On September 30, 1960, television audiences first met Fred and Wilma Flintstone, their best pals Barney and Betty Rubble, and a Stone Age world that looked suspiciously like suburban America. While The Simpsons just launched its 37th season on Sunday, it wouldn’t exist — nor would Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, or King of the Hill — without the groundbreaking footsteps of The Flintstones, the very first animated sitcom to air in prime time.
Created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, The Flintstones brought the familiar rhythms of live-action family comedies into cartoon form, complete with a laugh track to make it feel like any other Thursday-night sitcom. It wasn’t aimed at kids at all — the early episodes were marketed squarely to adults. In fact, its first sponsor was Winston cigarettes, and the cast even appeared in surreal black-and-white commercials puffing away outside the Stone Age home.
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For six years, Fred’s brash catchphrase “yabba-dabba-doo” and Wilma’s exasperated sighs turned Bedrock into must-see TV. The show ran for 166 episodes before wrapping in 1966, but not before it racked up several milestones. It became the first animated series ever nominated for television’s top comedy Emmy in 1961, competing in the same category as The Jack Benny Show. By its third season, it swapped its jazzy theme for the iconic “Meet the Flintstones,” a song that still triggers instant nostalgia.
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The series loved to wink at pop culture, pulling in “Hollyrock” guest stars like Ann-Margret — renamed Ann-Margrock — and Tony Curtis, a.k.a. Stony Curtis. Kids of the era fell for Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, who eventually earned their own Saturday morning spin-off in the early ’70s, voiced by Sally Struthers and Jay North. Even the cereal aisle kept the family alive: Fruity Pebbles, first launched in 1971, remains one of the longest-running character-branded cereals on shelves.
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And the legacy didn’t stop there. In 2010, Google honored the show’s 50th anniversary with a homepage doodle, and just last month MeTV Toons marked the 65th with a marathon of classic episodes, The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones crossover, and the 1966 film A Man Called Flintstone. Today, the show still runs nightly at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT on MeTV Toons and all six seasons stream free on Tubi, proof that Bedrock continues to roll.
What makes The Flintstones so enduring isn’t just nostalgia for its stone-wheeled cars or bird-powered record players. It’s the fact that it was TV’s first animated sitcom, laying the bedrock (literally) for everything that followed. Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty proved that cartoons could carry the same domestic stories as live-action stars — and in doing so, they changed television forever.
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