Munsters on 34th Street

It’s Thanksgiving and of course that means…The Munsters. Here’s the clan from 1313 Mockingbird Lane gathered in this photo with their fleet of kooky Munster kars, including the Munster Koach and the “Drag-u-la” souped-up dragster, both designed by cool-car maven George Barris. Check out this video (thanks to the excellent Check the Cool Wax blog) of Herman Munster and Grandpa from TV’s The Munsters in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from the mid-1960s, riding the Munster Koach (of which there are plenty of detailed close-ups). The Munsters are the focus of this Universal newsreel (The Munsters was a Universal production, get it?) but this vintage footage also features many glimpses of that big parade, including many of the pageant’s trademark giant balloons (including the goofy dragon balloon, Linus the Lionhearted and Donald Duck, making a turn on a very tight corner), parade-goers and Santa Claus. Note the narration is by Ed Herlihy, the narrator of the Universal newsreels, Jack Parr’s announcer on the post-Steve Allen/pre-Johnny Carson Tonight Show and (fitting in with our feasting theme), from 1947 through the early 1980s, the long-time voice of Kraft Foods, including the famous “recipe” TV commercials (“You’ll find all the recipes from tonight’s show in this week’s TV Guide.”).