Hiya, Kids!!: A '50s Saturday Morning / Sabrina The Teenage Witch: The Complete Animated Series

During television's
infancy, it didn't take much to keep viewers entertained—especially if
those viewers were children themselves. The four-disc DVD set Hiya, Kids!!:
A '50s Saturday Morning collects episodes from 22 different '50s TV series, from
legendary shows like Time For Beany and Sky King to long-forgotten regional hits like Ding
Dong School
and The Magic Clown. The episodes are between 15 and 30 minutes long, in
kinescoped black and white, and about as thrilling to watch as a test pattern.

But even test patterns can
hold some fascination when viewed from the right angle. Fans of vintage TV
personalities will enjoy seeing scandal-plagued game-show icon Jack Barry
hosting the "kids say the darndest things" forum Juvenile Jury, and Price Is Right announcer Johnny Olson
hosting Kids And Company. Those who like picking through old TV shows for quaint
racism should pay special attention to The Pinky Lee Show segment featuring a
tap-dancing black marionette. Mostly, Hiya, Kids!! is worthwhile for the way
it records the distant fog of the early '50s, when product pitches were more
earnest, broadcasters weren't as slick, and studio audiences stood stock still,
as though afraid all this newfangled machinery was going to turn them into
ghosts. All concerned seemed to be figuring out the medium on the fly, and
building the framework for something genuinely amusing and enjoyable, while not
yet providing the actual content.

In the decades that
followed, television's rhythms became so familiar that Saturday-morning
cartoons learned to ape them precisely—while again offering little that
any reasonable person would confuse with entertainment. The 32 half-hour
episodes on the Sabrina The Teenage Witch: The Complete Animated Series DVD set come from the
late-'60s/early-'70s era when cartoons were stiff, packed with weak gags, and
dressed up with laugh tracks that sounded like actual human laughter about as
much as banana-flavored Now & Laters taste like actual bananas. The 1971 Sabrina series takes its cues
from Bewitched
as well as from the Archie comics that spawned it. The titular heroine pals around
with the gang from Riverdale and surreptitiously does magic in order to thwart
catastrophe, while ultimately causing even bigger problems. Slapstick
ensues—though that slapstick loses much of its comic potential when
performed by characters who barely move. The passing of time has added value to
the clunky shows on Hiya, Kids!!, but even 40 more years wouldn't be enough to
make Sabrina
interesting.

Key features: Keeping your lousy kids
quiet for a few minutes. Otherwise, none.