The Pink Panther Show

First Show	1969
Last Show	1978
Genre	Cartoon
Network	NBC
Slot Day	Saturday
Slot Time	am
Jumped The Shark when...	Votes
The Pink Panther speaks	13
Never Jumped	4
Mister Jaws replaces the Aardvark and Ant	1
The Aardvark and Ant join the cast	1
The laugh track	1
The Christmas special	1

Other Thoughts:

Didn't they replace the "Aardvark and Ant" sketch with some kind of Shark at one point? Talk about a coincidence! Not only that, but the Pink Panther would sometimes go water skiing during the pre-commercial mini-skits they would do. He would always crash into a pole or something. They should have had him jump over the Shark on his waterskis. Now THAT would have been surreal! Two shows meet similar fates at the fins of a shark! Great show, though - until they replaced the aardvark with the shark. Same character, different actor, perhaps?
The original Pink Panther show was great. At the end of every show there was some live action where he got into a cool car that sort of looked like a batmobile, and then he roared off. At some point they added the ant and the aardvark and some other goofy characters. I hated that. Maybe I was just getting older. I guess the original Pink Panther sketches could only go so far.
This show jumped when it was revived and they made the Pink Panther talk! That was so wrong!
In response to the comment above, I don't believe that the Shark (he GOTCHA!!!) replaced the Ant & the Aardvark, but rather it was one of 3(?) sub-episodes. The other one I think was the Dogfather, a pretty funny spoof of the Godfather. If I remember correctly, there were some episodes where the Pink Panther actually spoke, which was pretty friggin' retarded
Ah. Its actually started when the pink panther started to talk... They was ruin it all! then I was watching tv one day and I saw that there is a TV show about the children of the pink panther. Oh man! Thats was lame! They could talk too , and they where looking very lame. They were look very ugly. They had ugly cuteness. Ughh...
It wasn't until the show's last couple years, in the late 70's, that I found out the cartoons were originally theatrical releases. The Panther and his friends did a reverse jump when they went into syndication and showed the toons with the original credits and NO LAUGH TRACK (except for MisterJaws, which was made for TV). The cartoons were so much better without that pretentious canned laughter. And you didn't have chortles and guffaws interrupting Henry Mancini's cool theme music. I never did see the 90's version that had him talking (yucch!). BTW the Panther spent one year (1978-79) on ABC before ending his network run.
Definitely when the P.P. opened his big yapper. Until then this was a truly original cartoon that had some of the best physical comedy around. Let Daffy Duck crack the one-liners. I still search Cartoon Network for the episode where the P.P. gets stuck in the Dracula's castle (played by the small, big nosed guy). And the Count can't seem to kill him. I also remember the shark and the aardvark being together, not replacing one another, along with the Inspector Cleuseau cartoons.
Mr. Jaws was one of the new characters created when it became the "Pink Panther laugh-and-a-half, hour-and-a-half show." He wasn't so bad, at least he was cooler than "Jabberjaw", who was introduced at the same time on another network. Then there were the Texas Toads. They had a lot of time to fill that year, after all. JTS moment? To paraphrase a poster in the "Welcome Back, Kotter" section, "this is so easy. When the Panther spoke. This is an obvious example of jumping the shark." Which reminds me of a joke--What did the Pink Panther say when he stepped on, um, the Aardvark's friend? Answer--"dead ant...dead ANT...dead ant, dead ant, DEAD ant, dead ant, dead AaAaAnt....do-do-do-do-do." And the Pink Panther Christmas special, which was aired exactly ONCE round about 1978 while they were showing Frosty the Snowman for the hundredth time then Frosty's Winter Wonderland then the decades-later Frosty sequel where the snowman goes blithely about hatless without melting an! d we don't even get to see Karen all grown up, was one of the sweetest, most touching such specials ever made. I don't want to spoil the whole thing, just in case it does ever air again, but the story was basically the Panther's quest for just a wee bit of sustenance on Christmas Eve, and that of the junkyard dog he befriends.
come on folks, lighten up, Pink always ruled and never jumped, although i do have to admit adding a voice was annoying, almost as annoying as when they added that voice to Wile E Coyote, both Pink and Coyote's voices were a conceited english accent if i recall, and what's all this aardvark/ant bashing? they were great!!!! as i kid those cartoons were relaxing. did jackie mason do the voice of one of them? it sure sounded like him. Pink rules!!!!!
I'm glad I'm not the only one who recalls PP speaking in snooty English accent. In fact, he spoke once during the original run, at the end of one cartoon, as he walked off into the sunset. To the poster above, the voice of the Aardvark (and Ant) was John Byner, doing his Jackie Mason impression. BTW, that was Arte Johnson voicing Mr. Jaws.
There's a comment about the "Texas Toads", the toads were originally called the "Tiajuna Toads", but later became "Texas Toads". Other than the toads, "The Inspector", "Ant & Aardvark" & "Mr. Jaws", there was also another cartoon added later called "Crazy-Legs Crane", which was a spin-off from "Tiajuna/Texas Toads". Another comment about show: Mr. Jaws appeared around the same time as "competitor" cartoon Jabberjaws. Both shark cartoons appeared during the "Jaws craze". Remember shark tooth necklaces?
Although as noted above the Pink Panther did speak briefly at the very end of one of the original cartoons, that was an isolated incident during that run. The true JTS moment was when they brought back the character in the early 90s and had him speak in every episode. The whole point of the Panther was that he was funny through his actions and reactions to what happened around him, without saying anything. This allowed the plots to move along fairly quickly. Also, the other characters usually were silent as well, or else screamed if something fell on them (I'm talking about the Panther cartoon itself, not the Ant/Aardvark or any of the other cartoons). Having them speak ruined the premise of the humor; it felt like a ball and chain had been shackled to the plots, so now everything had to be explained before it happened. I remember watching a few episodes when they first came on; there had been a big hoopla in the media about the character speaking for the first time. I stopped watching after a few weeks because to me it wasn't the Pink Panther, just some generic toon with a bland central character wearing the Panther's fur. BTW, trivia note: Matt Frewer (of Max Headroom fame) did the new voice. But it didn't sound right at all, and on top of that, knowing who was doing the voice, I kept waiting for the Pink Panther to speed up and slow down his speaking and have abrupt jump cuts to the next sentence, like Max. Come to think of it, that would've been more interesting...
Actually, the Pink Panther did speak throughout the episode "Pink Ice" in a British accent, which I found worse suited for him than the voice of Matt Frewer. As for the 1993 series, there were a few good episodes (it's not necessarily bad for the Pink Panther to actually speak, in my opinion-as long as speech is only used when truly necessary,) but a lot of bad ones. The shame was that they could have made a good series. However, the Pink Panther arguably jumped the shark from the mid-1970's on. The 1960's episodes just seemed to be better constructed, with a better sense of comic timing. Also in the 1970's, the series was getting to be a little too cutesy, and the Pink Panther was becoming too much of a goody two-shoes. The Pink Panther was funnier when he had a bit of malice in him.
I actually remember the Pink Panther Christmas special. I only remember it being depressing. Wasn't it about him and this 'poor little match girl' type? I preferred the Little Rascals Christmas special, another show that aired only once or twice.
When I first saw the new version of the cartoon and heard the Pink Panther talking, I wanted to throw a brick at the television. Who was the moron that decided to do this? Certain things would not be messed with. Besides, whoever was doing the voice was REALLY annoying.
Never jumped,my favorite Saturday morning cartoon show as a kid! Aired with a laugh track and brief segments with the characters in between cartoons that had sprightly background music [most likely done by Doug Goodwin]and pleasant narration by veteran actor Marvin Miller. Ran longer on NBC [9 amazing years!!],but couldn't make it on ABC,where it ran for only 1 season in newly produced cartoons for TV that paled in comparison to the theatrical originals NBC reran. Think pink!!
This show never jumped the shark. It did aggravate the shit out of me when I saw the episodes that had Pink Panther talking, but the Pink Panther could never really jump the shark. He's just too great! I liked, "The Ant & The Ardvark," "Inspector Clousea," and "Mr. Jaws," also.
At the end of "Sink Pink," our hero said, "Why can't man be more like animals?" Priceless moment. The contemporary series ran, to my knowledge, for two seasons (93-95) and the latter included such items as "Hamm & Eggz," "Voodoo Man," and "Seven Manly Men." Plus, there were only two items per half hour, as opposed to three, with another character almost always taking up the central segment. I am not making this up.
You are all missing the whole point of the Aardvark and Ant skits. Don't you realize that this was an early attempt at racial humor? An aardvark who sounds like Jackie Mason and an ant who sounds like Clifton Davis? This was a Jewish aardvark chasing a black ant! Apparently, way more subtle than I thought.
Oh God, I used to love watching this show as a kid. I remember this one episode where PP got a flat tire on a hill and he took the spare tire out of the trunk preparing to change the flat. The tire rolled down the hill. For the rest of the ep he was chasing the tire through all kinds of situations until the tire finally came to rest in a tire display case in car dealership. When he grabbed the tire that was his he was stopped at the door by an employee who was holding out his hand as to say hey, you just don't walk into my store and take a tire, hand over some cash. Finally after an argument (which consisted only of pointing and gestures PP pays for his own tire! F##*in' priceless! As for the above poster who said the AArdvark was Jewish -- I came to the exact conclusion some 20 years ago! As the only Italian in an all Jewish Long Island town, this guy sounded like every neighbor I ever had! Me and my friend used to imitate the AArdvarks voice saying some pretty derogatory Jewish statements. I'll never forget one ep at the end the Aardvark somehow was getting bombarded with hundreds of pieces of toast and when he popped his head out of the mountain of toast, he said in his best Jewish voice "ANYBODY GOT A POUND OF BUTTER?" Oh, I laughed my ass off, not because of the comment, but because of the jewish accent! Hell, anybody got a bagel?
Jumped when the series moved to ABC in 1979 and everything went to pot. But I religiously watched TPP when it was on NBC on Saturday mornings, on WPIX-11 during the week and on TNT when they used to show cartoons. I always respected the fact that TPP was great cartoon without anyone speaking. My favorite episode was one set in prehistoric days with TPP, small white guy, a lizard and a dinosaur battling each other for a bone with changed hands between them dozens of times through traps and chicanery, backed by a way cool soundtrack. Another series time seemed to have forgotten about.
This was one great cartoon. When Pink opened his big mouth and began yapping, something was really really wrong. To the (way) above poster who mentioned the episode where Pink is in Dracula's castle and Dracula can't kill him: Thanks for reminding me of that. That episode absolutely cracked my friends and I up when we saw it ("Bleauh, bleauh!" ). I hope it pops up on a repeat. I also remember the shark and the Anteater running simultaneously.
The best back up cartoon in the Pink Panther shows was The Inspectorfeaturing a character inspired by Inspector Clouseau (The signiture tune for The Inspector cartoons was the theme from the second and best Clouseau film A Shot in the Dark). In the New Pink Panther Show the Pink Panther cartoons weren't bad, but the Crazy Legs Crane and Blue Aaardvark cartoons were abysmal. By the way the film series jumped the shark with the last Peter Sellers Pink Panther, Revenge of the Pink Panther. The series had run out of steam before his tragic death.