It Wasn't Just My Imagination

One of great thing about the advent of the internet as a part of popular culture has been the ability to confirm that entire parts of my childhood weren't figments of my imagination. Case in point: the Gigantor cartoon show.


As a kid, I remembered that when I was four or five years old, in 1965-1966, a Chicago telelvision station, maybe WGN, featured the show Gigantor. The premise was that a young boy had control of an enormous radio-controlled robot who fought for the forces of good.

I have a very good memory for things that happened in my childhood; I have clear memories of a home my family lived in in Lagrange, Illinois when I was one year old. I've described details of the apartment to my parents and my parents agreed that my memories were correct. Therefore, it confused me when, as I grew up, in the course of talks with classmates about favorite childhood television programs, nobody remembered the Gigantor program.

I remember that the program was my favorite, until the Batman television show debuted in 1966. I have vivid memories of when my family lived in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, my brothers and I spending an afternoon constructing a "Gigantor" robot out of paper, crayons, thread and scotch tape.

Thanks to Wikipedia and Youtube, my childhood memories are proven not to have been hallucinations. The show had its origins as a Japanese manga called Tetsujin-28-go, which was purchased Fred Ladd and Al Singer, who hired Peter Fernandez to write the English scripts and participate in the English overdubbing. Fernandez later was involved in the same type of project with the seventies after-school staple Speed Racer.

At some point, after getting internet access around the time my son was born, I was able to find information on the show. I was struck by the whole premise of the show-- giving control of a powerful 100 foot tall rocket-powered robot to a 12-Year-Old boy. Could you imagine how a kid that age would use a robot like that?

"No, Mrs. Henderson, I don't think we'll be having any homework tonight-- not if you don't want your car to be crushed like a tin can..."

I was able to find an episode of Gigantor on Youtube, including the opening theme song, which I remembered, to my disbelief, word for word. I've included it below.