Re-Animations: The Mini-Munsters (1973)

In spite of learning the depressing outcome Bryan Fuller’s Munsters reboot Mockingbird Lane, which NBC will not be picking up as a series, I was pretty excited to learn that a Munsters cartoon exists. Unlike their creepy counterparts, The Addams Family, who have had many animated incarnations over the years, The Munsters never seemed to make the same impact.

While The Mini-Munsters may not have been an actual series, it did appear on Saturday Morning as part of ABC’s Saturday Superstar Movie program and was intended to kick-off a series. The premise of the one-hour special centers mostly around a teenage Eddie and his two cousins, Igor and Lucretia, who come from an unexpected visit. Together the trio forms a band (who didn’t in the 70s?) which sort of sparks the rest of the ragtag story involving the ghost of a funeral director who owned their iconic Munster Koach hearse, gangsters and music-fueled engines.

Unfortunately, this cartoon is so obscure that hardly any trace of it remains aside from a few still frames online. In fact, I was unable to find any actual footage of it anywhere which is a shame because considered how outlandishly far out the plot was I bet it had some pretty funny moments… or not. I guess, much like Mockingbird Lane, we’ll never know.

[Still images courtesy MarkyMunster.com]