A Flintstone Family Christmas (1993)

This was produced by Hanna-Barbera and aired on ABC on December 18, 1993. I can’t believe it, but it was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in 1994 for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour). This is the weirdest timeline of the series to me as after the events of I Yabba-Dabba Do!, Pebbles — who works for an ad agency — and Bamm-Bamm — who works in a car repair shop — get married and movies to Hollyrock so Bamm-Bamm could be a screenwriter. Two weeks before this movie, Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby aired and introduced the twin children of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, daughter Roxy and son Chip. who appear to be Capcom palette swaps with Roxy getting white hair in her mother’s hairstyle and Chip looking like his dad with red hair.

As they go to get a turkeysaurus for dinner, Fred and Barney are mugged. This points to the darkness of this version of The Flintstones. Yes, the show as originally for adults, yet jokes about drive-by stonings and Charlie Mansonrock are insane, to be perfectly open with you. I mean, do you want to think about an animated Manson Family stabbing Sharon Slate — get it, Tate, I could totally write for The Flintstones — with a dinosaur fork and it looks at the camera, covered in gore and says, “It’s a living.”

So yeah. They get mugged by Stoneywho Wilma decides to adopt, which leads to Fred getting brutalized in a street fight and hospitalized, causing him to miss being Santa in the Christmas Parade. Stoney responds by kidnapping Mr. Slate, which gets Fred and Stoney in jail together where they bond.

This was the last The Flintstones special to air on ABC. Its first airing was on December 18, 1993. I’m kind of not into grown-up Bamm-Bamm, but super into grown-up Pebbles. Betty and Wilma have not aged at all, nor has anyone else. Amazingly, Stoney seems to come from a street universe that this show never had before. One assumes he was to be the Stephanie to Fred’s Archie Bunker but as this was the last movie in this timeline we will never know, huh?

You can watch this on Tubi.

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