John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy and the first credited web animated cartoon among other things, notes with sadness the passing of Ed Benedict at the age of 94. Ed, as John explains on his blog All Kinds of Stuff, worked in animation for many years (including working with one of my great Animation Gods, Tex Avery, a revered figure to we Seventh Day Cartoonists) but is probably best known for his striking designs for the backgrounds and characters which defined the look for Hanna Barbera cartoons, most notably the original Flintstones. As John points out we are used to this style now, but at the time it first aired it was something very different and visually striking.

And as many have noted it can be seen as the first real animated sitcom (and one which depicted a blue-collar family at that, something else different); if the Flintstones hadn’t existed would we have the Simpsons today? And if we had no Simpsons would we have the rest of the televised animation we love today? Somewhere there is a parallel world where that is the case and it is a poorer reality than ours. John was a friend of Ed in his latter years and has a lovely tribute to him on his blog. My colleague Kenny points out that in a weird bit of coincidental timing we only recently added on this fabulous-looking Flintstones at the Drive In to our webstore; when you are reading John’s tribute have a look at this image which he posted (above) and then compare it to the forthcoming Drive In set (below). An animation design classic is still a classic in any decade. Mmmm… Brontoburger….