It's the kick-kick-kickiest...
"He was stunned and he was fascinated, still he had to see There was something deep inside the hat, What could that something be? Then cautiously each step he took, he climbed up on the brim to look, And all at once the hat began to shake, and rock, look out!" (The point of no return for poor Mark.)
The
Planet of Hats taken to its logical extreme: Most of the characters are anthropomorphic talking hats.
Extremely similar to
H.R. Pufnstuf,
Lidsville featured a boy, Mark (Butch Patrick), who falls into a stage magician's top-hat into the eponymous hat community. Having gained control of a ring-dwelling (non-hat) Genie (played by a
gender-flipped Billie Hayes, who also played Witchiepoo on
Pufnstuf), he is pursued by the magician's Lidsvillian evil counterpart, HooDoo, played by a pre-
Match Game Charles Nelson Reilly — not a hat himself, but living in a giant topper and flying around in a giant opera hat. Produced by
Sid and Marty Krofft Productions back in 1971, obviously while still tripping on acid. The concept bears a suspicious resemblance to an earlier British stop motion cartoon called
Hattytown Tales... though it was only two years earlier, and had none of the overarching plot (such as it is) of the classic Sid and Marty Krofft Productions "human lost in a strange land" story, and lacked any "human" characters.
Brilliantly parodied on
Mr Show in the sketch "The Altered State of Druggachusetts."
Lidsville provides examples of:
- At The Opera Tonight: Tonsilini the Top Hat (oddly enough, not, apparently, an opera hat).
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Raunchy.
- Cool Car: HooDoo's flying hat.
- Cool Old Lady: Mother Wheels.
- Cross Over: In one episode, HooDoo meets Witchiepoo through a dating service, and it is up to the heroes to break them up.
- Damn, It Feels Good To Be A Gangster: Mr. Big
- Don't Go Into The Woods: The Forest of Hair, crossing over with When Trees Attack.
- Dumb Muscle: Rah-Rah the football helmet
- Ending Theme
- Evil Sorcerer: Horatio J. HooDoo
- Evil Twin: Actually, HooDoo has a good twin.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The nurse is named Nursie.
- Executive Meddling: Producer Si Rose once said that the censors called them up one day and told them Mother Wheels needed to wear a motorcyle helmet; Rose responded, "Mother Wheels is a motorcycle helmet".
- Expository Theme Tune: Would also count as a Disney Acid Sequence...if the whole damn show wasn't one.
- Failure Is the Only Option: Mark never did get home.
- A God Am I: Raunchy appears to be going this way when he gets HooDoo's powers in one episode, but instead mostly spends his time getting back at his former boss and eating a ton of carrots.
- Great White Hunter: Colonel Poom, the pith helmet
- Hurricane of Puns: Hat-based puns
- I Am Very British: Colonel Poom
- Large Ham: HooDoo
- Most of the other characters are as well, but HooDoo still outhams them. He's played by Charles Nelson Reilly, for God's sake.
- Laugh Track
- The Movie: planned,
with Alan Menken doing the songs. - Nice Hat
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Tex the Ten-Gallon Hat, Boris the Executioner's Hood, Bela the Vampire's Cowl
- Our Genies Are Different
- The Place: Lidsville
- Planet of Hats: Amusingly, despite being a very literal planet of hats, it is not a figurative planet of hats.
- Playboy Bunny: HooDoo actually dresses as one of these in one episode. Yes, it's exactly as disturbing as you're imagining it being.
- Pirate: Captain Hooknose
- Prop Recycling: Some of the costumes are reused from H.R. Pufnstuf.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Bad Hats
- Saturday Morning Kids Show
- Short Runner: Like most Krofft shows, seventeen episodes, due to financial reasons.
- Sid and Marty Krofft Productions
- Simpleton Voice: Raunchy Rabbit and Rah-Rah
- Surrounded by Idiots: HooDoo's bumbling Bad Hats and other henchmen
- That Reminds Me of a Song: HooDoo has his own band living with him who will burst into song at the drop of a hat.
- Unfortunate Names: Weenie the Genie
- Captain Hooknose? Really?
- Verbal Tic: Mother Wheels — "Hon-EE!"
- Villain Episode: A few episodes focused more on the villains than on the heros. "Take Me To Your Rabbit" and "HooDoo Who?" come to mind.
- Villain Song: A couple.
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