Happy Anniversary, Herman

Please join me in celebrating the 40th anniversary of "The Munsters". 

It's hard to believe the show first aired 40 years ago.  It's also hard to believe that even as popular as the show was, it only lasted for two seasons (1964-1966).  But from my research, I found out that after it's two seasons, the network throught that monster shows were on the way out, so they cancelled it, even though the show was a monster hit, pun intended.  Other channels wanted to cash in on the popularity, so the 70 episodes of The Munsters quickly went into syndication, as they still are today. 

Last night on TV Land, I watched my favorite Munster's episode, "Hot Rod Herman."  In this episode, Eddie was bragging to a school friend that his Herman was an expert driver, and he gets Herman to compete in a drag race at the Mockingbird Heights drag strip.  Herman dresses up like Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" with a leather jacket and hat.  The funniest part was Herman's leather biker jacket -- on the back it said "The Punk Rods".(I think when I get my jacket for bike night I'm going to have that embroidered on the back.)  Herman soups up the family car, The Munster Koach, and they decide to race for pink slips but Herman loses the race AND the family car.  Lily really goes off on poor Herman, and Grandpa tells Herman to ask for a rematch.  Granpa builds Dragula, a dragster made from one of the coffins from the funeral home where Herman works.  Of course, Dragula wins and they win back the cool Munster Koach.  By the way, the Muster Koach and Dragula were designed and built by the same man that designed and built the Batmobile and the Monkee's GTO.  Pretty cool.

I got a ViewMaster for my 5th birthday, and the first slide I got for it was The Munsters, which I still have, of course.  I wanted a Munsters lunch box until I saw someone on the bus with a cool Partridge Family lunch box.  I never got either one, incidentally.

Another funny thing in the episode last night was in an attempt to sabotage Dragula, the other racer stole the car's parachute.  So when Grandpa won the race, he couldn't stop.  So Herman, still wearing his The Punk Rods leathers, grabbed onto the back of the dragster and stopped it.  The funny part was when they showed smoke coming from his boots.  Silly, yes, but it struck us as funny.  There was no talk of sex or any violence on the show - it was just mainly things so silly they were funny.  They don't make shows like that any more.  I guess that's why TV Land is so popular.