5 Underrated 1970s Cartoons You Forgot You Loved

Saturday mornings in the 1970s got weird. Networks, spooked by parent groups and regulators, scrubbed out the cartoon clobbering that defined the previous two decades, then basically handed the keys to two studios that could deliver volume fast: Hanna-Barbera and Filmation. The result was an assembly line of shows built with limited animation, recycled designs, familiar voices, and story templates you could set your watch to. Most of it blurred together. But not all. A handful of series from that era are a lot more interesting than their reputation suggests.

Two things shaped the decade more than anything else: Action for Children's Television pushed broadcasters to de-fang kid shows, and Hanna-Barbera proved you could bolt the Scooby-Doo mystery engine onto almost any fad and get a workable series. Between that and Filmation's anything-goes approach, ABC, NBC, and CBS filled their schedules with cartoons that looked like cousins. Here are five that earned a second look, either because they were smarter than the factory model or just so offbeat they circled back to delightful.

Jabberjaw (ABC, 1976)

Imagine Scooby-Doo mashed with Jaws, but set a century ahead in 2076, under the sea, inside bio-domed cities. That is Jabberjaw. Hanna-Barbera grabbed shark fever and ran with it, building an underwater world full of punny place names and tech. The band at the center, The Neptunes, tours these cities and routinely trips over ocean-obsessed supervillains.

The headliner is a 15-foot amphibious great white who plays drums and talks like Curly Howard. Frank Welker voices Jabberjaw with a dead-on Three Stooges vibe, courtesy of creators Joe Ruby and Ken Spears. Every other episode finds our guy launched through a wall by a designated shark-ejection robot, which reliably triggers his go-to gripe about getting no respect. ABC only ordered 16 new episodes before shoving it into reruns, but the world-building is more inventive than you'd expect, and the character stuck around in Hanna-Barbera crossovers for years after.

Inch High, Private Eye (NBC, 1973)

This one is Hanna-Barbera doing a spy spoof with one very literal twist: the detective is one inch tall thanks to a secret shrinking formula. Lennie Weinrib voices Inch High with a delivery that deliberately nods to Don Adams's Maxwell Smart, and the Get Smart DNA is all over the premise and timing.

Inch works for the Finkerton Detective Agency (yes, that name is the joke), while his constantly exasperated boss keeps trying to can him. He solves cases with backup from his niece Lori, her pal Gator, and a St. Bernard named Braveheart, cruising around in the whisper-quiet Hushmobile. The size gag is the show's cheat code: Inch can slip anywhere, then inconveniently pop back to full size at the worst moment. It only ran 13 episodes, but as a detective parody, it's surprisingly sharp.

Hong Kong Phooey (ABC, Fall 1974)

Sixteen episodes, one big reason it endures: Scatman Crothers. He plays Penrod 'Penry' Pooch, a police station janitor who moonlights as a martial arts superhero who, if we're being honest, is mostly theater. The actual sleuthing? That's handled by Spot, Penry's long-suffering, striped cat. Phooey flips through a correspondence-course fighting manual and pratfalls his way through set pieces that work because Crothers's voice gives the whole thing a warm, easy rhythm.

The show is Hanna-Barbera riffing on the early-70s wave of Hong Kong action films that were crushing it in American theaters, then undercutting the genre's stoic cool by making the hero a lovable bumbler. Structurally, it's the same chassis as a dozen other cartoons from the era, but personality wins here.

Groovie Goolies (Filmation, CBS, September 1970)

Filmation took a different swing with Groovie Goolies: a monster-themed variety half-hour that plays more like a kid-friendly sketch show than a conventional narrative. Think quick gags, wall-to-wall puns, and original songs every episode courtesy of the Bare Bones Band, all staged inside a boarding house called Horrible Hall.

The cast leans into classic horror riffs: Drac (voiced by Larry Storch), plus Frankie and Wolfie (both voiced by Howard Morris), but the point isn't continuity — it's speed and silliness. Because the show wasn't an adaptation of an existing property, Filmation could keep it loose in a way Hanna-Barbera's more network-shaped stuff rarely was. A feature film was planned in 1978 and never happened, and two TV revival attempts in 1984 fizzled before production. The original run is all we got, and it's the purest version of the idea.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home (Syndication, 1972–1974)

Before The Simpsons made it standard, Hanna-Barbera quietly proved that prime- time animation could carry adult sitcom energy. Wait Till Your Father Gets Home ran 48 episodes in syndication from 1972 to 1974, the first American animated prime-time sitcom since The Flintstones wrapped in 1966.

Tom Bosley voices Harry Boyle, a conservative suburban restaurateur whose political and cultural clashes with his kids power the show: a countercultural son, a feminist daughter, and a wide-eyed younger boy. With Don Nicholl running the writers room, the series openly chased the format of the day's live-action hits — think All in the Family — using animation for social satire instead of Saturday morning sugar rush. It proved you could build weekly generation-gap comedy without flesh-and-blood actors, setting a template The Simpsons and Family Guy would later sharpen. Big footprint, not enough credit.

The 70s churned out a lot of forgettable cartoons, but these five have a spark — whether it's sharper jokes, bolder world-building, or a voice performance that papers over the seams. Which one deserves a comeback, or at least a proper rewatch?