Shazzan

I, too, find this show a guilty pleasure. Shazzan is what Robin Williams' genie in the Disney version of Aladdin, aspires to be, and it's a good show. A classic of '60s animation. It begins with an announcer intoning "Inside a cave off the coast of Maine..." It's the story of Chuck and Nancy. They're a brother and sister. They find a mysterious ring in a chest. The ring is in two halves. When joined, it forms the word "Shazzan." Shazzan's a genie complete with mohawk, goatee, and Mr. Clean earring. They can't be returned home by Shazzan until they deliver the ring to its rightful owner.

I am (still) a big fan of the sixties Hanna-Barbera super-hero cycle which started in 1966 and ended ignominiously with the "Super Friends" around 1973. However, Shazzan was among the best of them. It had action, excitement, imaginative music scoring (also incorporated into 1968's "Arabian Knights" cartoon and i imagine the music originator must have been in overdrive by the sheer dramatics he was able to instill within the action sequences and final showdown between the jolly brown giant and his motley crew of adversaries.

But i digress....it seems that Jerry Dexter and Janet Waldo had worked together on other cartoon shows for H-B and for Filmation (notably "Josie and the Pussycats")so their chemistry must have worked in well.

Alas, there will never be anything to top the nostalgic 60's. Today's generation of kids are being swamped with rock-band screeching and that, is not what i would like to remember from the team of Hanna-Barbera.

• Brian T.

Chuck and Nancy, (no last names,) found a mysterious ring in a chest, "Inside a cave, off the coast of Maine." The introduction tells us that "when joined, the two halves form the word Shazzan, and they are magically sent back to the fabled land of the Arabian Nights..." There, they meet their genie, Shazzan, who'll serve them when called upon but he can't return them home until they return the ring to its rightful owner. Shazzan also presents them with a magical flying camel named Kabubbi. The title of this review's an example of one of the cries for help Chuck and Nancy always made to Shazzan.I used to watch it when I was little, and then again, when it was on in syndication back in the early 1980s. The cartoon was very loosely based on the Arabian Nights. One episode had Aladdin, and even the African Magician, (named Jaffar in the Disney movie,) but I digress. Anyway, Chuck and Nancy were always getting into trouble, and had to bailed out by Shazzan. Good show. Too bad it wasn't longer.

First of all, I always thought the name of the show and the genie was ShazzaM, not Shazzan. LOL After all, isn't "shazzam" a word for magical or exciting?

A brother and sister find a magic ring which, when joined, summons the genie Shazzan. They suffer dangers, call the genie, and he omnipotently gets them out of trouble, dispatching the bad guy(s) of the week along the way.

Along with the flying camel Kaboobie, they seek to find the ring's owner so they can hand it off and return to their lives. Alas, that aspiration remains unfulfilled.

Two episodes aired in each half hour on Saturday mornings.

I gotta admit, this show is a guilty pleasure. Shazzan's jolly demenor, cool goatee and quotable "Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!" in the face of any situation is irresistable. Only in the sixties could you get away with stuff like this. Every badguy in the show is Shrill-voiced bong-smoker who, invariably, is green. And Shazzan's approach to problem solving is priceless:

Green sultan calls up flying monkeys, Shazzan turns the monkeys into bugs, Sultan turns the bugs into screeching harpies, Shazzan turns the harpies into cheese, and so on...

You gotta wonder if this is a kids' cartoon or a relaistic depiction of what Joe Barbera actually thought he was seeing. If you haven't seen it yet, and it's on, you could do far worse than to spend an afternoon with Shazzan.