Any kid who grew up in the 1980s probably remembers the popular sitcom Punky Brewster.
From its Challenger episode to the fact that the show's namesake was an actual person,
here's everything you don't know about the happy-go-lucky series.
Soleil Moon Frye had appeared in a couple of made-for-TV movies and
a handful of television episodes when she landed the role of plucky Punky Brewster.
Despite being a relative newcomer to show business when the series debuted in 1984,
eight-year-old Frye did boast some meaningful connections to Punky Brewster's creator.
Her older half-brother Meeno Peluce was a successful child actor,
appearing on the TV version of The Bad News Bears, Voyagers!,
and as abused child Toby on a "very special episode" of Silver Spoons. As it turned out,
Silver Spoons was developed by David W. Duclon, who was also the creator of Punky Brewster.
Despite this helpful link to the show's source, Frye still had to endure a very competitive
audition process. Producers put out a casting call far and wide, and only decided that Frye was the
right actor for the part after considering around 3,000 other candidates. Among those Frye defeated
was Melissa Joan Hart, who'd later star as the similarly quirky Sabrina on Sabrina the Teenage
Witch. Funnily enough, Frye ended up on that show as well, playing Sabrina's friend Roxie King.
The deep and deliberately voiced George Gaynes had been a hard-working character actor since
the early 1960s. He'd landed small parts on dozens of episodes of TV shows including Hogan's Heroes,
Columbo, and Hawaii Five-O. However, Gaynes didn't really explode into the public consciousness until
1984, thanks to back-to-back breakout roles as Commandant Eric Lassard in Police Academy
and as Punky's reluctant adoptive parent, Henry, on Punky Brewster.
However, Gaynes wasn't immediately in contention to land that sitcom dad role.
Seasoned television actor Fred Gwynne was gunning for the part as well,
which would've marked his third successful sitcom following Car 54,
Where are You?, and The Munsters, in which he starred as the goofy Herman Munster.
"I'm every inch a gentleman. In fact, several gentlemen."
Gwynne was eager to be associated with a role besides that of a monster from a
20-year-old novelty sitcom. He attended his Punky Brewster audition dressed in a
white suit with a fresh haircut, hoping to look as little like Herman Munster as possible.
But then Soleil Moon Frye arrived to read lines with Gwynne and innocently asked,
"Aren't you Herman Munster?" Gwynne was so disappointed, he botched his audition.
"Did you say yoots?"
"Ya, two yoots."
"What is a yoot?"
"Punky Brewster" ranks as one of the most memorable names in TV history.
It fits the character tremendously, with her free-thinking wardrobe choices and attitude,
to the point that one would think the name was made up by the show's writers. But
in fact, the name was taken from an actual person.
NBC Entertainment president Brandon Tartikoff commissioned the show Punky Brewster,
suggesting the concept to creator David W. Duclon with the caveat that the main character
be named Punky Brewster. As a child, Tartikoff attended Lawrenceville School, an exclusive,
boys-only academy where he met the daughter of a teacher whose name was, adorably, Punky Brewster.
Punky was actually a nickname — the young woman's real first name was Peyton. When Punky Brewster
was in production in 1984, Tartikoff had NBC's lawyers find the real Punky,
now married and going by Peyton Rutledge, to get her approval and
pay her for the right to use her name. She gave it, and also agreed to film a cameo.
“What's your name?”
"Punky Brewster."
"Punky Brewster? Strange name."
In the mid-1980s, NBC was enjoying a long-running and very lucrative deal that allowed them
to run NFL games on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes those football games ran long,
exceeding the allocated time slot and thus intruding upon the network's prescheduled
primetime television block. NBC wasn't going to cut away from a hotly contested football game in
favor of whatever sitcom or scripted drama was supposed to start at 7 PM, so whatever
show had that slot was bound to experience some interference during the fall and winter months.
NBC anticipated this fate befalling Punky Brewster, set to debut in September 1984.
To help ensure that Punky Brewster would find a foothold with young viewers and not be gobbled up
by football, NBC announced a unique format tweak for the show before it even debuted.
Of the initial 13 episodes of Punky Brewster ordered, three would be "collapsible,"
meaning they could be broken down into two standalone, 15-minute episodes.
That way, if football ran long, NBC could still air an episode of Punky Brewster that millions of
kids had made an appointment to watch, and also ensure its 8 PM hit Knight Rider could start on
time. 15-minute shows hadn't been part of the nighttime TV landscape since the 1960s, when the
networks produced 15-minute primetime newscasts, but Punky Brewster brought the format back.
Punky Brewster's biggest supporter and constant partner in mischief
is her close friend Cherie Johnson, who lives in the same building as Punky's foster father,
Henry. The character of Cherie Johnson was played by a young actor also named Cherie
Johnson — and that wasn't a coincidence. Punky Brewster's creator, David W. Duclon,
just happened to be Johnson's uncle. Johnson told Mental Floss:
"He created the show, but not for me to have a
job. He just thought he'd use my name and that I'd be thrilled."
Duclon was only vaguely aware that his niece had acting aspirations, of which she wasn't
quite convinced herself. On the set of Duclon's other '80s show, Silver Spoons, Johnson told
Parlé that she watched Ricky Schroder perform and told Duclon that she could do the same.
When Punky Brewster entered production and Johnson learned that Duclon had named a character
after her, Johnson pushed to play the role. As Johnson later recalled, Duclon wanted a, quote,
"real actress." After Johnson auditioned seven times, however, NBC told Duclon to cast her.
"Oh, Cherie, I must have a green thumb. I sure have grown a pretty little flower."
"Thanks, Grandma."
On January 28, 1986, NASA launched the space shuttle Challenger. This was almost a routine
occurrence, as this would be the 10th time Challenger had gone into space in three years.
But this time was indeed different. High school teacher Christa McAuliffe was one of
seven Challenger crew members, set to become the first American civilian to visit space.
Because of the historical importance and educational connection, countless
classrooms around the country tuned in to watch the Challenger launch live. Tragically,
a little over a minute after liftoff, the space shuttle exploded, killing all seven
crew members. It's impossible to say how many kids watching the moment on TV were traumatized,
but the fact that it became a shocking generational milestone is beyond question.
One of those kids left sad and troubled by the event was a fictional one: TV's Punky Brewster.
The character repeatedly affirms her desire to be an astronaut when she grows up, so David W.
Duclon wrote an episode in which the character processes the Challenger disaster. According
to the Los Angeles Times, Duclon also wanted to help kid viewers manage their feelings, and to not
give up on their dreams of being astronauts some day. That encouragement is explicitly delivered
to Punky in the episode by special guest star Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon.
Punky Brewster received numerous letters from young viewers who would write suggestions on
what they wanted to see Punky do, as show producer Rick Hawkins told Mental Floss.
This inspired David W. Duclon to have an official contest, in which he asked kids
to send in their Punky Brewster ideas in the hopes of having it become an actual episode.
A seven-year-old Punky Brewster fan named Jeremy Reams sent in the winning entry,
which suggested Punky should show kids how to use CPR to save a life.
Show writers ran with that, concocting the 1986 episode "Cherie Lifesaver," wherein Punky's
best friend Cherie gets trapped in a junked fridge while playing. Hawkins told the outlet,
"That [idea] came out of research we had done where we learned an alarming
number of kids had suffocated in an old fridge or freezer."
By the '80s, fridges had to be openable from the inside, but, as Hawkins told Mental Floss,
"[I]n low economic neighborhoods, the old [fridges] were being tossed out in vacant lots."
Cherie nearly dies in that fridge, only for Punky to save her with CPR.
Punky Brewster was popular enough that NBC sought to expand their spunky,
fashion-forward star's TV empire. In the fall of 1985, a year after Punky Brewster debuted, NBC's
Saturday morning lineup welcomed a new cartoon also called Punky Brewster, although it was
sometimes referred to as It's Punky Brewster to differentiate it from its live-action counterpart.
While the sitcom is about an orphan living with a sometimes-stodgy old man, the animated series
is a bizarre, fantastical adventure with the characters of Punky Brewster added in.
The animated show also featured a cute, magical, gopher-like creature named Glomer,
who comes from a city at the end of the rainbow and gets lost in the real world, only to meet
Punky and her friends. This Punky Brewster lasted for two strange, whimsical seasons.
Not as successful a spin-off was Fenster Hall. NBC aired the pilot as an episode of Punky Brewster in
March 1985 without ordering a full series. Such a series would've explored the day-to-day happenings
of a children's shelter, which briefly served as a temporary home to Punky herself in early
episodes of Punky Brewster. Believe it or not, this spin-off series would have been a comedy.
Despite its impact with young viewers, Punky Brewster was not a breakout ratings hit.
In the 1984-85 season, it ranked 69th out of 77 shows in terms of viewership,
and fell to 76th in season two. This was bad news for Punky Brewster fans, and
NBC canceled it in 1986. There was good news, however: The network sold it to a television
syndicate. Several hundred non-network affiliated TV stations in the U.S. needed programming,
and many relied on modestly-budgeted scripted productions sold to them by distributors.
Joining the ranks of programs of dubious quality like She's the Sheriff, Small Wonder, and Mama's
Family were the third and fourth seasons of Punky Brewster. After a post-NBC hiatus of a year and a
half, these seasons aired on independent stations around the country in late 1987 and early 1988.
These 44 episodes nearly didn't get produced at all. In a contract dispute,
Soleil Moon Frye didn't report for work when it came time to shoot the
first episodes for syndicator Columbia Pictures Television. The company then threatened Frye,
10 years old at the time, with an $80 million lawsuit if she continued to hold out.
Punky Brewster ended a four-year, 88-episode run in the spring of 1988,
with its animated Saturday morning spinoff wrapping up a year earlier.
And yet the franchise hasn't remained dormant. In 2014, comics publisher
Lion Forge's ROAR imprint added a digital-only Punky Brewster book series to its line of
nostalgia-stirring adaptations of '80s titles like Airwolf, Knight Rider, and Saved by the Bell.
The comic was a collaboration between Teen Titans writer Joelle Sellner and artist Lesley Vamos.
Eventually collected and published as Punky Power, the comic serves as a prequel to the 1980s series,
focusing on a homeless Punky Brewster as she wanders the city looking for a place to live.
In January 2020, NBCUniversal announced that a new Punky Brewster series was in the works.
Set to debut in 2021 on the Peacock streaming service,
Soleil Moon Frye returns as the title character, now a single mother of three
who is still friends with Cherie and still occasionally wears two mismatched
shoes. Heart-warmingly, she befriends a girl in foster care who reminds her of her old self.
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