H.R. Pufnstuf
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H.R. Pufnstuf was the name of a children's television series produced by Sid and Marty Krofft. There were only seventeen episodes of this show, which ran from 1969 to 1970, but it was so successful that NBC kept it on the Saturday morning schedule for a full three seasons.
H.R. Pufnstuf introduced the Kroffts' most-used plot scenario, revolving around a boy ("Jimmy", played by Jack Wild) who had accidentally stumbled into an alternate fantasy world. The leader of the community of this world was a friendly dragon named H.R. Pufnstuf (played by Van Snowden and voiced by Lennie Weinrib, who also wrote the episodes). Jimmy had been lured to the island by Freddy the "magic flute," which was another of the main characters. Their nemesis was a wicked witch named Witchiepoo, played by Billie Hayes, who rode on a broomstick with a steering wheel. Apart from Witchiepoo, all of the characters on Living Island were realized via large, cumbersome costumes or puppetry. Since everything on Living Island was alive - houses, castles, boats, grandfather clocks, candles, books, trees, mushrooms - virtually any part of any of the Living Island sets could become a character, usually voiced in a parody of a famous film star, such as Mae West, Edward G. Robinson or John Wayne.
The show's popularity in the psychedelic era of the 1960s led to the release of a movie based on the show, called Pufnstuf, in 1970. The film featured guest appearances by Mama Cass Elliott and Martha Raye. Both show and movie were notable for bright colors, fast edits, sped-up film, musical segments and pop-culture in-jokes, and appealed to young adults almost as much as children.
The seventeen episodes of the TV series are available in a DVD box set. The film has never been legally available on home video.
The show was the subject of a successful lawsuit against the fast food restaurant McDonald's, whose McDonaldland characters were found to have infringed its copyright.
The same type of humor is found in Homestar Runner