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Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids

Series, 1972, The '60s and '70s, Set in North Philadelphia

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids is #5 of 18 in release order and #5 of 18 in chronological order in the CBS Saturday Morning Cartoons.

The story

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids is an animated series created, produced, and hosted by comedian Bill Cosby, who also lent his voice to a number of characters, including Fat Albert himself. Filmation was the production company for the series. The show premiered in 1972 and ran until 1985. The show, based on Cosby's remembrances of his childhood gang, centered on Albert, and his friends. The show always had an educational lesson emphasized by Cosby's live-action segments, and in early episodes the gang would usually gather in their North Philadelphia junkyard to play a rock song on their cobbled-together instruments at the end of the show.

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids recap

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972) follows a gang of friends in North Philadelphia who learn a lesson about growing up in every episode. Bill Cosby created, produced and hosted it, basing the gang on his own childhood friends, and Filmation animated it. Cosby also voices Fat Albert Robertson, whose greeting is "Hey hey hey!" The gang includes Mushmouth, Dumb Donald, Old Weird Harold, Rudy, Bucky, and Bill and his brother Russell. Cosby appears in live-action scenes framing each cartoon, and most episodes end with the friends' junkyard band playing a song about the lesson. The characters first appeared in a 1969 NBC prime-time special, Hey, Hey, Hey, It's Fat Albert, and the series premiered on CBS on September 9, 1972, with "Lying". CBS aired it until 1982, with production running in bursts. In 1979 it became The New Fat Albert Show and added The Brown Hornet, a superhero parody. The last new episodes came in first-run syndication in 1984 and 1985 as The Adventures of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, with more mature subjects, a Legal Eagle segment and, in the final season, no laugh track. The run totals 110 episodes plus specials.

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids ending explained

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids ends with "Attitude of Gratitude", aired August 10, 1985, in which Fat Albert takes a job at the local zoo and struggles to keep up with school and homework. It is an ordinary lesson episode, not a farewell, and production stopped after that syndicated season. The characters returned once more in the live-action film Fat Albert (2004), with Kenan Thompson in the title role, in which the gang steps out of their TV show to help a lonely girl named Doris.

Ratings

IMDb 6.7/10

Where it fits

Cast

Created by Bill Cosby, Ken Mundie.