Subscribe!The Flintstone Kids (1986)
Originally posted on 16 May 2026First episode title: The Great Freddini
How familiar with the show am I?: I know The Flintstones, of course, but not this spin-off.
Yes, it's the Flintstones' turn at the whole "spin-off about when the characters were kids" thing. Fred, Barney, Wilma, and Betty are all pupils at the same elementary school in the familiar town of Bedrock, with all its stone-age technology.
I probably don't need to explain who all the main characters are, do I? The main four are just child versions of the ones we're all familiar with. Dino is also there, as a young puppy-like dinosaur that's already Fred's pet and is smaller than Fred at this stage, and we also see Fred's parents who look a lot like how Fred will look as an adult.
In this episode, Wilma and Betty are waiting for the school bus, talking about how they're going to be Fred's assistants in his magic act at the talent show tonight. Barney shows up and, since Fred isn't there yet, he goes off to his house to look for him. Fred is in his room in a magician outfit, practising, trying to use magic to take all the money out of his piggysaurus bank, but Barney misunderstands and smashes it open. The contents: five clams (their currency), which he's planning to spend on a surprise birthday present for his mother. His mother thinks he has forgotten her birthday, but he intentionally doesn't give the game away as he kisses his parents goodbye and leaves for school. The girls are still at the bus stop, now waiting for the boys, and a bully named Rocky who has a crush on Wilma shows up with his gang on their bike. He offers her a ride but she rejects him, and then Fred and Barney show up. Fred tries to do a "magic trick" to make the school bus appear, but the bus (just a dinosaur with a bunch of kids riding on it) goes right past them! All four of the main kids rush to get on it - the girls make it, but while the boys are still climbing up the tail, Rocky knocks them back off again and they're left behind. Then Dreamchip, a girl that Fred has a crush on, shows up in her limo and offers Fred and Barney a ride. In the car, Dreamchip keeps telling Fred how adorable his outfit and his magic tricks are. Dreamchip asks if she can be Fred's assistant in the show - Barney tries to point out that Fred already asked Wilma and Betty, but he says yes anyway.
At school, the kids are all told to practise for the talent show. Rocky and his gang are a band but they're in need of a lead singer, and Wilma once again refuses them. She also gets wind of the fact that she's in danger of being replaced. But Fred and the girls practise anyway, doing a sawing-a-lady-in-half trick - Wilma is the assistant that hands Fred the "saw" (a small dinosaur), Betty is the one being cut in half, and Barney is playing the role of Betty's legs. Fred completely fails to perform the trick correctly, and is so clearly distracted by the presence of Dreamchip that Wilma refuses the job. Then, at the school "caveteria", the lunch lady won't accept Dreamchip's credit card and Dreamchip doesn't carry cash, so Fred spends all the money that was meant for his mother's present on buying Dreamchip's lunch for her - and, inadvertently, Wilma and Betty's lunches too, as they add theirs to the tray while Fred isn't looking. And then he finds out that Dreamchip has agreed to be in Rocky's act anyway.
Later, Dino unexpectedly shows up at school. Wilma and Betty overhear the ensuing conversation between Fred and Barney, and learn that their prank has deprived Fred's mother of a present, so they decide they have to do something to help. They approach Fred and tell him there's a nearby restaurant in need of a bus boy, so he can earn more money for a present. They also agree to be in his magic act again. Fred, still in his magician outfit, does a shift at the restaurant, but gets fired when his attempt at the classic tablecloth-removal trick smashes a lot of tableware. So then Fred takes up a job walking someone's pet dinosaur that's even more dog-like than Dino, as Wilma warns him that he's barely going to make it in time for the talent show at this rate. Rocky sees what Fred and his friends are doing and sends his own dog to antagonise them - Rocky's dog steals a bone from the dog-like dinosaur, sending it into a frenzy.
Then the talent show is already underway, and Rocky and his band are playing. Dreamchip is a terrible singer and Rocky tells her to take a break, but he's even worse in her place. Then Fred and the others inadvertently take over the stage, knocking Rocky into a trapdoor, and Dino is able to retrieve the bone and give it back to the other dinosaur. The crowd applaud Fred's "act" and he gets awarded first prize. It turns out the prize is five clams - but then everyone Fred has wronged throughout the episode comes to demand compensation for what he's done. He doesn't have enough left for a present for his mother, but she tells him that seeing him in the show was better than any present. The end.
I'll start by highlighting the voices. Of the main four, the actors playing Wilma and Barney are clearly doing an impression of the usual adult versions of the characters, whereas Fred and Betty have slightly more generic child voices. Both of Fred's parents are played by the same actor as each other - it seems like we're meant to read Fred's mother as kind of "Fred in drag", combining her voice with her appearance. It's not great.
The show has the standard Flintstones "stone-age technology" thing going on, with animals doing the work of machines in some cases. Betty has a pair of headphones that contain birds that play back songs, Wilma has a sundial wristwatch, and Fred cleans his room with a small mammoth that acts as a vacuum cleaner. It's lacking the "talking animal" aspect that some of these gags had in The Flintstones itself, though.
A major noticeable change compared to the original show is that none of the vehicles are the typical Flintstones kind where your legs go through the floor of the car and you have to make it run to go. Instead, most of the vehicles seen in the episode use ordinary (albeit stone) wheels to move around, the exception being the school bus which is a dinosaur as mentioned previously.
Something that dates this episode now is the fact that Dreamchip only having a card and not cash is meant to portray her as rich and snooty. Sure, you might not give someone that young a card nowadays, but other than that it's still much more normal to not carry cash these days than it was then.
One really weird thing about the animation in this show, that happens too often to ignore, is that the characters are often smiling, regardless of what emotion is indicated by their tone of voice, the words they're saying, and the situation they're in. It's especially noticeable towards the end of the episode - there's a scene where Wilma and Betty are both panicking, but they have smiles on their faces throughout. My guess: the character model sheets have smiles on their faces, and the animators have stuck to the models except when the script specifies otherwise.
The ending is completely bizarre. Fred's accidental "act" amounts to nothing at all - it makes no sense that it would be considered worthy of winning the contest, or that his mother would accept it in lieu of a present. Like, all the writers needed to do was make it appear like he'd somehow done something magical! How did they not manage that?
So yeah, this wasn't a very good show. There weren't any jokes that landed for me at all. I'm pretty sure the original Flintstones show is better than this - although I can't remember when I last watched it!
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