Tom Terrific

Did You Know?

• Tom Terrific was ranked #32 by TV Guide magazine on its 2002 list of '50 Greatest TV Cartoon Characters'.
• As of 2024, there has not been an authorized VHS, DVD or Blu-ray release of the series.
• Football player Tom Brady's attempt to trademark 'Tom Terrific' was turned down in August 2019 to avoid confusion with baseball player Tom Seaver.

Production

Tom Terrific was a black-and-white cartoon drawn to look like a child’s simple sketches. Gene Deitch created it for Terrytoons, which by then belonged to CBS, the network that broadcast Captain Kangaroo. The show had twenty-six stories, each split into five episodes, with one five-minute episode broadcast per day. The first thirteen stories were filmed in 1957, the second set in 1958.

Captain Kangaroo continued to rerun the episodes for many years. Starting in 1962, Captain Kangaroo broadcast Tom Terrific every other week, alternating with Terrytoons' Lariat Sam. Jules Feiffer wrote some of the dialogue. Deitch adapted the feature from his earlier newspaper comic strip, 'Terr'ble Thompson!', distributed during the 1950s by the United Features Syndicate.

Terr'ble Thompson was a six-year-old boy who imagined himself to be the 'Hero of Hist'ry' and freely time traveled to assist historical figures. An illustrated book reprinting the adventures of this precursor was published by Fantagraphics Books. Lionel Wilson performed all the voices.

Plot

The show features a gee-whiz boy hero, Tom Terrific, who lives in a treehouse and can shapeshift into anything he wants, thanks to his magical funnel-shaped 'thinking cap', which also enhances his intelligence. He has a comic lazybones of a sidekick, Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog, and an archenemy named Crabby Appleton, whose motto is, 'I'm rotten to the core!' Other foes include Mr. Instant the Instant Thing King, Captain Kidney Bean, Sweet Tooth Sam the Candy Bandit, and Isotope Feeney the Meany. Each episode was shown in five installments, one per day, Monday through Friday.

In popular culture

Tom Terrific appeared in a comic book published by Pines Comics for six issues from Summer 1957 to Fall 1958, with some stories drawn by Ralph Bakshi. The character also appeared in a few Wonder Books, an imitation of Little Golden Books. Crabby Appleton was the name of a rock group, which used the character's image on a 1971 album, Rotten to the Core. In the introduction to his book, The Great Big Book of Tomorrow, Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) says that he chose his pseudonym through misremembering the name of Tom Terrific. Tom Terrific appeared in the 1999 pilot Curbside, voiced by Haley Joel Osment. American football player Tom Brady attempted to trademark the phrase for himself, but was turned down in August 2019, to prevent confusion with baseball player Tom Seaver.