The Roman Holidays

Another great Hanna-Barbera cartoon for ya today. Only those of you with nothing better to fill your brain with will remember THE ROMAN HOLIDAYS, a Saturday morning gem from the 1973 season. Hanna-Barbera had already enjoyed heaps of success with the prehistoric family sitcom THE FLINTSTONES and it's futuristic counterpart THE JETSONS so they figured why not find more time periods to plop a family and make tons of anachronistic jokes. THE ROMAN HOLIDAYS followed the daily lives of the Holiday family. There was dad, Gus who worked for the Forum Construction Company lifting marble all day long. After a hard day at work, he'd come home to his wife Laurie and their kids (are you ready for this?) Groovia, Happius (as in Happy Holiday) and Precocia. Oh yes, and they had a pet lion too, named Brutus (who is just about the most generic looking Hanna-Barbera character ever drawn!)


The jokes went pretty much the same way as on THE FLINTSTONES. Instead of everything having a "stone" or "rock" in their name, the supporting players all had names like Mr. Evictus the landlord, or Gus's boss Mr. Tycoonus. There were plenty of jokes involving roman numerals. And, remember how Fred Flintstone used to wear a little sundial as a watch? Guy Holiday had a little hour glass as a watch...although I seem to remember Fred having one of those too! Anywho....great show that is so obscure even the most remote parts of the Kings Dominion parking lot were never named after characters from this show! It ran on NBC for one season in 1973 and that was it. I discovered it in my formative years on the classic USA CARTOON EXPRESS programing block on the USA Cable Network.

If this beauty ever makes it way to DVD, I'll make myself a great big Cesar salad and sit down and watch the whole thing...all 13 episodes!