Dr. Zonk and the Zunkins was a CBC

CBC Television

CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are...

 children's television series which ran three afternoons a week from 23 September 1974 to 14 April 1975.

Although the show was cancelled after one season, it was notable for the number of cast members who went on to successful careers. Some of the cast members were also seen in the following season on the CBC Television series Coming Up Rosie

Coming Up Rosie

Coming Up Rosie was a Canadian children's sitcom TV series on CBC Television, aired for three seasons from 1975–1978.-Premise:The show focused on a group of tenants in an office building located at 99 Sumach Street, Toronto. The title character, Rosie Tucker, was played by Rosemary Radcliffe...

.

Cast

• John Candy
  John Candy
  John Franklin Candy was a Canadian actor and comedian. He rose to fame as a member of the Toronto branch of The Second City and its related Second City Television series, and through his appearances in comedy films such as Stripes, Splash, Cool Runnings, The Great Outdoors, Spaceballs, and Uncle...
  
  
• Robin Eveson (as Billy Meek)
• Dan Hennessey
  Dan Hennessey
  Dan Hennessey is a Canadian voice actor who, early on in his career, performed with a children's comedy troupe,...
  
  
• Bob McKenna
• Rosemary Radcliffe
  Rosemary Radcliffe
  Rosemary Radcliffe is a Canadian comic actress, writer, composer and painter. She graduated from Ryerson College in Toronto, then began her television career on Sunday Morning at CBLT Toronto....
  
  
• Gilda Radner
  Gilda Radner
  Gilda Susan Radner was an American comedian and actress, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, for which she won an Emmy Award in 1978.-Early life:...
  
  
• Fiona Reid
  Fiona Reid
  Fiona Reid, CM is a Canadian television, film and stage actress. She is best known for her role as Cathy on the TV series King of Kensington....
  
  
• John Stocker

Premise

The show centered around scenes set in the bedroom of a young boy named Billy Meek with robot

Robot

A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...

/computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

-like puppets called Zunkins named Zooey and Dunkin who would come to life each episode out of a comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 featuring the adventures of the never seen superhero

Superhero

A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...

Dr. Zonk. The rest of the cast were featured in randomly-themed comedy sketches that the Zunkins would show to their human friend.

Reception

A survey of 600 potential viewers found that the series was deemed childish and that viewership was being lost to competing American sitcoms. This led the producers to feature several of the performers in an entirely new series, Coming Up Rosie, based on a more conventional sitcom concept.