So I remembered from '59 and '60, the May Company department store chain advertising that you could phone a special number and here Bugs Bunny (a key role model in my life) come in and get a special gift. David Grudt, a follower of this blog, dug into some online newspaper archives and found the ad for this which I reprinted in a message yesterday.
I also recalled the May Company doing something similar with a robot version of Fred Flintstone a few years later. David searched and could find no trace of this. But another follower of this site, Hunter Goatley, found an ad in the March 8, 1963 issue of the Independent, a newspaper published back then in Long Beach, some miles to the south of Los Angeles. And later yesterday, a gent named Clark Holloway also located and sent it to me. Here's a little piece of it…
…and like it says, if you click on it, you can see the whole ad, which is very long.
The ad is for the May Company in Lakewood, which is about eleven miles from Long Beach. We never went there. I saw the Flintstone Robot — I'm assuming they only built one — at the same May Company at Wilshire and Fairfax, That's the one where my parents shopped and where we went for the Bugs Bunny gift, and which is now the Motion Picture Academy's museum. I guess they just moved Robo-Fred from May Company to May Company, trying to sell the Pebbles Flintstone dolls which Ideal Toys issued.
I never thought this doll looked like the character in the show…or like anything which could have come from the union of Fred and Wilma.
The "Great Electronic Fred Flintstone" I saw at the May Company was about five feet tall and nowhere near as versatile as the ad would have you believe. "In action" meant that its mouth opened and closed, not necessarily in sync with what you were hearing, and one of its arms went up and down. I think the "exclusive interview" was one of the cavegirl attendants asking it questions as per a script and trying to time things so the pre-recorded voice of Alan Reed would sound like it was answering her questions. I did not see it/him sing anything or change its/his expression. And I don't recall getting a bubble gum cigar…or anything. I would have liked something that was Flintstone-specific.
You may be wondering what became of this Fred Flintstone robot. I asked both Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera when I was working for them and neither knew what the hell I was talking about…a not uncommon situation during my employment at Hanna-Barbera. I just assumed it was long gone. Then one day a couple years ago, I was driving down La Brea Avenue and I passed this weird mostly-outdoor business at the corner of La Brea and 1st Street.
It's an old antique/prop place that sells a lot of things like old signs from fast food places and I believe a few years earlier, they were selling some of the set pieces used for games that The Price is Right no longer plays. They always had interesting goodies there but I never stopped to browse because I didn't have the time and I may have feared I'd find something expensive which I absolutely had to have but couldn't afford and had no room to display.
This one day, I spotted some sort of five-foot figure of Fred Flintstone which might have been the 1963 Flintstone robot I saw at the May Company. Might have been. It also might not have been. I thought, "One of these days, I'll stop off and see if it's what I think it might be." And then I forgot all about it and hunkered down for COVID, not going anywhere near La Brea and 1st. One afternoon last week, I took that route down La Brea and not only is the Fred gone, the whole business is gone. They're putting a new building up on that corner.
So that's all I know, which of course isn't much. Thanks, Hunter and Clark, for finding proof of what I remembered. And if anyone ever comes across info on where that robot Flintstone is or was…well, it would be nice to know but I'm not spending a lot of time wondering about it.