Lidsville

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Lidsville

Genre	Children's television series
Starring	Butch Patrick Charles Nelson Reilly Billie Hayes Jerry Maren Sharon Baird Joy Campbell Van Snowden
Country of origin	USA
No. of episodes	17
Production
Producer(s)	Sid and Marty Krofft
Running time	0:25 (per episode)
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	September 11, 1971 – September 2, 1973
Links
IMDb profile

Lidsville was Sid and Marty Krofft's third television show following H.R. Pufnstuf (1969) and The Bugaloos (1970). As did its predecessors, the series combined two types of characters. Conventional actors in makeup were filmed alongside performers in full mascot costumes, whose voices were dubbed in post-production. Seventeen episodes aired on Saturday mornings for two seasons, 1971–1973.

The show involved a teenage boy named Mark (Butch Patrick) who fell into the hat of Merlo the Magician and arrived in Lidsville, a land of living hats. The hats on the show are depicted as having the same occupations as the humans who would normally wear them. For example, a cowboy hat would act like a cowboy. The character's houses were also hat-shaped.

The villain of the show was a magician named Horatio J. HooDoo (Charles Nelson Reilly). Among other notable characters were Raunchy Rabbit (Sharon Baird in mascot), Weenie the Genie (Billie Hayes, who also reprised her H.R. Pufnstuf role, Witchiepoo, in one episode), and Rah-Rah the football helmet (Jerry Maren).

The vain but somewhat naive HooDoo flew around on his Hatamaran and kept the good citizens of Lidsville in fear, demanding that they pay him their Hat Checks. Mark helped the good hats resist, as he attempted to find a way back home. HooDoo, trying to reclaim control of the androgynous Weenie from Mark, often enlisted the services of four Bad Hats. In his high hat home, HooDoo was besieged by the taunting music of the Hat Band. The show had an endless array of puns such as these.

Lidsville resembles a later British series, Hattytown Tales, produced by Hattyland Enterprises & FilmFair Ltd. in 1980, which used an almost identical concept but different characters and was produced in claymation.

Like predecessors H.R. Pufnstuf and The Bugaloos, Lidsville ran for only one season (1971-1972), with reruns airing the following year (1972-1973).

The complete series was released on DVD in the United States in January 2005.