Tuesday's Overlooked TV: Clutch Cargo

This cartoon was another favorite of mine when I was a kid. You'd have to have a kid's forgiving nature to be a fan of a show with such primitive animation and the bizarre technique of superimposing actual mouths over the drawings to provide movement when the characters talked. The stories were serialized in five-minute chunks each weekday, and then on either Saturday or Sunday they would all be aired together to make a half-hour episode. I watched every chance I got and probably came close to seeing all 52 stories that were produced. Clutch Cargo was a globe-trotting adventurer who looked like a cross between Dick Van Dyke and Race Bannon (from a better cartoon show). He got into assorted scrapes along with his young ward Spinner and their comic relief dog Paddlefoot. As I recall, the stories actually weren't bad, typical pulpish adventures, and that's probably what drew me in. The entire series has been released on DVD, and many complete episodes are available on YouTube.