50 years ago the famous animated series “The Flintstones” was broadcasted for the first time. The show is set in a version of the stone age where human beings live with animals from different ages such as dinosaurs and mammoths.

The main characters are Fred Flintstone, his wife Wilma and their friends Barney Rubble and his wife Betty: those two families live in the town Bedrock where modern technologies are anticipated in ingenious ways, generally using various animals so for example there are photocameras with a bird inside that carves the picture on a stone tablet in real time or elevators operated by a brontosaurus while in cars the drivers move them with their feet. All those machineries are obviously built in stone and wood.

The setting in the stone age led to various gags based on the names of various characters that are “stone” versions of real characters such as actors “Gary Granite” (Cary Grant) and “Stony Curtis” (Tony Curtis).

Fred Flintstone, who plays bowling whenever he can, is famous among the other things for his shout “Yabba Dabba Dooo!”.

The animated show went on until 1966 then in the ’70s some animated movies and new shows where produced with the Flintstones and Rubbles children Pebble and Bamm-Bamm as teenagers, other movies have the old characters in alternative realities. In 1994 and 2000 two movies with real actors were produced.

After decades the original series remains the most loved, so much that it’s still repeated while the various products derived from it had a limited success: the allegory of the american society in the ’60s presented in the original series, the ingenuity of the stone age technologies and the brilliant characters seem inimitable.