“Schoolhouse Rock” Season 1 Now Playing on Disney+

by Beth Keating

News/Review

DisneyBizJournal.com

July 9, 2020

If I start the sentence, “Conjunction junction….” and you respond “…What’s your function?” I know exactly what you were doing on Saturday mornings in the late ‘70s.

You were sitting in your living room, probably eating Count Chocula or Franken Berry cereal, and watching the animated shorts of Schoolhouse Rock! on TV. Schoolhouse Rock! was a Saturday morning staple in between feature cartoons on ABC.

If you are missing all of those classic tunes (and really, who wouldn’t be?), you’re in luck. They are now part of the library on Disney+, and the first season is now available to stream in all its educational glory. There are 51 episodes in this set, and they include your favorite earworms such as “I’m Just a Bill,” “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here,” “Tyrannosaurus Debt,” and “I’m Gonna Send Your Vote to College.” Tax Man Max is there, and so is Interplanet Janet.

The original 4 minute long episodes of Schoolhouse Rock! ran from 1973 through 1984, but it was brought back with some additional episodes in 1993 and ran until 1996.  A few direct to video episodes were also produced in 2009. You can still purchase a 30th anniversary DVD of all the tunes. Among the topics, the shows covered history, grammar, math, science, and economics in a series of themed seasons. Season one focused on “Multiplication Rock” and ran from January to March of 1973, featuring a new number each week. The additional themed groupings included “Grammar Rock,” “America Rock,” “Science Rock,” “Money Rock,” and “Earth Rock.” 

The Emmy Award winning Schoolhouse Rock! was the creation of David McCall, an advertising exec who noticed that while his son struggled to remember math, he could easily remember the words to his favorite songs.  He enlisted the help of musician Bob Dorough and illustrator Tom Yohe to create the first episode, which was called “Three is a Magic Number.” The work caught the eye of Radford Stone at ABC, who took it to Michael Eisner (vice president of ABC at the time) and famed cartoon director Chuck Jones, and the rest is animation and Disney history. (Disney became the proud owner of Schoolhouse Rock! when they purchased ABC in 1996.)

Viewers are warned by Disney that the “program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.”  

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Beth Keating is a regular contributor to DisneyBizJournal.