Three crime-busting young women, Dee Dee, Brenda and Taffy (known collectively as the Teen Angels) find a frozen prehistoric caveman in a block of ice during one of their adventures. They thaw him out and he is miraculously preserved and comes back to life. He says he's the "world's first superhero".
They call him Captain Caveman (Cavey for short) and he joins their team, solving all kinds of mysteries. It's never explained why he has superpowers. At only 4ft tall, he claims to be two million years old. Totally covered in long body hair, he resembles an Old English Sheepdog.
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Strange superpowers
His superpowers include the ability to fly, although this can fail him at the worst possible moment. Various items are kept under his hair and he can pull them out at will to help the team's latest crime-busting quest.
He can also eat large objects in one gulp and has devoured table lamps, safes, television sets and bicycles. In fact, the Teen Angels sometimes have to stop him from eating evidence! He also has super-strength and owns a magical club that appears to help him to fly, which he keeps tucked away under his long hair too.
He speaks in what we imagine "caveman talk" might be, saying things like, "Me know where bad guys are hiding." Quite often, he utters a nonsensical phrase, "Unga bunga!"
His trademark phrase is his resounding battle cry of "Captain CAAAAAVE MAAAAAAN!" which he shouts at random intervals throughout each episode. His voice is so powerful that it can shatter glass and any other fragile objects in the area. Objects smash every time he shouts his own name when preparing to do battle with the bad guys.
Cavey is kind-hearted and friendly, but ultimately rather stupid. He isn't able to understand modern life and social customs, even though he has lived in the 20th century for some time now. This makes some situations difficult, to say the least. The words "Bull in a china shop" have been used to describe him.
Show's origins
The show was seen as a parody of another ABC show, the detective drama, Charlie's Angels, featuring three crime-fighting women and their boss, Charlie. It also had elements of other Hanna-Barbera cartoons, including Josie and the Pussycats and Scooby-Doo.
The three crime-fighting women in Captain Caveman were even called the "Angels" and had different personality traits and ways of doing things, like Charlie's Angels. For example, Brenda was the super-brainy one, Taffy was a "scaredy-cat" and Dee Dee was laid back and easy going.
Captain Cavemen was linked to another animated cartoon set in prehistoric times. He had been a prehistoric superhero in the Flintstones' home town of Bedrock. On occasion, he would interact with The Flintstones - he also had a son called “Cavey Junior”.
Legend had it that he became frozen in a glacier when he lived in Bedrock and was thawed out two million years later by the Angels crime-fighters.
Episodes
There were three seasons of Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, comprising 40 episodes. The cartoon was initially broadcast as part of the Scooby Doo's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics show in 1977, which showed 16 episodes, each of 11 minutes' duration. In 1978, further episodes of Captain Caveman were broadcast as a segment on Scooby's All-Stars.
By 1980, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels was a show in its own right and had a half-hour slot, combining new episodes and re-runs of earlier episodes. The team continued to interact with the "Scooby Doobies" team to take part in the Laff-A-Lympics.
Like a multitude of Hanna-Barbera cartoons in the 1970s, Captain Caveman had a background "laugh track" - otherwise known as "canned laughter". It was one of the studio's last animated productions which featured this.
Cavey and the Angels embarked on many different adventures, in the same way that Scooby Doo and the gang did. In The Mixed Up Mystery of Deadman's Reef, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels are relaxing on the beach with friends when they see a ship mysteriously vanish. Will they be able to find out what kind of skulduggery has occurred to make it disappear off the radar?
In Big Scare at the Big Top, tigers begin disappearing at the circus. Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels are drafted in to investigate and they find out a mysterious phantom has apparently been haunting the circus. Will this be the case - or will the spook be revealed as a human character whom we all suspected from the start?
In Cavey and the Weirdo Wolfman, Captain Caveman meets another super-hairy creature when he and the Angels go skiing with their friend, a royal prince. The regal sceptre, the prince's symbolic wand, is suddenly stolen by a Snow-Wolfman, so the gang goes off to investigate.
Children loved the wacky stories and visual humour, including the comic way that Captain Caveman struggled with the concept of modern living, thus entering all rooms with a charging attack on the wall in case danger was afoot!
The final episode was aired on 21st June 1980, although Captain Caveman later appeared in The Flintstone Kids in 1986. His character appears briefly in South Park's Imaginationland: The Movie in 2008, when he is one of numerous cartoon and imaginary characters who come under attack in the animated adventure.
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