LOS ANGELES (KABC) — If you grew up in the 1970s, you probably knew all about a kids’ show with plenty of music, lots of life lessons and three costumed animal characters.
Now, thanks to social media, the program’s human stars are back in the spotlight. We are catching up with “Doug and Emmy Jo” from “New Zoo Revue.”
Together, they made almost 200 episodes of “New Zoo Revue” over five seasons, beginning in 1972.
Doug Momary and Emily Peden, better known as Doug and Emmy Jo, taught us to be better citizens with the help of costumed characters named Henrietta Hippo, Charlie the Owl and Freddie the Frog.
They used song and dance and stories to help us understand things we could take with us as we grew older.
“That’s what Doug intended,” said Peden. “And we’ve even had kids say, ‘I pretended that you were my parents. I wanted to go home and live with you.’ And so I’m grateful that now we have an opportunity to meet some of those children.”
Decades later, the memories and the music remain.
“It is amazing that, you know, songs that I wrote 50 years ago still pertain to what’s going on today in kids’ lives,” Momary said. “We had a schedule where I would write the songs over the summer and write the stories and then we’d give them to our script writers who would flesh them out. And I would write the songs for all those shows, 52 shows we did the first season. And so each show had three songs, three to four songs it. So do the math,” he said. The math computes to 600 songs.
Among the topics they tackled: Pride, love and even nutrition.
“When you have a little child, everything you say goes into, like, a little computer in their brain. It stays there,” said Peden. “And I’m so thankful that what we put into their little brains was positive.”
“And treating people as you would have them treat you. I mean, it was the golden rule but it still applies today,” Momary added.
The couple, married now for 55 years, had been out of the spotlight for some time until their daughter put them on social media and their fans found them all over again.
“I’ve re-colored and re-mastered, like, 21 shows on Prime Ticket. It’s so fun to go back and look at those and be able to revisit the music and it has just been fascinating to me,” Momary said.
“I just love it. And I love meeting our New Zoo kids,” Peden said.
You can also find episodes of “New Zoo Revue” on YouTube. Momary has a couple of new ideas he’s working on now. “Safari Town” is an animated show he’d like to see get made. The other idea is called “Knights of IT: Guaridans of the Digital Realm,” a series about how to handle the internet.