Trivia / H.R. Pufnstuf

• Acting for Two: Only three voice actors worked on this series – Lennie Weinrib, Joan Gerber, and Walker Edmiston – with Weinrib doing a bulk of the voices... in fact, at one point, Orson "takes over" while Witchiepoo goes missing, and starts giving orders to Stupid Bat; Weinrib voiced both characters, and pretty much used the same voice for both of them, which really brings this trope to a different level.
• The Cast Showoff: Jack Wild, having played the Artful Dodger in Oliver!, was a good singer and dancer, and so nearly every episode had Jimmy singing a song and/or doing some kind of casual dance. The other characters would sometimes join in for a sung line or two, or as the chorus, but Jimmy got more solo songs than everyone else on the show put together.
  • In fact, HR. Pufnstuf was actually created as a vehicle for Jack Wild due to his rapid ascension to Teen Idol status in the US (he'd already been fairly well-known for a few years in his native England). This explains why so many of the songs centre around Jimmy.
• Colbert Bump:
  • Many children today were probably introduced to the show through the title character's guest appearance on Mutt & Stuff ^note which was also developed by Sid & Marty Kroft in 2016.
  • A few years earlier, Gen X and Y Americans first exposure to the series was from a remix by Pogo titled "Living Island" from 2011.
• Dawson Casting: A relatively minor, yet nonetheless interesting case. Jimmy, who starts the series as an 11-year-old before turning 12 in "The Birthday Party", was played by 16- to 17-year-old Jack Wild. Wild's voice didn't properly break until he was about 19, which made it easy for him to sing in a higher register.
• Development Hell: Dear Lord, the reboot. A remake of the movie was propositioned by Sony Pictures back in 2000, but plans were scrapped soon after. Eight years later, the Kroffts announced plans for a prequel, and announced that the script was finished and ready to go into production. The last anyone has heard of this project was back in 2010, after they expressed a desire for Justin Bieber to play the role of Jimmy. Now that Bieber is clearly too old, is covered in tattoos and has a less-than-desirable reputation to boot, that will probably not happen.
• Edited for Syndication: Television reruns omit Jimmy's and Pufnstuf's closing remarks after the credits.
  Jimmy: See you next week!
  Pufnstuf: Keep those cards and letters comin'!
• Executive Meddling: Surprisingly, a few instances for this series:
  • NBC originally rejected the title H.R. Pufnstuf altogether, not because they thought it meant "hand-rolled puffin' stuff", but rather they thought the title looked "too effeminate"; Lennie Weinrib even said they were asked by the network, "Why would kids turn off Batman on ABC, and Superman on CBS to watch a powder puff on NBC?"
  • The network even told the Kroffts to stop having Witchiepoo hitting her flunkies (swiping Orson on the beak with her wand, bopping Stupid Bat upside the head), on the grounds that there was "too much violence".
  • Despite pleas from the Kroffts, the network would not add to the series' already meager $54,000-per-episode budget, resulting in the Kroffts, and some of their colleagues to dip into their own pockets to help keep the show from going under, even though they were upwards of $3,000,000 over budget. The network did, however, give them 10% budget increase for the movie, and did offer a 5% increase if they would do a second season.
• The Other Darrin: While voiced by Lennie Weinrib in the TV series, in the movie Pufnstuf is voiced by Allan Melvin. ^note Technically, Melvin had voiced a Krofft character before. He was the voice of Drooper, one of The Banana Splits, which the Krofft Brothers created for Hanna-Barbera. Melvin also supplied voices for H.R. Pufnstuf before the movie was produced.
  • The actress playing Witchiepoo in H.R. Pufnstuf & The Brady Kids Live at the Hollywood Bowl is definitely not Billie Hayes.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Paul Simon felt the theme song was enough of one to "59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" that he successfully sued and now receives half-writing credit.
• Testing the Editors: After decades of being goaded for a definitive answer on whether the show was one giant pot reference, Marty Krofft did finally admit that H.R. Pufnstuf's title was a reference to reefer smoking, in an interview with The Times Union on 13 February 2004. However, the title was apparently born out of a childish sense of humour rather than an active interest in drug culture, as he was seeing if he could pass it by the NBC executives without being called out on it. (As seen under Executive Meddling, they did have an issue... just in a different direction.)
• Vindicated by Reruns: The Kroffts could only afford to film one season of this show, but because it was so successful and popular, NBC kept repeating it every new TV season through the early and mid-1970s.
• What Could Have Been:
  • As detailed here, there were plans for an animated reboot of the series during the 2000s by Canadian TV studio DHX Media (now called WildBrain). Concept art, production assets, and even an animatic of the intro were all developed, and the Kroffts themselves even approved of the pitch. Unfortunately, the project fell through as DHX Media did not have the money to acquire the rights to the characters.
  • A film adaptation was planned with Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg attached as writers but never happened. Given their tendency to badly spoof whatever was popular at the time, perhaps this was for the best.

---