Warner Video has a yabba-dabba-do time (you knew that was coming, right?) releasing this 60th anniversary Blu-ray boxed-set compilations of The Flintstones, running the entire lifetime of the original show from 1960 to 1966 (a 20-disk DVD complete collection appeared in 2018).
Each disc is accompanied by a mini-documentary or extra, ranging from William Hanna and Joseph Barbera (filmed in 1991) demonstrating for the viewer how to draw Flintstones characters to the music tracks of an all-Flintstones song album to short making-of and behind-the-scenes documentaries (cartoonist and historian Scott Shaw also shows off his formidable home stash of international Flintstones collectibles). The peculiar origin of the ancient-alien character the Great Gazoo (voiced by Harvey Korman) also gets a mini-history.
Alas, scant credit is given to the live-action Jackie Gleason series The Honeymooners, oft-cited for providing a template for the prime-time cartoon series focusing on blue-collar caveman Fred Flintstone, his wife Wilma, best friend Barney Rubble, and Barney's wife Betty.
Commentators include a most amusing bit with actor Stephen Baldwin—a Barney Rubble from the live-action "Flintstone" features—the late Fred Silverman, and many of the surviving animators from the older generation at MGM/Hanna-Barbera, saying that no cartoon show of this magnitude and ambition had ever been launched on American TV before, and it went through a few tryouts (as The Flagstones and The Gladstones) before reaching its finished version (the rough-draft version of Betty Rubble is pretty jarring indeed).
Viewers of this new HD presentation will find the Flintstones archaeology looking great pictorially, even as the scripts are somewhat dated. But who can resist revisiting Anne-Margaret and Tony Curtis doing their own voiceovers (as "Anne Margrock" and "Stony Curtis"), Bedrock-ized versions of bands such as The Beau Brummels, a cross-promotion cameo by cartoon versions of Bewitched's characters, or the late-series addition of the Gruesomes, a sort of primordial knockoff of The Addams Family or The Munsters?
Two super-sized extras are feature-length Flint-film spinoffs. The theatrically released A Man Called Flintstone (1966) is a pop-culture mutation in which Fred and Barney participate in spy antics inspired by James Bond 007 (just about everything in 1966 was a 007 tie-in).
An arguably loopier franchise mish-mash is the straight-to-video The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age Smackdown, from 2015, (Mr. Slate now has a flat-screen PC monitor!) in which voiceover artists from The Simpsons and others try to fill in for Alan Reed, Mel Blanc, Jean Vander Pyl and Gerry Johnson—but it isn't quite the same. Though wrestling icons Vince McMahon, John Cena, The Undertaker, Rey Mysterio, etc. do provide their own speaking roles for purists, and Wilma poses in a bikini.
Overall, the set represents an essential Blu-ray title for J shelves as well as collections catering to animation, TV classics, and nostalgia-minded grownups.