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Puppets! Clowns! Candy bars! A great collection of shows from half a century ago.

I grew up in the late 1970s through the ‘80s. Having done so, I was of course one of millions of kids who were fed a steady diet of nothing but cartoons on Saturday mornings. It was a ritual we all lived through, though it seemed to die out a bit during the 1990s and especially today. Having grown up on that diet of based-on-toys cartoons, I’m more than a little remiss in viewing Hiya Kids!, a collection of (mostly) Saturday morning kids shows from the 1950s. Television was completely different in that era, though in some ways, the same.

This Shout Factory release is a wonderful time capsule of the period. Collected on four discs are random episodes of 21 different shows, none of them animated. But boy, did they have a thing for puppets back then. The variety here though is intriguing and captivating.

We kick things off with Kukla, Fran and Ollie, one of the aforementioned puppet shows. In this episode, Fran (the one real cast member) discusses a Life Magazine culture quiz with the puppets, and Ollie the snake will have none of it, believing people can’t be classified. It’s certainly a bit of shock to see that shows back then weren’t as dumbed down as they’d become in decades later.

The rest of the first disc is a Who’s Who of the legendary shows: Howdy Doody, Lassie, Annie Oakley and Flash Gordon are represented here. The other three discs are more interesting. Disc 2 begins with Ding Dong School. Don’t laugh. In it, a retired school teacher sits before the camera and shows little children how to blow bubbles, reads poems and converses with the camera as if she could hear the answers. It’s quaint, and as one of the really early beginnings of educational television, it’s neat. However, it does give away the fact that not every show on here was a Saturday morning show, as she specifically mentions it being Friday and that there wasn’t any Ding Dong School again until Monday. Bob Clampett’s follow-up to his days making Looney Tunes is here in the form of Time for Beany, the puppet show that would later morph into Beany & Cecil. Ventriloquist Paul Winchell’s show follows, as does Roy Rogers’ and an early sci-fi show called Captain Z-RO.

Discs 3 and 4 are just as eclectic. Clowns are everywhere in Super Circus and The Magic Clown, more puppets in The Rootie Kazootie Club and action fans get Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, Sky King and The Cisco Kid. Juvenile Jury is an interesting concept with a panel of young’uns giving their opinions on questions from the audience.

Hiya, Kids! is great nostalgia. The prints (taken from old kinescopes) aren’t always the best, but all are quite watchable. One thing you’ll notice is how many of the shows were sponsored heavily by candy companies. Also, a good number of them had special offers for the kiddies that were expiring that week, so hurry fast!

While the set contains no special features per se, there’s a nice booklet included that goes into the history and trivia of the shows, giving new viewers an excellent view of them.

Hiya, Kids! is an excellent choice for those who want to see some of the more obscure television shows of the time mixed in with some of the more well-known. They’re certainly an eye-opener for those of us who grew up with nothing but ‘toons based on toys, comics and movies.

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