The Jetsons is an American animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. It originally aired in prime time from September 23, 1962, to March 17, 1963, then later in syndication. New episodes were produced in 1985 to 1987 as part of The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera block. It was Hanna-Barbera's Space Age counterpart to The Flintstones.
While the Flintstones lived in a world which was a comical version of the Stone Age, with machines powered by birds and dinosaurs, the Jetsons live in a comical version of a century in the future, with elaborate robotic contraptions, aliens, holograms, and whimsical inventions. The original series comprised 24 episodes and aired on Sunday nights on ABC beginning September 23, 1962, with prime time reruns continuing through September 22, 1963. It debuted as the first program broadcast in color on ABC-TV. (Only a handful of ABC-TV stations were capable of broadcasting in color in the early 1960s.) In contrast, The Flintstones, while always produced in color, was broadcast in black-and-white for its first two seasons,
Following its primetime run, the show aired on Saturday mornings for decades, starting on ABC for the 1963–64 season and then on CBS and NBC. New episodes were produced for syndication from 1985 to 1987. No further specials or episodes of the show were produced after 1989 due to the deaths of stars George O'Hanlon and Mel Blanc. The 1990 film Jetsons: The Movie served as the series finale to the television show. Twenty-seven years later, a new direct-to-video animated movie, The Jetsons and WWE: Robo-WrestleMania!, was released in 2017. - Wiki
It’s easy for some people to dismiss “The Jetsons” as just a TV show, and a lowly cartoon at that. But this little show—for better and for worse—has had a profound impact on the way that Americans think and talk about the future.
“The Jetsons” was the distillation of every Space Age promise Americans could muster. People point to “The Jetsons” as the golden age of American futurism because (technologically, at least) it had everything our hearts could desire: jetpacks, flying cars, robot maids, moving sidewalks. But the creators of “The Jetsons” weren’t the first to dream up these futuristic inventions. Virtually nothing presented in the show was a new idea in 1962, but what “The Jetsons” did do successfully was condense and package those inventions into entertaining 25-minute blocks for impressionable, media-hungry kids to consume.
And though it was “just a cartoon” with all the sight gags and parody you’d expect, it was based on very real expectations for the future. As author Danny Graydon notes in The Jetsons: The Official Cartoon Guide, the artists drew inspiration from futurist books of the time, including the 1962 book 1975: And the Changes to Come, by Arnold B. Barach (who envisioned such breakthroughs as ultrasonic dishwashers and instant language translators). The designers also drew heavily from the Googie aesthetic of southern California (where the Hanna-Barbera studios were located)—a style that perhaps best represented postwar consumer culture promises of freedom and modernity.
The years leading up to “The Jetsons” premiere in September 1962 were a mix of techo-utopianism and Cold War fears. The launch of Sputnik by the Soviets in 1957 created great anxiety in an American public that already had been whipped up into a frenzy about the Communist threat. In February 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, but less than a year earlier the Bay of Pigs fiasco raised tensions between the superpowers to a dangerous level. Americans seemed equally optimistic and terrified for the future. - Smithsonian Magazine
George Jetson works three hours a day and three days a week for his short, tyrannical boss named Cosmo G. Spacely, owner of the company Spacely Space Sprockets. Typical episodes involve Mr. Spacely firing and rehiring George Jetson, or promoting and demoting him.
Mr. Spacely has a competitor, H. G. Cogswell, owner of the rival company Cogswell Cogs. The Jetson family live in Orbit City. George commutes to work in an aerocar that resembles a flying saucer with a transparent bubble top. Daily life is characterized as being comically leisurely because of the incredible sophistication and number of labor-saving devices, which occasionally break down with humorous results. George's work day consists of pressing a single computer button. Despite this, characters often complain of exhausting hard labor and difficulties of living with the remaining inconveniences.
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Other Jetson family members include Jane Jetson, the wife and homemaker, teenage daughter, Judy, and genius preteen son Elroy. Housekeeping is seen to by a robot maid, Rosey; she only appears in two episodes of the original 1960s show, excluding her appearance in the closing credits, but makes many appearances on the 1980s show.
The family dog Astro can mumble and say his words beginning with Rs. Astro's catch phrases are "Ruh-roh!" and "Right, Reorge!" or "Rats Rall Right Reorge!" Later Hanna-Barbera cartoon dogs, including Scooby-Doo and Muttley, would have the same speech impediment; voice actor Don Messick played all three. In the first episode of the 1980s show, an alien named Orbitty joined the family.
Names of locations, events and devices are often puns or derivatives of contemporary analogs with explicit space-age twists. The same technique was used in The Flintstones with archaic or stone-age twists. - Fandom
When The Jetsons would make a phone call, they would actually be using a screen device where they could see the other person. This was introduced back when not only did we have corded phones, we still had rotary dials. Now, with Skype and Facetime and the like, we can talk face-to-face with a person who lives hundreds of miles away.
It’s not too long ago when the standard TV was a clunky box shape. But on the cartoon, flat TVs could descend from the ceiling similar to the projector screens at school. All of the components would fit inside the slim TV. To the best of my understanding as a kid, there were a lot of electronic pieces making the TV work. I never did discover what the guts of the box TVs looked like. But now it’s uncommon to not have a flat screen TV.
Do you recall George Jetson had a watch that doubled as a communication device? Much like the Jetson family’s phone, you could see the person talking to you. My friends and I thought it was really something neat in elementary school when your digital watch could double as a calculator. But as a communication device? Not happening. Cut to the 21st century and we have smart watches that can help us navigate using GPS, alert us to email messages, keep track of our appointments, log how many steps we’ve taken, and still supply us with the time.
One of the most memorable non-human characters of the cartoon was Rosie, the family’s robot housekeeper. While her physical presence was quite primitive for a cartoon set in the future, Rosie was able to keep up with the Jetsons messes. We’re not at the point where we have AI housekeepers but we do have access to robot vacuums. Once seemingly out of the average person’s price range, you can find these house cleaning tools at most retail big box stores. - The Courier
Trivia:
The first program ever to be broadcast in color on ABC-TV.
An episode of another Hanna-Barbera show, The Flintstones (1960) (The Flintstones: Time Machine (1965)), in which the Flinstones and the Rubbles use a time machine at the World's Fair to travel to the future, features a distinctly Jetson-esque 21st century.
The design of the Jetsons' flying car was inspired by a 1954 Ford concept car, the FX-Atmos, notable for its all-glass bubble canopy, dashboard radar screen and jet-plane-like tailfins.
The Jetsons' phone number is VENUS-1234.
The Seattle (WA) Space Needle inspired the "skypad" apartment buildings on the show whose stilts grew or shrunk, depending on the sun or rain.
The character George Jetson was ranked #4 in TV Guide's list of the "25 Greatest Sci-Fi Legends" (August 1, 2004 issue).
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