Cartoon Town, BJ and Dirty Dragon, Gigglesnort Hotel, Bill Jackson

Copyright Bill Jackson, 2013

Created by Bill Jackson and Brian Mayer

Memory Feature

Birth of the Birds

Many folks have always thought of the Thumptwangers as crows even though they were red.  Perhaps it was their large beaks and feisty manners, but I wasn't thinking crows when I created them.  The puppets preceding them were Ferguson S. Martian and Mortimer M. Martian, better known as Fergy and Morty.  As Martians, each was green, bald, and had one eye.   When I created the birds I intended them also to be Martians with the one eye, but colored them red to differentiate them from regular Martians. 

Birth of the birds took place during my stay at  WLW-i, Indianapolis, where the infectious thump and twang of Indiana bluegrass music caused me to drop their Martian ancestry and make them down home birds that lip-synced (or in this case, beak-synced) to the thumping and twanging from the likes of Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and other bluegrass icons.  So, from this thump and twang came the name Thumptwangers.  It was a bit of a twister and many people call them the thumbtwangers to this day. At first the group consisted of four males, but then I added four females to flesh out the chorus when needed.  Here we did a special effect to create a big all-girl chorus:

  When I originated Cartoon Town for WFLD-TV in Chicago, only two males and two females were actually named -- Maynard, Marvin, Myrtle, and Minnie.  The group presented comical scenes to many hit songs with Ray Stevens' music a favorite.  Some said we were doing MTV before there was MTV.  Maynard and Myrtle married and represented  the Thumptwanger clan, especially on Hokey Theater.

     All of the Thumptwangers appeared during my one year at WGN-TV, but only Maynard and Myrtle were residents at The Gigglesnort Hotel on WLS-TV, where they were visited occasionally by showbiz cousin Billy Joe Bigbeak.

And one last note: when Maynard got nervous he pecked -- and he got nervous a lot, which you may remember threatened anything wooden in the Hotel.

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