The Thing is a 1979 Marvel cartoon, produced by Hanna-Barbera, about Ben Grimm as a teenager. The story is different from the original Fantastic Four comics and focused solely on the Thing in his misadventures.
The cartoon was part of Fred and Barney Meet the Thing. It has nothing to do with The Thing franchise, nor any of the films.
The Thing provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: The other members of the Fantastic Four (Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, and the Human Torch) are completely omitted in this adaptation, with the Thing being portrayed as a solo hero.
- Amplified Animal Aptitude: "The Thing Goes To The Dogs" features a supposedly-normal dog who, at one point, stands on her hind legs to play charades with the main characters, growing thumbs in the process.
- Beach Episode: "Beach Party Crashers", though most of the characters spend the episode in their normal outfits. Betty changes into a bikini for one scene, which she spends mostly underwater. (Though rich kid Ronald and the elderly Miss Twilly get more screen time in their respective swimsuits) "Lights, Action, Thing" starts with the characters on a yacht in swimwear, hewing closer to the trope in spirit if not literally.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Benjy and friends encounter Bigfoot in "The Thing Meets Bigfoot", both Stretch disguised as the hairy cryptid and the genuine article.
- Big, Thin, Short Trio: This version of the Yancy Street Gang is this, with leader Spike being the "Short", Stretch being the "Thin", and Turkey being the "Big".
- Blessed with Suck: The main character is, in reality, neither the scrawny geek Benjy nor the monstrous but popular Thing. He's the adult Ben Grimm, unable to change back to his normal self. The young audience is apparently supposed to see his condition as Cursed with Awesome, but Benjy clearly feels differently. As he says in "To Thing or Not To Thing":The Thing: I've had it being Benjy or boulders! I want to be me again, test pilot Ben Grimm.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: To become the Thing, Benjy Grimm touches his rings together while intoning, "Thing Rings, do your thing!"
- Cats Are Mean: The Yancy Street Gang's cat Roscoe in "The Thing Goes to the Dogs", who aids the gang in their plan to kidnap Ronald Radford's dog Countess.
- Celebrity Lie: Used weirdly in "Decepto the Great". Benjy can't seem to produce the Thing for a school show, even though he is the Thing. (Every time he tries, he winds up scaring a comic-relief janitor character - seen only in this episode - and he changes back to try to calm him down instead of going on stage)
- Comedic Underwear Exposure: In the episode "Circus Stampede" Turkey, the fat gangster from Yancy Street Gang, has his pants ripped off by a lion, leaving him embarrassed only in his white underwear with pink polka-dots.
- Cryptid Episode: One of the first episodes is "Bigfoot Meets the Thing". Subverted in that Bigfoot is just one of the Yancy Street Gang in a costume. Double-subverted when the real Bigfoot falls in love with the guy in the (apparently-female) costume.
- Dumb Muscle: Turkey of the Yancy Street Gang is a big guy and the dumbest of the group.
- Easy Amnesia: "The Thing Blanks Out" has the Thing forget who he is after being hit on the head after lifting a bridge to prevent Ronald's yacht from crashing into it. He doesn't have his memory restored until an acorn hits him on the head.
- Evil Knockoff: "Double Trouble for the Thing" features a robot duplicate of the Thing, programmed to commit crimes and frame the real deal.
- Gone Horribly Wrong:
- The opening heavily implies (and several episodes later confirm) that this is the same adult Ben Grimm from the comics, but with a cure that had gone wrong, so he's unable to transform back into his normal adult self. Now he's stuck as either a scrawny geek or a monstrous pile of rocks, neither of which he likes (but he likes being the Thing less).
- To a lesser degree, the robot Clunk from "The Thing Meets The Clunk". It's a robot designed and programmed to help people, but in practice it combines strength equal to the Thing with absolutely no common sense, leading him to cause more disasters than he stops. "HELP? CLUNK HELP!" meant that a disaster was about to occur.
- Hammerspace: The orange rocks that turn Benjy into the Thing seem to appear out of nowhere. (Though that does seem to be at least partially for the audience's benefit; when transforming in an enclosed space, no rocks are shown flying into the space from the outside)
- In Name Only: Appears to be this at first glance. For starters, Benjy transforms into the Thing with items called "Thing Rings", one on each hand, and can transform back. The series has a cast of high school students with Ben as a teenager. Subverted in that this is the same adult Ben Grimm from the comics after all, but with a cure for his Thing condition that had Gone Horribly Wrong and regressed him into a teenager.
- My Nayme Is: His name is Benjy Grimm, not Benji (probably to avoid confusion or legal issues involving another famous Benji.
- Pet the Dog: Snobby rich kid Ronald Radford demonstrates the trope in a somewhat literal manner in "The Thing Goes to the Dogs", where he is shown to genuinely care for his dog Countess.
- Picnic Episode: "Picnic Panic" had Benjy and friends on a picnic that the Yancy Street Gang tried to ruin.
- Poke the Poodle: The Yancy Street Gang were pranksters who especially loved to torment spoiled rich kid Ronald, but basically harmless.
- Porky Pig Pronunciation: In the episode "The Thing Blanks Out", the Thing struggles to pronounce "ingenuity" before settling on "smarts".
- Power Incontinence: "To Thing Or Not To Thing" has Benjy transforming back and forth at random all day (with a shortened and rock-less version of his usual Transformation Sequence), while out with his friends. Somehow, nobody notices.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: "The Thing and the Captain's Ghost" is based around this, with Spike of the Yancy Street Gang pretending to be the ghost of the title to scare Ronald. They themselves then get scared off by the heroes pretending to be ghosts or, more specifically, by Betty, with her hair in curlers and her face in a mudpack.
- Secret Identity: Only Kelly Harkness and her father know that Benjy is the Thing. Her father is the reason he's a teenager in the first place rather than an adult.
- Shout-Out: "The Thing Blanks Out" at one point shows a dog that looks similar to Scooby-Doo.
- Transformation Sequence: A particularly elaborate one, and another one for reversion. While he normally only transforms two or three times per episode (plus maybe one reversion sequence), in "Decepto the Great", he transforms to or from the Thing seven times, the first four in the span of a minute and a half
. - X-Ray Sparks: In "A Hot Air Affair at the Fair", the Thing catches a lightning bolt and throws it at Spike, causing his skeleton to become visible as he's being electrocuted.
- Younger and Hipper: Ben is stuck as a teenager in this series, and has to endure going back to high school a second time (but as a scrawnier and geekier version of his original self)
