The New Fred and Barney Show brought back Bedrock’s most distinguished families, the Flintstones and the Rubbles. Fred, Wilma and Pebbles and Barney, Betty and Bamm-Bamm got a second chance in the late 70s to charm television audiences with their adventures. The show consisted of a half hour Fred and Barney story but then was joined by another half hour of the Thing—teenaged Benjy Grimm and pals—to become Fred and Barney Meet the Thing.

Yet another addition was made when episodes of The New Shmoo were tacked on and the show became known as Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo. There was really no meeting though, each segment ran its separate course and the protagonists occasionally appeared together in the brief bumper sections within an episode. The Flintstone gang continued to do their thing—adventures at the bowling alley, shenanigans at the rock quarry, unfortunate meetings with supernatural creatures—while the Thing juggled school life at Centerville High and thwarting the criminal plans of the Yancey Street Gang. Benjy’s friend Kelly was the only one who knew his secret identity so Benjy often had to find a secluded spot to change into the orange, rock-skinned superhero.

The Shmoo was originally a character in the Lil’ Abner comic strips of the 1940s, a happy, serene creature shaped like a squat bowling pin; or like a bell; or like a budding yeast cell (we’ll wait while you go looking for your 11th grade biology textbook). Hanna-Barbera’s The New Shmoo came with an entourage of three young reporters, Mickey, Billy Joe and Nita, who helped the Shmoo expose crimes and investigate various supernatural events. The Shmoo’s greatest asset was its ability to change shape into anything you could imagine and probably into things you couldn’t. The half hour episodes of The New Shmoo were split in two and inserted at different points in the Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo lineup.

The amalgamated series lasted barely a year before the Thing, the Shmoo and the Bedrock gang called it quits.