22 February: The Flintstones

Today is said to be the birthday of Pebbles Flintstone in 10k BC. Here are 10 things you might not know about Pebbles and her family.

1. Until 1997, this animated show, with 166 episodes, was the most aired prime-time cartoon. In 1997, The Simpsons overtook them.
2. The show was almost called The Gladstones or The Flagstones. The Flagstones was rejected because there was already a comic strip of the same name. Early discussions also considered setting the show in a different time in history - a Roman family and a Pilgrim family were among the options explored.
3. Designer Ed Benedict originally drew the characters to look more like Neanderthals, too, but Joe Barbera rejected that look and tweaked them to look more modern and clean cut.
4. Fred Flintstone's trademark yell, "Yabba dabba doo!" was the invention of Alan Reed, who voiced the character. He thought it sounded better than the "Yahoo!" the scriptwriters would have him say. Some sources say Reed's mother used to say, "A little dab'll do ya," and he adapted her saying. Others say it came from a Brylcreem advert.
5. For a while in the 1960s the Flintstones were used to advertise cigarettes, and Fred and Barney would be shown smoking at the end of each show. However, in the 1970s cigarette ads on TV were banned and the characters switched to grape juice.
6. Pebbles and neighbour kid Bamm-Bamm didn't appear until series four. Pebbles was originally going to be a boy, "a chip off the old rock", but the producers changed their mind when the Ideal Toy Company approached them about a marketing deal for a girls' toy. Pebbles was born at the Bedrock Rockapedic Hospital on February 22 10,000 BC. Her best friend was the Rubble's adopted son Bamm Bamm, who she later married. She had a career in advertising and has a son called Chip and a daughter called Roxy.
7. Some sources claim that Fred and Wilma were the first animated married couple to be shown sharing a bed on TV.
8. Some sources say the theme tune, Meet the Flintstones, was derived from a piece of classical music - the second Tempest movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No 17 Op. 31, to be exact. Although we associate the tune with the show now, it wasn't used until season three. The first two seasons opened with an instrumental piece called Rise and Shine.
9. Part of the appeal of the show is the juxtaposition of modern day life into a stone age setting. Primitive technology or animals are used instead of machines, such as a brontosaurus used as a crane and a woolly mammoth used as a petrol pump (although mostly cars are powered by people running inside them). People have small dinosaurs and sabre-toothed cats as pets (like the one Fred is seen throwing out of the house during the end credits).
10. Although the show was cancelled in 1966, the characters have returned many times since then in different incarnations. There have been spin off TV series such as The Pebbles and Bamm Bamm Show, about the two kids as teenagers, live action movies, comics, video games and proposed re-boots of the series, none of which have aired as yet.

Settling the Score

Another collection of short stories, even more murder and mayhem with carol singers, an orchestra out for revenge, a sinister magic stone and a haunted mansion.

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A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

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