Yabba Dabba Does It: Cartoons and Creative Thinking

The release of Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park frankly terrified me. In 1993, as an eight-year-old child, it was the first time I had ever really been conscious of what dinosaurs were capable of.

One scene in particular has forever plagued me. In it, child actors Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards are in the compound’s kitchen, having just survived an attack of stampeding Gallimimus, and – in the boy’s case – a rather heinous electrocuting. Now they are busy stuffing their faces on steaks and cream pies, convinced that the worst is behind them. Not so, intrepid young adventurers: There just happens to be a couple of particularly hungry Velociraptors lingering outside; better go and hide behind some of those sheet-metal cupboard doors over there.

For the uneducated, the kids do survive (of course – this is Hollywood), but that is beside the point when you’re an eight year old watching this play out on a huge, multiplex cinema screen with only a bag of popcorn and a Slush Puppie to hide behind. Of course, exposing oneself to Jurassic Park when your only previously encounter with dinosaurs was at the mercy of Hanna-Barbera and The Flintstones was always going to be a risky strategy.

You see, in Bedrock, Fred Flintstone slides down a Brontosaurus’ tail: an ingenious example of how to clock-off work fast; you can climb a Stegosaurus’ back plates like an escalator, and read the daily news via a slab of engraved slate. No iPad malfunction in Bedrock. You can even have a Saber-toothed Tiger as a house pet. If this were Jurassic Park, Fred Flintstone would be toast.

Today, The Flintstones celebrates the 50th Anniversary of their first airing. To mark the occasion, Google have replaced its logo with a recognisable Flintstones scene, thereby shoving nostalgia down everyone’s throat. And I, for one, can’t get enough.

The opening credits to The Flintstones call them “the modern stone-age family,” which, while being one of the most oxymoronic concepts ever, at least has a point. Admittedly, you would be forgiven for thinking The Flintstones are a fairly odd choice of inspiration for modern business metrics – they do, after all, live in a prehistoric (not to mention cartoon) world, but you’d be a fool to deny that their technology was not on par with much of what we use today.

Fred Flintstone was, in fact, so carbon neutral, he’d make even the likes of Method blush: his foot-powered car certainly rivaled any electric car on the market today, and – if you’re willing to count sundials – Fred and Co. also benefited from solar powered watches, dinosaur-powered garbage disposals and baby-woolly mammoth vacuum cleaners.

Let’s be clear, I am not suggesting that in the quest for green credentials we should be replacing our Dysons with Aardvark Hoovers; nor do I think I will be giving up my Sky+ in favor of some gerbil-powered TV gadgetry any time soon; but as businesses around the world look to be more environmentally friendly, there seems no better day than their golden anniversary to salute The Flintstones for ignited childrens’ imaginations throughout the years – and not least for thinking creatively about gadgetry and technology.

I bet Eric Ryan liked The Flintstones, anyway.

Topics: Technology, Retail, Business Intelligence, IT