The Flintstones and the Jetsons - really the same idea.

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A friend of mine and I love these two cartoons. We have been watching them faithfully (when possible as syndication throws them all over the airwaves) since we were kids. The Flintstones is great because they are actually so far ahead of their time. They have transportation (on THE WHEEL, no less) which requires fossil fuel (oh, bad pun). They have electricity of sorts, generated by perpetual motion. They have hygiene and fashion that makes me wonder how the Geico Caveman feels about his own slovenly appearance. The gadgets on the Flintstones totally rock (bad pun number 2). It took a lot of imagination for Hanna Barbera to come up with this one, no doubt. I also like how they had regular celebrity guests like Rock Hudson and the not to obvious, including Ann Margrock. Too bad Sylvester "Stalstone" of Rocky fame was born out of time. On the other hand, there is the family of the future, The Jetsons. They also had cool appliances and gadgets. The difference is that many of the gadgets were thought up by the creators ahead of their time. We have them all now, I think, in some form, except maybe the elevated highway for multiple flying vehicles. (Air traffic controllers would swallow their tongues if they had to handle those jams). Seriously we have camera phones and speakers. We have robots that perform simple industrial and household tasks (like the remote control vacuum cleaner and lawn mowers you can now get). I guess we don't send people from place to place by vacuum tube elevators but I think it could be possible as vacuum tubes do tranport information from place to place within businesses now.