Predicting the Jetsons Predicting the Future

I chuckle a bit when I read how “The Jetsons invented (fill in the blank).” The Jetsons didn’t invent much of anything. The show itself was a time inverse of The Flintstones, some of the settings owed something to World’s Fairs in Seattle and New York, and the “inventions” can be found in “Popular Science” and similar magazines that the writers brought to the studio for gag ideas.

They can also be found in the John Sutherland industrial cartoon Your Safety First, produced for the Automobile Manufacturers Association in 1956. It has a number of things in common with The Jetsons, which first aired in fall 1962.

There’s no food-a-rack-a-cycle, but the family in this cartoon enjoy a meal that is in pill form. The dinner tray is wheeled in automatically, just like those robot vaccuums of today.



Hmm. How to spend the evening (at home, of course).



In a clever gag, the covering of the dinner tray acts as a vacuum and inhales the table cloth and the dishes. Wheeling itself somewhere, the table lifts up to become a big screen TV as the chairs around the table re-arrange themselves so the family can watch. Where are the cries of “John Sutherland invented the big screen TV?”



Because this cartoon was made in the 1950s and not the future, there is a 1950s gag about the ubiquitousness of Westerns on television.



Your Safety First also features Jetsons-like bubble-top cars and the George-like father complaining that his four-hour work day of the future is too long.

No, the father isn't voiced by George O'Hanlon. It's Marvin Miller doing his Captain Cosmic voice from Destination Unlimited. Gerry Nevius and Charles McElmurry are the layout artists and likely had a hand in the designs. Neither worked on The Jetsons.

It's a shame a reddened, battered print is the only one in public circulation.