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In a world where technology progresses at the speed of light, and casino games can be enjoyed from anywhere you have internet access, there’s nothing quite like visiting a land-based venue every now and then to marvel at the architecture and atmosphere that the incredible graphics online gaming sites can only attempt to replicate.

Whilst there are so many unique games at sites like the Karamba online casino, for example, that you just couldn’t find at a land-based venue, there are also plenty of elements of brick-and-mortar casinos that ensure they will never go out of style.

With this in mind, join us as we take a whistle-stop tour around the world to visit some of the most beautiful casinos…

Monte Carlo Casino

First up, we’re going to be flying to Monaco, where the first modern casino of its time – The Casino de Monte-Carlo – has proudly stood since 1893.

Built by Charles Garnier, the architect of the Paris Opera House, the casino’s marble and gold paved atrium is complete with 28 columns made of onyx. There are plenty of sculptures and artwork to marvel at when you step into this iconic casino, alongside space for operas, concerts and ballets.

The gaming rooms are framed by stained-glass windows and large chandeliers, each with a rich history of royalty and Roulette.

Luxor Las Vegas Casino

Next, we’re going to Sin City – right in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, Nevada.

The Luxor is one of the most easily recognisable structures in Las Vegas, as a 30-story pyramid with a giant sphinx sculpture welcoming many visitors from outside.

Since its opening in 1993, the sculpture has expanded to increase its capacity to 4,407 rooms – so you can only imagine the sheer size of this incredible monument. Paying homage to ancient Egypt, there are sculptures and statues in all the public spaces, with horizontal lifts, and murals celebrating Egyptian history in pure luxury.

There’s also a laser-like light which lights up the night sky, shooting out the top of the pyramid to make sure the Luxor really can’t be missed.

Atlantis Casino Resort

Part of Paradise Island in the Bahamas, the Atlantis Casino Resort sits on a lush tropical island with a two-mile white sand beach. The casino is not only a feat of engineering – replicating the Lost City of Atlantis with arches, domes, spires and soaring towers that look as though they have just burst out from the depths of the sea, but is also home to a marine habitat.

Vowing to protect the marine and island life around it, Atlantis Casino Resort features multiple different hotels, featuring an average of 3,000 rooms surrounding the world’s largest marine habitat and 14-acre dolphin habitat centre.

With multiple pools, spas, restaurants and resorts, you can only imagine the sheer size and architectural brilliance that this casino features.

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Where do you think you’ll visit first? It’s clear no casino is alike, and each of them features an abundance of history – so once you’ve brushed up on your gaming knowledge online, will you be dusting off your passport and visiting one of the world’s most beautiful casinos?

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Gambling can be addictive, please play responsibly.
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Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

2000-01

Although it had failed to find an adequate replacement for Seinfeld since that show was laid to rest in 1998, NBC’s Must-See Thursdays still dominated the non-factual portion of US TV audiences in the 2000-01 season, as both ER and Friends entered their seventh seasons with nice Dr Greene being diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Monica and Chandler getting married. Everybody still loved Raymond over on CBS, which otherwise had to rely on the power of Survivor to gain a decent ratings share.

The world prepared to say goodbye to Walker, Texas Ranger, Diagnosis: Murder, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Star Trek: Voyager, but genre fans could still comfort themselves with weekly doses of Buffy, Angel, Touched by an Angel, Futurama, The X-Files, and Roswell, and there was the promise of Dark Angel, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Andromeda, and Sheena all making their debuts. Now those shows made an impact but what about those that didn’t? This is the story of four more of 2000’s forgotten shows…

Special Unit 2 (UPN): Created by Evan Katz, Special Unit 2 told the story of a top-secret Chicago police squad tasked with dealing with what most people regarded as mythical creatures but which they called “links,” as in “missing link”. Millions of years ago, you see, humanity diverged in many different ways, most of which died out but of whom remnant populations still hide amongst the general public.

Our guides to the work of Special Unit 2 are Detectives Nick O’Malley and Kate Benson. O’Malley, played by Michael Landes (Jimmy Olsen in season one of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman), is a maverick, even by the standards of an unorthodox division, angst-ridden by the death of his former partner and lover, who were cut into six-hundred cubes of flesh by a criminal called The Chameleon. Benson (Party of Five’s Alexondra Lee) is recruited as the series starts, one of the only regular police who doesn’t dismiss the existence of links as fairytales.

O’Malley and Benson are joined by the unit’s captain, whose metal hand is the subject of many jokes, and their link liaison Carl, a kleptomaniac gnome. A six-episode first season was aired as a mid-season replacement for the cancelled Seven Days in April 2001 and did well enough that a second season of thirteen episodes was ordered, arriving for the Fall 2001 TV season and given Star Trek show Enterprise as a lead-in.

Gorgons, djinns, Japanese mummies, and a dragon are among the wide variety of links created by special effects master Patrick Tatopoulos and investigated by the team, and it was a brave critic who dared accuse the show of being repetitive. Despite all this, UPN pulled the plug and replaced it with CBS reject Wolf Lake, which lasted just four episodes before it, too, was cancelled. The complete series was released on DVD in 2017 and remains a delight, a missing link in the history of genre police procedurals.

That’s My Bush! (Comedy Central): Three and a half years after striking gold with South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone brought another show to Comedy Central, this time with a seemingly straight-up political satire theme rather than their firstborn’s wider-ranging target scope. The central characters of That’s My Bush! are President George W Bush and First Lady Laura but that wasn’t how it was planned…

Like many ahead of the contentious election, Parker and Stone assumed Al Gore would win easily and, although they claimed they would create a sitcom about the fictional social life of whoever won, did a great deal of work on Everybody Loves Al. The uncertain nature of the result of the election, and the prospect that Bush might win, pushed the show back from its January 2001 launch to April, with much of the work done on ..Al retooled for That’s My Bush!

Rather than the expected lampooning of Bush and his wife, the show instead took a swipe at sitcom tropes of the 1970s and 1980s, injecting some hot button topics such as abortion and gun control, and always ending with the line, “One of these days, Laura, I’m gonna punch you in the face!” as a modern riposte to The Honeymooners’ “One of these days, POW!!! Right in the kisser!” catchphrase.

Eight episodes were made, airing on Wednesday nights in the Spring of 2001, before Comedy Central decided to cancel the show as part of a cost-cutting drive. Parker and Stone were ambivalent, admitting the show was expensive to make and that it probably wouldn’t have continued after 9/11 anyway, with the mood of the country changing so hard. Actor Timothy Bottoms, who played Bush in the sitcom, went on to play him in a serious piece about 9/11, as well as the Crocodile Hunter movie.

Night Visions (Fox): Presented by writer and punk rocker Henry Rollins, Night Visions was an attempt by Fox to do their own version of The Twilight Zone with Rollins its Rod Serling. Creators Dan Angel and Billy Brown had a decent résumé, having worked on John Carpenter Presents: Body Bags and Goosebumps before writing for season five of The X-Files, and it was that latter show that was instrumental in Rollins’s involvement in Night Visions, having first been considered for a recurring role there.

Rollins acted as a guide through twisted tales that found a medical student tormented by voodoo, a man experiencing flashbacks to his new home’s past dwellers, and three students who can escape their apparent death in a fiery car crash only if they manage to stop anyone finding out about it. With a cast of familiar faces including Cary Elwes, Luke Perry, Bridget Fonda, Lou Diamond Phillips, Randy Quaid, Jack Palance, and a whole load more, and episodes directed by Joe Dante, Tobe Hooper, Bryan Spicer, and Bill Pullman, among others, the stories hosted by Rollins could hardly be considered thin gruel.

Angel and Brown, though, did not want a regular host for the series and also butted up against the network on the tone of the show, finding themselves at times both too scary and not scary enough for their Fox bosses. Angel and Brown felt that the inclusion of Rollins was an attempt to make the show “hip” but found that the show probably wasn’t hip enough after a change of guard at the top at the network meant it was removed from its proposed October 2000 premiere.

Instead, Night Visions aired as a Summer replacement in July 2001, a time when no-one is watching much television, and so there were few takers for the end product, a creepy and quirky series of stories that took one step sideways from reality. Ten episodes, each with two stories, aired between July and September 2001 before the show was taken off air to make room for the new 2001-02 Fall shows, but The Sci-Fi Channel acquired the rights and showed all thirteen finished episodes over the Summer of 2002. It’s never been released on DVD but you can find all thirteen episodes in the usual places and it’s well worth your time spending an evening with Mr Rollins…

Queen of Swords (syndication): A co-production between British, Canadian, and Spanish companies, Queen of Swords is a female Zorro. That may sound dismissive but that’s exactly what it sets out to be and what it achieves, and to pretend any different would be doing all involved a disservice. The one key difference between Johnston McCulley’s pulp hero and Tessie Santiago’s female equivalent is cleavage but otherwise her masked revenger, standing up for the ordinary people of Spanish California in the early nineteenth century may as well carve a Z into her victims.

Santiago plays Tessa Alvarado, a young Spanish aristocrat who returns to California after the death of her father, only to find the local populace – and her father’s possessions – under the thrall of corrupt local governor Colonel Montoya. Visited by the spirit of her father in a dream, Tessa dons a mask and uses her considerable fencing skills to bring some justice to Santa Helena, all with the aid of Marta, a gypsy wise woman who names her the Queen of Swords.

Created by David Abramovitz (who’d previously worked on V and the Highlander TV series) and Linda Lukens (who had to go to court to get a credit), the show debuted in syndication in the US on October 2^nd 2000, and in Spain and Canada five days later. Sony, who held the rights to the Zorro franchise, attempted to sue over the series in 2001, alleging similarities between the show and their property but the judge ruled that the copyright on the character and his initial written appearances had elapsed and that there were not enough similarities between the show and Sony’s latest film to warrant legal action.

Perhaps because of all the legal issues, there was no second season of Queen of Swords, the twenty-two-episode first season having ended on a cliffhanger. Queen of Swords was Santiago’s first role and one that earned her a sizeable cult following and an ALMA nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Syndicated Drama Series. Since finishing up as Ms Alvarado, she’s appeared in Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and as Vice-President Vargas in the political thriller Scandal, none of which involved wearing a lacy mask.

Next time on The Telephemera Years: Those shows that didn’t make it to air in 2000, including some very super nerds…

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1977 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1980 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1984 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1986 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1987 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1990 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1992 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1995 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1997 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2000 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2003 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2005 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2008 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Irwin Allen

Titans of Telephemera: Stephen J Cannell (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Titans of Telephemera: Kenneth Johnson

Titans of Telephemera: Glen A Larson (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Quinn Martin (part 1, 2)

Over at Starburst Towers we’ve barely had time to take down our Halloween decorations before we realised that Santa Claus is coming to town. Christmas is very much on it’s way and while we’re busy decorating the halls of our nerve-centre with tinsel, trees and pagan sacrifices, we still have time point our lovely readers at some the most exciting toys, either as gifts or things to put on your owne wishlist. Watch this space for reviews of some of these lovely goodies over the next few days.

Playmobil – Star Trek – Klingon Bird-of-Prey

Playmobil are the masters of cute, fun playsets that appeal to children of any age. They are very good at creating toys that folk will always play with. Last year  they wowed Star Trek fans with the classic Star Trek Enterprise playset, and they’ve done it again with a Klingon Bird-of-Prey. Not just any old Bird-of-Prey though;  Commander Kruge’s ship from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. It even comes with a little sticker on the side so you can rename it the HMS Bounty.

This set is pure joy. We get four playmobil Klingons including Maltz and Kruge, as well a Kirk in the dashing Admiral uniform and a young Spock in black robes.  The ship’s wings move. The missiles fire (and at quite a pace), the seat for the cockpit is adjustable and if you press the view screen it plays a movie clip; with four different screens available to slot in. It also has a variety of sound effects, including ambient mode, a full firing sequence, Klingon commands and a warp mode. It also has a little diorama stand / playset thing as well as components to hang it from the celling. It’s guaranteed to delight any Trekkie, regardless of age.  It is based on Star Trek 3, so whales are not included.

Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi  – L0-LA59 (Lola Droid)

Anyone who’s watched Disney+ show Obi-Wan Kenobi will have seen Lola, Princess Leia’s adorable lady-bird like droid companion who zooms around following Leia and being adorable.  They L0-LA59 toy is a Star Wars roleplay toy; think of it as cuter version of a kids light-saber.  Though the toy doesn’t actually fly, it flaps it’s wings, chirrups cute robot noises, flashes lights and generally flutters.

It has three modes; In Companion Mode (which) activates when you attach it’s legs and Hover Mode (which switches on when you attach the clear plastic stand) the toy flaps it’s wings, opens it’s mouth and tilts from side to side. Basically it dances and sings, and it’s very cute. Taking it off it’s mount activates On The Go Mode and it gets really chatty and excited as you move it around.  It responds to its surroundings (like some sort of advanced FURBY) and is genuinely a fun little toy.

NERF Armorstrike DInosquad

NERF have become masters of distilling play and fun into a single toy, and the dino-squad range take two very cool things (toy guns and dinosaurs) and turn them into one roar-some play experience. It’s a bright green NERF gun that looks like a dinosaur, has dinosaur spines and also comes with a pump-action handle and rotating barrel. It comes with 16 NERF -Elite darts. 8 are stored in the dinosaur’s thagomizer-style tail and the other 8 go in the barrel. It’s fast, it’s fun and furious.  Sure to make boredom extinct.

NERF Elite 2.0 Motoblitz Blaster

Of course, when you want to take fun seriously, go NERF Elite. The Motoblitz Blaster is both a pump-action air-powered blaster and a motorised NERF dart flinger. This means you can fire 6 darts at once with the pump and then scatter darts everywhere with the motor. Before running away and reloading, of course.

The toy comes with a clip that holds ten darts (in addition to the six that go in the front)  and you get 22 Elite Darts to throw around like a NERF Elite Master. Silly fun.

Scalextrix Back To The Future Vs Knight Rider

In a team-up that alas will never happen in the movies, Scalextrix have put two of their most sought after toy cars into one fabulous set.  It’s a basic track with some neat features; the track is magnetic so the cars won’t fly off the table, the lights work (but the flux capacitor doesn’t time-travel) and the track is designed so you can smash into each other if you’re quick enough.  Scaletrix has come a long way since the 50’s and this is a fabulous gift for nostalgic adults and car crazy kids.

Magic The Gathering 2022 Starter Kit

Forget your other card games; Magic the Gathering has always been where it’s at in terms of fun and popularity. You can go anywhere in the world with a Magic deck in your pocket and you’ll probably find someone to play with.  The 2022 starter kit contains two starter decks (White/Blue and Red-Green), deck boxes, a booklet and best of all, two codes that let you play the online version of the game, Arena. (Which has an interactive guide as part of the game, so it’s worth going online just for that.) It’s a solid set of cards for experienced players also, so get this before it gets snapped up by the fans.

Pathfinder: Goblin Phunny Plush
Sticking with the very geeky, those lovely people at Kidrobot, Paizo and Wizkids have teamed up to give the world one of the silliest plushies just in time for Christmas. The Pathfinder: Goblin Phunny Plush carries a plush knife and a manic grin. These little monsters are familiar to fantasy gamers from across the genre, so why not invite one home for Christmas?

Warhammer 40,000 – Red Gobbo Socks

Travelling to the worlds of science fiction, well, grim-dark space fantasy, but sticking with goblins, Games Workshop have solved Christmas with their Red Gobbo Socks. These feature the revolutionary Red Gobbo himself, Games Workshop’s very own giver of gifts.

 

 

Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set: Dragons Of Stormwreck Isle

We mentioned this in out D&D Christmas Guide, but if you have a budding Matt Mercer amongst your loved ones, there’s really no better place to start than Stormwreck Isle as the party gets  drawn into the midst of an ancient war among dragons.

Cluedo – Treachery at Tudor Mansion

Fun Fact, Americans call Ludo by a different name, so they call the famous crime solving game Clue instead of Cluedo. Treachery at Tudor Mansion takes all the fun of Cluedo and turns it into an escape room mystery,  which is  fun take on an old classic.

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

1973-74

With a massive 31.2 rating, CBS’s All in the Family had no competition for the top spot as 1973’s most popular show, with over twenty million viewers tuning in weekly to see what daft old racist Archie Bunker would do next. In fact, CBS controlled the top ten shows to such an extent that only NBC’s Sanford and Son (like All in the Family, a British transplant) earned a spot on the rundown. NBC really couldn’t cope with a CBS line-up that also included The Waltons, M*A*S*H, Hawaii Five-O, and new arrival Kojak, and Police Story seemed to be their only new show to make any impact.

ABC, though, had new smash The Six Million Dollar Man at number eleven, and scored decent placings for Kung Fu, The Streets of San Francisco, and the debuting Happy Days. Although ABC would have preferred to land more blows on the Tiffany Network, they could still rely on Monday Night Football and their various movie slots to pull in viewers, although their schedules – like those of CBS and NBC – were very light on sci-fi and fantasy shows. But what about Saturday mornings, when kids got up before their parents and fixed themselves to the TV for four hours? This is the story of 1973’s cartoon attractions…

Goober and the Ghost Chasers (ABC): After Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! had scored big in 1969 with its mix of teen protagonists, silly taking animal, and more mysteries than you can shake a stick at, Hanna-Barbera repeated the formula at every opportunity, often with mixed results. First up was Josie and the Pussycats (with a snickering cat in the Scooby role), swiftly followed by The Funky Phantom (a civil war ghost), The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (Chu Chu the dog), and Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space (Bleep the alien).

Flushed with success and not wanting to veer too far from their Scooby/Flintstones formulae, 1973 brought two new Scooby clones in the shape of Speed Buggy (see Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera, part two) and Goober and the Ghost Chasers. Goober was an Afghan hound, voiced by ventriloquist Paul Winchell, who tags along with three teen reporters for Ghost Chasers Magazine. Ted and Tina were roughly analogous to Scooby’s Fred and Daphne, with Gilly a mix of Velma and Shaggy, and the foursome travelled around in a weird looking van that might as well have been called The Mystery Machine.

Where Goober and Scooby differed were in the former’s ability to turn invisible, something that happened when he got scared, and in the curious phenomenon of an appearance by The Partridge Family (voiced by their live-action counterparts) in eight of the first eleven episodes. In all, sixteen episodes were produced, airing between September and December 1973, with the last new episode airing before the tie-in metal lunchbox and Wonder Bread trading card set were released.

Both Goober and Speed Buggy were one-season wonders, replaced in the 1974 line-up by Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch (another car) and Partridge Family 2200AD, which saw Goober’s guest stars given their own show, solving time-travelling mysteries with the aid of, yes, a robot dog. Several episodes of Goober and the Ghost Chasers were released on VHS in 1986 and the complete series is available as a manufacture on demand DVD from Warner Archives. As always, though, if you know where to look you can sample some ectoplasmic excitement for yourself…

Bailey’s Comets (CBS): Joe Ruby and Ken Spears had met at Hanna-Barbera in 1959, where they worked as staff writers, eventually opting to go freelance but still pitching the studio on concepts like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and Jabberjaw. They also worked with Sid and Marty Krofft, and with DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, and it was for the latter that they created Bailey’s Comets, a spin on the formula that exploded after 1963’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World became a smash hit.

Bailey’s Comets are a team of roller-skaters, led by Barnaby Bailey (voiced by Carl Esser), engaged in a cross-country race with other teams of skaters to discover clues that will lead them to a million-dollar prize hidden somewhere in America. Alongside Bailey were his girlfriend Candy, bossy redhead Sarge, ditzy Bunny, and the banana-crazy Pudge, and with the help of skate-based inventions from team mechanic Wheelie they race through thirty-two episodes (two per half hour show) in their search for gold.

Standing in their way are a wacky selection of rival teams, including The Texas Black Hats (cowboys on skate-wearing horses), The Jekyll-Hydes (English nobles who could turn into monsters), The Cosmic Rays (aliens), The Broomer Girls (witches with roller-skates on their brooms), and The Mystery Mob, a team whose identity is unknown to the other skaters as they are constantly hidden by a cloud of dust.

Someone at either DePatie-Freleng or CBS must have felt optimistic as, by the end of the first season, the prize had yet to be claimed, but there was no second season for Bailey and company. Ironically, it was replaced in the line-up by re-runs of Scooby-Doo and Ruby and Spears moved on to act as story consultants for the live-action TV version of Planet of the Apes, eventually forming their own production company, Ruby-Spears Productions, in 1977.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids (NBC): Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! had been inspired by The Archie Show and had initially been created with the kids as a touring rock ‘n’ roll band. No idea – good or bad – is ever truly forgotten in TV and after Josie and the Pussycats (another Archie property) had struck gold in 1970 for Hanna-Barbera, the studio decided to create its own group of teen heartthrobs, this time working as undercover government agents.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids debuted on September 8^th 1973 and those tuning in were introduced to the titular band, led by hunky Butch and also including beautiful Merilee, uptight Steffy, and drummer Wally (voiced by Micky Dolenz). The team were given their missions by a supercomputer named Mr Socrates who is also somehow allergic to Elvis, Wally’s mischievous dog.

Songs for the show were composed by Hoyt Curtin and Paul DeKorte, and four songs from the show were released on a pair of singles from Romar Records, run by the man who discovered Frankie Avalon, Robert P Marcucci. A proposed album never appeared but the music was just the backdrop to the crime-fighting action, with the gang facing down counterfeiters, boat thieves, kidnappers, gold smugglers, and more.

A single season of just thirteen episodes was all that Butch and company received, their brand of bubblegum pop outdated by 1973, although the band did make several appearances in Sealab 2021, Adult Swim’s ironic remix of the original series, and turned up in Jellystone, the Cartoon Network’s anarchic alternative world where all the H-B characters live in the eponymous town. The show is available on DVD from Warner Archives and although there is little in the way of full episodes on popular free video-sharing sites, you can thrill to a compilation of the band’s “hits” on YouTube.

Jeannie/My Favorite Martians (CBS): It wasn’t all crime-fighting dogs and teen heartthrobs that made up the 1973 Fall Saturday morning line-up, there were also a pair of 1960s sitcoms brought back as cartoons, using the wider scope available for animated adventures to take those concepts way beyond their live-action counterparts.

Jeannie, from Hanna-Barbera, was a take on I Dream of Jeannie, the popular Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden affair that ran from 1965 to 1970 on NBC. In this version, the sultry genie’s bottle is washed up on a beach and found by teenage surfer Corey. Jeannie is now also a teenager and has apprentice Babu in tow, his failed attempts at magic providing comic relief for the Archie-style high school adventures that see Corey and Jeannie engage in a cautious dating ritual.

Airing as the first part of an hour-long block with Jeannie was My Favorite Martians, a spin-off from the singular My Favorite Martian which ran for three seasons from 1963 on CBS. The original starried Ray Walston and Bill Bixby as the titular Martian (known as Uncle Martin) and his human host Tim, but they opted out of Filmation’s cartoon sequel, replaced by Jonathan Harris and Howard Morris. The premise saw Martin’s nephew Andromeda arrive to cause chaos for the pair, along with Tim’s niece Katie.

Neither show managed to gain as much of a following as the original sitcoms and both were gone after just sixteen episodes, consigned to spin-off hell alongside AfterMASH, The Brady Brides, and Tabitha. They’ve never been released on home video and, although Jeannie and Babu have appeared in occasional Hanna-Barbera productions, it’s probably for the best that they’re long forgotten (except on YouTube, where the complete runs of both are inexplicably available).

Next time on The Telephemera Years: Set the controls for the year 2000 where CONSPIRACY abounds!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1977 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1980 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1984 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1986 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1987 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1990 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1992 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1995 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1997 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2000 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2003 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2005 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2008 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Irwin Allen

Titans of Telephemera: Stephen J Cannell (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Titans of Telephemera: Kenneth Johnson

Titans of Telephemera: Glen A Larson (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Quinn Martin (part 1, 2)

Dungeons and Dragons has levelled up somewhat over the last couple of years. More people are playing the imaginative game than ever before (partially thanks to  Zoom and Google Meet) and as Christmas is coming, you might want to pick up a D&D themed pressie for the part-time Tiefling in your life.

Let’s start with the basics. Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set: Dragons Of Stormwreck Isle  is the new starter set. It’s fairly comprehensive and has a solid starting adventure.  They are other starting sets; we’d suggest avoiding the Rick&Morty and Stranger Things ones unless you’re a fan of those franchises, and if you can’t get Stormwreck, check out the  D&D Starter Set or The D&D Essentials Kit.  Failing that, if they don’t own it, get them the Player’s Handbook, it’s the basic book. Wizards of the Coast do a fancy box set of the big three books; Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual and Dungeon Master’s Guide. If they’ve got all those, take a look at the Rules Expansion Gift Set, which features three books and a lot of new monsters, spells and character options.

If you’re buying a gift for someone very new to Dungeons and Dragons and rules aren’t their thing,  Jim Zub’s Young Adventurer’s Guides are great, and the new one, Dragons and Treasures, is great.

If they have all those things and are a Dungeon Master, we recommend Sly Flourish’s Lazy Dungeon Master series, it’s crammed with handy ideas for running games. You may also want to consider a subscription to  MCDM’s Arcadia Monthly Magazine.  It’s crammed with inspirational ideas for running a game of D&D, featuring some of the most talented folk in the industry.

There’s been some great books out for D&D recently. The latest is Dragonlance Shadow of The Dragon Queen, which is a cinematic epic that draws together classic D&D stories and takes a party of heroes across a war-torn world to deal with the rising return of an evil dragon army. It’s a new take on an established classic, and is supplemented with its own strategic board game, Warriors of Krynn.

On the sillier side there’s Spell Jammer – Adventures in Space. It’s swashbuckling adventure with Sun Dragons and wooden space-ships. Heck, it even has its own album; Spelljams. all produced by Chris Funk, guitarist from The Decemberists.

However, if you’re only buying one D&D book for the fan in your life, and want something from this year, check out Dungeons and Dragons: Journeys through the Radiant Citadel. It’s an anthology of adventures filled with very refreshing and interesting ideas written by some of the most talented voices out there.

Other adventure books we recommend include Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos – a magical school setting that is for everyone and is part campaign, part high-school drama.  Candlekeep Mysteries – a magical book about magical books; it’s lots of little adventures strung together and a great source of inspiration and ‘how to’ guidance.

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a very flexible setting/adventure book that takes the party into the fairy land known as the FeyWild. It’s very much about the imagination and the Dungeon Master can toggle that to mean it’s Labyrinth or Disney, but they can also up the peril and make it a bit more Stephen King. Finally, the one we’ve been playing a lot at Starburst Towers is  IceWind Dale – Rime of the Frost Maiden – Frozen horror at the edge of the world. Very dark in places, and a bit open ended for some, but very replay able.

Dice are usually a fabulous option for gamers.    Beholder’s Gaze remain our go-to for dice, from their excellent low budget grab bags to their gorgeous premium sets. Dakota Irish will also provide great gaming gear.  Expect to pay a lot more for dice made out of metal, resin or precious stones, and always purchase from a reputable source. You can never have enough dice.

The official ones include a Avernus/Baldurs Gate set, a Sword Coast/Elf Inspired set and a rather lovely set inspired by Icewind Dale, We really liked the The Witchlight Carnival box, which has a great and is interestingly orange.

Those gamers who like playing in person have a bunch of options to improve their table. Though they are lot’s of D&D miniatures out there (mostly thanks to Wizkids) you might also want to consider Campaign Cases, both Creatures and Terrain. These are for figuring distances/area effect spells etc, and use poker chip like counters, solid cardboard tile pieces and static cling plastic sheets to help DM’s plot out combats and so on. Much more portable than minis and cheaper than lots of minis. Not for everyone, but a neat new tool. As an alternative, check out Loke Battle Mats for a similar sort of thing.

Dice storage is also really important, as dice aren’t fun to stand on. We’ve recommend buying a Worry Monsters and filling it full of dice before, but they also official versions of that sort of thing available. Ultra Pro produce, for example, a little owl bear with a zip-up tummy you can put dice in. D&D Plushies are a thing, Wizkid’s a range of things called Phunnies, and honestly, the Displacer Beast kitty is very, very cute. They do a plush Tiamat. Never has Chaotic Evil been so cute.

Wizkids primarily do miniatures.  This year saw the release of multi-part plastic kits called Frameworks. You’ll need to get paints, glue etc and it’s almost a different hobby, but if you want a custom model of your own hero, it’s the way to go. If you want to use someone else’s heroes, such a Critical Role’s Bell’s Hells, they have you covered as well.

Of course, if you (or the D&D player in your live) is a fan of Critical Role, then you’ve an easier path. The hit Twitch stream/actual play D&D show has its own merchandise line and is doing a ‘Critmas’ sale over the holidays.  Everything from tree ornaments, to blazers, to ugly ‘Critmas’ jumpers and even Chetney’s Pock O’Pea’s Winter hat.

If geek fashion is your thing, but Critical Role isn’t, maybe try an I’m A Goblin t-shirt.

Dungeons and Dragons has been around so long that we now have established academic learning on the game and its history. For the hardcore fan, you might want to consider Jon Peterson’s excellent Game Wizards, a deep dive into the origins of the game, covering everything from the acrimony between the game’s creators to the Satanic Panic of the 80s. Ben Riggs Slaying the Dragon cover similar ground, and the two books complement each other quite well. On a related note, those interested in the early history of D&D in the UK (and how it spawned so many other things) may want to grab Sir Ian Livingstone’s Dice Men. (The also two new Fighting Fantasy novels out).

Staying with books, Art & Arcana, a Visual History does exactly what it says on the tin, a stunning collection of fantasy art that covers the long-running franchise’s history.  If you just like pretty pictures, consider The Dungeons and Dragons Tarot; it’s a solid collection of art cards, though not a great Tarot set. On the less supernatural side, there’s the Dungeons and Dragons Annual 2023, which has a word search and some fun ideas. There’s also a Where’s Wally style search book called BEHOLD! If cookbooks are your thing, try the excellent Heroes’ Feast D&D themed cookbook, and do give the Evermead a go.

Oh, and they are now action figures, both of the classic D&D cartoon characters, as well as some connected to that forthcoming movie.

Finally, if you have a budget for it; go to Beadle & Grimm’s Pandemonium Warehouse. It’s the pet D&D project from D&D fan and Hollywood star Matthew Lillard. They do luxury versions of D&D box sets, including SpellJammer, Wild Beyond The Witchlight, and Van Richten’s Guide. Strongly recommended, but pricey.