Zeitgeisty media often come in twos. Usually, it is similarly themed films that release around the same time, like Armageddon and Deep Impact or Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. We’ve had dueling Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent movies. It happens in TV too. Literally fifty years ago today, two animated children’s series about modern-day families transported back to prehistory debuted. One was the hybrid-stop-motion Land of the Lost. The other was a traditional cell-animated adventure from Hanna-Barbera. Although it was not a huge hit, there was probably enough early-1980s syndication and licensing for Valley of the Dinosaurs to make an impression with some Gen X’ers, even though we probably missed the initial episode, “Forbidden Fruit” when it premiered on this day in 1974.
Logically, professor John Butler and his wife Kim took their entire family on his Amazonia research trip, including their dog Digger. Frankly, we can accept Digger, because he causes far less trouble than his bratty son Greg, who is the one they should have left behind. He will be quite a burden for his older teen sister Katie, who is often the one who must corral him. Nevertheless, they were all together in the raft that was swept up into a vortex and sucked into a “world that time forgot.”
Fortunately, Gorok’s neanderthal family befriends the Butlers, teaching them how to survive in their extreme new environment. They match up pretty well, since Gorok and Gara have a teen son, Lok and a younger daughter Tana. They even have a baby stegosaurus, Glump, who becomes Digger’s playmate.
In fact, Digger and Glump are all kinds of likably cute. Dogs and dinosaurs are definitely sure-fire, evergreen animation subjects, which were in Hanna-Barbera’s wheel house. Nineteen years before Jurassic Park, animation was still the best way to present humans and dinosaurs in the same frame. However, Valley probably did not earn many paleontologists’ endorsements, especially when “Forbidden Fruit” portrays a rampaging brontosaurus.
However, it evokes all kinds of archetypes when he Butlers mistakenly harvest the “forbidden fruit” reserved for Maligue, the giant (vegetarian) brontosaurus. Of course, most of the Butlers heed Gorok’s warning, but not Greg, who was a proto-Gen Z’er, refusing to listen to his Boomer parents, way back in 1974. Of course, Maligue smells his fruit, so he comes looking for Greg’s stash.
Shrewdly, Hanna-Barbera did not waste time with a long, drawn-out origin story. They give viewers the essentials every week in the opening credit sequence. Instead, they jump right into the adventures. Obviously, this series follows a formula, in which the Butlers’ ignorance (most often Greg’s) land them in trouble, but the scientific knowledge of Prof. John (who resembles a white-haired George Peppard) helps save the day. Perhaps when they are rescued, he will bring back some dinosaur DNA, just for the sake of science.
A little kernel of Valley of the Dinosaurs probably stuck in the subconscious of a lot of kids in the 70’s and 80’s, priming us for Jurassic Park. Weirdly, prehistory was having its moment on all three of the big-3 networks on September 7th, because Hanna-Barbera’s live-action Korg 70,000 also debuted on this day. Land of the Lost is widely considered the winner, but there is something nostalgically pleasing about Valley of the Dinosaurs’ first episode. You could say it definitely takes you back.
