They were like your favourite uncle or aunt. And they came to visit you every day.
 
“They” were the hosts of kids’ TV shows, an animal now as extinct as the dinosaur. In the early days of TV, the avuncular characters in front of the camera were as familiar as your own parents. But unlike mom and dad, these guys (mostly guys) showed cartoons!
 
Perhaps the most famous in Toronto is a man who didn’t actually do a kid show for very long – the late, great “Jungle” Jay Nelson, who worked with a giant stuffed gorilla on WKBW-TV before being recruited to become one of the most fondly remembered morning men ever on CHUM-AM.


 
His work on CHUM was memorable, but as evidence of how much the TV exposure meant, it’s interesting to note that the “Jungle” nickname never really left him, even though it didn’t make a lot of sense on local radio.
 
CFTO was prominent, with “Uncle Bobby” Ash, a guy I never especially got into.


  
Besides, he had a real Bimbo for a birthday clown!
 
Far more popular in my house was Kiddo the Clown, played by future director Trevor Evans. He lasted on air here for four years until the show was cancelled and, in the final episode, Kiddo was evicted from his hovel, supposedly to make way for a subway!
 

 
TV columnist Bill Brioux says it was all part of a dispute Evans had with the station, and wanted to make sure no one could replace him.
 
“This was Evans’ big, cranky, “G’bye, kids” As he told me years later, when he visited the Toronto Sun after I first shared this childhood memory with readers, Evans had asked for a raise and was instead fired. He had one last show to do. So he made sure nobody else could step into his slap shoes. True story.”
 
Brioux has a lot more memories of that greasy kid’s stuff here.
 
But it wasn’t just local. Everyone I knew ran home at lunch time to watch Soupy Sales on channel 9, a syndicated show out of WNEW in New York.


 
I was lucky enough to see him live and get his autograph at The Steel Pier in Atlantic City way back in 1966, just after his show became huge all over again.

 

He even did “The Mouse” his famous dance and only hit record.





 
The jokes were as corny as they come, but they were still hilarious. Well, mostly.


  
Sadly, many of those classic tapes have been lost. Like “Rocky & Bullwinkle” it was one of the few kid shows that winked at adults with in-jokes only the parents would get. Which is why my father would often watch it with me.
 

 
Captain Kangaroo’s Bob Keeshan came by his role legitimately, starting life as the original “Clarabell the Clown” on the old Howdy Doody Show. He obviously learned enough to go out on his own and was widely successful, with the show – along with Bunny Rabbit, Mr. Moose, the talking Grandfather Clock and the ever present Mr. Greenjeans – running for decades on CBS.
 
Oh, and he even recorded the occasional LP, too.


 
Speaking of Howdy Doody, it was one of the original kid favourites and made NBC-TV a household name before NBC-TV was a household name. Local personality “Buffalo” Bob Smith became an international star because of that marionette.


 
CHCH got into the act, with Randy Dandy, Albert J. Steed (hosted by Bill Lawrence) and the infamous Cliff McKay, using a terrible German accent as Grandpa Schnitzel on “Schnitzel House.”
 
 
(Photo from The Hamilton Spectator’s article “The 60th anniversary of CHCH.”)
 
Not to mention the ubiquitous “Romper Room.”


 
Even a station outside Toronto, CKCO Kitchener, made a splash with Big Al.  

 
(This pic is courtesy of CKCO History, a great site about KW’s channel 13’s past.)
 
But without question the most famous and influential station in Toronto wasn’t from here. It was Channel 7, which began the day with Dave Thomas on “Rocketship 7” and later in the afternoon, featured Tom Jolls as “Commander Tom.” Everyone I knew watched them before and after school.
 

 
WBEN tried several shows, most hosted by Mike Mearian, who went on to great fame as a commercial actor and pitchman. And then there was WGR. They never really had a show that stuck and there’s a mystery about it I’ve never been able to solve. Here’s a 1960 ad for a live action kids’ show called “Checkers and Can Can.” It appears to have featured a clown and a robot. But there’s very little information about it anywhere. Does anyone remember this?
 

 
Still, they tried to serve their tiny viewers as this 1956 ad attests.


 
Kukla, Fran & Ollie weren’t local, per se, but they were one of the first kids’ shows to become famous and it made them a household name on network TV.


 
So what happened to all the “Uncles,” “Captains” and “Commanders?”
 
In a word, money. They simply became too expensive to produce and in a new world where cable channels were showing the same kind of cartoons 24-hours-a-day (and you can also find them on the Internet) their time was up.
 
I remember once hearing that City TV was planning to try a morning kid show. But it never came to pass. And given the current financial hit traditional broadcasters are taking, it’s a sure thing it never will.
 

 
As Clarabell the Clown (who never spoke) said on the final seconds of the Hoody Dowdy show in September 1960, with a tear running down his cheek, “Goodbye kids!”