This is Thanksgiving Week, which of course means we’re up to our shoulder pads in televised NFL and college gridiron contests. Football is considered by many to be America’s most popular sport. The list of pro football-themed TV series, however, is relatively short, Ballers, Necessary Roughness, and 1st & Ten (starring O.J. You-Know-Who) among them. The first such show, it turns out, was an animated situation comedy that was one of Hanna-Barbera’s last attempts at prime-time success.
Where’s Huddles?, debuting in July of 1970, followed the on- and off-field exploits of teammates Ed Huddles (voiced by Cliff Norton) and Bubba McCoy (Mel Blanc). The longtime best friends were quarterback and center, respectively, for the Rhinos pro football squad. They lived next to each other, Ed with his wife Marge and infant daughter Pebbles…er, Pom Pom (both voiced by Jean Vander Pyl), and Bubba with flighty spouse Penny (Marie Wilson). Bubba even drove a football-shaped car.
The families’ other neighbor was prissy Claude Pertwee (Paul Lynde), who sneeringly referred to the fellas as “savages.” Rounding out the cast were Rhinos head coach “Mad Dog” Maloney (voiced by Fred Flintstone himself, Alan Reed) and linebacker “Freight Train” (Herb Jeffries), the HB studio’s first African-American recurring TV character. Oh, and of course there were also Ed’s dog Fumbles (inevitably voiced by Don Messick) and Pertwee’s mishievous cat Beverly.
With three of the four main voice actors from The Flintstones featured in its cast, it comes as no shock that Where’s Huddles? had the feel of a modern-day rebooting of the former show. Even Bubba bore a resemblance to a taller and stockier Barney Rubble (also voiced by Blanc). Longtime character designer Iwao Takamoto gave the Huddles crew a pleasant–if standard–appearance that would come to exemplify Hanna-Barbera’s simplfied “house look” for the ’70s.
Several of the 10 broadcast episodes borrowed heavily from Flintstones storylines (swimming pool troubles, having to retrieve an angry letter from the mailbox, mixed-up medical records, and so on). Again, this is no surprise, since six episodes were co-written by Flintstones alum Harvey Bullock. As for the football scenes, they often took a backseat to the standard domestic comedy travails, but did feature veteran sports announcer Dick Enberg, as himself, calling the action.
Airing on CBS as a summer replacement for The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, Where’s Huddles? scored a touchdown with kids but failed to gain any yardage with adults like The Flintstones a decade earlier. Its limited, Saturday morning-style animation lacked the depth of such earlier Hanna-Barbera prime-time efforts as Top Cat, The Jetsons, and Jonny Quest. As a result, CBS failed to pick the show up for a full season’s run.
Over the more than half-century since its less-than-stellar kickoff, Where’s Huddles? has managed to gain a cult following with cartoon aficionados and football fans, many of whom were children back in 1970. It’s far from the worst HB offering from the ’70s (CB Bears or Casper and the Angels, anyone?), and it certainly scores points as the first pigskin-centered series.