King Kong (キングコング００１/７親指トム), commonly referred to as The King Kong Show, is an animated television series produced by Videocraft International and Toei Animation. ABC ran the series in the United States on Saturday mornings between September 10, 1966, and August 31, 1969. It is the first anime-based series produced in Japan for an American company (not counting Rankin/Bass' previous Animagic stop motion productions, which were also animated in Japan). This series is an animated adaptation of the famous film monster King Kong with character designs by Jack Davis and Rod Willis. In this series, the giant ape befriends the Bond family, with whom he goes on various adventures, fighting monsters, robots, aliens, mad scientists and other threats. Unlike King Kong's destructive roles in his films, the cartoon turned him into a protector of humanity.

Tom of T.H.U.M.B.

Included with King Kong is Tom of T.H.U.M.B., a parody of spy films of the 1960s called Tom of T.H.U.M.B. (based on the character in English folklore 'Tom Thumb'), about a secret agent for T.H.U.M.B. (the Tiny Human Underground Military Bureau) named Tom and his Asian "sidekick" Swinging Jack, who are accidentally reduced by a shrinking laser ray gun to 3 in tall. The pair are sent out in a variety of miniature vehicles by their bad-tempered boss Chief Homer J. Chief to foil the fiendish plots of M.A.D. (Maladjusted, Anti-social and Darn mean), an evil organization made up of black-hatted and black-cloaked scientists "bent on destroying the world for their own gains".

Characters

Cast

Crew

List of episodes

Starting with the second episode, each episode begins with a six-minute King Kong segment, followed by a six-minute Tom of T.H.U.M.B. segment, and then a second six-minute King Kong segment.

Music

The theme music for the series was recorded in London, England, in 1965, using primarily British studio musicians. Canadian conductor, vocalist and former Kitchener-Waterloo Record entertainment columnist Harry Currie provided vocal talent on the recording.

Release

In Japan, the first two episodes were combined into a 56-minute special, titled King of the World: The King Kong Show (世界の王者　キングコング大会), and was broadcast on NET (now TV Asahi) on December 31, 1966. The rest of the series, with the inclusion of Tom of T.H.U.M.B., was broadcast on NET as King Kong & 001/7 Tom Thumb (キングコング００１/７親指トム), and aired from April 5 to October 4, 1967, with a total of 25 episodes. On November 15, 2005, Sony Wonder released the first eight episodes (two King Kong cartoons separated by a Tom of T.H.U.M.B. cartoon) on two DVD releases titled King Kong: The Animated Series Volume 1 and King Kong: The Animated Series Volume 2. The pilot episode was included, in its two parts for American syndication, between the two DVDs.

Reception

In the 2007 book ''Comics Gone Ape! The Missing Link to Primates in Comics, comics historian Michael Eury writes: "The Rankin/Bass King Kong'' was an early case of identity theft, where the Kong name was appropriated (fully under license) to describe a new character that, at best, only remotely resembled his namesake. This was Kong done wrong".

Legacy

This series, in spite of the lukewarm reception, was successful enough for Rankin/Bass to extend the Kong franchise to another Japanese company, Toho (which had already produced the hit film King Kong vs. Godzilla in 1962). This resulted in two films: Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (originally intended to be a Kong film, with Godzilla exhibiting some of Kong's traits) and King Kong Escapes, which was based on The King Kong Show.