Rod Rocket is the first animated cartoon to be produced by Filmation

Filmation

Filmation Associates was an American production company that produced animation and live action programming for television during the latter half of the 20th century. Located in Reseda, California, the animation studio was founded in 1963...

, debuting in syndication

Television syndication

In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...

 in 1963.

History

Rod Rocket was originally produced by True Line, a small Los Angeles animation studio formed by Lou Scheimer

Lou Scheimer

Louis Scheimer is an Emmy and Grammy Award–winning American producer, one of the original founders of Filmation, an animation company, and also an executive producer of many of its cartoons .-Career:Early in Filmation's history, Scheimer also contributed...

 and Hal Sutherland

Hal Sutherland

Hal Sutherland was an animator who became a director of animated productions at Filmation in the late 1960s.Sutherland had a hand in a large number of Filmation's limited animation productions which were broadcast as Saturday morning cartoons....

 in the early 1960s. Scheimer and Sutherland had met while working at Larry Harmon

Larry Harmon

Lawrence Weiss , better known by the stage name Larry Harmon and as his alter-ego Bozo the Clown, was a Jewish American entertainer.-Biography:...

 Productions on the made-for-TV Bozo the Clown

Bozo the Clown

Bozo the Clown is a clown character very popular in the United States, peaking in the 1960s as a result of widespread franchising in early television.Originally created by Alan W...

 and Popeye

Popeye

Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929...

 cartoons. SIB Productions, a Japan-based company with an American office in Chicago, co-produced the series in conjunction with the CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 Television Network.

Plot

The television series focuses on the adventures of a boy named Rod Rocket and his best friend, Joey. The wise codger, Professor Argus, sends Rod and Joey on an exploratory mission in a spaceship called the Little Argo and he waits for them to come home with his teenage granddaughter, Cassie. While in space, Rod and Joey constantly battle two bumbling cosmonauts.

Voices

• Sam Edwards
  Sam Edwards
  Sam Edwards was an American actor. His most famous role on TV was as the banker in the TV series Little House on the Prairie.-Biography:Born into a showbusiness family, his first role was as a baby in his mother's arms...
  
  - Rod Rocket and Joey
• Hal Smith
  Hal Smith (actor)
  Harold John "Hal" Smith was an American character actor and voice actor. Smith is best known as Otis Campbell, the town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show, and was the voice of many characters on various animated cartoon shorts...
  
  - Professor Angus
• Pat Blake - Cassie