Sep 29, 2010 14:09 GMT  ·  By

With Google having recently celebrated its birthday with a special doodle, it's now gotten back to celebrating other people's, or in this case, animated TV shows' birthdays. Google is now featuring a "The Flintstones" doodle to mark the popular show's 50th anniversary.

The Flintstones doodle is currently live in New Zealand, Fiji and a few nations in the Pacific ocean, places where it is already September 30. As the clock strikes 12:00 in other places, the doodle should go live there as well.

Still, it's going to be a while before it reaches Europe and even more until it goes live on the main Google.com site, which is updated according to US time.

The Flintstones is one of the best known and loved animated series of all time. It debuted on September 30, 1960 and ran for six seasons on ABC. The final episode of the original series aired on April 1, 1966.

The show sparked a number of spinoffs and a few animated and even live action movies which have kept it fresh in the collective mind.

The show centered around the Flintstone family and the juxtaposition between 'modern-day' issues and the fictionalized version of the Stone Age, featuring dinosaurs.

Of course, it has to be taken into account that the 'modern-day' issues refer to the 1960s, making the show an interesting glimpse of western and particularly US views on life from five decades ago.

One particularly interesting piece of trivia is that The Flintstones was the first ever animated TV show to feature a couple, gasp, sleeping in the same bed.

Mel Blanc, The Man of a Thousand Voices as he is known, voiced Barney Rubble, one of the leading characters in the show. Blanc is one of the best known voice actors of all time especially for the characters he did for Warner Brothers. He is the voice behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, Yosemite Sam, Wile E. Coyote and countless others.