The 14 Earliest Animated TV Series Ever Aired
The path to Rick and Morty started with Crusader Rabbit and ran through Winky Dink.
‘The Woody Woodpecker Show’ (1957)
Besides the classic animated shorts, they also filled time with live-action footage of Disney animators in their glorified sweatshops, and a voice actor riffing over newsreel footage, in character as Woody Woodpecker.
‘The Ruff and Reddy Show’ (1957)
Named after 19th century Whig Party star Zachary Taylor, aka “Old Rough and Ready,” this show was about a smart cat and a dumb dog who never met a woman because the studio would only pay for two voice actors. It was the first-ever Hanna-Barbera series.
‘Tom Terrific’ (1957)
Tom Terrific was a child superhero who could turn into any animal or vehicle he wanted. He lived alone in a treehouse (with his sentient but stupid dog), and didn’t fight crime, per se, but rather raged against the adults in his life. Sounds pretty bleak!
‘The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show’ (1956)
Originally a Dr. Seuss book, this was a series about a little kid who could only communicate via foley artist-y sound effects. The original short won an Oscar, but the series only lasted for three months.
‘A Rubovian Legend’ (1955)
This was a British stop-motion puppet show about — predictably — a royal family. Sometimes a dragon would get the hiccups and turn into cabbage.
‘The Mickey Mouse Club’ (1955)
This variety show would repurpose a bunch of Mickey cartoon shorts that had been released in theaters, but did animate some new bumpers and intro/outro scenes. The theme song always ended with Donald Duck failing to hit a gong in some novel way — a clear predecessor to The Simpsons’ couch gag.
‘Mighty Mouse Playhouse’ (1955)
Mighty Mouse made frequent appearances in theatrical shorts throughout the 1940s, but TV made him a star.
‘The Gumby Show’ (1955)
Gumby first appeared in a short film called Gumbasia, which is considered one of the first music videos, then made an appearance on The Howdy Doody Show, before spinning off into his own series. The plasticine they used to make Gumby was prone to disintegration, so they had to use five or six Gumbies for every scene, kind of like in The Prestige.
‘The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican’ (1954)
This guy frequently makes Worst Animations of All Time lists. It started as a puppet show before, apparently, one single guy animated it with crude pencil sketches and improvised voiceover that sounds like everyone’s least favorite uncle was too drunk to read Captain Underpants and made up his own story on the fly.
‘Winky Dink and You’ (1953)
This show walked so that shows like Blues Clues and Dora the Explorer could run. Parents would buy a vinyl “magic drawing screen” to slap over the TV so kids could draw on it, helping Winky Dink and his dog Woofer navigate some conflict. They might need a bridge to cross a river or a cage to catch a damn lion.
‘Jim and Judy in Teleland’ (1949)
Jim and Judy were two kids who jumped into their television to have extremely low-budget adventures. It featured crude cel art and borderline puppet show special effects that look just like Poochie returning to his home planet. A decade later, it was rebroadcast as Bob and Betty in Adventureland for some reason.
‘Tele-Comics’ (1949)
This show didn’t feature any actual animation, but was really more of a slideshow of comic strips that some guy narrated out loud. Strips included “Brother Goose,” “Joey and Jug” and “Rick Rack, Secret Agent.”
‘Adventures of Pow Wow’ (1949)
Captain Kangaroo unleashed this racist horror upon the giggling masses for a few years in the 1950s. It was about a cheerful little Native American boy named Pow Wow who saves animals from Final Destination-esque predicaments with the help of his tribe’s — yikes — “medicine man.” The creators never renewed the copyright, for some reason, so it’s in the public domain now. In case you want to pitch something to A24.
‘Crusader Rabbit’ (1948)
In those days, animating a feature-length movie or theatrical short was so onerous, no studio thought they could take on a weekly TV show. Creator Alexander Anderson had pitched an animated variety show called The Comic Strip of Television for years, before this one character was picked up for a series. The show was a four-minute satirical short that was all cliffhanger, no resolution. Co-creator Jay Ward would go on to create The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
