Gigglesnort Hotel (partially lost local children's variety puppet TV program; 1975-1978)
Series screenshot.
Status: Partially Lost
Gigglesnort Hotel first aired on Chicago WLS-TV in 1975 and quickly became one of the highest rated children's shows in the channel's history, eventually being syndicated in 1978. It was the third children's show created by Jackson and served as a successor to his previous shows "The BJ and Dirty Dragon Show" (also known as Cartoon Town) and "Clown Alley" (which are both also mostly lost) and featured many characters from both. It ran for 78 episodes.
The show consisted of various vignettes and sketches featuring interactions between the mayor of Cartoon Town BJ (Bill Jackson) and his zany cast of puppet characters: The eponymous owner of the hotel, Old Man Gigglesnort, Mother Plumtree, The Old Professor, Wally Goodscout, The Lemon Joke Kid, the Thumptwangers, the hotel bellhop named Weird, Dirty Dragon, and many more. Each episode would teach a life lesson that would tie into the lives of the inhabitants of the Gigglesnort Hotel: e.g. taking care of a puppy as in S03E06 "Puppy Parenthood!"
Following the end of its syndication Bill Jackon seemingly retained the rights to the show, opening up a now defunct website (dirtydragon.com[1]) to sell DVDs of the series under his production company Funco[1]. Collections of assorted volumes containing 2 episodes each were sold via mail order. Availability of the volumes varied over time, with the final version of the site only listing volumes 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 for sale[1]. They were never given an official release outside of these volumes.
Found Episodes
TVDB[2] has a listing for the show with a complete list of episodes, although due to the limited amount of information about the show online, the accuracy of these titles is not verified and the source of them is unknown.
The YouTube Channel "The Museum of Classic Chicago Television"[3] has posted clips of many episodes as well as two complete episodes: "Following Directions" and "Return of The Slob!" (bearing a burned-in watermark from their website fuzzymemories.tv[4]).
Archive.org user "lo-fi noise makers"[5] has uploaded a single episode (Title unknown)
YouTube channel Paul Novak[6] uploaded two episodes, "Puppy Parenthood!" and "The Shusher" as well as a documentary about the making of "Clown Alley", "The BJ and Dirty Dragon Show", and "Gigglesnort Hotel" titled "Remembering Cartoon Town"
YouTube channel sasha[7] uploaded DVD rips of Volume 2, Volume 3 and Volume 4.