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Granted its a cartoon, but something always puzzled me....

The Flintstones are a "modern stone-age family", and have all the conveniences of the modern world. These include appliances such as trash compactors, garbage disposals, radios, washing machines, dicta-birds...all manner of modern stuff.... which are essentially powered by animals. Everything from mini-mammoths to pre-historic pigs to itty bitty dino birds, there are a lot of these "Appliances" around which they use every day.

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Considering there is no electricity (and these creatures wouldn't run on it anyway), but they should be powered by something .... How exactly do these "items" get their power? Do the Flintsones have to feed them regularly?

It's never been elaborated on in the cartoon; figured somebody must know something.

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    Nevermind who's feeding them, who's slopping out the "garbage disposal!?" Kinda defeats the purpose of a garbage disposal...
    – DavidW
    Commented Dec 18, 2019 at 18:50
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    A running gag is those animals saying "it's a living". I remember an episode, or TV movie, that showed the animals when they are off-duty, and the flintstones aren't around. I believe they feed themselves on their own time, as they are employed, not owned.
    – rld
    Commented Dec 18, 2019 at 19:04
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    @rld that needs to be an answer
    – Quasi_Stomach
    Commented Dec 18, 2019 at 19:29
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    This is some deeply dark shizzle; bleedingcool.com/2017/03/01/…
    – Valorum
    Commented Dec 18, 2019 at 19:34
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    @Russhiro - As with most worldbuilding, if you start to actually consider the ethics you end up going down a very narrow and dark rabbit-hole.
    – Valorum
    Commented Dec 18, 2019 at 21:20

1 Answer 1

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A running gag is those animals saying "it's a living". I remember an episode, or TV movie, that showed the animals when they are off-duty, and the flintstones aren't around. I believe they feed themselves on their own time, as they are employed, not owned.

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3
  • I will try and hunt a clip down after work, I have vague memories of a 80s era made for TV special/movie..
    – rld
    Commented Dec 18, 2019 at 21:03
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    Taking you as a person of honor, and for your logical application, I put this as an answer anyway. Thank you./
    – Russhiro
    Commented Dec 18, 2019 at 21:42
  • I remember hearing one or another of the appliance animals saying that on several occasions. I watched the flintstones when it first came out.
    – NothingToSeeHere
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 13:25

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