Curiosity Shop

I have been looking for video of this show for decades. Thank God someone has finally put some clips on YouTube. If you haven't seen them, you have to check them out. The opening sequence is there, as well as a commercial and network promos for the whole Saturday morning lineup from 1971. If nothing else, it proves to my family that I didn't make this show up in my own mind.

I wish I could find the Halloween special...as many here have said, it stands out in my mind (few other things from that long ago have made it this far in my memory).

Onomatopoeia was my favorite, which explains a lot about me...

I have very fond memories of this show. In fact, I think it had a large influence on my career choice in animation. "The Curiosity Shop" would regularly show animated shorts that had no other venue in the US. There was a talking TV character that would show them on her screen. (She was a grandmother character with a shawl over her console and instead of legs, she sat on rockers like a rocking chair. I don't remember who provided the voice. Many of the animated films presented were from the National Film Board of Canada, Zagreb Yugoslavia and often Oscar nominees and/or winners. I distinctly remember some of the short films by Ryan Larkin, especially his Oscar winning "Walking". Interestingly enough, Larkin was the subject of the Oscar winning animated short film for 2003, "Ryan". I must confess that another reason I had to watch the show was my mild crush on child actress Pamelyn Ferdin. My hat is off to the late Chuck Jones for helping to create such a wonderful and influential show.

Probably one of the best shows ever made for Saturday morning TV, not the usual animated dreck but a fun show that was also informative and educational. I remember best a show about horror, done for Halloween, where I first saw the unmasking scene from "The Phantom of the Opera". I even had a Curiosity Shop lunchbox! Hopefully, with the ever growing hunger of the cable/satellite TV monster, this show will someday resurface.

I too remember this show. Shirley Jones appeared in the premiere episode. The animal puppets were classic. I had a punch-out book of the Curiosity Shop, that I could set up with all the animal puppets in the wagon or whatever that was they were all in. All I can recall of the puppets was the basset hound, the giraffe and the duck-bill platypus who was a person in a full costume and never spoke. He wore big sneakers too. Pamelyn Ferdin, a child actress all over tv shows back then, perhaps best found as one of the five children in the Guardian Angel episode of the sixties Star Trek, was one of the kids and the older boy can be found in several episodes of Brady Bunch as Bobby's friend, particularly in the episode with Joe Namath. A black girl was eventually brought in, I guess to appeal to affirmative action that was going on back then. I also recall the Halloween episode. All the puppets were dressed up as monsters and the platypus was a vampire. It was very creepy seeing them all like that. Was it the final episode I recall that had the children leave the curiostiy shop, saying good bye and once outside we were treated to them hopping around in multi-colored psychedelic swirls, with only their silhouettes moving, accompanied by some very funky music?

I would love to see this show again. For the longest time I equated Shirley Jones with this show more than I did Partridge Family.

My twin girls, in first grade, just told me that they are learning about "sound" words, and I immediately had a flashback to the "Onomatopoeia" song, which I am pretty sure I first heard on the "Curiousity Shop" all these many years ago. Here are some of the lyrics, as I remember them (yes, I even remember the basic tune): "Onomatopoeia, Onomatopoeia, it's the word you spell by ear. Onomatopoeia, Onomatopoeia, it's a word for a sound that you always hear -- like a crash, bang, boom." I read on Wikipedia that a specific puppet represented the Onomatopoeia and made all kinds of sounds. Can someone, somehow, somewhere post a YouTube video with this song? I'll even settle for the lyrics. The so-called "modern" Onomatopoeia songs don't hold a candle to the Chuck Jones version. PLEASE, Please if anyone knows a link to the lyrics or the right YouTube video, post it in the comments somewhere! This was a truly great show - obviously, since I remember this from more than 40 years ago!