8 Live-Action Sitcoms You Didn’t Know Had Terrible Animated Spin-Offs

1 The Brady Bunch

The first live-action series to be spun off into a cartoon was most likely The Brady Bunch, which launched the Filmation cartoon The Brady Kids in September 1972. The show was essentially The Brady Bunch minus the adult characters, but to make it extra kid-friendly, the Brady kids were given two pet pandas, Ping and Pong. After much recycling of animation from other Filmation cartoons to save money, the show ended after just two seasons. Even Brady Bunch producer Sherwood Schwartz, who cooked up the idea, admitted it was a failure.

What’s interesting is that several different shows across several networks and production companies came out with animated spin-offs — both series and animated specials — that same year. Was there some weird fever dream going on in Hollywood in 1972 or did every single network run out of ideas and just steal the nearest and worst one? We may never know.

2 I Dream of Jeannie

The animated spin-off of I Dream of Jeannie — simply called Jeannie — was another early 1970s flop. Unlike the original show, in which Jeannie serves, then falls in love with, an adult astronaut, cartoon Jeannie takes orders from a high school kid and is accompanied by a chunky genie-in-training named Babu. An interesting fact about the 1973 show is that it starred a pre-Star Wars Mark Hamill who also sang the very bad theme song.

3 My Favorite Martian

While it’s largely forgotten now, My Favorite Martian — a sitcom about a martian living on Earth — was a hit in the 1960s, so much so that it generated an even more forgotten spin-off in 1973, seven years after the original show ended. Yet, despite built-in love for the characters and premise, My Favorite Martians — which added a kid martian and a dog martian to help appeal to a younger audience — tanked, and only 16 episodes ever aired.

4 Gilligan’s Island

Now this is where shit gets weird. For the most part, the earliest sitcom cartoon spin-offs were kid-ified continuations of the original show. They might add a new pet — in Gilligan’s case, a monkey named Snubby — but the cartoon was essentially the same premise as the original. Such was the case with the first animated spin-off of Gilligan’s Island, but definitely not the second. 1974’s The New Adventures of Gilligan was basically just an animated take on Gilligan’s Island. It lasted just two seasons totaling 24 episodes. But, eight years later, the Gilligan brand still had enough cache to spawn the 1982 sci-fi cartoon Gilligan’s Planet. 

In Gilligan’s Planet, the Professor builds a spaceship to get the castaways off the island, but they jettison into space and crashland on another planet. Once there, they get into similar hijinks as they did on an island, but now with a sci-fi twist. Also, Snubby the monkey is replaced by an alien named “Bumper.” Yes, the show was as stupid as it sounds, which is why it lasted just 13 episodes.

5 ‘Happy Days’ and Several of Its Spin-Offs

In the early 1980s, Happy Days would become the worst perpetrator of this blight upon television. To kick off the decade, Happy Days — which itself was a spin-off of Love. American Style — launched the fifth of its seven (or ten, depending on how you count them) spin-offs. In the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, Fonzie has a dog named Mr. Cool and he, Richie, Ralph and a “a future chick named ‘Cupcake’” travel through time. But, most egregiously, some television executive of unsound mind also decided that two Happy Days live-action spin-offs would receive their own cartoon incarnations as well. 

In 1981, Laverne & Shirley spawned Laverne & Shirley in the Army. This show, obviously, featured the two leading ladies enlisting in the army under the command of a talking pig named Sgt. Squealy.

Then, in 1982, a series called Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/Fonz Hour arrived. The show’s first half featured a series with a younger Mork (still played by Robin Williams) in high school on Earth and accompanied by an Orkan pet named “Doing.” The second half of Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/Fonz Hour was a continuation of Laverne & Shirley in the Army, but now the duo were joined by the Fonz and Mr. Cool. 

None of these shows lasted more than 20-something episodes each, but the animated Happy Days franchise was debuting new episodes from November of 1980 until November 1983, so it did have a fairly decent run.

6 The Dukes of Hazzard

In 1983, The Dukes of Hazzard got in on the animated action with The Dukes, which follows the Duke boys as they race around the world. They already had their pet dog Flash in the original show, who joins them here, but just to make things even more cutesy, they added a pet raccoon for Uncle Jesse.

7 Punky Brewster

Because no one learns any lessons, 1985 saw the debut of It’s Punky Brewster. While the original Punky Brewster was about an abandoned child (Punky) being raised by a foster parent, the cartoon spin-off saw Punky team up with a magical gopher named Glomer who can teleport her around the world.

8 ALF

During the height of ALF’s fame in the late 1980s, the cat-eating alien stranded on Earth spawned two cartoon spin-offs. The first was the prequel ALF: The Animated Series, in which ALF (aka Gordon Shumway) is on his home planet of Melmac. While fondly remembered by some, the cartoon didn’t have the same spark without the fish-out-of-water elements of ALF being an alien on Earth. Nor was ALF himself as funny without the human family to bounce off of (particularly Max Wright, who played the ever-flustered Willie Tanner).

While the short run of ALF: The Animated Series would suggest it was a failure, the cartoon was big enough to receive its own spin-off, ALF Tales, which, for a few months, ran concurrently with ALF: The Animated Series. ALF Tales featured characters from ALF: The Animated Series playing various characters in classic fairy tales. The parody elements gave this show a little more for ALF to play with, but the strictly-for-young-kids series was still a big step down from the original sitcom.

ALF: The Animated Series and ALF Tales both concluded in 1989. After that, it seems the animated spin-off fever  finally broke. That isn’t to say that other future shows wouldn’t risk their chances with cartoon incarnations; Sabrina the Teenage Witch had a successful 65-episode animated series in 1999, and Mr. Bean had a 2002 cartoon that lasted an impressive 132 episodes. Most recently however, Trailer Park Boys had a cartoon spin-off in 2019 that tanked, lasting just 20 episodes.

So it’s hard to imagine that a Married… with Children cartoon will break the 50-year old losing streak.