BAGGY PANTS & THE NITWITS - THE COLLECTION (NBC 1977) VERY RARE CARTOON!!! Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson

Here’s one that many Laugh In fans might not even know about…Baggy Pants & The Nitwits!  This extremely rare animated series ran on NBC in the fall of 1977. Though the characters appeared together in the show's introduction, they each appeared separately in their own episodes. Each 30-minute episode of Baggy Pants and the Nitwits contained two segments: one for Baggy Pants and the other for The Nitwits.

Baggy Pants is an anthropomorphic cat dressed as Charlie Chaplin's "Tramp" character, right down to the mustache and cane. Similar to Chaplin and the Pink Panther, Baggy Pants pantomimed in all his misadventures, with very little or no spoken dialogue in his segments.

The Nitwits is about an elderly superhero named Tyrone (voiced by Arte Johnson) who, due to public demand, re-emerged from retirement to again fight crime with help from his wife Gladys Ormphby (Ruth Buzzi) and her purse, taking assignments at his own discretion (according to the announcer in the introduction).

Johnson and Buzzi adapted and reprised the roles they had originated on the sketch comedy series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In; for this series, to keep the series family-friendly, much of the adult innuendo the characters used in Laugh-In (including Tyrone's original last name Horneigh) was removed. (In the opening titles of "Nitwits" segment, Johnson himself was credited with having "created The Nitwits for television.")

Number of DVDs: 2

Number of Episodes: 11

Quality: 8-8.5/10

Running Time: 4 hrs 13 min (approx)

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Full Screen

NOTES: This is a fan-made DVD set. Not a studio release.  Pictures are taken from the DVD. These episodes are very rare and come from film transfers - they are not remastered so you will see scratches and fading - but very enjoyable to watch. Includes network film countdowns and "sponsor message" inserts.