This post here about the original opening of The Flintstones prompted a lot of e-mails and online chatter. A number of folks noted similarities between the first Flintstones theme ("Rise and Shine") and the opening tune for The Bugs Bunny Show ("This is it!"), which was also on ABC.
Someone wondered on Facebook if one was copied from the other and someone else pointed out that that wasn't possible since The Flintstones debuted on September 30, 1960 and The Bugs Bunny Show debuted less than two weeks later…on October 11, 1960.
That doesn't prove anything since both songs were written months before so there was time to animate to them. I just think it's ridiculous to think that the composer of the song that was written second heard the other song and said, "Hey! I'm going to steal those opening notes!"
This video from the meTV folks features the original Flintstones opening again and it also has the closing, complete with Wilma Flintstone's missing mouth which I noticed when I was eight.
Those are not the original credits. When video of the closing was located in the vault, it was without the credits, which changed from week to week — especially writer credits and voice credits. When the restoration was done, they made up one set of end credits, featuring the names of lots of people (but not all) who worked on the first two seasons.
Some of those folks worked on every episode but some didn't. For instance, Jerry Mann who's listed among the voice actors, was heard on ten episodes during the first two seasons and one in the third. So any time you see these end credits, you're seeing credits that are not specific to that particular episode.
And I was told that when they did this restoration, there was some discussion of drawing in Wilma's missing mouth but they ultimately decided to leave it the way it was. Good.