The Jetsons (DVD) Review

The Jetsons (DVD) Review

If the Flintstones are the modern stone-age family, then the Jetsons are the quintessential post-modern futuristic family, complete with flying cars. Following the massive commercial success of the animated classic The Flintstones (1960), Hanna-Barbera followed with additional prime-time cartoon series Top Cat (1961) and The Jetsons (1962). Cancelled after one season on ABC, The Jetsons lived on through the success of syndicated reruns on Saturday morning cartoons, through TV movies and specials, comic books, games, and toys. Its enduring success prompted Hanna-Barbera to revive the series from 1985 to 1988, using many of the same animation techniques and characters as found in the original…

The Jetsons follows the lives of George Jetson and his average middle-class family. George is a bumbling, yet kind-hearted family man who works for Spacely Sprockets, a sprocket manufacturing concern owned and run by the slave-driving dwarf Mr. Spacely. George’s wife Jane is a homemaker who dials up breakfast for the family and pushes all the proper buttons necessary for cleaning the house and taking care of the domestic affairs. Son Elroy is a boy genius, and daughter Judy is a typical teenage rock-and-roller. Throw in a sarcastic robot maid named Rosie and a talking dog named Astro, and The Jetsons has all the elements of a modern TV classic. With flying cars, stilted high-rise houses, and automated gadgets for almost every conceivable form of work, the show matches The Flintstones pound-for-pound in respect to the artist/producers’ breadth of creativity and imagination…

The Jetsons DVD features a number of hilarious episodes including the series premiere “Rosie the Robot” in which Jane urges George to buy a robot maid, but George feels they can’t afford it. And with his boss, Mr. Spacely, due to come over for dinner, George doesn’t think he can get raise out of Mr. Spacely if he sees a robot maid at the Jetson home. Meanwhile,