Tom Terrific

Tom Terrific is a 1957–1959 animated series on American television, presented as part of the Captain Kangaroo children's television show.[1]

Tom Terrific
Genre	Animated television series
Created by	Gene Deitch
Developed by	Gene Deitch
Written by	William Bernal, Phil Eastman, Bud Evsalin, Bob Kuwahara, Ralph Newman
Directed by	Gene Deitch
Starring	Lionel Wilson
Theme music composer	Thomas Lee Morrison, Philip A. Scheib
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	26
Production
Executive producer	William M. Weiss
Producer	Gene Deitch
Editor	Jack MacConnell
Production company	Terrytoons
Release
First shown in	1957-1958
Original release	June 10, 1957 – 1959 (pre-reruns)

Created by Gene Deitch under the Terrytoons studio (which by that time was a subsidiary of CBS, the network that broadcast Captain Kangaroo), Tom Terrific was made as twenty-six stories, each split into five episodes, with one five-minute episode broadcast per day. The first thirteen stories were filmed in 1957, with the second set in 1958. Captain Kangaroo continued to rerun the episodes for many years. Starting in 1962, Captain Kangaroo broadcast Tom Terrific every other week, alternating with Terrytoons' Lariat Sam.[2]

Drawn in a simple black-and white style reminiscent of children's drawings, the show features a gee-whiz boy hero, Tom Terrific, who lives in a treehouse and can transform himself into anything he wants, thanks to his magical funnel-shaped "thinking cap," which also enhances his intelligence. He has a comic lazybones of a sidekick, Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog, and an arch-foe named Crabby Appleton, whose motto is, "I'm rotten to the core!"[3] Other foes include Mr. Instant the Instant Thing King, Captain Kidney Bean, Sweet Tooth Sam the Candy Bandit, and Isotope Feeney the Meany. Some of the dialogue was written by cartoonist Jules Feiffer.[4]

Gene Deitch adapted the feature from his earlier newspaper comic strip, "Terr'ble Thompson!" distributed during the 1950s by United Features Syndicate.[5] Terr'ble Thompson was a six-year-old boy who imagined himself to be the "Hero of Hist'ry" and freely travelled back in time to assist historical figures. An illustrated book reprinting the adventures of this precursor to Tom Terrific was published by Fantagraphics Books.

All the voices were performed by Lionel Wilson (who later voiced Eustace Bagge from the Cartoon Network series Courage the Cowardly Dog).

Tom Terrific was ranked #32 by TV Guide magazine among its "50 Greatest TV Cartoon Characters."[6]

Episodes

• Each episode was shown in five installments, one per day, Monday through Friday.

Episode	Title	Air Date[7]
1	The Nasty Knight	June 10, 1957
2	The Pill of Smartness	June 17, 1957
3	Sweet Tooth Sam	June 24, 1957
4	Snowy Picture	July 1, 1957
5	Crabby Appleton's Dragon	July 8, 1957
6	Captain Kidney Bean	July 15, 1957
7	The Gravity Maker	July 22, 1957
8	Scrambled Dinosaur Eggs	July 29, 1957
9	Who Stole the North Pole	August 5, 1957
10	Instant Tantrums	August 12, 1957
11	Track Meet, Well Done	August 19, 1957
12	The Great Calendar Mystery	August 26, 1957
13	Elephant Stew	August 2, 1957
14	The Missing Mail Mystery	August 9, 1957
15	The Prince Frog	September 16, 1957
16	Isotope Feeney's Foolish Fog	September 23, 1957
17	Moon Over Manfred	September 30, 1957
18	Go West, Young Manfred	December 2, 1957
19	The Silly Sandman	September 7, 1957
20	Crabby Park	October 14, 1957
21	The Million Manfred Mystery	October 21, 1957
22	The Flying Sorcerer	October 28, 1957
23	The Big Dog Show-Off	November 4, 1957
24	The End of Rainbows	November 11, 1957
25	Robinsnest Crusoe	November 18, 1957
26	The Everlasting Birthday Party	November 25, 1957

Home video

As of 2020, there has not been an authorized VHS, DVD or Blu-ray release of the series.

In popular culture

• The character also appeared in a comic book for six issues in 1957 from Pines Comics, with some stories drawn by Ralph Bakshi.
• Tom Terrific appeared in a few Wonder Books, an imitation of Little Golden Books.
• Crabby Appleton was the name of a rock group, which used the character's image on a 1971 album, Rotten to the Core.
• In the introduction to his book, The Great Big Book of Tomorrow, Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) says that he chose his pseudonym through misremembering the name of Tom Terrific.
• Tom Terrific appeared in the 1999 pilot Curbside, voiced by Haley Joel Osment.[8]
• American football player Tom Brady attempted to trademark the phrase for himself, but was turned down in August 2019, to prevent confusion with baseball player Tom Seaver.[9]

References

1. Woolery, George W. (1983). Children's Television: The First Thirty-Five Years, 1946-1981, Part 1: Animated Cartoon Series. Scarecrow Press. pp. 295–296. ISBN 0-8108-1557-5. Retrieved 22 March 2020.
2. Hamonic, W. Gerald (2018). Terrytoons: The Story of Paul Terry and His Classic Cartoon Factory. John Libbey Publishing Ltd. pp. 289–290. ISBN 978-0861967292.
3. Perlmutter, David (2018). The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 653. ISBN 978-1538103739.
4. Erickson, Hal (2005). Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 Through 2003 (2nd ed.). McFarland & Co. pp. 862–863. ISBN 978-1476665993.
5. Terrible Thompson strip
6. TV Guide's 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time
7. DataBase, The Big Cartoon. "Tom Terrific Episode Guide -CBS Prods @ BCDB". Big Cartoon DataBase (BCDB). Retrieved 3 September 2019.
8. "Curbside". The Big Cartoon Database. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
9. New York Post: "Tom Brady denied Tom Terrific trademark" Aug. 23, 2019

Further reading

Kevin Scott Collier. The Amazing Transformations of Tom Terrific. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. ISBN 1974583899

External links

• Tom Terrific at IMDb
• Theme song