49 Fun Facts About The Jetsons

Which studio produced The Jetsons?

Hanna-Barbera. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera built it as a Space Age mirror image of The Flintstones, their Stone Age hit that had made prime-time cartoons a craze two years earlier.

How long did The Jetsons last in prime time before cancellation?

One season. Only 24 episodes were made in 1962-63, but the same ones were rerun over and over for the next two decades.

In 1962 The Jetsons became the first programme ABC had ever broadcast in what way?

In colour. Hardly anyone saw it that way, though: only a handful of ABC's stations could transmit colour in 1962, so most of the country watched in black and white.

What is the name of the sky-high metropolis where the Jetsons live?

Orbit City. Its homes and offices stand on adjustable columns so tall that the ground beneath is hardly ever shown.

What is the name of the building the Jetson family calls home?

Skypad Apartments. Its superintendent is a part-time inventor whose gadgets tend to backfire, and his mechanical assistant ends up courting the Jetsons' maid.

What is the name of the Jetsons' robot maid?

Rosie. She was all the family could afford: Jane passed over fancier robots with British and French accents for an outdated demonstrator model.

George Jetson's cry of 'Jane, stop this crazy thing!' comes as he is trapped on what?

A runaway treadmill. In the closing credits he is walking Astro on it when the dog bolts after a cat, and George is left whirling round and round, shouting for his wife.

Astro's growly habit of starting his words with an R was later given to which other cartoon dog?

Scooby-Doo. One actor voiced both dogs, and Astro was saying things like 'I ruv roo, Reorge' seven years before Scooby's 1969 debut.

What breed is Astro?

Great Dane. George at first refuses to keep him, protesting that their home is no place for a dog, and brings home an electronic pet instead.

What was Astro's original name when he belonged to millionaire J.P. Gottrockets?

Tralfaz. After a custody battle in 'Millionaire Astro', the tycoon sees how much the dog loves the Jetsons and gives him back to them.

How does Astro win his place in the family over George's electronic dog?

He accidentally stops a burglar. The electronic dog, 'Lectronimo, is supposed to do exactly that and fails, so the family hands it over to the police and keeps the stray.

What does the company George Jetson works for manufacture?

Sprockets. Spacely Space Sprockets and its chief rival spend the series stealing each other's ideas, a feud that usually ends with George in trouble.

What is Mr. Spacely's first name?

Cosmo. In the 1985 episode 'A Jetson Christmas Carol' the miserly boss plays the Scrooge part, haunted by ghosts after ordering George to work overtime on Christmas Eve.

What is the name of Mr. Spacely's business rival?

Cogswell. His firm is forever spying on Spacely's: in one 1985 episode his agent hides inside a robot guard dog, Trojan-horse style, to steal a prototype.

What does George Jetson's job mostly consist of?

Pushing a button. That is the running gag: his working week is absurdly short, yet he comes home groaning that the workload is killing him.

What is George Jetson's job title?

Digital index operator. In the first episode he boasts of being a 'darn good' one; the grand-sounding title is part of the joke, since the show never lets his work look hard.

Which nonsense phrase, lifted from Elroy's secret code, becomes a hit song for Judy Jetson's teen idol?

Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah. George swaps Elroy's code for Judy's contest entry to wreck her chances, the gibberish wins anyway, and he ends up drumming along on stage.

What does Mr. Spacely regularly do to George Jetson in a rage, only to undo it by the episode's end?

Fire him. 'Jetson, you're fired!' is the boss's signature bellow, and by the 1980s episodes he is grumbling about twenty years of firing the same man.

What is DiDi, the confidante Judy Jetson tells her troubles to?

Her robot diary. DiDi floats beside her and talks back, and in one 1985 episode it is DiDi she confides in when she thinks everyone has forgotten her birthday.

Where does Elroy go to study astrophysics and star geometry?

Little Dipper School. His teacher there is a robot, Miss Brainmocker, and in one episode a classmate's switched report-card tape sends Elroy running away from home.

What is the name of the rock singer Judy wins a date with in a songwriting contest?

Jet Screamer. George loathes the singer and tags along on the date to break it up, but he comes home a fan.

What is Jane Jetson's running-gag weakness?

Terrible driving. Her lessons leave her instructor a nervous wreck, and in one episode she ends up sharing a car with an escaped bank robber.

Which comic strip, whose film star went on to voice Jane, was The Jetsons modelled on?

Blondie. The studio's Stone Age hit had borrowed its set-up from The Honeymooners, and for the Space Age it borrowed Blondie's, casting the films' own Blondie, Penny Singleton, as Jane.

Which voice actor played George Jetson's short-tempered boss, Mr. Spacely?

Mel Blanc. The voice of Bugs Bunny had lain in a coma after a 1961 car crash; the next year he was bellowing 'Jetson!' as George's tiny, tyrannical boss.

Who voiced the head of the Jetson household in the original series?

George O'Hanlon. He had auditioned for Fred Flintstone and lost to Alan Reed, but the producers remembered him two years later when their space-age father needed a voice.

Daws Butler, one of the regular voices of The Jetsons, was also the original voice of which cartoon star?

Yogi Bear. Butler built the bear's voice on Art Carney's Ed Norton from The Honeymooners, and he also spoke for Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw.

How do characters in The Jetsons usually place a call, decades before it became everyday technology?

By videophone. A typical call from the boss opens with his face filling the screen and a bellow of 'JETSON!', and the flat-screen video chat it imagined in 1962 is now routine.

Like a live-action sitcom of its day, the original Jetsons episodes were broadcast with what?

A laugh track. Only the original prime-time episodes have one: those made in the 1980s do without, and the 2004 DVD set kept the canned laughter in place.

Who voiced the Jetsons when the show was revived in 1985?

The original cast. All seven leads came back more than two decades on, and the revival ran to 51 new episodes, more than twice as many as the original series.

What is the name of the springy-legged alien who became the Jetsons' second pet in the 1980s episodes?

Orbitty. He was added for the 1985 revival; one science-fiction encyclopedia calls him annoyingly cute, and a Smithsonian writer dubbed him the Jar Jar Binks of the Jetsons' world.

Which obnoxious robot becomes George Jetson's supervisor and mortal enemy?

Uniblab. The boss's electronic toady informs on George until a spot of sabotage sends it haywire, and it later turns up as the sergeant of his Space Guard platoon.

What part of The Jetsons, re-recorded in stereo, became a pop hit in 1986?

The theme tune. Hoyt Curtin's jazzy 1962 theme turned up on rock radio and MTV; the composer, who scored nearly all of the studio's 250 series, said he was amazed every time he heard it.

How do the Jetsons and the Flintstones end up meeting in the 1987 TV movie?

Elroy's time machine malfunctions. The Jetsons set out for the 25th century and land in the Stone Age instead, and the rescue attempt back home fetches the Flintstones forward by mistake.

Which pop singer controversially replaced Janet Waldo as the voice of Judy in Jetsons: The Movie?

Tiffany. Waldo had already recorded the whole part when the studio swapped in the teen pop star, hoping she would draw a younger audience.

Why was Jetsons: The Movie, released in 1990, dedicated to the voices of George and Mr. Spacely?

Both died while making it. The two actors died five months apart in 1989, and an impressionist supplied additional lines for both characters.

In Jetsons: The Movie, who is sabotaging the asteroid factory George runs?

Furry aliens who live there. Their colony lies inside the asteroid the plant is drilling into, and the film ends with them running the factory themselves so that their home is spared.

Which WWE star does George Jetson find frozen in the 2017 film Robo-WrestleMania!?

Big Show. Lost in a snowstorm on the way to a title match, he is dug up by George a century later and, finding that robots now do the wrestling, turns them into his own army.

What was the 1974 proposed Jetsons sequel retooled into after CBS rejected it?

Partridge Family 2200 A.D. The rejected pitch aged the Jetsons by a decade, with Elroy a teenager and Judy a reporter; CBS asked for the sitcom pop group in a space-age setting instead.

How does George Jetson commute to work?

In an aerocar with a bubble top. The flying car became the show's emblem: when the 21st century arrived, complaints that it had never appeared regularly invoked the Jetsons.

After its prime-time cancellation, The Jetsons found lasting success in reruns in which time slot?

Saturday mornings. Reruns of the same episodes aired there for years on all three big networks in turn, which is why a show that failed in prime time became a childhood fixture.

Nostalgia for The Jetsons helped popularise which complaint about a future that never arrived?

Where's my jetpack? It became a rallying cry of people who feel cheated of a future the cartoon seemed to promise, and their complaints routinely name the Jetsons.

In which architectural style is the Jetsons' sky-high home city drawn?

Googie. The show's designers borrowed the look from the coffee shops, motels and gas stations of southern California, where the studio was based.

In the 1980s episodes, what is R.U.D.I., George Jetson's talkative partner at the office?

His computer. R.U.D.I. thinks for himself and is fond of George, but in the 1987 crossover film a rival firm's computer charms him into leaking company secrets.

Montague Jetson, a 110-year-old who turns up for a visit, is George's what?

Grandfather. In 'A Visit from Grandpa' he stumbles through a string of misadventures, and he returns in the 1980s to take George's place at Judy's father-daughter dance.

Jean Vander Pyl, the voice of the Jetsons' robot maid, was best known as which other cartoon character?

Wilma Flintstone. For all the decades of reruns she saw little of the money: contracts of the day barely provided for residuals, which, she said, was why she was not wealthy.

The pole-top buildings of The Jetsons are often likened to which landmark, opened the year the show began?

The Space Needle. Seattle's saucer on a stalk opened for the 1962 World's Fair five months before the series began, and it apparently became the model for every home and office in the show.

Which rapper was mistakenly reported in 2012 to be creative director of a Jetsons movie?

Kanye West. He tweeted that he had only been discussing the job on a call, and the film's producer said flatly that he was not its creative director, though she praised his passion for the show.

Which filmmaker executive produced the live-action Jetsons sitcom pilot ABC ordered in 2017?

Robert Zemeckis. The Back to the Future director backed a version with live actors for ABC, the same network that had cancelled the cartoon more than half a century earlier.

Which turn-of-the-millennium animated series was influenced by The Jetsons and referenced it often?

Futurama. It set out to show a more cynical future than the Jetsons', yet it keeps harking back to the older show's tropes.