Tom Terrific

I’m Tom Terrific, greatest hero ever, Terrific is the name for me, cause I’m so clever, I can be what I want to be, and if you’d like to see, Follow, follow me . . .“Teeeeeeeee-rrific!”Simple, charming, and unforgettable. Those three words may be the only description necessary for Terrytoons’ Adventures Of Tom Terrific, a classic of the Baby Boomer TV generation.Developed by Gene Deitch as the first CBS-based Terrytoon (the network had recently bought the animation studio), Tom Terrific debuted on the popular Captain Kangaroo children’s show in 1957.Armed only with a small budget and a talented staff of writers and animators, Deitch and crew developed a series that both celebrated and poked fun at the adventure serials of radio days. Using a simple black-and-white drawing style with minimal backgrounds, the Terrytoons animators brought Tom Terrific to rousing life.I’m Tom Terrific, greatest hero ever, Terrific is the name for me, cause I’m so clever, I can be what I want to be, and if you’d like to see, Follow, follow me . . .The title star was a wee superhero with a magic, funnel-shaped hat. Tom’s unusual headgear allowed him to transform into anything he could imagine, from a rock to a rocket. Always confident but never violent, Tom took on a variety of comical criminals, including Sweet Tooth Sam, Captain Kidney Bean, The Silly Sandman, The Gravity Maker, and Tom’s arch enemy, Crabby Appleton, who was “rotten to the core.”Always at Tom’s side was his “ever-faithful companion,” Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog. Despite the imposing name, Manfred never really liked the whole crime busting routine. The big, slow-voiced and baggy-eyed pooch would rather avoid trouble than stop it, and a good long nap beat a good deed any day of the week.If you see a plane on high, A diesel train go roaring by, A bumblebee, or a tree, It’s me!Tom Terrific was an instant success with kids and adults, both of whom could appreciate the show’s inventive writing and clever situations. The five-minute, cliffhanging episodes were presented every weekday on Captain Kangaroo, delivering one complete five-part story each week.In all, twenty-six full adventures (or 130 individual episodes) of The Adventures Of Tom Terrific were produced and aired over the cartoon’s four-year Captain Kangaroo stint. After leaving the Captain’s realm, the twenty-six Tom Terrific stories were packaged and sent into syndication, where Tom and Manfred continued to delight young audiences for years.When there is trouble, I’m there on the double, From Atlantic to Pacific, They know Tom Terrific!Tom Terrific was a product of Terrytoons' Deitch Era — a brief period in the studio's history during which its grizzled schlockmeisters were forced to take orders from 31-year-old Gene Deitch. Deitch, who got his start doing Gerald McBoing-Boing at UPA, became the Terrytoons creative director the year after CBS bought the company from founder Paul Terry. The first thing Deitch did was scrap all the ongoing characters, including such stars as Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle, and replace them with the likes of Gaston LeCrayon and John Doormat.He also explored new venues. Tom Terrific was produced for the burgeoning television market, and ran from 1957-59 on CBS's Captain Kangaroo show. The daily episodes, replete with heroism, villainy and cliffhangers, added up to a complete five-part story every week. Those old episodes were sporadically re-run, and were seen, on rare occasions, as recently as the early 1970s.Tom's appeal did not lie in the cartoons' production values, which, like most early TV animation (e.g., Clutch Cargo, Col. Bleep), were nothing short of shoddy. No, it was in the clever writing, the likeable characters, and the fact that the series was just plain fun. The latter quality was considerably enhanced by the talent of voice actor Lionel Wilson, who played all the roles. As chief villain Crabby Appleton ("He's rotten to the core!"), Wilson would sneer and hiss in the best melodramatic tradition; while as Tom, his breathless enthusiasm made every little plot development seem like a Major Event.Another possible source of the character's appeal was in his basic situation. Besides being a superhero (he could transform his body into whatever he wanted), Tom was a kid on his own. His headquarters was a tree house, where he lived with his ever-faithful companion, Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog (possibly the world's laziest heroic sidekick), and nobody else. The only adults in Tom's life were guys he could have fun adventures with — villains like Captain Kidneybean the Pirate and weirdos like madcap inventor Isotope Feeny. What kid wouldn't want to identify with a guy like that?Besides his Captain Kangaroo appearances, Tom held down a quarterly comic book for no less than six issues, Summer 1957 through Fall 1958, where some stories were drawn by Ralph Bakshi (later the animation producer who brought Fritz the Cat to the big screen). Sidney the Elephant, another Deitch creation, appeared in it as a back-up feature. Tom also appeared in a few Wonder Books, a knock-off of Little Golden Books.Like the rest of the Deitch Era Terrytoons, the Tom Terrific cartoons haven't been seen in many years. But unlike most, they're very fondly recalled by their Baby Boom audience.