The Flintstones: The Complete Series makes its glorious debut on Blu-ray

Debuting in 1960, The Flintstones was the first prime-time animated sitcom and still remains incredibly watchable some 60 years (!) after its debut. For what was essentially an animated take on The Honeymooners, the Hanna-Barbera produced show lasted six seasons, running for a whopping 166 episodes, and leaving a massive impact on pop culture that can still be felt today.

The conceit of taking a suburban sitcom, animating it for an adult audience, and placing the entire thing in the Stone Age was a wildly original idea and revisiting the show with this new set reinforces just how memorable the voice work is and how tight the scripts are, even if most of the reference points are notably dated at this point.

Fred Flintstone is a blue-collar grump for the ages, and the obvious inspiration for generations of animated goofball dads to follow, from The Simpsons’ Homer Simpson to Family Guy’s Peter Griffin. The episodes follow a fairly predictable pattern; there is generally some sort of miscommunication between Fred and his wife Wilma, and together with their neighbours Barney and Betty Rubble, they embark on some manner of shenanigans in Bedrock that ensures Fred will eventually blow his volatile temper.

Despite being fairly formulaic, The Flintstones is perfect comfort viewing. Chalk it down to nostalgia, but seeing the series with this incredible presentation truly feels like being a kid again and jumping out of bed at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning to start a marathon of cartoon watching.

The Flintstones makes its high definition debut with a comprehensive new box set that collects the entire run of the series, along with two animated features, 1966’s The Man Called Flintstone and 2015’s The Flintstones and WWE: Stone Age Smackdown! Spread over 10 Blu-rays discs, the show looks absolutely glorious in 1080p, bringing out the show’s vivid colours and line drawings like never before.

The set recycles the extras from the previous DVD seasons, and while it’s nice to have them on-hand, it’s unfortunate that no new extras were created for the show’s high-definition debut (the extras are presented in 480p). Spread out across the set’s discs, highlights include a featurette on the show’s Music Director Hoyt Curtin, and Bedrock Collectibles: Collecting All Things Flintstone, a fun look at the staggering amount of tie-in products that were unleashed onto consumers in the ’60s.

Fans that snapped up the previous DVD sets might be disappointed that there’s nothing new included in this set (apart from the two animated features, which are surprisingly only presented in 480p), but the show has never looked better on home video, making this an easy recommendation for those who want to own the complete iconic series in one handy and affordable package. You’ll “have a yabba dabba doo time!”

The Flintstones: The Complete Series is available now.