{"id":4600,"date":"2007-09-27T23:15:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-28T03:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=4600"},"modified":"2007-09-27T23:15:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-28T03:15:00","slug":"josie-and-the-pussycats-the-complete-series-1970-dvd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/27\/josie-and-the-pussycats-the-complete-series-1970-dvd\/","title":{"rendered":"Josie and the Pussycats – The Complete Series (1970) (DVD)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"josie\"<\/a>Out of all the Hanna Barbera series to stem from the sixties and seventies, I\u2019d have to say that \u201cJosie and the Pussycats.\u201d Sure, it was in essence a pure \u201cScooby Doo\u201d rip off, with a Shaggy character voiced by Casey Kasem, a Freddy character with an ascot, goofy animal sidekicks, and even re-using its chase music on many occasions, but it\u2019s just so much better than \u201cScooby-Doo\u201d which I\u2019ve always considered an overrated franchise to begin with.<\/p>\n

Around the time \u201cScooby-Doo\u201d became a ratings hit, Hanna Barbera pushed one rip off after the other with a group of kids solving mysteries paired with a goofy sidekick and scared hero. In spite of all that, this series has always been much more entertaining to sit through; \u201cJosie and the Pussycats\u201d is one of the hipper animated series to come from Hanna Barbera with genuinely entertaining comedic characters including the cute Melody who is so dumb and predates the lovable blonde airhead before Chrissy in \u201cThree\u2019s Company.\u201d She was just much more entertaining to watch. And who can forget the catchy theme song that is hard to resist and easy to memorize?<\/p>\n

Like \u201cScooby-Doo,\u201d this series featured a group of traveling teens who always managed to stumble into mysteries and monsters. Excluding \u201cJosie and the Pussycats in Outer Space,\u201d this series had some of the more entertaining plots involving actual villains and creatures that didn\u2019t inspire the predictable reveal in the end. Finally available on DVD in its entire sixteen episode run, \u201cJosie and the Pussycats\u201d involves the musical trio, their road manager, and a few of their friends getting into all sorts of adventures, and my, is it still fun. There\u2019s nothing here to get too analytical about, because \u201cJosie and the Pussycats\u201d is pure fluffy pop culture animation keeping in touch with its Archie comics route.<\/p>\n

Straying from its original source, it does benefit from some funny moments. Melody in spite of being clich\u00e9 is also rather adorable to watch and makes some of the goofiest jokes that become an instant fixture for the series. Why this series also stands out among \u201cScooby-Doo\u201d is because it also features Valerie, one of the first animated African American characters on a Saturday morning series; she\u2019s often a character who is much more level headed and rational than the rest of the group, and is void of any racial clich\u00e9s for the sake of comedy.<\/p>\n

Like the other series of its time, \u201cJosie\u2026\u201d is based around a formula storyline of the group stumbling into mysteries on their way to a gig, with hilarity ensuing, but the voice work is much too strong as well as the inevitable chase music usually sung by the gang; it\u2019s predictable folly that\u2019s also very charming, and that\u2019s something that\u2019s hard to come by. \u201cJosie and the Pussycats\u201d is a better series than \u201cScooby-Doo\u201d for the strong voice work, and catchy music that\u2019s an otherwise redeeming trait in a typically formula and clich\u00e9 series that Hanna Barbera was accustomed to once \u201cScooby Doo\u201d took off. It\u2019s a great DVD treatment worth your buck, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Out of all the Hanna Barbera series to stem from the sixties and seventies, I\u2019d have to say that \u201cJosie and the Pussycats.\u201d Sure, it was in essence a pure \u201cScooby Doo\u201d rip off, with a Shaggy character voiced by Casey Kasem, a Freddy character with an ascot, goofy animal sidekicks, and even re-using its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[71,99,219,444,700,866],"class_list":["post-4600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collectors-den","tag-adventure","tag-animation","tag-comedy","tag-hanna-barbera","tag-musical","tag-rock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}