Animators Joe Ruby and Ken Spears worked for Sid and Marty Krofft Television Productions and DePatie–Freleng Enterprises before going to Hanna-Barbera in the late sixties where they created Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?. This series was an immediate smash and would go on to be one of the most enduringly popular cartoon brands of all time. For Hanna-Barbera, Ruby and Spears went on to emulate the Scooby-Doo formula with Dyno-Mutt, Dog Wonder and Jabberjaw. They went on to supervise the Saturday morning lineups for CBS, then ABC.
In 1977, they decided to set up their own animation studio, Ruby-Spears Productions, a subsidiary of Filmways. Their first creation was… kind of a Scooby-Doo knockoff — Fangface.
The show debuted in the fall of 1978 on ABC. It followed the exploits of a group of teens who solve mysteries including the handsome leader Biff (voiced by Jerry Dexter), the “Fred,” his beautiful girlfriend Kim (Susan Blu), who was sort of an amalgam of Velma and Daphne, the stocky idiot Puggsy (Bart Braverman), and the lanky idiot Sherman “Fangs” Fangsworth (the great Frank Welker).
Kim’s ethnicity isn’t clear. She may be black or Latina. (Blu is Caucasian.) But at any rate, it was sort of progressive for a cartoon in 1978 to depict an interracial couple.
Like most Scooby-Doo knockoffs, this group had a comedic mascot, but in a twist, on Fangface, one of the teens was ALSO the mascot. You see, Fangs was a werewolf!
As the show’s opening narration stated:
Every 400 years, a baby werewolf is born into the Fangsworth family, and so when the moon shined on little Sherman Fangsworth, he changed into Fangface, a werewolf! Only the sun can change him back to normal, and so little Fangs grew up and teamed up with three daring teenagers – Kim, Biff and Puggsy – and together they find danger, excitement and adventure! Who can save the day, who can wrong the rights and right the wrongs …. none other than Fangface!
Check out the intro below:
As you can see, Ruby and Spears clearly plagiarized themselves in this sequence by having Kim kidnapped the same way Daphne is in the opening of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?.
Fangs would transform into a werewolf whenever he saw the moon… or even just a picture of the moon or something that looked like the moon. He would also turn back into a human if he saw the sun… or even just a picture of the sun or something that looked like the sun.
Unlike Scooby-Doo, the villains on Fangface weren’t usually disguised. They were basically just straight-up supervillains, more akin to those on Dyno-Mutt.
How does Fangface compare to Scooby-Doo and other knockoffs? Well, it’s obviously not as good as Scooby-Doo. As for other knockoffs? It sort of falls in the middle. It’s goofy and silly. If you have a low tolerance for dumbassery, you may not like this because both Fangs and Puggsy are just so dumb and bumbling… even compared to Shaggy and Scooby.
Also, on a personal note, Puggsy reminds me of roughly 75% of the guys I’ve dated. I have a thing for stocky morons, I guess. Yay, me.
Apparently, Puggsy and Fangs were based on Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall from the Bowery Boys movie franchise from the 1940s and ’50s. That may explain why nearly every line of Fangface’s dialogue included him grunting “Ooh! Ooh!”
There were 16 episodes of the first season and it was successful enough to get a second season, although it was integrated into the anthology The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show. Clearly, Plastic Man was the main draw, so that segment was 30 minutes long. Fangface and the other supporting segments, Mighty Man and Yukk and Rickety Rocket, were only about 15 minutes long.
Fangface was renamed Fangface and Fangpuss, as the show integrated Fangs’ infant cousin who appeared to only be named Baby Fangs who also transformed into a werewolf called Fangpuss. This completely ignored the continuity established in the original opening credits that only “once in 400 years” was a werewolf baby born to the Fangsworth family. But hey! Cute diaper-wearing baby werewolf! Who’s gonna complain about that?
Frank Welker also voiced Baby Fangs/Fangpuss.
(Ruby-Spears had a thing for babies. In its second season, Plastic Man introduced Plas’ infant son, Baby Plas.)
Fangface seems to have been pretty popular and spawned a few pieces of licensing. There was a board game, books, a story record, a Colorforms set, a Halloween costume, a sleeping bag, and View-Master reels. Some episodes were also released on VHS in the 1980s.
Eventually, Ruby-Spears Productions was purchased by Warner Bros., who also owned Hanna-Barbera, so the Ruby-Spears library was folded into that bundle. As a result, reruns of Fangface wound up on Cartoon Network and Boomerang in the 1990s.
Unfortunately, for better or worse, Fangface was a middle-of-the-road cartoon that has faded into obscurity. It’s worth checking out if you are a fan of Scooby-Doo-esque shows. If not… maybe skip it.
Do you remember this show? Were you a fan?