The Thing and the Absent-Minded Inventor

The Thing and the Absent-Minded Inventor
The Thing saves rather ungrateful inventor.
Premiere date	December 1, 1979
Run time	11:36
Music composed by	Hoyt Curtin
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"The Thing and the Absent-Minded Inventor" is the thirteenth (part two) of The Thing season one, and the final overall, and came as a segment of Fred and Barney Meet the Thing. It aired on December 1, 1979 on NBC.

Miss Twilly takes her favorite students to the annual inventors show, where her uncle(?) is poised to win the Eureka prize, if he can pay enough attention in time to get his invention seen by the judge.

Some dude at Hanna-Barbera was clearly thinking, "Why hasn't the divine Miss Twilly been given her own episode? Let's spend eleven minutes with her trying to get out a complete sentence. Now that's comedy!"

Characters

Legend
Character debut	Speaking debut	Ep. debut	No lines	Mentioned

In order of appearance:

Character	Actor
Miss Twilly	Marilyn Schreffler
Benjy Grimm	Wayne Morton
Betty Harkness	Marilyn Schreffler
Kelly Harkness	Noelle North
Ronald Radford	John Erwin
Judge	Unavailable
The Thing	Joe Baker
Fenwick Twilly	Unavailable

Locations

• Earth
  • United States
    • Centerville
      • Inventors fair

Objects

• Eureka
• Benjy's rings
• Supervac

Vehicles

• Ronald's car

Music

The score was composed by Hoyt Curtin.

Release

Dates are in order of release:

• United States: December 1, 1979 on NBC

Behind the scenes

• Something you don't usually see in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, is two people making out in public.

Errors

• Miss Twilly invites the gang out to the annual inventors fair, but Ronald's the one who has to drive her. Since this is the last episode of the series, I must ask: What was Hanna-Barbera thinking when it came up with this series?
• Wouldn't it have just been easier to make the Twillys siblings? No, of course not, why make something in this series actually make sense?
• Why do the other kids call Fenwick Uncle Fenwick, instead of Mr. Twilly? It's not like he insisted on it. Because this is television and a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, and things like that always make sense.
• Why does the Thing need Fenwick's gratitude, when he considers himself the idol of a million other people?

In other languages

Language	Name	Meaning

Home availability

• Warner Bros. owns the show, while Disney owns the characters, making it difficult to release this episode onto DVD.