Winky Dink

The early television kids show, Winky Dink (CBS, 1953-57), was less an animated cartoon and more a two-dimensional puppet show (Mae Questel provides Winky’s voice live in the studio). A photoblog called Showbiz Imagery and Chicanery has just posted several great photographs taken on set of host Jack Barry and of kids demonstrating the draw-on-screen process that made the show so famous. It was a bit before my time, but no less interesting as a early interactive television experiment. These newly discovered photos are fascinating flashback to one of TV’s earliest kid’s shows.

For the record, Fred Calvert and Al Kouzel supervised a cheap, Tom Terrific-derivative, animated version in 1969, about which, the less said the better.

(Thanks, Devlin Thompson)