Our intrepid field reporter Debbie Anne Perry reports that the Flintstones-based theme park "Bedrock City" in Arizona (...a half-hour from the Grand Canyon, no less) has closed!
Read all about it via Debbie's provided link HERE!
Gosh! I didn't even know it was sick! ...More to the point, I didn't know it STILL EXISTED!
In fact, I'd never heard of the park in Arizona, but HAD been aware of the original such park (closed some time before) in South Dakota!
How, you are doubtlessly asking yourselves, did I know about such an attraction?
Because I read about it on the inside front cover of THE FLINTSTONES # 40 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: June, 1967)!
While Debbie's linked article shows what "Bedrock City, Arizona" looked like in January, 2019, this page from THE FLINTSTONES # 40 gives you a look at the "South Dakota-Rock" park in its 1960s heyday!
Hard to believe such a place even existed, much less in South Dakota rather than California or Florida! Here are the individual frames for your viewing pleasure! Click to further enlarge!
Forgive me, but I must interject here! Doesn't that look like Jay North as "Dennis the Menace" posed with Bamm-Bamm?
The frozen-moment-in-time is all the more serendipitous as Jay North would later voice the "Teenage Bamm-Bamm" in the 1970s "Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show", which focused on their lives as teenagers!
...But, that's something we'd never have known in 1967!
From the "How Times Change" Department: Um... "What's Decoration Day?", I ask facetiously! Some prehistoric holiday where you dress up in funny hats?
...Or when you buy new drapes, because your "pet pink piranha" has shredded the old ones?
OH, WAIT... It must be THIS...
...Because The Flintstones couldn't possibly celebrate Christmas!
...Could they?
In any event, in 1967, I sure wanted to BE that kid - and take a trip to "Bedrock City"!
And I'm not ashamed to admit that part of me still does!
21 comments:
Huh. Hadn't the faintest idea that The Flintstones had ever been on the level of popularity that gets you several theme parks about you.
Achille:
Oh, yes indeed, they were!
As an observer of popular culture, it’s always fascinated me how time tends to “rewrite history” (no reference to DuckTales intended) so frequently in that particular subset of our mass-consciousness!
There was a time where VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA was far more popular than STAR TREK (TOS) – and THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. outstripped them both! …Not that anyone who “wasn’t there at the time” would be likely to know this!
Then BATMAN “slid down the Bat-Poles” to blow all of it away… and STAR TREK (TOS) later became an unparalleled phenomenon via the daily repetition of local syndicated reruns! The same thing applied to a lesser extent – but very definitely so – for LOST IN SPACE!
But, before all that, THE FLINTSTONES was a definite phenomenon in its own right! It was also a merchandising juggernaut! Perhaps the first spawned by the American television era! As hard as it is to believe from today’s perspective, Flintstones merchandising way outdid Disney! And, as a kid who frequented toy departments of all the major chain stores and local establishments, I oughta know!
THE FLINTSTONES also ran for SIX SEASONS, while each of the other series I mentioned above ran for three or four! Appealing to both children and adults as no television cartoon had before – nor would do again until THE SIMPSONS!
I feel it would have run longer still if Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera didn’t take that “one step too far” and turn the final season into something akin to MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, a popular sci-fi/fantasy-based sitcom of the time, with the addition of The Great Gazoo!
Gazoo, while definitely entertaining (as voiced by Harvey Korman), took the series TOO FAR from what had once made it great, and so THE FLINTSTONES was cancelled in 1966. Perhaps not so coincidentally, MY FAVORITE MARTIAN was cancelled at the same time!
COMMENT TO BE CONTINUED... (Thanks for the limitation, Google!)
COMMENT CONTINUES FROM ABOVE...
While all this COULD be regarded as nothing more than my personal (and perhaps biased?) observations, there is one item of indisputable proof of the vast popularity of THE FLINTSTONES… and, not so surprisingly for this Blog and its humble host, it can be found in the pages of Gold Key Comics!
Until all publishing frequencies for comic books went wacky in the 1970s, there were but THREE basic publishing frequencies for all comics – certainly at the time of the “Flintstones phenomenon” – MONTHLY, BI-MONTHLY, and QUARTERLY!
Throughout the 1960s, conservative, safe-playing Western Publishing, the publisher of Gold Key Comics, had only ONE monthly title. That was the venerable, all-time classic WALT DISNEY’S COMICS AND STORIES (…which literally came to its end, “in-title” at least, in 2018)!
ALL other titles were bi-monthly or quarterly, with the majority being quarterly… with ONE NOTABLE EXCEPTION!
Allow me to quote from the indicia of THE FLINTSTONES # 28, published at the height of the property’s popularity:
“THE FLINTSTONES No. 28, August, 1965. Published monthly except February, April, October and December by K.K. Publications, Inc., Poughkeepsie, New York.”
In this day where “every comic must be monthly – whether it deserves to be or not” it MAY be hard to appreciate the significance of what you’ve just read – but, please believe me, it was unheard-of in 1965, and is an undeniable testament to the great popularity of THE FLINTSTONES!
Especially so, coming from a publisher as conservative as Western – where UNCLE SCROOGE, DONALD DUCK, MICKEY MOUSE, BUGS BUNNY, and PORKY PIG were bi-monthly, and DAFFY DUCK, YOGI BEAR, WOODY WOODPECKER and POPEYE were quarterly!
Now, the whole idea of (multiple) theme parks takes it to another level that even *I* can’t truly verify – but the fact that such a thing WAS built – and was synergistically important enough to be highlighted in Western’s high-selling FLINTSTONES comic book (…another thing the conservative publisher would not have done lightly) - AND somehow hung-on until 2019 (!) must mean something!
…Oh, and this may be the greatest “comment-to-reply word disparity” in this Blog’s history!
Oh.
(The above was me topping the comment-to-reply word disparity record. …Or is that reply-to-reply?)
I'd say you did it, all right! :-)
Hey, Joe Rockhead (ha ha) - YOWP had a post on his blog a few years ago regarding the Arizona Flintstones park, with plenty of additional pics.
www.yowpyowp.blogspot.com/2016/08/where-flintstones-live-kind-of.html
Thanks for the link, TCJ!
I *did* recall that Yowp had done a post on this, but wasn’t quite up to searching for it! Glad you were!
A caution to my readers, though, on the THREE LINKS embedded in Yowp’s post…
1: Is redirected to what appears to be a web-design service. I didn’t stay long enough to be certain. On links that “don’t go where I expect them to”, I vacate immediately!
2: Does indeed have more photos of Bedrock City, and the TEACHER inside the schoolhouse is one *I* would like to have had in my own school-daze! (Hubba, hubba!) But a pop-up appeared “inviting me to something” and, as soon as I see one of those, I also vacate immediately and don’t stick around long enough to find out what I’m being invited to!
3: is just a “dead link”, perhaps appropriate given the subject! I guess LINKS can become prehistoric too.
With warnings issued, HERE is the link supplied by TCJ! Enjoy the trip most of us will never get to take!
There is a particularly good comment by an “Anonymous” poster describing the experience! Be sure to read that!
Finally, if I have to be “Joe Rockhead”, do I get to pick WHICH VERSION of “Joe Rockhead” I get to be? The happy-go-lucky partier, the sham volunteer fireman, or the more conventional later version?
If so, I’d opt for “the happy-go-lucky partier” if, for no other reason, I’d get to speak with the same voice Daws Butler would later use for BOTH Lippy the Lion and Peter Potamus!
Let me give my perspective as one who has been there...yes, actually visited the Flintstones attractions at the Grand Canyon and in Custer, South Dakota. I did not get to experience these until I had reached adulthood, but in a way I'm glad I only got to dream about them as a kid.
To call "Flintstones Bedrock City" a "theme park" is sort of an exaggeration. Of course, they had their charm...it was Flintstones, after all...but charm could not conceal the cheapness. The "theme park" consisted of several structures...manufactured to look like stone-age houses. You could walk into the Flintstones' house and go next door to the Rubbles' and encounter some life-size color statues of Fred, Barney, Wilma, Betty, Pebbles, and Bamm-Bamm scattered throughout the grounds--somewhat randomly, I might add, and with no consistency of characters being particularly near their place of residence. They had a Flintstone car and a Rubble car made of stucco or metal, durable enough for kids to clamber in and out of. There was a Bedrock "movie theatre" which seated about 10 to 15 if memory serves, and ran the same handful of Flintstones episodes continuously all day. There was a little train kind of stone-age looking that ran around the perimeter of the grounds, and of course was only for kids. There was a City Hall and a Jail and a few other odds and ends. No Bowling Alley, no Gravel Pit. There were generic dinosaurs--non HB-looking--that kids could climb on. The whole experience was geared toward kids, with little for adults except for nostalgia value. The South Dakota attraction had one very cool feature--Mt. Rockmore--complete with the faces of Fred, Barney, Mr. Slate, and Joe Rockhead. The grassy areas and walkways were not particularly Bedrock-looking, and the entire thing had a cheap look and feel about it.
So here goes Part Two. I'm not saying the Bedrock City attractions weren't worth seeing, but you could see the entire thing within five minutes and that's if you took your time. Of course, there was the "thrill" of a 3-dimensional Flintstones world but it was never fully or even partially realized. Imagine what Disney would have done with a Flintstones park and you can see why the Bedrock City smacked of disappointment. I got the feeling that the owners weren't particularly knowledgeable about the Flintstones. There were no cute little touches that could have made it more satisfying and memorable. Don't get me wrong--I had a "great old time" when I went, but I had to manufacture most of the experience in my head by imagining what great heights COULD have been reached. And even me, diehard Flintstones fan from the get-go, I reached my saturation point well ahead of thirty minutes, the length of an original Flintstones episode. It was fun and all, and I'm glad they were there, but--they weren't all that. There just plain wasn't all that much to them. Even the gift shops were pretty limited in their stock. Not much print matter at all, but tons of Dino, Pebbles, or Gazoo dolls. Some T-shirts of the attraction, many more of "Star Wars" or other franchises. So, yes, it was fun...but.
Not trying to burst anyone's bubble. If you were a Flintstones fan, or even a partial fan, you would be amused, but probably not thrilled. Just let me design a Flintstones park some day and give me plenty of acreage and plenty of cash, and I could create a memorable experience that children and adults would cherish forever. Just sayin'. Yabba dabba do!
Scarecrow:
I was hoping you’d chime in on this, as your comment at Yowp says you were actually there!
By the photo published in the Gold Key Comic, I never thought Disneyland had anything to worry about but, still, it was something I would have liked to have seen… even if it was in actuality the sort of thing they’d grandly spoof on THE SIMPSONS or FAMILY GUY!
I would also imagine that there was a VERY limited playlist at the “Bedrock Theatre” because kids who sit all day to watch the cartoons aren’t asking their parents for Bronto-Burgers, Cactus-Cola, and souvenirs!
And, with our family's not having had a color TV until 1968. I would have sat there for as much of the day as possibly, watching those same FLINTSTONES episodes, over-and-over, but IN COLOR!
And, speaking of souvenirs… STAR WARS?! …REALLY?! How disappointing, with an overabundance of Hanna-Barbera characters to push! I guess even a prehistoric souvenir shop has to keep up with the times! BTW, I’ve never seen a Gazoo doll! I might have bought one for the sheer novelty of it! Was Gazoo part of the exhibit, or was it put-up before his arrival?
As for “Mt. Rockmore”… Mr. Slate and Joe Rockhead, and no Wilma or Betty? I guess those *really were* prehistoric times!
And while I’m glad to see Joe Rockhead appear on *something*, is he really worthy of a mocking of Mt. Rushmore? Perhaps he was there simply for being more attractive than Weirdly Gruesome! I hope it was the “the happy-go-lucky partier” Joe Rockhead, but it probably was the “more conventional later version”! …In which case, I *might* have preferred Weirdly!
I have but one final thought on the whole matter… Given the overall inadequacy and pervasive cheapness of the place, perhaps this was The Flintstones’ “audition” for their eventual move from Gold Key to an also-overall inadequate and pervasively cheap oeuvre at Charlton Comics!
One correction--looking at photos (I was earlier referencing from memory only)--the Mt. Rockmore design featured Fred, Barney, Dino, and Mr. Slate.
Okay… I suppose Dino is probably more representative than Joe Rockhead, but NO Wilma and Betty?
That’s like doing a “Mt. Ralphmore” for THE HONEYMOONERS and, instead of including Alice and Trixie, they added Mr. Marshall and “Lulu the Dog”!
I think that the time has passed for any more Flintstones theme parks. They pretty much just sell cereal and vitamins now, as well as a short-lived DC Comics revamp. You can still find them on DVD at Walmart or streaming on Boomerang’s app, though. For their time, they were a fun series. For now, anyways, I’d say they’re Yabba-Dabba-Done. But you never know what WB may decide to revive next. Hopefully they leave the WWE wrestlers out of it the next time, though. (There actually is a WWE/Flintstones direct to video movie...and one with The Jetsons, too. At least they stopped before having one with Top Cat!).
Deb:
I agree that “the time has passed for any more Flintstones theme parks.” But, I strongly disagree that they are “Yabba-Dabba-Done” (…as clever as I might find that phrase!)
The Flintstones SHOULD be an “evergreen” property, appealing to generation-after-generation! That fact that this may not be so, is the doing of WB, deciding that they need to be buoyed by something as inappropriate and schlocky as the WWE – when the property itself is worlds better than that, or presented in a quasi-realistic style with more adult themes by WB’s DC Comics! …It’s true that I enjoyed the comic as an alternate universe take on the classic Flintstones, but what's so wrong with just DOING the classic Flintstones?
Of course, the damage wasn’t wholly done by WB. Hanna-Barbara itself largely compromised the property with just about anything done after the original series – save “The Man Called Flintstone” animated feature.
The Flintstones, while still iconic (at least to certain generations), should be much more so than it is today – and had it been better handled over the years since the original series, I have little doubt that it would be!
I also said “for now”. Perhaps The Flintstones will find the right project like Mickey Mouse did and they’ll be back in full force. Or they’ll continue to muddle through any number of misguided revival attempts like Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and Scooby-Doo have. I don’t think that The Flintstones are extinct just yet. Right now, they’re just frozen in the glacier of time, waiting for the right person or people to thaw them out.
Deb:
Well, since no one’s asked me to “thaw them out” for a revival, I fear it will be the latter! :-)
And (again), since no one’s asked me, I would return to what made The Flintstones great in the first place… The First and Second Season style look, characterizations, and funny plots – but, with Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm …AS BABIES!
I’d give it a little more meta humor, referencing that the characters noticed (or at least suspect) that something’s up when Barney’s voice changes – twice – and Betty’s changes once, but at the expense of any and all character, becoming a “Stepford-Stone Wife”! Maybe even delve into how Dino went from a cross-between Bugs Bunny and Phil Silvers to an overly-affectionate yapping pet! …And give a little more love to “Baby Puss”, beyond the iconic 3rd-6rd Season closing sequence.
There would be a little Fifth-Season-Style Adventure, but not enough to eschew the funny-stuff!
And, I would definitely bring back Alvin Brickrock!
Or, heck… Just look at THIS GREAT COMIC , to get a feel for what I would do with The Flintstones!
Of course, I could do many of these things by writing a COMIC – and that would be more suited to my limited talents, but (again, sigh!), no one’s asked me!
As for the other properties you mention, SCOOBY-DOO really hasn’t fared all that badly compared to other “misguided revivals”, given things like SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERY INC., the current DC comics – especially SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP (…in view of recent events at um… “other publishers”, the BEST classic funny-animal “regular comic book” around today), and things like the direct-to-DVD SCOOBY-DOO / BATMAN THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD!
Funny… Until now, no one’s ever asked me about that either! Maybe I need to change my brand of toothpaste, or sumpthin’!
Scooby-Doo's revivals, misguided? Yeah, I gotta agree with Joe there, old Scoob is doing fine! I do hope you all caught The Curse of the Thirteenth Ghost (Joe, I sent you an email about that, did it go through), and you have to admit this sort of fanservice is the kind of thing a franchise can only allow itself when it's doing well enough.
Achille:
Again, I think Scooby-Doo has done quite well with regard to revivals… but Deb has a point as well – such as those more recent TV series (beyond MYSTERY INC.) where the characters are designed with today’s unfortunate, but all too typical, distortion, and there probably was a DVD crossover with the WWE as well! …Honestly, I’m quite pleased that I cannot name them, or supply any additional detail!
I have not yet seen “The Curse of the Thirteenth Ghost”, but it is very definitely on my list!
And, sorry to you and everyone else to whom it applies... for various reasons I’ve fallen behind on answering my e-mails (including that one – which, of course, I read), and hope to play catch-up very soon! I put the Blog-stuff out there as quickly as possible because (as you can see) it just generates more comments from (and more FUN for) us all!
Finally, speaking of “fanservice”, I have but FOUR WORDS (…or two hyphenated ones, if you will): SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP! That’s been some of the very best “fanservice” for OVER FIVE YEARS now! I can’t say enough about it, and probably never will as long as they never change their great writer Sholly Fisch!
It’s understandable. Sometimes life gets in the way of e-mails and blogging.
...And eating... and sleeping... and breathing...
Sorry! Gotta take a break to inhale a breath, while time allows!
My scheduled exhale time is ten minutes from now!
Say, why am I turning blue? ...I don't have TIME for this!
THUD!
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