The Thing is a 1979 Marvel cartoon, produced by Hanna-Barbera, about Ben Grimm as a teenager. The story is different from the original Fantastic Four comics and focused solely on the Thing in his misadventures.
The cartoon was part of Fred and Barney Meet the Thing. It has nothing to do with The Thing franchise, nor any of the films.
The Thing provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: The other members of the Fantastic Four (Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, and the Human Torch) are completely omitted in this adaptation, with the Thing being portrayed as a solo hero.
- Amplified Animal Aptitude: "The Thing Goes To The Dogs" features a supposedly-normal dog who, at one point, stands on her hind legs to play charades with the main characters, growing thumbs in the process.
- Beach Episode: "Beach Party Crashers", though most of the characters spend the episode in their normal outfits. Betty changes into a bikini for one scene, which she spends mostly underwater. (Though rich kid Ronald and the elderly Miss Twilly get more screen time in their respective swimsuits) "Lights, Action, Thing" starts with the characters on a yacht in swimwear, hewing closer to the trope in spirit if not literally.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Benjy and friends encounter Bigfoot in "The Thing Meets Bigfoot", both Stretch disguised as the hairy cryptid and the genuine article.
- Big, Thin, Short Trio: This version of the Yancy Street Gang is this, with leader Spike Hanrahan being the "Short", Stretch being the "Thin", and Turkey being the "Big".
- Blessed with Suck: The main character is, in reality, neither the scrawny geek Benjy nor the monstrous but popular Thing. He's the adult Ben Grimm, unable to change back to his normal self. The young audience is apparently supposed to see his condition as Cursed with Awesome, but Benjy clearly feels differently. As he says in "To Thing or Not To Thing":The Thing: I've had it being Benjy or boulders! I want to be me again, test pilot Ben Grimm.
- It's somewhat justified by the comments that Ben's true passion in life is being a pilot, something he can't do as Benjy either as he's too young in that form. He could wait it out a few years until he's legally an adult again but he's both doesn't want to wait and fears he'll lose his edge from being out of the cockpit that long as well as the fear that in his scrawnier Benjy form he won't be able to pass the physical requirements to be a military test pilot like his first go around.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: To become the Thing, Benjy Grimm touches his rings together while intoning, "Thing Ring, do your thing!"
- Canon Immigrant: The Thing Ring (or Thing Rings in this case) was adapted into the comics later on when Ms. Thing becomes an auxiliary member of the Fantastic Four, using the rings and the catchphrase to summon a Thing suit that gives her super strength.
- Cats Are Mean: The Yancy Street Gang's cat Roscoe in "The Thing Goes to the Dogs", who aids the gang in their plan to kidnap Ronald Radford's dog Countess.
- Celebrity Lie: An odd variation in "Decepto the Great": Benjy can't seem to produce the Thing for a school show, even though he is the Thing. Every time he transforms, he winds up scaring a comic-relief janitor character — seen only in this episode — and he changes back to try to calm him down instead of going on stage.
- Comedic Underwear Exposure: In the episode "Circus Stampede" Turkey, the fat Yancy Street Gang member, has his pants ripped off by a lion, leaving him embarrassed only in his white underwear with pink polka-dots.
- Cryptid Episode: One of the first episodes is "Bigfoot Meets the Thing." Of course, "Bigfoot" is just Stretch from the Yancy Street Gang in a costume — until the real Bigfoot shows up and promptly falls in love with the guy in the (apparently-female) costume.
- Dumb Muscle: Turkey of the Yancy Street Gang is a big guy and the dumbest of the group.
- Easy Amnesia: "The Thing Blanks Out" has the Thing forget who he is after being hit on the head after lifting a bridge to prevent Ronald's yacht from crashing into it. He doesn't have his memory restored until an acorn hits him on the head.
- Evil Knockoff: "Double Trouble for the Thing" features a robot duplicate of the Thing, programmed to commit crimes and frame the real deal.
- Gone Horribly Wrong:
- The opening heavily implies (and several episodes later confirm) that this is the same adult Ben Grimm from the Fantastic Four comics, but he's unable to transform back into his normal adult self because of something Professor Harkness did to try to cure him. Now he's stuck as either a scrawny geek or a monstrous pile of rocks, neither of which he likes (but he likes being the Thing less).
- To a lesser degree, the robot Clunk from "The Thing Meets The Clunk". It's a robot designed and programmed to help people, but in practice it combines strength equal to the Thing with absolutely no common sense, leading him to cause more problems than he solves. "HELP? CLUNK HELP!" meant that a disaster was about to occur.
- Hammerspace: The orange rocks that turn Benjy into the Thing seem to appear out of nowhere. (Though that does seem to be at least partially for the audience's benefit; when transforming in an enclosed space, no rocks are shown flying into the space from the outside)
- In Name Only: For starters, "Benjy" Grimm is a skinny, picked-upon teenager who can transform into the Thing and back by putting the two halves of his "thing ring" together. The show is mainly a Gag Series consisting of a bunch of high school students getting into wacky hijinks. Not a one of the other Fantastic Four are ever seen or mentioned, nor do any actual supervillains show up. The closest thing to recurring villains are the Yancy Street Gang, a bunch of idiot bikers. Weirdest of all, Benjy is still actually test pilot Ben Grimm, somehow turned into a scrawny teenager who can transform into a rock monster, which, assuming his fateful cosmic journey is yet to come in this universe, just makes things more confusing.
- Invincible Hero: The Thing's strength is taken to physics-defying extremes, able to bend metal beams into a wooden clubhouse, and at one point using a boulder and a large tree as a leaver to lift an entire mountain range with no problems. This despite the fact that he deals with mostly mundane problems like a biker gang ruining his picnic.
- Irony: Being stuck as a skinny teen aside, this version of Ben Grimm is basically living the life his comic book self would probably kill to have, I.e- able to transform into the Thing at will, his Thing form having a fan following with at least one hot chick fawning over him while comic Thing is stuck as the Thing and his appearance is treated as hideous or a source of derision by nearly everyone else around him. The one aspect both versions share across continuities is the loyal friendship of a scientist—Professor Harkness and Reed Richards, respectively— who won't stop at trying to return them to normal.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Professor Harkness and Kelly think it's appropriate that Betty (Kelly's sister) not know that Benjy and the Thing are one and the same, and Betty (a rather shallow and materialistic individual who dates Ronald purely for his money) apparently doesn't hang around her own family enough to connect the dots herself.
- Loves My Alter Ego: Benjy has a crush on Betty Harkness, but Betty only has eyes for the Thing. (The Thing, despite otherwise sharing Benjy's mind and personality, does not seem to have a crush on Betty)
- My Nayme Is: His name is Benjy Grimm, not Benji (probably to avoid confusion or legal issues involving another famous Benji).
- Pet the Dog: Snobby rich kid Ronald Radford demonstrates the trope in a somewhat literal manner in "The Thing Goes to the Dogs", where he is shown to genuinely care for his dog Countess.
- Picnic Episode: "Picnic Panic" had Benjy and friends on a picnic that the Yancy Street Gang tried to ruin.
- Poke the Poodle: The Yancy Street Gang were pranksters who especially loved to torment spoiled rich kid Ronald, but basically harmless.
- Porky Pig Pronunciation: In the episode "The Thing Blanks Out", the Thing struggles to pronounce "ingenuity" before settling on "smarts".
- Power Incontinence: "To Thing Or Not To Thing" has Benjy transforming back and forth at random all day (with a shortened and rock-less version of his usual Transformation Sequence), while out with his friends. Somehow, nobody notices.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: "The Thing and the Captain's Ghost" is based around this, with Spike of the Yancy Street Gang pretending to be the ghost of the title to scare Ronald. They themselves then get scared off by the heroes pretending to be ghosts or, more specifically, by Betty, with her hair in curlers and her face in a mudpack.
- Secret Identity: Only Kelly Harkness and her father, the man who accidentally changed Ben Grimm into a teenager in the first place, know that Benjy is the Thing. Even Kelly's sister Betty, who is smitten with the Thing and who Benjy has a crush on, doesn't know.
- Shout-Out: "The Thing Blanks Out" at one point shows a dog that looks similar to Scooby-Doo.
- Transformation Sequence: A particularly elaborate one, and another one for reversion. Benjy Grimm puts the two halves of his ring together while saying "Thing ring, do your thing!" While he normally only transforms two or three times per episode (plus maybe one reversion sequence), in "Decepto the Great", he transforms to or from the Thing seven times, the first four in the span of a minute and a half
. - X-Ray Sparks: In "A Hot Air Affair at the Fair", the Thing catches a lightning bolt and throws it at Spike, causing his skeleton to become visible as he's being electrocuted.
- Younger and Hipper: Ben is stuck as a teenager in this series, and has to endure going back to high school a second time (but as a scrawnier and geekier version of his original self).