Back when Saturday morning cartoons were actually a thing, animated spinoffs were network executives’ golden ticket for extending the lifespan of their biggest hits. 1960s sensations “Star Trek” and “Gilligan’s Island” both enjoyed new leases on life when they were revived via cartoon series years after going off the air, bringing back most of the original casts in their beloved roles (though their cheap production models did lead to some constraints, like when “Star Trek: The Animated Series” was forced to drop Chekov). In the case of Sherwood Schwartz’s silly slapstick sitcom about a group of people stranded on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific, it actually got a second animated spinoff, if you can believe it.
If you’re wondering how the hell Schwartz wrung enough juice for two whole other shows out of the “Gilligan’s Island” formula, the answer is he didn’t — not exactly. Where the showrunner’s Western knockoff “Dusty’s Trail” swapped out Bob Denver’s sailor gear for a cowboy getup, stuck the passengers of the SS Minnow on a wagon train, and called it a day, the first of his cartoon continuations, “The New Adventures of Gilligan,” was just the original series done all over again. The biggest difference was every episode came equipped with a moral at the end for the show’s intended juice box demographic when they aired on Saturday mornings. Luckily, “New Adventures” premiered in the ’70s, so kids were spared from having an animated Gilligan teach them about stranger danger and dealing with unwanted physical contact (à la the “Sonic Sez” segments on the ’90s “Sonic the Hedgehog” cartoon that people in my age bracket were reared on).
“New Adventures” also gave Gilligan a pet sidekick in the shape of the monkey Snubby (an uncredited Louis Scheimer), a trick Schwartz would recycle in his other animated spinoff.
Gilligan’s Island in space (literally)
Airing on ABC for two seasons from 1974-75, “The New Adventures of Gilligan” saw the original “Gilligan’s Island” cast reprise their roles save for Tina Louise, who was keen to put some space between her and Ginger Grant (though she would later make her peace with her “Gilligan’s Island” fame), and Dawn Welles, who was unavailable due to her theater career having taken off since playing farm gal Mary Ann Summers on the show’s parent series. Instead, Jane Webb voiced both Ginger and Mary Ann on “New Adventures,” with the former being re-imagined as a blonde to better distance her from Louise’s live-action iteration. In doing so, “New Adventures” even started a tradition that would be carried over into its sci-fi themed ’80s follow-up, “Gilligan’s Planet.”
Just as the title implies, “Gilligan’s Planet” sees Gilligan and the gang stranded on an unknown planet far from Earth after yet another one of the Professor’s (Russell Johnson) cockamamie inventions meant to bring the castaways back to civilization goes haywire. (The Professor’s experiments, for what it’s worth, may have been far more useful in real life than they ever were in the “Gilligan” universe.) And just as in “New Adventures,” “Gilligan’s Planet” sees its blundering crewman gain a nonhuman colleague in the form of the green reptilian Bumper, as once more voiced by Scheimer. The show also reunited Welles with her “Gilligan’s Island” costars, with the actor lending her vocals to Ginger and Mary Ann alike for all 13 episodes of its one-and-done season run on CBS in 1982.
Where “Star Trek: The Animated Series” was an exception in that it was practically as well-received as its predecessor, the two follow-ups to “Gilligan’s Island” went the way of so many other animated spinoffs: to a quick death and swiftly forgotten. The fact they got made at all might be miracle enough.
