Lidsville

1 9 7 1 - 1 9 7 3 (USA)
17 x 30 minute episodes

In the middle of the summer in the middle of a park, there began a great adventure for a boy whose name was Mark...

Intrigued by a magician's performance while at an amusement park, Mark (played by Butch Patrick of The Munsters fame) decides to lag behind the rest after the show. Alone backstage in the magicians room Mark picks up the magician's hat to inspect it when the hat suddenly begins to grow larger. Startled by this, Mark drops it on the floor where it continues to grow to an enormous size. Climbing up on the brim while attempting to look inside, he loses his balance and falls into the hat.He keeps falling and falling through the hat that turns into a long tunnel and he reappears in Lidsville - a land inhabited almost entirely by living, talking hats of all kinds: Stetsons, top hats and helmets . . .

He is quickly captured by a band of bad hats (an executioner's hood, a gangster's hat) that work for the local bad guy, Horatio J Hoo Doo the evil magician.  

Hoo Doo believes Mark is a spy for the good hats and he holds him prisoner. In Hoo Doo's dungeon, Mark is befriended by another prisoner - Weenie the Genie . Weenie must be loyal to Hoo Doo because he possesses the genie's magic ring.Together Mark and Weenie plan to escape, a plan that includes Mark stealing the magic ring.

The weekly episodes then revolved around Mark's struggle to find his way back home with the assistance of Weenie the bumbling genie and the good hats (a cowboy hat, a  nurse's hat, a party hat, a pith helmet) of Lidsville.

Hoo Doo, on the other hand,  tries to recapture Mark, the magic ring and Weenie the Genie amidst locations like the Shampoo River and Hair Forest. What else did you want when you were a kid! ABC ran 17 episodes of Lidsville over two seasons beginning in September 1971. NBC then reran it for another season before it jumped to the syndication market. 

"How's that for a topper?"