Hong Kong Phooey

Hong Kong Phooey is an an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and originally broadcast on ABC. The original episodes aired from September 7 to December 21, 1974, and then in repeats until 1976. The show was brought back in reruns in 1978 and 1981.

Plot
The main character, a clownishly clumsy and inept, kung-fu fighting Penrod "Penry" Pooch who is a janitor working at a police station as a "mild-mannered" janitor under the glare of Sergeant Flint nicknamed "Sarge" that disguises himself as Hong Kong Phooey as his secret identity who is just as clownishly clumsy and leaps into action as Hong Kong Phooey by jumping into a filing cabinet – in so doing he always gets stuck, and is unstuck by his snickering, unintelligible police pet cat Spot – and once disguised, gets equipped with the "Phooeymobile" vehicle that transforms itself into a boat, a plane, or a telephone booth, depending on the circumstances to fight villains and solve crimes as his alter-ego.

In fighting crime, he relies on his copy of The Hong Kong Kung Fu Book of Tricks, a correspondence-course martial-arts instruction handbook. However, his successes are only either thanks to Spot, who provides a solution to the challenges, or the direct result of a comically unintended side effect of his conscious efforts. The humor of the incompetence of Hong Kong Phooey is a recurring theme of each episode.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Incredibly catchy, upbeat, and memorable theme song.
 * 2) Decent and creative animation for the 70s. Especially the backgrounds were designed by Lorraine Andrina and Richard Khim.
 * 3) Fun soundtrack that stays true to the tone of the show.
 * 4) Classy voice acting, most remarkably Hong Kong Phooey himself from the ever so talented Scatman Crothers and Spot's humorous gibberish done by Don Messick.
 * 5) This show takes a shot at the growing popularity of Hong Kong martial arts movies and many crime-fighting cartoons that were popular in the 70s and makes a fun, comedic parody of it.
 * 6) The style of having an egotistical and lucky if inept at being a superhero while his sidekick is more competent than he is, would be a predecessor to other shows that came after like Inspector Gadget or Darkwing Duck.
 * 7) The plots are unpredictable, engaging, and sometimes enjoyable to watch.
 * 8) Likable characters such as Hong Kong Phooey (who is generally a nice guy if having some ego in his generally laid-back, dense, and carefree appearance) and his sidekick Spot.
 * 9) The jokes are quite entertaining (even for the way this show was done in the 70s), especially Penrod's strong sense of humor and wit out of his typically clumsy and bumbling demeanor.
 * 10) And speaking of Phooey's presence in and out of his costume, he may be a total failure of a crimefighter, but he's got TONS of witty lines to tell to the viewer and to the characters he interacts with.
 * 11) Speaking of humor again, some of the dialogue that contains banters and the voices are very amusing and charming at the same time.
 * 12) The consistent running gag that Phooey needs to resort back to his book of "Hong Kong School of Kung Foo" because on what to do (whether they work or don't) since he never seems to memorize any of his martial arts moves in the first place is pretty funny when thinking about it and it is always well executed.
 * 13) "Fan-rific!"

Bad Qualities

 * 1) It was short-lived by only one season and ended way too quickly.
 * 2) Some jokes are hit-or-miss or just flat-out silly.
 * 3) The frequent use of pseudo-Chinese didn't age too well and can seem as racist to some nowadays (such as Hong Kong Phooey's drivels with spouting out gibberish based on what he thinks are magic words that relate to Kung Fu, examples of these include "Ching Chong Bin Biyong").
 * 4) * Speaking of not aging well, some minor bits of the animation such as the lip-syncing, while decent and appropriate for the time, can sometimes come off as either stiff or awkward.
 * 5) Phooey's incompetence and his absent-mindedness can often drag out a lot.
 * 6) Rosemary's jokes and drawn-out running gags based on her ditzy nature with answering phone calls and handling her job in a very naive way can be annoying and not that funny.

Reception
There was merchandise featuring the characters/etc, when it comes to video games (there were these ports) and there were at least one or some Cartoon Network games the titular characters was featured in, and Hong Kong Phooey would be featured in some CN commercials.

Videos
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Trivia

 * 1) An musical artist named Sublime made his own recreation of the theme song from the show.
 * 2) Hong Kong Phooey almost had a full feature film done by the same studio that made the live-action Scooby Doo movies, but was scrapped.