Until The Simpsons came along and ruined it for them, The Flintstones held the honor of being the longest running animated prime time series in television history. This cartoon, inspired by the success of The Honeymooners, soon became a cultural icon and a popular favorite among viewers of all ages and remains so to this day. Numerous spin offs, a couple of bad live action movies, plenty of comic books, toys, and games of all kinds have kept The Flintstones alive and well in the American subconscious and popular all over the world and Hanna Barbara has been teaming up with Warner Brothers to release the seasons in their complete form on DVD.

The show hit a nice blend of jokes for adults but at the same time had enough physical comedy and goofy situations that kids could get into it too. In short, The Flintstones was, and still is, a lot of fun for the whole family. With its constant running gag of prehistoric beasts being used as appliances and vehicles, combined with some characters who had a lot more personality than any cartoon at the time, the series kept the laughs coming and hooked viewers by using a nice mix of running plots and single episode stories.

Here's a little peek at which episodes live amongst the fancy animated menus in all their digital splendor, spread across four mighty discs and making up the entire sixth (and final!) season of the show that ran from September 17, 1965 through April 1, 1966:

No Biz Like Show Biz: Ruthless show biz promoter Eppy Brianstone fast becomes hip to the fact that Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm have got some serious musical talent that he can cash in on. When they no longer have time for their fathers, Fred and Barney decide to kidnap their kids which alerts the local police to their activities.

The House That Fred Built: Wilma opens the mail one day and finds a latter from her mother, Mrs. Slaghoople, telling her that she's moving in with the Flintstones. Fred doesn't want her staying in the house so he starts rebuilding an old shack for her to live in.

The Return Of Stony Curtis: Betty and Wilma enter a contest and win the prize – a day of servitude from none other than famous actor Stoney Curtis (voiced by Tony Curtis)! Fred isn't happy with this at all until Stoney tells him he wants him in his upcoming film at which point Fred drops everything in hopes of catching his big break into stardom.

Disorder In The Court: Fred and Barney were on the jury that put The Mangler behind bars. When the dastardly villain escapes from prison our heroes decide to law low for a while because The Mangler has sworn revenge against them and they now fear for their lives.

Circus Business: In a less than brilliant move, Fred hopes to get rich by buying a circus. Of course, the performers aren't too impressed and so they all quit which forces Fred to put on the show himself using Barney, Dino and Hoppy as stand ins for the real performers.

Samantha: The stars of TV's Bewitched (Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York) guest star on this episode when Darrin goes off to play with his boat leaving Samantha around to hang out with The Flintstones. They grab the Rubbles and all head out camping for a nice bit of rest and relaxation which soon turns into a battle of the sexes where Samantha's powers gain the upper hand for the ladies.

The Great Gazoo: Fred and Barney meet the titular Gazoo, a small green alien from outer space, and he becomes their servant and friend. What seems to good to be true, however, really is when Gazoo starts disappearing at all the wrong times leaving Fred and Barney holding the bag.

Rip Van Flintstone: Fred is off at the annual quarry picnic when he gets bored and decides to have a nap. He wakes up two decades later to learn that Barney is now filthy rich and that Pebbles has married Bamm-Bamm.

The Gravelberry Pie King: Mr. Slate fires Fred for siding with some disgruntled workers and so he decides to make a living selling Wilma's pies. Unfortunately for the Flintstones, there's not a lot of mark up in pies when they cost so much money to make and it looks like they're going to loose some money on the let alone turn a profit.

The Stonefinger Caper: Fred and Barney find themselves in some serious danger when the villain of the latest spy film, Stonefinger, somehow manages to come to life. He's after them and it looks pretty dire until The Great Gazoo shows up with his crazy space guy powers.

The Masquerade Party: In a spin-off of Orsen Welles' War Of The Worlds stunt, Fred decides to attend the Water Buffalos costume party dressed as an alien. The problem? The local radio station is playing a prank on the city by broadcasting the news that they're under attack by aliens!

Shinrock-A-Go-Go: In one of the best episodes of the season, Fred starts a new smash dance craze in Bedrock when he drops a bowling ball on his foot and hops around on one leg screaming in agony. He gets invited onto the popular music show, Shinrock, but soon develops a serious case of stage-fright.

Royal Rubble: Barney is pretty excited by the fact that he's been mistaken for the elusive Prince of Rockabia, figuring he'll role with it and lead a life of luxury. Unfortunately for Barney, the prince is in hiding because he's going to be put to death for abandoning his thrown.

Seeing Doubles: Fred and Barney have committed to taking their wives out for a nice dinner but what they really want to do is go bowling. They decide that with Gazoo's help they'll be able to do both, and sneak out to the alley once Gazoo creates some clones of them to deal with the dinner date but of course none of it goes as planned.

How To Pick A Fight with Your Wife Without Really Trying: Nobody gives relationship advice like a small, floating green space alien – that's what Fred and Wilma find out when listening to Gazoo about their marital problems leads to a separation.

Fred Goes Ape: When Fred makes a mistake and gets the wrong prescription from the pharmacy and takes some strange medicine, he turns into a giant ape. Barney sees this happen and figures he's losing it but when he and Fred take the kids to the zoo, and Fred takes another pill, well, it all goes horribly, horribly wrong.

The Long, Long, Long Weekend: One cool thing about having an annoying alien hanging around is that he can take you into the future if he wants and that's exactly what happens when Fred and Gazoo trip into the 21st century. Fred learns that he'd better pay off that loan he took out with Mr. Slate as the interest down the road is going to be killer.

Two Men On A Dinosaur: Fred and Barney take Gazoo to the race track where, with his help, they start winning big time. Unfortunately for them, a bookie named Big Ed isn't too happy with their results and he decides to have a little talk with the two high rollers.

The Treasure Of The Sierra Madrock: Fred and Barney buy a fake gold mine from two scam artists pretending to be miners. This looks to be a pretty bum deal until Wilma and Betty find out what happened and decide to beat the cons at their own game by selling the mine back to them.

Curtain Call At Bedrock: The PTA is putting on a production of Romeorock and Julietstone and they want Fred to play the male lead with Wilma playing the female part, but he's not into that at all and so they choose Barney. Barney gets the mumps and drops out and so Fred finally takes the part until Wilma gets sick too.

Boss For A Day: When Fred complains to Gazoo about Mr. Slate, he decides that Fred could learn a lesson by switching places with him. Running the quarry for a day proves to be a lot more work than Fred first thought that it would be.

Fred's Island: Fred is ecstatic when Mr. Slate invites him to spend the day on his yacht until he finds out that the only reason Slate wants him there is so that he can paint it for him. Luckily, Fred has Wilma and the Rubbles along to help him and they start having a good time and soon forget what they were there to do in the first place and Mr. Slate loses his temper.

Jealousy: Wilma wants Fred to go to a violin concert with her and when he pretends to be sick she instead goes with her ex-boyfriend, Wilbur. Fred gets jealous and along with Barney and Gazoo decides to follow them so that he can make Wilma jealous too.

Dripper: Barney somehow manages to befriend a trained seal named Dripper and in doing so winds up in a scheme to kidnap the seal. It turns out that Dripper's trainer is tired of living in the seal's shadow and so he intends to use Barney to do something about it.

My Fair Freddy: When a mistake at a posh country club finds Fred with a membership he decides that he'd better have Gazoo use his powers to make him more of a gentleman. Fred decides to take ballet lessons to improve himself but it doesn't work so well and soon he learns that he and Wilma should just be themselves if they want to be accepted.

The Story Of Rocky's Raiders: Fred learns of his family's military history by putting himself in the place of his grandfather who was a crack fighter pilot named Lt. Rocky Flintstone. He, along with his pal Reggie Vanderrock, have to rescue a spy from the evil Baron Von Rickenrock.

First things first - The Great Gazoo was a bad idea. He doesn't fit in with the rest of the characters very well and while he did provide a few amusing situations, most of the film he just kind of felt like an easy way out for the writers to throw Fred and Barney into more quirky and troublesome adventures. The show had become fairly tired by this point, which is a shame after the great fifth season, and it was starting to show. With that said, there are some seriously funny episodes in here and a few classic moments from the show's history that make the season worth watching. Even the lesser episodes at least have their moments while the better ones stand their own against classics from the first seasons.

Video:

Each and every one of these episodes was meant to be seen fullframe and that's exactly how they appear in this set. Thankfully, the elements look to have been in pretty good shape for this release as the video quality is great, despite some obvious dirt here and there and the fact that the limitations of the source material do shine through on DVD. Colors are nice and strong, print damage is surprisingly minimal, and there aren't any mpeg compression issues noticeable at all. There is a fine coat of grain overtop the picture pretty consistently but that's to be expected considering the age of the episodes. Overall, the series does look really good on these discs.