Andy's Gang

I was very young when "Andy's Gang" was on TV, but it was a great favorite of mine. I always liked Gunga Ram and his elephant, "Teela," but I always especially remember Froggy saying, "I'll be good, I will, I will!" However, Froggy was very seldom "good." I thought it was really great when Froggy appeared, or vanished, in a flash of light or smoke or whatever-it-was. It is only now that we can see that Froggy was the precursor to Bart Simpson, and that Froggy was subliminally brainwashing us Baby Boomers into rebelling against our parents and the whole Establishment, which came to full fruition in the Vietnam era with all those street demonstrations we remember so well. Oh, come on! Don't believe this? Get some tapes of this show (they have been made and sold) and see if I'm not right! (Also, check out "Froggy the Gremlin" on eBay--those rubber Froggy dolls are selling for hundreds of dollars!) A wonderful nostalgic memory!

The song went (I think)

I got a gang, You got a gang Everybody's got to have a gang. But there's only one real true old gang it's Good Old Andy's gang.

Pluck your magic twanger Froggy (a cloud of smoke) Hiya Kids Hiya Hiya Hiya

Does your shoe have a boy inside? what a funny place for a boy to hide. Does your shoe have a dog there too? A boy and a dog and foot in a shoe. Well the boy is Buster Brown and the dog is Tige his friend and its really just a picture but it's fun to play pretend. So look look look in your telephone book for the store that sells the shoe with the picture of the boy and the dog there too so you can put your foot into, a Buster Brown shoe.

Saurday morning line up

1.Crusader Rabbit and Rags the Tiger 2.Andy's Gang, 3.Howdy Doody,4.Roy Rogers, 5.Fury, 6.Sky King, and 7.My Friend Flicka

The golden age of television

froggy would appear and say, HI-DEE, HI-DE, HI-DEE! billie gilbert would appear as the prof. and give voice lessons.. something would happen ( maybe froggy would spray sneezing powder? ) and he would sneeze uncontrollably and leave.. also remember the magic twanger.. from my dim memory, i thought it was froggy's way of triggering a practical joke.. the scenes of the kids in the audience struck me as strange.. i remember that they always were doing the same exact movements, as if the same film was used every episode.. why not, what do kids know? there was a song andy sang with the audience.. only remember the ending-- good ol' andy's gang!

I was born in 1971....so ANDYS GANG is not something I remember from childhood. I am a very nostalgic person who treasures most old '70s & '80s things. I read a great book called BAD TV (written by Craig Nelson) and he gives a review of ANDYS GANG as being one of the most bizarre childrens shows ever created. In the list of reasons WHY the show was strange was Midnight the cat who could somehow be maneuvered into dancin a mean hula and purring "Niiiice" and Froggy The Gremlin who they described as being "evil". I would love to get my hands on a copy of this...but do they even have tapes of shows from that far back???

Andy's Gang was wild, something like a Saturday-morning Tonight Show for kids, with a rowdy audience howling with laughter or excitement -- although the kids weren't really there. The audience seen at the beginning was stock footage that was constantly reused.

I remember the audience singing a Buster Brown theme song to start the show.

I think it ended, "There's only one kind of gang for me, good old Andy's Gang!"

Andy Devine hollered "Hey kids!" and the crowd roared back. Froggy the Gremlin, a rubber toy, always said, "Hiya, kids, hiya hiya hiya!" He also brought on the film or cartoon when everyone yelled, "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!" There was usually a film episode of adventure with Gunga Ram, the mahout (Indian elephant wrangler) or the same actor as a Native American.

There was a black cat named Midnight who purred "Niiiiice" (voiced by June Foray) and a mouse named Squeaky who was played by a hamster. There were also comedy or variety sketches. Vito Scotti often appeared as some kind of "expert" who would do a demonstration for the audience. As Scotti narrated what he was doing Froggy would suggest wildly wrong things, which Scotti would repeat and do and then get upset about.

It was very low-budget, but hey, I was five or so and I loved it.