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The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show

US television program

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ16953609 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show is an hour-long American Saturday morning cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions from 1965 to 1967 for NBC.

In 1965, the show aired as two independent half-hour programs. The Atom Ant Show featured the tiny superhero Atom Ant, with additional segments The Hillbilly Bears and Precious Pupp. The Secret Squirrel Show features the master spy Secret Squirrel, backed up with Squiddly Diddly and Winsome Witch. In the winter, the shows combine into an hour-long format, The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show. For the series' final NBC run under the Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel title, the show was a half-hour long.

Voices

Don Messick as Atom Ant (Season two), Ferocious Flea, Mr. Muto, Narrator, Precious Pupp, Shag Rugg

Paul Frees as Morocco Mole, Double-Q, Yellow Pinkie, Hi-Spy, Claude Hopper, Squiddly Diddly

Jean Vander Pyl as Maw Rugg, Floral Rugg, Winsome Witch

Henry Corden as Paw Rugg

Janet Waldo as Granny Sweet

Howard Morris as Atom Ant (Season one), Muscles' Boss

Mel Blanc as Secret Squirrel, Bowling Champion, Officer Smith

John Stephenson as Narrator, Chief Winchley

Allan Melvin as Muscles, Big Fats Dynamo, Professor Von Gimmick, Little Mousey, Ali Cat, The Toadstool, additional voices

Ted Cassidy as Opening Announcer (uncredited)

Other voices include Dick Beals, Mel Blanc, Henry Corden, Gerry Johnson, Allan Melvin, Don Messick, John Stephenson, and Janet Waldo.

Production

On September 12, 1965, the series had an hour-long primetime preview on NBC called The World of Secret Squirrel and Atom Ant or The World of Atom Ant and Secret Squirrel.

The Hillbilly Bears cartoon segments repeated during the second season of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour (1969–1970), and all 52 Atom Ant and Secret Squirrel half-hour episodes were syndicated as part of The Banana Splits and Friends Show, an umbrella title for a package combining episodes of several different Hanna-Barbera series (the other series included The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Gulliver).

Segments

The program contains six segments:

Atom Ant: A cartoon about a superheroic ant (voiced by Howard Morris, later Don Messick).

Editorial summary

“The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show” enters the record as uS television program. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Atom, Secret and Squirrel can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1965, 1967, 1969, 1970—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1965-09-09. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Atom, Secret and Squirrel.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Atom, Secret and Squirrel provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16953609. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1967, 1969 and 1970.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show primary sources, The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show archive and Atom research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show” 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.