Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Bill Cosby created this Filmation series, based on his boyhood in Philadelphia (and, more directly, on his Stand Up Comedy routines of the 1960s). Cosby also appeared on camera as a Narrator and performed some of the character voices, including Fat Albert himself. The show ran Saturday mornings on CBS from 1972 to 1984, followed by one additional season in first-run Syndication. In addition to a good income, Cosby also used this series to earn a Doctorate in Education, and become Dr. Cosby.

In every episode, Fat Albert and his inner-city gang became involved in some comic misadventure, either learning a moral lesson or demonstrating a lesson for someone else. As on The Archie Show, every Fat Albert episode included at least one song. In later seasons, Fat Albert and his friends followed the exploits of their favorite TV superhero, the Brown Hornet.

At Christmas 2004, Twentieth Century Fox released a live action Fat Albert feature film starring Kenan Thompson [1] in which the cast of the Fat Albert cartoon step out of the TV to make a little girl's life better. It wasn't received well by critics or the box office.


Tropes used in Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids include:
  1. The same Kenan Thompson who was on All That, Kenan and Kel, and is currently on Saturday Night Live