The Robonic Stooges

Overview

Moe, Larry and Curly are superheroes who fight crime with their special bionic powers and are given assignments via film projector from their frustrated boss Agent 000 (pronounced "Oh-Oh-Oh") who runs the Superhero Employment Agency.

Since all of the original Three Stooges had died when production began (Moe Howard and Larry Fine had both died in 1975, Shemp Howard died in 1955 and Curly Howard died in 1952), other voice actors were used to impersonate them, mostly veteran voice actors from other Hanna-Barbera productions. Paul Winchell voiced Moe, Joe Baker voiced Larry, and Frank Welker voiced Curly (Welker had previously used his Curly impersonation for the titular character in Jabberjaw). Unlike cartoon series produced by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, The Robonic Stooges did not contain a laugh track.

This was the second animated adaptation of the Three Stooges, the first being Cambria Studios' The New Three Stooges in 1965, which used the actual Stooges' voices. Norman Maurer, who was married to Moe Howard's daughter and had acted as the Stooges' agent during their lifetimes, worked on both series. The Stooges had previously appeared in another Hanna Barbera-created series: The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972), this time as Moe, Larry and Curly-Joe. With the deaths of Fine and Howard in 1975, other actors were engaged to voice the roles of Moe and Larry; neither of the surviving "third" Stooges, Joe Besser or Joe DeRita, were asked to participate (even as Besser was working for Hanna-Barbera for other series at the time).

The Robonic Stooges episodes were occasionally seen between shows as interstitial segments on Boomerang.

Voices

1977

Aired as part of The Skatebirds:

1978

Aired as part of The Three Robonic Stooges (2 shorts aired per 30-minute episode):