The Flintstones' New Neighbors

The Flintstones get new neighbors, the Frankenstones. Fred is prejudiced against them, because they're "weird", until he learns that they are nice people. There are a number of differences between the Frankenstones here and when they later became regular characters on The Flintstone Comedy Hour. Here, Frank Frankenstone sounds like Boris Karloff; later he sounded like Charles Nelson Reilly. Here, the Frankenstone children are a little boy and a teenage girl; later, they were a little girl and a teenage boy.

"The Flintstones' New Neighbors" was a TV special produced right after "The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone". In the earlier special, the Flintstones and Rubbles go to a castle in Eastern Europe where the Dracula-like owner mistakes Wilma for his bride. In this next one, a family called the Frankenstones moves in next door to the Stone Age clan. The patriarch looks like Frankenstone from the previous one, except that whereas the previous one knew only brute force and couldn't form complete sentences, this guy is probably the politest and most cultured person in Bedrock.

So what happens is that Wilma, Barney and Betty are happy to get to know the Frankenstones, but Fred considers them freaks...until he needs their help rescuing Pebbles. I guess that Fred is just the typical working stiff who doesn't like seeing any changes in his neighborhood. A prehistoric Archie Bunker, you might say.

We could be cynical and guess that Hanna-Barbera Productions simply repeated the previous special - as well as "The Munsters" and "The Addams Family" - but this is a pretty fun half-hour. It's the only time that I remember where anyone operates a car by picking it up around himself and running.