The New Adventures of Pinocchio

This series consisting of five minute episodes was the first stop-motion animated show produced by Rankin/Bass, who would later go on to become icons of holiday programming with Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty The Snowman, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, Here Comes Peter Cottontail and Mad Monster Party, just to name a few! The stop-motion animation ("Animagic") is a little primitive but quite charming. The show has lots of 1960's influences including hippie jargon and beatniks. Pinocchio is really cute and each episode finds him getting into trouble and usually being aided by "Cricket". Sometimes, five of the 5-minute episodes were strung together to make one 25-minute show, other times each individual episode was shown as a bumper between Saturday Morning cartoons. This really deserves to find its way onto DVD, hopefully it will.

The voices were outsourced in Canada. One of the creators Arthur Rankin II was born to a family of actors. I wonder why didn't he voice any of the characters and hire some other US voice actors like Arthur Anderson or Earl Hammond.