Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels
Encyclopedia
Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels is an animated series created by Joe Ruby
Joe Ruby
Joseph "Joe" Ruby is commonly known for inventing scotch tape. Ruby was an American inventor who worked for Johnson and Johnson, Permacel Co., and 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he invented masking tape and cellophane tape.[1]Biography...

 and Ken Spears
Ken Spears
Ken Spears is a TV writer and animator who is known as the co-creator for the Scooby-Doo series, Josie and the Pussycats, and Jabberjaw with his partner Joe Ruby. He is co-founder of the production company Ruby-Spears Productions.-References:...

 and produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...

 from September 10, 1977 to June 21, 1980 on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

.

The first and second seasons were originally broadcast as segments on the package shows Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics
Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics
-DVD release:On January 19, 2010, Warner Home Video released Scooby's All-Star Laff-A Lympics - Volume 1 on DVD in Region 1. The single disc release features the first four episodes of the Laff-a-Lympics segment of the package. Target released an exclusive second volume with the next four episodes...

and Scooby's All-Stars from 1977 to 1979 and the third season featured Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels in their own half-hour timeslot in 1980.

Summary

Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels centers on the mystery-solving adventures of the Teen Angels—Brenda, Dee Dee and Taffy—and their friend Captain Caveman (or Cavey for short), a prehistoric caveman whom the girls discovered and thawed from a block of ice. The concept and general plot for the show was seen as a parody of Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels is a television series about three women who work for a private investigation agency, and is one of the first shows to showcase women in roles traditionally reserved for men...

(which also aired on ABC). It also borrowed heavily from other Hanna-Barbera shows such as Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo is an American media franchise based around several animated television series and related works produced from 1969 to the present day. The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, was created for Hanna-Barbera Productions by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears in 1969...

and Josie and the Pussycats
Josie and the Pussycats (TV series)
Josie and the Pussycats is an American animated television series, based upon the Archie Comics comic book series of the same name created by Dan DeCarlo....

, among others. Captain Caveman was also on the "Scooby Doobies" team on Laff-a-Lympics.

Captain Caveman's powers include super-strength, a variety of useful objects hidden inside his fur, and a club that allows him to fly and from which pops out different tools he uses to fight crime. His trademark is his battle cry of "Captain CAAAAAVEMAAAAAAANNNN!" Captain Caveman's voice was provided by Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...

.

The first and second seasons of the show remained part of Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics and Scooby's All-Stars through 1979. Cavey and the girls also participated in sporting competitions
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...

 as part of "The Scooby Doobies" team on the half-hour "Laff-A-Lympics
Laff-A-Lympics
Laff-A-Lympics was the co-headlining segment, with Scooby-Doo, of the package Saturday morning cartoon series Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. The show was a spoof of the Olympics and the ABC television series Battle of the Network Stars, which debuted one...

" segment. In March 1980, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels were given their own half hour show with 16 new episodes combined with reruns from 1977-1979. A total of 40 11-minute episodes were produced (16 in 1977-1978, 8 in 1978-1979 and 16 in 1980).

Like most of the animated series' created by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, the show contained an abridged, inferior laugh track
Laugh track
A laugh track is a separate soundtrack invented by Charles "Charley" Douglass, with the artificial sound of audience laughter, made to be inserted into television programming of comedy shows and sitcoms.The term "laugh track" does not apply to the genuine audience laughter on shows that shoot in...

 created by the studio, one of their productions to do so.

Captain Caveman

Captain Caveman (voiced by Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...

) is the main character, a caveman who is thousands of years old (his exact age is never disclosed). He can pull various objects from his body hair. He can also fly, but his flying power always seems to fail him at the worst possible moment. Sometimes he would attribute this mishap to an energy shortage ("Uh oh! Bad time for energy crisis." CRASH!), which was a pun on the gasoline rationing shortages of the late 1970s. He speaks in stereotypical "caveman-talk", replacing subjective pronouns with their objective equivalents and dropping articles
Article (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...

 such as "the" (for example, "Me know where bad guys are hiding."), and often mumbles the nonsense phrase "unga bunga". He also has a bad habit of occasionally eating large non-food objects in one gulp (i.e. bicycles, TV sets, safes, table lamps), and the Teen Angels occasionally have to stop him from eating potential clues that will help them to solve the mystery.

Dee Dee Skyes

Dee Dee Skyes (voiced by Vernee Watson
Vernee Watson-Johnson
Vernee Watson-Johnson is an American actress. She is best known for her recurring roles as Vernajean Williams on Welcome Back, Kotter and as Viola "Vy" Smith on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, playing the mother of Will Smith's character.She played a small role on Sister, Sister as Lisa's best...

) is the brains of the Teen Angels, is the group's sole African-American, and acts as their unofficial leader. Dee Dee and the rest of the Teen Angels found the frozen Captain Caveman and defrosted him. She wears her hair in an afro
Afro
Afro, sometimes shortened to fro and also known as a "natural", is a hairstyle worn naturally by people with lengthy kinky hair texture or specifically styled in such a fashion by individuals with naturally curly or straight hair...

 and usually wears a red turtleneck sweater with a blue skirt and red knee high boots. Both her dress style and her knack for solving mysteries make her similar to Velma Dinkley
Velma Dinkley
Velma Dace Dinkley is a fictional character in the American television animated series Scooby-Doo. She is prone to losing her glasses. She is usually seen wearing a baggy orange sweater, short pleated skirt , knee socks, and Mary Janes...

 of Scooby Doo fame, while she also bears a resemblance to Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats
Josie and the Pussycats (TV series)
Josie and the Pussycats is an American animated television series, based upon the Archie Comics comic book series of the same name created by Dan DeCarlo....

.

Brenda Chance

Brenda Chance (voiced by Marilyn Schreffler
Marilyn Schreffler
Marilyn Schreffler was an American actress, who provided voice-overs for several animated TV programs, mostly for Hanna-Barbera Productions.-Life:Born in Concordia, Kansas, and had an affinity for cartoons since age 6...

) is a cowardly brunette who is always scared of the demons, monsters and phantoms that she encounters. She usually wears a pale pink top and a pair of hot pink flared trousers with a white belt.

Taffy Dare

Taffy Dare (voiced by Laurel Page
Laurel Page
Laurel Page is an American actress. She was born in Los Angeles, California. Page provided voice-overs in the following animated series:*Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels - Taffy...

) is the blonde member of the group, renowned for her cry of "Zowie!" whenever she comes up with a plan (or "Another Daffy Taffy Plan" as Brenda and Cavey would call it) to catch the culprits. In spite of her usually zany plans, Taffy is actually very capable and clever. She has the ability to sweet-talk Caveman into acting as bait for her plans to capture the culprit. She usually wears a green dress with matching shoes. It is revealed that Captain Caveman has a crush on her.

Opening and closing credits

The opening credits for each episode consisted of voice-over narration by Gary Owens
Gary Owens
Gary Owens is an American disc jockey and voice actor. His polished baritone speaking voice generally offers deadpan recitations of total nonsense, which he frequently demonstrated as the announcer on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Owens is equally proficient in straight or silly assignments and is...

:
Set free by the Teen Angels from his prehistoric block of glacier ice comes the world's first superhero, Captain Caveman! Now the constant companion to the Teen Angels—Brenda, Dee Dee and Taffy—in their hilarious, and sometimes scary mystery missions. Get ready for Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels!


The music heard in the closing credits is the CB Bears
CB Bears
CB Bears was a 60-minute Saturday morning cartoon program block produced by Hanna-Barbera which aired on NBC from September 10 to December 3, 1977...

theme. After the first three screens, the end credit roll is from the original two-hour version of Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics
Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics
-DVD release:On January 19, 2010, Warner Home Video released Scooby's All-Star Laff-A Lympics - Volume 1 on DVD in Region 1. The single disc release features the first four episodes of the Laff-a-Lympics segment of the package. Target released an exclusive second volume with the next four episodes...

.

Season 1 (1977)

Title Original airdate
1 "The Kooky Case of the Cryptic Keys" 1977 September 10
2 "The Mixed Up Mystery of Deadman's Reef" 1977 September 17
3 "What a Flight for a Fright" 1977 September 24
4 "The Creepy Case of the Creaky Charter Boat" 1977 October 1
5 "Big Scare in the Big Top" 1977 October 8
6 "Double Dribble Riddle" 1977 October 15
7 "The Crazy Case of the Tell-Tale Tape" 1977 October 22
8 "The Creepy Claw Caper" 1977 October 29
9 "Cavey and the Kabuta Clue" 1977 November 5
10 "Cavey and the Weirdo Wolfman" 1977 November 12
11 "The Disappearing Elephant Mystery" 1977 November 19
12 "The Fur Freight Fright" 1977 November 26
13 "Ride 'em Caveman" 1977 December 3
14 "The Strange Case of the Creature from Space" 1977 December 10
15 "The Mystery Mansion Mix-Up" 1977 December 17
16 "Playing Footsie with Bigfoot" 1977 December 24

Season 2 (1978)

Title Original airdate
17 "Disco Cavey" 1978 September 9
18 "Muscle-Bound Cavey" 1978 September 16
19 "Cavey's Crazy Car Caper" 1978 September 23
20 "Cavey's Mexicali 500" 1978 September 30
21 "Wild West Cavey" 1978 October 7
22 "Cavey's Winter Carnival Caper" 1978 October 14
23 "Cavey's Fashion Fiasco" 1978 October 21
24 "Cavey's Missing Missile Miss-tery" 1978 October 28

Season 3 (1980)

Title Original airdate
25 "The Scarifying Seaweed Secret" 1980 March 8
26 "The Dummy" 1980 March 15
27 "Cavey and the Volcanic Villain" 1980 March 22
28 "Prehistoric Panic" 1980 March 29
29 "Cavey and the Baffling Buffalo Man" 1980 April 5
30 "Dragonhead" 1980 April 12
31 "Cavey and the Murky Mississippi Mystery" 1980 April 19
32 "Old Cavey in New York" 1980 April 26
33 "Cavey and the Albino Rhino" 1980 May 3
34 "Kentucky Cavey" 1980 May 10
35 "Cavey Goes to College" 1980 May 17
36 "The Haunting of Hog Hollow" 1980 May 24
37 "The Legend of Devil's Run" 1980 May 31
38 "The Mystery of the Meandering Mummy" 1980 June 7
39 "The Old Caveman and the Sea" 1980 June 14
40 "Lights, Camera... Cavey!" 1980 June 21

The Flintstone Comedy Show (1980-82)

In November 1980, Captain Caveman began to star in segments of his own on The Flintstone Comedy Show
The Flintstone Comedy Show (1980)
The Flintstone Comedy Show was a 90-minute Saturday morning animated series revival of The Flintstones produced by Hanna-Barbera and aired from November 22, 1980 to September 11, 1982 on NBC...

, one of many spin-offs
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...

 of Hanna-Barbera's popular prime-time show The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...

, often in a role similar to that of Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...

. Captain Caveman worked at The Daily Granite newspaper with Wilma Flintstone
Wilma Flintstone
Wilma Anna Flintstone is a fictional character in the television animated series The Flintstones. She was the red-headed wife of caveman Fred Flintstone, daughter of Pearl Slaghoople, mother of Pebbles Flintstone and a grandmother...

 and Betty Rubble
Betty Rubble
Elizabeth 'Betty' Jean Rubble is a fictional character in the television animated series The Flintstones and its spin-offs and live-action motion pictures. She is the black-haired wife of caveman Barney Rubble and the adoptive mother of Bamm-Bamm Rubble...

. His "secret identity" was Chester, the office boy. To disguise himself as Chester, Captain Caveman wore a pair of glasses and a tie. Despite the simplicity of his disguise, he required a coat rack and an elaborate transformation sequence to become Captain Caveman.

The Flintstone Kids (1986-88)

In 1986, Captain Caveman appeared in a backup segment of The Flintstone Kids
The Flintstone Kids
The Flintstone Kids is a 30-minute animated television series spin-off of The Flintstones which followed the adventures of Fred, Barney, Wilma, and Betty as children with their pet Dino.-Premise:...

called Captain Caveman and Son with his son, Cavey Jr. (voiced by Charles Adler). In this case he appeared on a show-within-a-show that the younger versions of Fred, Barney, Wilma, and Betty enjoyed watching; the Captain's mumbled "unga bunga" became a catchphrase that the kids would shout before watching each "episode" of the show. The show would involve a lesson the Flintstone kids were trying to learn in the prologue. The whole "secret identity" idea was also ignored or forgotten.

Other appearances

  • A very similar pair of characters, the Slag Brothers, made an appearance in the earlier Hanna-Barbera series Wacky Races
    Wacky Races
    Wacky Races is an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera. The series features 11 different cars racing against each other in various road rallies throughout North America, with each driver hoping to win the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer." Wacky Races ran on CBS from September...

    .
  • In the Pinky and the Brain
    Pinky and the Brain
    Pinky and the Brain is an American animated television series.The characters Pinky and the Brain first appeared in 1993 as a recurring segment on the show Animaniacs...

    episode "The Luck of Pinky" Captain Caveman makes a cameo appearance as a small statue.
  • Captain Caveman later appeared in the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
    Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
    Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law is an American animated television series comedy created by Williams Street and produced by Cartoon Network Studios that aired on Cartoon Network during its Adult Swim late night programming block. The series' pilot first aired in 2000, and later became a series in...

    episode "The Evolutionary War" with Captain Caveman voiced by Chris Edgerly
    Chris Edgerly
    Christopher "Chris" Edgerly is an American actor and voice actor.Edgerly was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, he moved to Savannah, Georgia at the age of two with his mother, and two brothers...

     and Cavey Jr. voiced by Maurice LaMarche
    Maurice LaMarche
    Maurice LaMarche is an Emmy Award winning Canadian-American voice actor and former stand up comedian. He is best known for his voicework in Futurama as Kif Kroker, as Egon Spengler in The Real Ghostbusters, Verminous Skumm and Duke Nukem in Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Big Bob Pataki in Hey...

    . His son Cavey Jr. was teased at school because his existence proved the Theory of Evolution
    Creation and evolution in public education
    The status of creation and evolution in public education has been the subject of substantial debate in legal, political, and religious circles...

    .
  • Captain Caveman appeared in the Robot Chicken
    Robot Chicken
    Robot Chicken is an American stop motion animated television series created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Green provides many voices for the show...

    episode "Ban on the Fun" voiced by Breckin Meyer
    Breckin Meyer
    -Early life:Meyer was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Dorothy Ann , a travel agent and former microbiologist, and Christopher William Meyer, a management consultant. As a child of divorced parents, he lived in California, Texas, West Virginia and New Jersey. He has an older brother,...

    . In a segment that parodies the Laff-A-Lympics in the style of the Munich massacre
    Munich massacre
    The Munich massacre is an informal name for events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Bavaria in southern West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian group Black September. Members of Black September...

    , Captain Caveman and Shaggy Rogers
    Shaggy Rogers
    Norville "Shaggy" Rogers is a fictional character from the American animated television series Scooby-Doo, about the adventures of four crime-solving teenagers and Shaggy's pet great dane, Scooby-Doo. Shaggy is a cowardly slacker more interested in eating than solving mysteries. He is the only...

     confront Daisy Mayhem and Captain Caveman blows her up with the wrong club.
  • Captain Caveman appeared as an enemy in the 8-bit computer game Renegade III: The Final Chapter
    Renegade III: The Final Chapter
    Renegade 3: The Final Chapter is a scrolling beat'em up computer game released on the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, MSX and ZX Spectrum systems in the late 1980s by Ocean Software under their "Imagine" label...

    .
  • In the Halloween
    Halloween
    Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...

     2008 episode of Homestar Runner
    Homestar Runner
    Homestar Runner is a Flash animated Internet cartoon. It mixes surreal humor with references to retro pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music.The cartoons are nominally centered on the title character, Homestar Runner...

    , Homsar disguises himself as Captain Caveman. He then exclaims "Daaa!! AaAah'm the Captain Caveman of the graveyard train!"
  • In the Family Guy
    Family Guy
    Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...

    episode named "Perfect Castaway", Peter expresses how much he misses Captain Caveman, and vows that he will see him again once he gets off the island.
  • Captain Caveman also makes a cameo appearance in a episode of Adventure Time with Finn and Jake where he is seen as a stuffed doll in Finn's room.
  • Captain Caveman appears in the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated episode "Mystery Solvers Club State Finals" voiced by Jim Cummings
    Jim Cummings
    James Jonah "Jim" Cummings is an American voice actor who has appeared in almost 100 roles. He has appeared in classic animated movies such as Aladdin and The Lion King, as well as taking on roles in more current films, such as Bee Movie, Princess and the Frog, and Winnie the Pooh.-Personal...

    . He and the Teen Angels appear alongside other Hanna-Barbera detective teams in a fever dream of Scooby-Doo's. When the teenage sleuths are kidnapped by Lord Infernacus, it's up to their sidekicks to save them.

Home media releases

A PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...

 videocassette
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

 of Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels containing 13 episodes was released only in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 in 1997. The series has not yet been released on DVD for the Hanna-Barbera Classics Collection
Hanna-Barbera Classics Collection
The Hanna-Barbera Classics Collection is a series of two-to-four-disc DVD box sets from Warner Bros.' home video unit Warner Home Video, usually containing seasons and complete series of various classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon shows...

 from Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video . The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979...

.

External links

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