… The Jetsons?
Well, I suppose the short story is that they had their run and then the show was retired.
Those of us who grew up a few years ago had our first look at the future with cartoons’ first “21st Century Family”. You can re-watch them in this collection. I’m not sure of the copyright issues so am not including them here.
If you watched the cartoon, can you forget George Jetson, his boy Elroy, daughter Judy, Jane his wife … ?
It was this week during a Zoom Beer with friends staring at the screen that my mind wandered a bit and thought about what the Jetsons’ vision of the future was and how, surprisingly, so much of what the cartoonists drew has come to reality.
It seems like every episode featured a telephone call and they had video phones which has its advantages and disadvantages in that you get to see everything. I mean, who could forget the episode of Jane putting on a face mask so that her friend couldn’t see her. I wonder how much of that happens today!
Other things that stand out are flying cars (including traffic jams), moving sidewalks, food dispensing machines, the fun with homework, how teenagers are still teenagers, a robot housekeeper, and most bizarrely, George didn’t work for home. He actually drove (flew?) to work, dropping off the kids at their schools. No home schooling was predicted for the future.
Teleportation didn’t happen in the show; we had to wait until Star Trek for that to happen. So many ideas carried between the two series.
The one thing that I still wait for is one push button to make things happen. Everything the Jetsons had was activated by one push button. I still have to use three keystrokes CTRL-SHIFT-V to paste without formatting!
For a Sunday morning, let’s test your knowledge…
- what was the dog’s name?
- what was the housekeeper’s name?
- where did George Jetson go to work?
- what was his boss’ name?
- what was the name of the boss of a competing business?
- how did the dog get its exercise?
- how were deliveries often made?
- if you weren’t home, how did you make/take phone calls?
- what was the famous studio that produced The Jetsons?
If you were a real fan, I’m sure that you can come up with many ideas of your own. There were a few things that were demonstrated that have yet to come to fruition though.
- a house in the clouds
- no pollution
- clothes with sharp pointy corners
- tubes for going up and down floors that always seemed to get them exactly where they wanted to do
How sharp are your memories of the Jetsons? Please share them in the comments below.
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doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.