment, where comedian Lenny Schultz would read letters and jokes from viewers. This version performed poorly and eventually reverted to the original 30-minute version in 1977 as Think Pink Panther.[1]

After nine years on NBC, the Pink Panther moved to ABC in 1978 and was retitled The All New Pink Panther Show, where it lasted one season before leaving the network realm entirely. The tenth season featured 16 episodes with 32 new Pink Panther cartoons, and 16 featuring Crazylegs Crane: no bumpers were produced for The All New Pink Panther Show, but 10 second "Stay tuned..." bumpers explaining an upcoming entry were produced for the first several episodes. The 32 All New Pink Panther Show entries were eventually released to theaters by United Artists.[1]

Henry Mancini composed "The Pink Panther Theme" for the live action films, which would be used extensively in the cartoon series as well. Doug Goodwin composed the show's opening title music while William Lava and Walter Greene composed music scores heard throughout the cartoons, many of which were variations on Mancini's "Pink Panther Theme".

By the time of the show's 1969 debut, fitting cartoon and children's shows with a laugh track was standard practice.[1] In keeping with this standard, NBC added a laugh track to all seasons of The Pink Panther Show, marking the first time in history that theatrical films were fitted with a laugh track for television broadcast (Season 2 utilized an inferior laugh track, utilizing isolated laugh clips from Season 1).[1] This was an anomaly, as other theatrical cartoon series that were airing successfully on television (i.e. Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Looney Tunes, Popeye) did not receive this addition.

The soundtracks were restored to their original theatrical form in 1982 when the DFE theatrical package went into syndication. Repackaging over the years has resulted in both theatrical and television versions of the entries being available. The exceptions were Misterjaw and Crazylegs Crane, which were produced specifically for television and never re-released theatrically, resulting in laughter-only versions.[1] The U.S.-based Boomerang occasionally airs versions with the laugh track intact, though these versions are more commonly found outside of the U.S., such as on the BBC Two repeats circa 2011 in the United Kingdom, The Spanish language Boomerang requires that MGM supply them with laugh track-only versions of all shorts. The Portuguese language Boomerang, France-based Gulli, and Poland channels TV 4 and TV6 also broadcast certain entries utilizing laugh track versions. Some laugh tracked shorts also appear on the Pink Panther YouTube channel.

United Artists Television syndicated The Pink Panther Show in 1980, complete with bumpers and laugh-tracked versions of the shorts. By 1982, MGM Television began syndicating some individual cartoons to local stations to air them as they saw fit. This format did not contain the series' bumpers nor the laugh track.[1]

Most television stations aired the later package released in 1982, featuring the cartoon shorts by themselves, isolated from the show's original bumpers sequences. The laugh track was also silenced on all entries except for Misterjaw. Chicago-based WGN-TV was one of the few stations to air the 1980 The Pink Panther Show syndication package. Conversely, New York City-based WPIX featured a stripped-down version of the shorts, airing the entries without the laugh track, bumpers, or theatrical opening/closing credits.

The episodes shown on Teletoon Retro also featured remastered versions, while the wrap-around content was in rougher condition. The Inspector cartoon, Tour de Farce, had the wrong title card, that for Reaux, Reaux, Reaux Your Boat.

Cartoon Network reran The Pink Panther Show from 1997 to 1999, and intermittently in 2006, 2009, and 2012. A "no-frills" version aired on Boomerang five days a week at 5:30 am, 10 am and 2:30 pm; the Boomerang version included four shorts and no bumpers, in the style of its other theatrical-short compilation shows. Until August 2009, Boomerang only featured shorts from The Pink Panther, The Ant and the Aardvark and The Inspector. The laugh track was present on several entries. Currently, the show remains intact on the Spanish Language Boomerang TV channel with most entries containing their original laugh track. The Pink Panther show aired on Boomerang from 2000 to 2012, and was available on the video on demand network Anime Network from 2012 to 2016.

The show also previously aired in its original format on This TV on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8:30 am Eastern Time or 7:30 am Central Time (as part of its Cookie Jar Toons programming block) until September 22, 2011. The digital broadcast network Light TV ran the series when the network launched Christmas weekend 2016 until September 29, 2019. On June 1, 2020 to May 29, 2022, the show aired for the first time in Spanish on Galavisin, known as El show de la Pantera Rosa.[2]

From May 2021 to May 2023, MeTV rerunned the show under the name Pink Panther's Party, during their Saturday morning block, Saturday Morning Cartoons, from 7:30 am to 8:00 am ET/ 6:30 to 7:00 am CT following Popeye and Pals, which currently aired from 7:00 am to 7:30 am ET/ 6:00 am to 6:30 am CT. The show is collectively called Popeye and Pink Panther's Party, combining Popeye and Pals and Pink Panther's Party into a single show. However, the channel lost the rights to air the non-WB DePatie-Freleng cartoons, which caused Popeye And Pink Panther's Party to be reverted back to Popeye and Pals, which currently only airs Popeye shorts.[3][4]

Amazon Prime carries The New Pink Panther Show episodes (As of 2023) for free for Prime members.The Pink Panther Show, The New Pink Panther Show, The Pink Panther & Friends (using the syndicated intro), and the aforementioned syndication version have appeared on the Pink Panther Facebook page.

The Pink Panther Laugh-and-a-Half Hour-and-a-Half Show was an attempt by DFE to revamp the traditional format of three entries airing in a 30-minute format. The show was expanded to 90 minutes, and included a live-action segment featuring comedian Lenny Schultz reading letters and jokes from viewers. The show also featured two new made-for-television series, a first for the franchise: the Texas Toads (a redubbed version of the theatrical Tijuana Toads series), and Misterjaw. New bumper sequences featuring both the Texas Toads and Misterjaw were created for the series. These new entries were aired in combination with rebroadcasts of The Pink Panther, The Inspector and The Ant and the Aardvark.

The final series broadcast on NBC, Think Pink Panther reverted to the traditional 30-minute format and consisted of rebroadcasts. No new cartoons were created for this show. The layout of the closing credits was based on The New Pink Panther Show.[1]

United Artists Television syndicated a weekday 30-minute Pink Panther show in 1980, complete with bumpers and laugh-tracked versions of the shorts. A new opening sequence preceding the show featured Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther Theme" played under a segment from Pink Outs featuring the Pink Panther folding the backdrop into a square to be eaten. The closer featured the last few seconds of the theme played under a scene from Reel Pink featuring the panther water skiing.[1]

UATV created two versions of the syndication package. The first consisted of The Pink Panther, Inspector, The Ant and the Aardvark and Texas Toads entries sourced from film elements utilized during the program's original network run.[1]

The second version consisted of The Pink Panther, The Ant and the Aardvark and Misterjaw entries sourced from new prints of the original film negatives and transferred to videotape, resulting in sharper images. As The Pink Panther and The Ant and the Aardvark entries were sourced using theatrical prints (sans laugh track), a new, less invasive laugh track being employed on sitcoms at the time was added to the soundtrack for consistency to match the made-for-television Misterjaw entries and bumper sequences that retained their respective laugh-tracked soundtracks.

The German version of the show, Der rosarote Panther - Zu Gast bei Paulchens Trickverwandten (The Pink Panther - Being a Guest of the Pink Panther's Cartoon-relatives) which started airing on ZDF in 1973 contains four cartoons per episode. The first cartoon is always a Pink Panther entry, the second one is an Inspector short, followed by another Pink Panther cartoon, and usually ending with an Ant and the Aardvark short. However, cartoons from The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show by UPA are added into the mix starting with episode 12, making the show's format rather messy compared to its other incarnations. Several episodes start off with a Pink Panther cartoon, followed by a longer UPA cartoon, and end with another Pink Panther short. Others replace the second Pink Panther entry with a UPA cartoon, and some feature two or three UPA cartoons cut together as one 'proper' segment.[9] Bumpers are featured in this series, but only in the first 42 episodes. All cartoons have their opening and ending titles removed; when a cartoon ends, it immediately fades into a bumper and once the bumper ends, the next cartoon starts playing with no title card or credits.

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