ABSTRACT
The Flintstones are genuine offspring of television. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, their creators (of Tom & Jerry fame), designed them not only for television, they designed them from television, from the series of family sitcoms that were popular in the 1950s such as I Love Lucy, Father Knows Best, and in particular The Honeymooners. The Flintstones were the direct ancestors, Stone Age predecessors so to speak of the Simpsons, an animated sitcom favorite that, like the Flintstones, only works in dialogue, not in animation that was inexpensively executed in South Korea. For some time, Asterix was the leading European cartoon character, both in books and animated films. Asterix was a shrewd, cunning little Gaul warrior living in a small village that opposes the Roman occupants. Most famous abroad, however, are the Smurfs. Their prototypes had been created by Belgian artist, Peyo, in an animation studio in Brussels during German occupation in 1944 and were refined in 1957 as Schtroumpfs.
