Lancit Media's Planned TV Series

Several news articles on the web show a planned TV series for Pajama Sam, Freddi Fish, and Putt-Putt from Lancit Media. Here are a few that mention it:
http://www.csoon.com/issue24/p_humong.htm
http://articles.latimes.com/1997-03-26/business/fi-42340_1_tv-show
http://web.archive.org/web/19980210025344/http://www.humongous.com/about/pr/more/news/hetv.html
So, as you can see, pretty much all of these articles are from early '97. But what I find really strange is that, even though there are many news articles announcing this, not once did it ever actually find its way on TV. This is very strange. All the articles are from March '97, and the whole thing just seemed to disappear. I'm quite curious about this - it was never mentioned again, yet they felt it important enough to cover it in news articles. The same happened with Big Thinkers 2nd Grade, but that game's kinda understandable given those games' low success. Here, it's just a mystery. I've been trying to figure it out why.

Wow! I wish that actually aired on TV. but I don't know why it cancelled though.

So the guys who were to create the show also worked on Reading Rainbow and The Puzzle Place. Judging by that, the shows would have appeared on PBS. If they had followed through with that, I think my childhood would have been more epic! Thankfully they didn't oust making merchandise.

On PBS? Dang, if this showed up I would have stopped caring about not having cable. I never had cable until I was 11 years old, so I missed out on a lot of the shows that people say were great.

I found an article from two years later that mentions "Putt and Pals!" as the name of Lancit's Putt-Putt cartoon. So the studio did go through with it, but it's still unclear what happened that made the show(s) vanish.

My guess is that, after Infogrames' acquisition of the Atari name and HE's subsequent transferal to Atari's publishing, Lancit's rights to the characters must have gotten lost in the rearranged licenses.

I myself had only six channels to watch (and a few more that were fuzzy & unpredictable) until I was 15, so I would have been delighted to see those guys on PBS. How unfortunate.

MrEightThreeOne wrote:On PBS? Dang, if this showed up I would have stopped caring about not having cable. I never had cable until I was 11 years old, so I missed out on a lot of the shows that people say were great.

Why not? Didn't you have enough money to buy cable? Couldn't've you just stolen cable, like the Simpsons did in one episode? (I hope not!)

Pizzaking27 wrote:Why not? Didn't you have enough money to buy cable? Couldn't've you just stolen cable, like the Simpsons did in one episode? (I hope not!)

If his childhood was anything like mine, not having basic cable was completely okay simply because he didn't need it. It's difficult to believe with it having become more common over the years, but some people get by without extra channels just fine - regardless of whether or not they're capable of subscribing to it.

MrEightThreeOne wrote:On PBS? Dang, if this showed up I would have stopped caring about not having cable. I never had cable until I was 11 years old, so I missed out on a lot of the shows that people say were great.

That is a shame you miss them

ElectroMan34 wrote:

Pizzaking27 wrote:Why not? Didn't you have enough money to buy cable? Couldn't've you just stolen cable, like the Simpsons did in one episode? (I hope not!)

If his childhood was anything like mine, not having basic cable was completely okay simply because he didn't need it. It's difficult to believe with it having become more common over the years, but some people get by without extra channels just fine - regardless of whether or not they're capable of subscribing to it.

Poor, poor dude... All this may explain why he never played any BBC videogames, even the Bob the Builder one!

Pizzaking27 wrote:

Poor, poor dude... All this may explain why he never played any BBC videogames, even the Bob the Builder one!

I watched Bob the Builder when I was a kid

luka2 wrote:

Pizzaking27 wrote:

Poor, poor dude... All this may explain why he never played any BBC videogames, even the Bob the Builder one!

I watched Bob the Builder when I was a kid

So did I!

I think the Putt and Pals show will be on Discovery Kids. And I don't know why the show got canceled.

There's someone on Youtube says this:

Oh, you mean Lancit Media's planned TV series? There were several articles mentioning that, but the series never came to be. I did recall on one of brends11's old music uploads, a commenter said something about it, and even said he had a few episodes recorded on VHS. He may have lived in the only country that actually got it.

Any such info would be lost forever now...

One things for certain, as of today we don't know and may never know the full story about exactly what happened to these shows, unless maybe one day someone directly involved comes out in an interview or something and tells the story of what could have been.

Well, the Putt and Pals! article is from Playthings Volume 97 Issue 6, which was published in June 1999, on page 75. If someone could find a copy of that, there may be a full press release. But then, maybe the abstract said everything.

Either way, I'm sure a magazine that old and obscure is virtually impossible to find, so whether there's any detailed info is irrelevant at this point.

ElectroMan34 wrote:Well, the Putt and Pals! article is from Playthings Volume 97 Issue 6, which was published in June 1999, on page 75. If someone could find a copy of that, there may be a full press release. But then, maybe the abstract said everything.

Either way, I'm sure a magazine that old and obscure is virtually impossible to find, so whether there's any detailed info is irrelevant at this point.

I think you're looking for this!
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/2053751/putt-putt-goes-from-cd-tvhttp://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/2053751/putt-putt-goes-from-cd-tv

Says not found.

*sigh* I posted that exact same link far earlier in this topic. If you click on the phrase "an article" in post #5, you'll see the same webpage. I wasn't looking for it, I was actually referring to it.

Guess it doesn't work in Canada, though. Anyway, like I mentioned, all that's there is the abstract. You can't actually read the full text. So all we have to go on is this:

Reports on Lancit Media Entertainment's licensing agreement to produce the television program `Putt and Pals!' based on the CD-ROM published by Humongous Entertainment.

And yet...if someone could find that issue of Playthings, there may in fact be more to it.

I believe Putt and Pals! will be on Discovery Kids. No Joke.

I found another article that briefly mentions this series here.  Not really new information, but interesting none the less.

http://web.archive.org/web/20090409061314/http://time.com/time/digital/cyberelite/24.html

pezhead53 wrote:I found another article that briefly mentions this series here.  Not really new information, but interesting none the less.

http://web.archive.org/web/20090409061314/http://time.com/time/digital/cyberelite/24.html

Discovery Kids was replaced by the Hub. Later on, The Hub was replaced with Discovery Family.

So I bet it never aired...and if it did...I wish I could've seen it.

Hey, I'm still thinking about HE Games turning into Shows until now!