The Funky Phantom
American-Australian animated television series
The Funky Phantom is an American-Australian Saturday morning animated television series, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, in association with Australian production company Air Programs International for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). The show was a clone of Hanna-Barbera's popular Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, with a trio of teenage detectives driving around the country and solving crimes. In this case, the "Scooby-Doo" role was taken by a Revolutionary War-era ghost, voiced by Daws Butler in a manner almost identical to that of Snagglepuss.
Reruns of the show ran during the 1972 season and, briefly, in 1980, as part of Hanna-Barbera's Godzilla series.
Plot
Trying to find shelter from a storm while driving their "Looney Duney" dune buggy, three teenagers — brainy redhead Skip Gilroy, beautiful blonde April Stewart, and Skip's brawny dark-haired best friend, Augie Anderson — and his dog Elmo, entered an old house where a grandfather clock displayed an incorrect time. Upon setting the clock to midnight, it released two Revolutionary War-era ghosts: an American patriot named Jonathan Wellington Muddlemore, whom the kids call "Mudsy", and his cat Boo. The two explained that, during the Revolutionary War, they had stumbled upon two Redcoats so they hid inside the clock. They evaded discovery, but they were unable to get out of the clock and eventually died inside. After being freed by their new friends, Mudsy and Boo have accompanied them on many mysteries, providing invisible assistance.
This set-up shows a certain similarity to the 1946 Abbott and Costello film The Time of Their Lives, in which two Revolutionary War-era ghosts are also held earth-bound due to a secret hidden in a clock.
The public source identifies “The Funky Phantom” as american-Australian animated television series. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Funky, Phantom and American-Australian.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Funky Phantom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.