Barney and Betty Rubble are their neighbors and best friends, and later on adopt a super-strong baby boy named Bamm-Bamm and acquire a pet hopparoo (kangaroo) called Hoppy.

Producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who had earned seven Academy Awards for Tom and Jerry, and their staff faced a challenge in developing a thirty-minute animated program with one storyline that fit the parameters of family-based domestic situation comedies of the era.

The plots deliberately resemble the sitcoms of the era, with the caveman Flintstone and Rubble families getting into minor conflicts characteristic of modern life.

Animation historian Christopher P. Lehman considers that the series partly draws its humor from anachronism, mainly the placing of a "modern" 20th-century society in prehistory which takes inspiration from the suburban sprawl developed in the first two decades of the postwar period.

[15] Blanc's Barney voice varied from nasally to deep before the accident, as he and Barbera, who directed the sessions with Alan Dinehart, explored the right level in relation to comedy and other characters.

[18] According to Henry Corden, a voice actor and a friend of Gleason's (who would subsequently take over the role of Fred from Reed after his death in 1977), "Jackie's lawyers told him he could probably have The Flintstones pulled right off the air.

[20] Around the same time, Corden was providing Fred's singing voice in two films being produced at the studio: the 1966 special Alice in Wonderland, or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?

Since Mel Blanc's death in 1989, Barney has been voiced by Jeff Bergman, Frank Welker, Scott Innes, and Kevin Michael Richardson.

Various additional character voices were performed by Hal Smith, Allan Melvin, Janet Waldo, Daws Butler, and Howard Morris, among others.

The opening and closing credits theme during the first two seasons was "Rise and Shine", a lively instrumental underscore accompanying Fred on his drive home from work.

"[29] Jackie Gleason, creator of The Honeymooners, considered suing Hanna-Barbera Productions, but decided not to since he did not want to be known as "the guy who yanked Fred Flintstone off the air".

In 1955, Avery directed a cartoon entitled The First Bad Man, narrated by cowboy legend Tex Ritter, which was about the rowdy antics of a bank robber in stone-age Dallas.

This was reflected in the comedy, which resembled the primetime sitcoms of the era, with family issues resolved at the end of each episode, as well as the inclusion of a laugh track.

[37] This was dictated by the custom, at that time, that the stars of a TV series often "pitched" their sponsor's product in an "integrated commercial" at the end of the episode.

Welch's also produced a line of grape jelly packaged in jars that were reusable as drinking glasses, with painted scenes featuring the Flintstones and other characters from the show.

As a result of a wider number of yearly viewers, including children, and competition from TV's trend toward fantasy shows, the episodes varied from family comedy to fantasy/adventure, but still had stories about couple dynamics.

In the U.S., The Flintstones was part of NBC Saturday mornings from 1966 to 1970, with syndicated reruns offered to local stations until 1997, when E/I regulations and changing tastes in the industry led to the show's move to cable television.

As of 2017, full episodes are available in the U.S. on Boomerang's subscription video-on-demand service, with select clips made available on the official YouTube account tied to the revamped Kids' WB website.

The show was also later carried overtime on YTV, Teletoon Retro, Cartoon Network, and Boomerang, alongside French channels ICI, TQS, TVA, and Prise 2.

When Independent broadcaster ITV first aired The Flintstones to England in January 1961, the program slowly began to spread its popularity around the world.

[43] The series was repeated for decades in various daytime and early evening time-slots; episodes were also sometimes used by the BBC in case of last minute schedule changes, such as coverage of sporting events being affected by bad weather.

[46] Animation historian Michael Barrier disliked the series, calling it a "dumb sitcom" and stated that "I can readily understand why someone who as a small child enjoyed, say, The Flintstones might regard that show fondly today.

The show was revived in the early 1970s with Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm having grown into teenagers, and several different series and made-for-TV movies (broadcast mainly on Saturday mornings, with a few shown in primetime), including a series depicting Fred and Barney as police officers, another depicting the characters as children, and yet others featuring Fred and Barney encountering Marvel Comics superhero The Thing and Al Capp's comic strip character The Shmoo—have appeared over the years.

[citation needed] Original runs: Compilation shows: In 2011, it was announced Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane would be reviving The Flintstones for the Fox network, with the first episode airing in 2013.

[61] After Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly read the pilot script and "liked it but didn't love it", MacFarlane chose to abandon work on the project rather than restarting it.

Like Cave Kids, the show focuses on the lives of best friends Pebbles Flintstone and Bamm-Bamm Rubble, who are joined by Dino for many adventures in the Stone Age.

[75] On March 10, 2023, it was reported the series would have also featured the voices of Stephen Root (Fred), Amy Sedaris (Wilma), Joe Lo Truglio (Barney), Nicole Byer (Betty) and Manny Jacinto (Bamm-Bamm).

[79] It closed in 2015 when ownership was transferred, and the new owner could not come to a licensing agreement with Warner Bros. Bedrock City near Williams, Arizona, which opened in 1972, was a spin-off from the same family that owned the South Dakota park.

[86] The same couch gag was reused in syndicated episodes of "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", when The Simpsons overtook The Flintstones as the longest-running animated series.

On September 30, 2010, Google temporarily replaced the logo on its search page with a custom graphic celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Flintstones' first TV broadcast.