You probably remember Ben Grimm as the heart and soul of the Fantastic Four. He’s the rocky powerhouse with a heart of gold, a guy who’s spent decades trading blows with Doctor Doom and Galactus. But back in 1979, things got weird. Very weird. If you happened to be sitting in front of a television on a Saturday morning during the Carter administration, you might have witnessed The Thing animated series, officially titled Fred and Barney Meet the Thing.
It’s a bizarre relic.
Honestly, the most confusing part isn't even the show itself—it's the fact that the Fantastic Four are nowhere to be found. Instead of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, we got a scrawny teenager named Benjy Grimm. Instead of cosmic rays and tragic transformations, we got a pair of magic rings. It sounds like a fever dream, but it was a very real production by Hanna-Barbera that ran on NBC.
How The Thing Animated Series Rewrote Marvel History
To understand why this show exists, you have to look at the licensing landscape of the late 70s. Marvel was trying to get their characters onto every screen possible, but the rights were a tangled mess. DePatie-Freleng Enterprises already had a Fantastic Four cartoon running in 1978 (the one with HERBIE the robot instead of the Human Torch). Because of those existing contracts, Hanna-Barbera couldn't use the full team.
So, they pivoted. Hard.
In this version, Benjy Grimm is a high school student at Centerville High. He’s a bit of a weakling, constantly picked on by a biker gang called the Yancy Street Wolfpack. It’s a complete departure from the "Aunt Petunia’s favorite nephew" backstory we know from the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby era. When Benjy needs to clobber someone, he doesn't transform because of cellular mutation. He puts two halves of a ring together and shouts, "Thing Ring, do your thing!"
Suddenly, rocks fly out of nowhere and attach to his body. He grows several feet taller, develops a deep voice, and becomes the orange powerhouse we recognize. It’s basically a magical girl transformation sequence, just with more grit and property damage.
The tonal shift is jarring. One minute Benjy is dealing with typical teen angst, and the next he’s lifting a bus. The show didn't care about comic book canon. It cared about selling toys and filling a 60-minute block alongside The Flintstones. That’s right—the "Fred and Barney Meet the Thing" title was a total lie. The characters never actually met. They just shared a time slot.
The Animation Style and the Hanna-Barbera "Look"
If you've seen one Hanna-Barbera show from this era, you’ve seen them all. The art is functional but stiff. You’ll notice the same recycled backgrounds over and over. Trees pass by in a loop while the Yancy Street Wolfpack chases Benjy on their motorcycles.
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The character design for the Thing himself is actually decent. He looks like the Kirby drawings, with the heavy brow and the cracked-earth skin texture. But the movement is limited. Action scenes usually consist of the Thing throwing a large object or catching a falling structure. There isn't much "fighting" in the traditional sense because of 1970s broadcast standards, which were notoriously strict about violence in children's programming.
Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, the legends behind Scooby-Doo, were involved in the development of these blocks, which explains why the show feels more like a mystery-of-the-week or a slapstick comedy than a superhero epic. The stakes are rarely higher than saving a local carnival or stopping a petty thief.
The Mystery of the Missing Fantastic Four
Fans often ask where the rest of the team went. It’s a fair question. You can’t really have Ben Grimm without the family dynamic that makes him interesting. Without Reed Richards to act as his foil, Benjy Grimm is just a kid with a superpower he uses to solve mundane problems.
The exclusion of the Fantastic Four was purely a legal move. Since NBC couldn't get the rights to the whole team, they settled for the most "marketable" individual character. At the time, the Thing was a solo star in the comics with the Marvel Two-In-One series, where he teamed up with different heroes every month. Hanna-Barbera likely thought he could carry a show on his own.
They were wrong.
By stripping away the tragedy of Ben Grimm—the man trapped in a monster's body—they removed the soul of the character. In The Thing animated series, Benjy can change back whenever he wants. He’s not a tragic figure; he’s just a kid with a cool gadget. That fundamental change is why the show is often mocked by comic book historians today. It missed the point.
Why the "Thing Ring" Concept Happened
The "Thing Ring" is perhaps the most infamous part of the show's legacy. Why a ring? Well, the 1970s were obsessed with "transformation" triggers. You had Wonder Woman spinning in circles, Shazam shouting a magic word, and even The Super Globetrotters changing into superheroes in a locker room.
A ring provided a tangible toy for kids to buy. It turned a complex biological tragedy into a product. While it’s easy to be cynical about it now, it was a standard industry move at the time. Marvel has a long history of weird licensing deals, from the Japanese Spider-Man with a giant robot to the Hulk live-action show where David Banner was a physician instead of a nuclear physicist.
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Episodes and Villains: What Actually Happened?
The show only ran for 26 segments (usually two segments per episode). Most of the plots are forgettable. You won't find the Skrulls or Galactus here. Instead, the Thing faces off against:
- Mad scientists with generic shrink rays.
- Bikers who are more annoying than threatening.
- The Yancy Street Wolfpack (who, in this version, are just bullies on motorcycles).
There was an episode where he had to save a beauty pageant. Another where he dealt with a ghost in a western ghost town. It was "safe" television. It didn't push boundaries or try to tell a serialized story. It was purely episodic, designed to be watched while eating a bowl of sugary cereal.
The Legacy of the 1979 Series
Surprisingly, the show has a cult following. Not because it’s "good" in a traditional sense, but because it’s such a weird artifact of its time. It represents a moment when comic book IP wasn't handled with the reverence it is today. Back then, these characters were just content to fill space between toy commercials.
You can occasionally find clips of it on YouTube, and the "Thing Ring, do your thing!" catchphrase has become a bit of a meme among older Gen X-ers and comic book nerds. It’s a reminder that the path to the Marvel Cinematic Universe was paved with some very strange stones.
What Most People Get Wrong About This Era
People often think this show was a flop, but it actually did okay in the ratings for its specific niche. It didn't get canceled because no one watched it; it ended because the "Fred and Barney Meet..." format was shifting, and Marvel's licensing deals were constantly evolving.
Another misconception is that Stan Lee hated it. While Stan was always protective of his characters, he was also a businessman. He understood that getting the Thing on NBC was a massive win for brand awareness, even if the execution was a bit silly. He was often the one pitching these ideas to networks, trying to find any way to get Marvel characters into the mainstream.
Critical Analysis: Why It Failed to Stick
In the long run, The Thing animated series failed because it lacked an identity. It wasn't a superhero show, and it wasn't a teen comedy. It was caught in the middle. By making Benjy Grimm a teenager, they alienated the older fans who liked the "grumpy uncle" vibe of the comics. By making the plots so simplistic, they failed to capture the imagination of kids who were starting to see more sophisticated storytelling in shows like Star Wars or even the later 80s cartoons like Transformers.
The animation quality didn't help. By 1979, the limited animation style of Hanna-Barbera was starting to look dated. When you compare it to the lush animation of the 1990s X-Men or Batman: The Animated Series, it looks like a prehistoric relic.
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Finding the Show Today
Tracking down the full series is surprisingly difficult. It hasn't had a major DVD or Blu-ray release in the way other Marvel shows have. You won't find it on Disney+ because of the complicated rights issues with Hanna-Barbera (which is now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery). It’s stuck in a sort of legal limbo between the company that owns the character (Marvel/Disney) and the company that owns the actual footage (WB).
This is common for older co-productions. Unless both companies can agree on a profit-sharing model, these shows just sit in a vault, gathering digital dust.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Collectors
If you're interested in exploring this weird corner of Marvel history, there are a few things you can do. Don't go looking for a high-definition remaster; it doesn't exist. Instead, lean into the nostalgia and the history.
- Search for "The Thing 1979" on fan archives. There are several dedicated animation history sites that host low-resolution clips and full credit sequences.
- Look for the "Thing Ring" merchandise. While rare, there are vintage toys and iron-on transfers from that era that pop up on eBay. They are a hilarious conversation starter for any Marvel collection.
- Read "Marvel Two-In-One" issues from 1979. If you want to see what the character was actually doing in the comics at the same time the show was airing, these issues are fantastic. They show the massive gap between the "Thing Ring" version and the "Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Thing" from the source material.
- Check out the Fred and Barney connection. If you're a fan of animation history, researching the "Meet the Thing" block shows how networks used to bundle unrelated shows to build a "power hour" of programming.
The 1979 The Thing animated series isn't a masterpiece. It's barely a "good" show. But it is a fascinating example of how a character can be completely dismantled and put back together to fit a specific corporate mold. It's a piece of history that shows how far we've come—from "Thing Rings" to the modern era of faithful adaptations. It’s clobberin’ time, even if it’s done with a pair of magic rings and a high school jacket.
To really appreciate where the MCU is now, you have to look back at the moments when it almost went off the rails. This series is one of those moments. It's weird, it's wacky, and it's 100% real. If you ever feel like modern superhero movies are getting too complicated, just remember: it could be worse. You could be shouting at a ring to make rocks fly onto your body.
Next time you see Ben Grimm on the big screen, take a second to remember Benjy Grimm from Centerville High. He’s the forgotten cousin of the Marvel multiverse, still riding his bike through the recycled backgrounds of our collective Saturday morning memories.
Next Steps for Enthusiasts:
If you want to dive deeper into 70s Marvel animation, look into the 1978 Fantastic Four series produced by DePatie-Freleng. It’s the show that "stole" the rest of the team from the Thing, and it features HERBIE the robot, who was created because the Human Torch was tied up in a separate live-action film development deal. Comparing the two shows gives you a perfect picture of the chaotic licensing wars of the era.