In 1960, a company run by two women would change daytime television programming forever. That company, named after the two women (that were also women)--Hanna & Barbara--began their television revolution by beginning with, The Flintstones. What history doesn't remember is that from 1954 there was a third sister, Toots, that almost led the creative vision in a different direction, one aligned with American automotive power and righteous torque. However, in the last months of 1959, the Hanna-Toots-Barbara company downsized their sister, Minnie Toots, and changed their original idea from a landmark cartoon to the Flintstones. We asked our fledgling Video Club to review: The Buttstones

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Hey, hey Video-Heads! It’s me again, Palmer Jergens, but you can just call me Uncle Palmy. Today I’m gonna discuss a favorite topic of mine, one that you won’t see anywhere else. We’re gonna talk about a history that could’ve been, but never was. So, let’s slather it down, stroke it up, and talk about: The Buttstones.

The 1950’s was a crazy time and cars were insane. They went fast and either got you home or got you dead. It was awesome and we all loved it. But some people didn’t love it. I just don’t get it. Cars didn’t kill people, people killed people. Sure, sure, there were accidents, a lot of accidents, and spinal injuries, so many spinal injuries, but you can’t make an omelette without killing a few babies, right? Minnie Toots–despite all her wisdom and experience and her advanced lady degree in typing–just never got  Bananafana Pho Hanna, or their sister, Fee-Fi-Fo Marbara Barbara, to see that making a cartoon series about muscle cars was going to be family friendly. Despite safer and more efficient motor technologies, the Buttstones were deemed problematic and replaced, at the last minute, for those namby-pamby Flintstones who power their cars with feet.

How stupid is that? Feet?!

In 1958, Hanna-Toots-Barbara had a real concept on their hands, a caveman reimagining of car culture, with full bore, open throttle, raging engines run on farts. But no, we’re stuck with feet, boring stupid feet. I don’t want to masturbate when I watch cartoons! Get those feet off the tube. We all want to see screaming engines tearing up the dinosaur highways, cruising for freedom and a bruisin’!

You can’t drift a sweet Nissan with feet! Or improve your quarter-mile times with a pedicure! Bullshit man! Feet won’t cut it. If Hanna-Toots-Barbara had any balls they would have stuck with the Pre-Historic #1 Mopar family, the Buttstones. That was a high octane family. Their farts powered the first combustion engines man! Did you even watch the cartoon? See, that’s something America can get behind, raw power coming from renewable butts-based farts. Need more pick-me-up on your commute, just add beans and hot-sauce tequila to your diet. Oh man, that was even in the second episode they never released. Toots Buttstone–named after Minnie Toots–didn’t calibrate his compression ratios for double beans and he ended up cracking a header driving his GTO through a zombie-dinosaur mob. That was an important lesson, for the kids, about fuel efficiency and compression ratios in combustion engines. Toots Buttstone and Barney Fartle had cam shafts coming out of their ears and fuel filters coming out of their butts!

But I think we all know when it started going downhill, when it became painfully clear that the cultural triumph of The Buttstones was never going to happen. Picture this kid, the year was 1959, and cartoons were just beginning to take the country by storm, figuratively of course. Disney just released “Sleeping Beauty,” and without a single fart. That Walt really had a screw loose! The first Barbie was released and Alaska joined the Union. Everything was great and America celebrated with bigger cars and bigger engines. Every automobile manufacturer had at least one, 400+ cu. in. engine. Woweee! Back then, without seat belts and crash zones and baby seats, that was like strapping a rocket engine to a four-seater coffin. And we Loved it!!

The country was ready for an epic cartoon television series that celebrated our innate barbarism, self-starter tendencies, and love of laying down sweet, sweet power on the open road. But the creators of The Buttstones knew something else, the country needed to seriously consider investing in renewable energies; only a fool would think gas would last forever. And that’s where The Buttstones found their niche, delivering the comedic hijinx of everyman families while secretly delivering a message on the importance of global preservation efforts. And who better to deliver this important message than a family living with dinosaurs? They didn’t have oil yet, kid! That’s what I’m saying! They HAD to use something else, something renewable.

Hello Farts!

And that was it, there you had it: cartoons, buds, babes, dinosaurs, and fart-fueled high-performance dragsters. Everything was coming up roses for the hilarious Buttstones in a family cartoon. Honestly, I think the third episode was just Barney Fartle letting a big one rip inside the gas tank as they drove from Atlantic City to Phoenix! Oh man, they even had a chair on the ROOF of the car, with a hose up his butt, for the WHOLE RIDE. Hahahaha!!!

You see, the morning before the trip, Barney–who knew he’s not supposed to drink milk because it makes him gassy which you learn about in the pilot–had THREE huge bowls of his favorite cereal, “Snap Crackle n Roar!” with 4% dino milk. Hahahaha!!! Oh God, it was hilarious! He never once stopped farting!!!! Lol! It ended up being a three-episode continuation because he couldn’t stop farting, and every bump on the road have him burst a little more fart so of course the car would shoot forward a bit and the Barney would be dangling on the side of the roof with a house in his butt!

That was a wholesome slice of Americana right there.

And then came the nuclear threat, the red scare, and with that, a luddite’s fear of technology, explosions, and things that go boom. Fucking pussies!

Minnie Toots was a hard-charging, red-blooded, sexual panther of an American woman. God bless her. She got shit done and drank anyone under the table. Many ad execs even credit her for starting the cocaine fad in NYC. Toots could do it all, but it had to be loud. She ran that company hard and anyone that dared call her a peacenik or boycotted combustion engines got clit-slap right in the kisser.

But, as like what happens to all good things, Minnie Toots had the rug pulled from under her. You see, Bananafana Pho Hanna, and Fee-Fi-Fo Marbara Barbara, were peaceniks and wanted to make a family show that didn’t involve graphic anal attachments on a Sunday morning cartoon, or introduce the beginnings of a cyborg cultural manifesto showing humans and machines merging to become a new species altogether. This last fear was all thanks to Fee-Fi-Fo Marbara Barbara and the night she had a bad acid trip where she imagined something called a “techbro” that had–as quoted from her 1983 autobiography, Seductions of The Foot–“control over all society, that sent cars to Mars, tripped on drugs while at work, introduced a decentralized doggies currency and ruined the democratic will of the government, and spent all his writing childish insults on messages that the world could read instantly without using any paper but required little birds.”

Bananafana Pho Hanna, being the weak one of the group, quickly catered to Fee-Fi-Fo Marbara Barbara. So, in the last months of 1959, with almost the whole season wrapped and in the can, they quickly re-edited and redrew what they could. Say goodbye to the Buttstones and hello Flintstones and their dirty, dirty feet.

Oh sure, we can’t have farts because combustion is “ooh scary!” so let’s replace that with dirty, unwashed feet that track germs right into the kitchen. They glossed over that by never showing a prehistoric car, powered by feet, for a driver with polio!!

Imagine a world that had the Buttstones, just for a second. I know for sure Quentin Tarantino would never have developed his foot fetish because, if you watch the original footage, Smelling Buttstone’s backside was so well drawn that Hugh Hefner had a spread ready to go and Marilyn Monroe was said to be “all in a rage” over not having the fairest butt of them all.

I’m pretty sure this is around the time America started learning to hate sex.