The Great Gazoo

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The Great Gazoo
The Flintstones character
The Great Gazoo
First appearance	"The Great Gazoo"
Last appearance	"My Fair Freddy"
Created by	Hanna Barbera
Portrayed by	Harvey Korman
Information
Species	Alien
Gender	Male
Address	Bedrock

The Great Gazoo is a character from The Flintstones animated series. He first appeared on the show on October 29, 1965. The Great Gazoo was voiced by the late Harvey Korman.

[edit] Biography

The Great Gazoo is a tiny, green, floating alien who was exiled to Earth from his home planet Zatox as punishment for having invented a doomsday machine, a weapon of immense destructive power. His invention was a button which would destroy the universe if pressed, though he insists he made it on a whim with no intent of using it. Gazoo was discovered by Fred and Barney when his flying saucer crashed.

Gazoo refers to Fred and Barney as "dum-dums" and constantly causes problems for them. Even when he attempts to help out Fred and Barney, he usually ends up causing even more trouble. The only people who are able to see him are Fred, Barney, and the children, because they believe in him. A running gag is that Fred argues with Gazoo while Wilma believes that he is talking to himself. When their daughter, Pebbles, says "Gazoo," Wilma thinks Pebbles is sneezing.

Gazoo's name actually derives from the 1909 hit song, "King of the Bungaloos," by Charles Straight and Gene Greene. In it the narrator explains, "I just received a cable 'spatch from my ancestral home. It tells me I'm the great Gazoo, successor to the throne."^[1]

Because Gazoo is introduced into the show midway through the final season and is considered quite an absurd character, being a futuristic alien that appears in the middle of the Stone Age, he is often cited by fans and critics of the show as being an example of the show having "jumped the shark." Indeed, the show was cancelled shortly after his first appearance, although it cannot be said with any certainty that Gazoo contributed in any way to the series' conclusion.

The story arc regarding Gazoo trying to return home is never resolved because of the cancellation of the original series, and the character does not appear, nor is he referred to, in the immediate series follow-up The Man Called Flintstone or any of the later spin-off TV series or animated movies, rendering him effectively dropped from continuity. (He does play a major part in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, set before the original series - and thus disrupting series continuity.) Apart from the original TV series, he appears in a Fruity Pebbles cereal commercial as part of a promotion for a contest where consumers would have to try to find boxes of all-orange cereal pieces, and more recently has become the mascot for Marshmallow Mania Pebbles cereal. He is also a character in Flintstones vitamins.

[edit] Appearances in other Warner/HB productions

• The Great Gazoo also appears in The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino and Hoppy NES game and the arcade game Flintstones Memory Match
• In the episode of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast entitled "Pavement", the Great Gazoo makes a cameo - only long enough to be introduced, say the catchphrase "Toodle-loo, dumb-dumbs!" and disappear.
• In the Duck Dodgers cartoon Attack of the Drones, Gazoo appears in a parody of the Jedi Council.
• The Great Gazoo also had a part in the second live-action film, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, where he is played by Alan Cumming and, instead of being sent to Earth as punishment, he has to study humanity's mating habits because he is the most expendable of his people.
• Charlton Comics also published a short-lived comic book focusing on the character in the mid-1970s.

[edit] References

1. ^ Greene, Gene, and Straight, Charles, King of the Bungaloos (Music House of Laemmle: Chicago, 1909), p. 1.