Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels is an American animated mystery comedy series created by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears and produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for ABC. The series aired during the network's Saturday morning schedule from September 10, 1977, to June 21, 1980.
In the series, the caveman superhero Captain Caveman is discovered within a block of ice and thawed out. He joins a trio of mystery-solving teenage girls in various missions. The hero has superhuman strength and flight, but his powers could fail him in inconvenient situations. Among the Teen Angels, Dee Dee Skyes is a Velma Dinkley-like amateur detective, Taffy Dare is the eccentric strategist who convinces the Captain to follow her instructions, and Brenda Chance is an easily-frightened girl who habitually serves as the victim in damsel in distress scenarios.
Contents
Summary
The series follows the mystery-solving adventures of the Teen Angels—Brenda, Dee Dee and Taffy—and their friend Captain Caveman (or Cavey for short), a prehistoric caveman and superhero whom the girls discovered and thawed from a block of ice. The concept and general plot for the show was seen as a parody of Charlie's Angels (which also aired on ABC). The show also borrowed heavily from Scooby-Doo, another Hanna-Barbera show.
Captain Caveman's powers include super-strength, a variety of useful objects hidden inside his hair, and a club that allows him to fly and from which pop out different tools he uses to fight crime. His trademark and catchphrase is his battle cry of "Captain CAAAAAVEMAAAAAAANNNN!" Captain Caveman's voice was provided by Mel Blanc.
A total of forty 11-minute episodes ran for three seasons from 1977 to 1980: sixteen episodes were produced as segments of Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics in 1977, eight episodes were produced as segments of Scooby's All-Stars in 1978 and sixteen episodes were produced in 1980 when Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels were given their own half-hour show which combined new episodes and reruns from 1977 to 1978. Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels also participated in sporting competitions as part of "The Scooby Doobies" team on the half-hour Laff-A-Lympics segment. Like many animated series created by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, the show contained a laugh track, one of the last Hanna-Barbera productions to do so.
Characters
The series features the following four main characters throughout its run:
Captain Caveman, or "Cavey" for short (voiced by Mel Blanc), is the protagonist of the show, billed as "the world's first superhero." He is a caveman who is millennia old (his exact age is never disclosed, although in an episode he is carded by a doorman who is unsure Cavey is old enough to let in, to which Captain Caveman responds, "I'll be 2 million next month."). He can pull various objects from his long body hair that covers his body except for his nose, arms, and legs. He can also fly, but his flying power always seems to fail him at the worst possible moment. Sometimes he would attribute this mishap to an energy shortage ("Uh oh! Bad time for energy crisis." CRASH!), which was a reference to the gasoline rationing shortages of the late 1970s. He speaks in stereotypical "caveman-talk", replacing subject pronouns with their object equivalents and dropping articles such as "the" (for example, "Me know where bad guys are hiding."), and often mumbles the nonsense phrase "unga bunga". He also has a bad habit of occasionally eating large non-food objects in one gulp (e.g. bicycles, TV sets, safes, table lamps), and the Teen Angels occasionally have to stop him from eating potential clues that will help them to solve the mystery. Despite this, Cavey is ultimately loyal to them and he is very capable capturing culprits.
Dee Dee Skyes (voiced by Vernee Watson) is the brains of the Teen Angels. Dee Dee and the rest of the Teen Angels found the frozen Captain Caveman and defrosted him. She wears her hair in an afro and usually wears a red turtleneck sweater with a blue skirt and red knee high boots. Both her dress style and her knack for solving mysteries make her similar to Velma Dinkley of Scooby-Doo fame, while she also bears a resemblance to Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats. She is misidentified as Brenda in the opening credits. Though some sources give the family name of both Dee Dee and her uncle Frank as "Sykes", their name is given as "Skyes" in the episode "The Fur Freight Fright", which featured Frank and his company "Skye's Furs". Her adaptation in the 2020 film Scoob! as Blue Falcon's assistant (voiced by Kiersey Clemons) also introduced herself as Dee Dee Skyes, and she is listed as such in the closing credits.
Brenda Chance (voiced by Marilyn Schreffler) is a nervous brunette who is always scared of the demons, monsters and phantoms that she encounters and always tries to back out of a scary mystery similar to that of Shaggy Rogers, but always ends up getting captured or the short end of the stick. She wears a purple striped tank top and a pair of hot pink flared trousers with a white belt. She is misidentified as Dee Dee in the opening credits.
Opening and closing credits
Each episode opens with voice-over narration by Gary Owens explaining how Captain Caveman was "set free by the Teen Angels from his prehistoric block of glacier ice."
The music heard in the closing credits is the CB Bears theme. After the first three screens, the end credit roll is from the original two-hour version of Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics.
Broadcast history
Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels was broadcast in these following formats on ABC:
Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics (September 10, 1977 – September 2, 1978)
Scooby's All-Stars (September 9, 1978 – September 8, 1979)
Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels (March 8, 1980 – June 21, 1980)
Broadcast schedules (all EDT):
September 10, 1977 – July 1978; Saturdays 9:00 – 11:00 a.m.
July 1978 – September 2, 1978; Saturdays 9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
September 9, 1978 – November 1978; Saturdays 10:00 – 11:30 a.m.
November 1978 – May 1979; Saturdays 8:00 – 9:30 a.m.
May 1979 – September 8, 1979; Saturdays 8:30 – 10:00 a.m.
March 8, 1980 – June 21, 1980; Saturdays 11:30 – 12:00 noon
Episodes
Cast
Mel Blanc as Captain Caveman
Laurel Page as Taffy Dare
Marilyn Schreffler as Brenda Chance
Vernee Watson-Johnson as Dee Dee Skyes
Gary Owens as Narrator
Later appearances
The Flintstone Comedy Show (1980–82)
In November 1980, Captain Caveman began to star in segments of his own on The Flintstone Comedy Show, one of many spin-offs of Hanna-Barbera's popular prime-time show The Flintstones, often in a role similar to that of Superman. Captain Caveman worked at The Daily Granite newspaper with Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble. His "secret identity" was Chester the office boy. To disguise himself as Chester, Captain Caveman wore a pair of glasses and a tie. Despite the simplicity of his disguise, he required a coat rack and an elaborate transformation sequence to become Captain Caveman.
The Flintstone Kids (1986–88)
In 1986, Captain Caveman appeared in a backup segment of The Flintstone Kids called Captain Caveman and Son with his son Cavey Jr. (voiced by Charlie Adler). In this case he appeared on a show-within-a-show that the younger versions of Fred, Barney, Wilma, and Betty enjoyed watching; the Captain's mumbled "unga bunga" became a catchphrase that the kids would shout before watching each "episode" of the show. The show would involve a lesson the Flintstone kids were trying to learn in the prologue. He had no secret identity.
Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe
Captain Caveman and Dee Dee Skyes appeared in the 2020 computer-animated Scooby-Doo film Scoob!, with Captain Caveman voiced by Tracy Morgan and Dee Dee voiced by Kiersey Clemons. Dee Dee appears as the pilot of the Falcon Fury and assistant of the Blue Falcon. Captain Caveman is an inhabitant of a prehistoric ecosystem under Messick Mountain and part of a tribe with long body hair like him and is capable of speaking proper English.
Captain Caveman appears in the 2021 film Space Jam: A New Legacy. His design is the same as in Scoob! Captain Caveman is seen watching the basketball game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad while swinging from the overhead power line that Magilla Gorilla was riding his unicycle on.
Other appearances
A very similar pair of characters, the Slag Brothers, made appearances in the earlier Hanna-Barbera series, Wacky Races. They served as the inspiration for Captain Caveman.
Captain Caveman later appeared in the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law episode "The Evolutionary War", with Captain Caveman voiced by Chris Edgerly and Cavey Jr. voiced by Maurice LaMarche. Captain Caveman turns to Harvey Birdman to represent him when Cavey Jr.'s school would not teach evolution.
Captain Caveman appeared in the Robot Chicken episode "Ban on the Fun", voiced by Breckin Meyer. In a segment that parodies Laff-A-Lympics in the style of the Munich massacre, Captain Caveman and Shaggy Rogers confront Daisy Mayhem and the former blows her up with the "wrong club".
In a Halloween-themed episode of Homestar Runner, Homsar is dressed up in a Captain Caveman-like costume. During the episode, he exclaims "DaAaAaA! I'm the Captain Caveman of the graveyard train!"
In the Family Guy episode "Perfect Castaway", Peter Griffin says how much he misses Captain Caveman, and vows that he will see him again once he gets off the deserted island he is trapped.
Captain Caveman makes a cameo appearance in an episode of Adventure Time, where he is seen as a stuffed doll in Finn's room.
Captain Caveman appeared in the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated episode, "Mystery Solvers Club State Finals", voiced by Jim Cummings. He and the Teen Angels appear alongside other Hanna-Barbera detective teams from Jabberjaw, Speed Buggy, and The Funky Phantom in a fever dream of Scooby-Doo's.
In Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon, a person cosplaying as Captain Caveman makes an appearance in a Hanna-Barbera-themed convention.
Captain Caveman is seen briefly in the background of South Park - Imaginationland: The Movie (2008). He is seen amongst a plethora of other imaginary and cartoon characters as they are being attacked by terrorists.
Comic books
Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels appeared in all 13 issues of Laff-A-Lympics (Marvel Comics, 1978–79) as members of the Scooby Doobies.
Cavey and the Angels appeared in the first issue of the short-lived Hanna-Barbera TV Stars (Marvel, August 1978).
Cavey and the Angels team up with Mystery, Inc. in Scooby-Doo #9 (Marvel, February 1979).
In 2018, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels (excluding Brenda) appeared in a backup story in the DC comic Aquaman/Jabberjaw Special #1. In this story, the wizard Shazam transports the powerful hominid from prehistoric times to the present to settle an argument with the Spectre about whether heroism is strictly a trait of modern man or early man.
Home media
DVD
On July 23, 2013, Warner Archive Collection released the complete series as a manufacture-on-demand (MOD) DVD.