Certainly one of the strangest names for a cartoon (neither character is a frog), Spunky and Tadpole is one of those cartoons that is enjoyable once for about seven minutes. In their original half-hour format they're pretty excruciating. Understandably, the show was cut into a seven minute (or less) serialized format to be used on various local kids shows hosted by regional Bozo the Clown types. I always have dug the thick ink outlines of the characters, but the voices - one of which is provided by the pre-Hanna-Barbera era Don Messick - are grating, the stories are dumb, and it's also quite boring. I have a couple jumbo-vhs copies from the early eighties I bought from a video store that went under, but its taken me a couple years to get through 90 minutes of the stuff. Before Ruff and Reddy took the air, there was Spunky and Tadpole. Nobody missed them.
