A magician shows how magic the multiplication of 3 really is, including a family of three and a football team whose uniforms are numbered in threes.
"Three Is a Magic Number" was the pilot episode and had originally aired in full as part of Curiosity Shop on September 2, 1971 (two years before ABC aired the show). When aired on Multiplication Rock, a small portion was cut due to an error: Dorough had included a claim that there were exactly three multiples of three in every set of ten natural numbers, but this generalization fails when the first number in the set is a multiple of 30, in which case there are four multiples of three.
2
2
"My Hero, Zero"
Bob Dorough
Bob Dorough
January 13, 1973 (1973-01-13)
A young boy portrayed as a superhero shows his skeptical older sister the importance of the digit 0 as well as multiplication by powers of 10.
3
3
"Elementary, My Dear"
Bob Dorough
Bob Dorough
January 27, 1973 (1973-01-27)
The multiplication of 2 is taught in the context of a non-religious version of the story, Noah's Ark.
4
4
"The Four-Legged Zoo"
Bob Dorough w/kids chorus
Bob Dorough
February 10, 1973 (1973-02-10)
A teacher (Miss Simpson) takes her class on a field trip to the zoo where they use the animals (Alpacas, Ibexes, Kudus, etc.) to learn the multiplication of 4.
5
5
"Ready or Not, Here I Come"
Bob Dorough
Bob Dorough, Maurice Irby Jr.
February 17, 1973 (1973-02-17)
A boy (who is the oldest of a group of students) counts by fives during a game of hide and seek with his friends. (Irby's writing credit comes from the inclusion of some lyrics from his composition "Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie," a hit song by Jay and the Techniques.)
This is the first to feature an African-American child as the main character of the series. It teaches about the multiplication of 6 with visits to the neighborhood candy store, a restaurant, and an African prince. It also explores the commutative property in multiplication.
7
7
"Lucky Seven Sampson"
Bob Dorough
Bob Dorough
February 17, 1973 (1973-02-17)
Lucky Seven Sampson is a happy-go-lucky but mischievous rabbit with the number 7 stamped on the bottom of his right foot and a black circle around his left eye. He teaches kids from Public School #7 about the multiplication of 7. It also explores the distributive property for multiplying 7 by numbers greater than 10.
During school on a cold winter's day, a young girl's thoughts about the multiplication of 8 revolve around winter games, particularly ice skating. The video briefly explores the distributive property of multiplication/addition for multiplying 8 by numbers higher than 10, and closes by noting the numeral 8's resemblance to a sideways infinity symbol.
This short came out two years after the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act had prohibited cigarette advertising; it did not, however, prohibit the depiction of smoking in fiction, even in children's programming, so long as it was not a sponsored tie-in. In the short, Number Nine puffs a cigar throughout. ABC Broadcast Standards and Practices, after initially rejecting the short for this reason, relented and allowed the short to air when it accepted that the cat was a villain and would not encourage children to smoke. It remained in rotation through the rest of the series run.
10
10
"The Good Eleven"
Bob Dorough
Bob Dorough
March 24, 1973 (1973-03-24)
Winged angels take us through the multiplication of 11 while continuously bumping into the number 10. The distributive property of multiplication and addition, plus the commutative property of multiplication are also briefly explored.
11
11
"Little Twelvetoes"
Bob Dorough
Bob Dorough
March 31, 1973 (1973-03-31)
In this space rock piece, a yokel (the slowpoke from "Ready or Not, Here I Come") encounters Little Twelvetoes, a peculiar, Mad Hatter-like extraterrestrial lifeform in a flying saucer who has twelve fingers on each hand and twelve toes on each foot and counts using base-twelve (which is demonstrated with the Frank Emerson Andrews notation of χ and ↋ for the tenth and eleventh digits). Having only ten fingers and toes on each hand and foot, the yokel must learn multiplication by 12 "the hard way," and Little Twelvetoes obliges with a game of interplanetary pinball before disappearing into the night.
A young white-haired girl (Ahrens in her series introduction) sings about the different people, places and things she encounters on her daily adventures, introducing the viewer to the grammatical construct of nouns.
13
2
"Verb: That's What's Happening"
Zachary Sanders
Bob Dorough
September 22, 1973 (1973-09-22)
In an homage to blaxploitation films, a young black boy learns about verbs from a movie starring his favorite superhero, Verb.
In a railyard, a train conductor (Sheldon in his series debut) shows the viewer how conjunctions work by hooking up boxcars representing words, phrases and clauses with one of three conjunction boxcars: AND (a red boxcar), BUT (a yellow tank car), and OR (a green hopper car).
This song teaches about interjections through three stories: an ill child reacting to a shot of medication, a woman rejecting a suitor's advances, and a group of irate fans shouting non-obscene words in response to an interception at a football game. The song's chorus quotes the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. Producer Tom Yohe's daughter Lauren provides the closing line: "Darn! That's the end!"
The Lolly family, owners of a store that sells adverbs, demonstrate their product. Bob Dorough provides the voices of all three generations of Lollys at various speeds.
18
7
"Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla"
Jack Sheldon
Bob Dorough & Kathy Mandry
April 27, 1976 (1976-04-27)
Pronouns are stressed by a trio with long names: Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla, his sister Rafaella Gabriela Sarsaparilla and their friend (and narrator) Albert Andreas Armadillo, along with their pets consisting of a kangaroo, an aardvark and a rhinoceros.
19
8
"Busy Prepositions"
Bob Dorough & Jack Sheldon
Bob Dorough
September 11, 1993 (1993-09-11)
A horde of working ants called "The Busy P's" teach about prepositions while on the job.
20
9
"The Tale of Mr. Morton"
Jack Sheldon
Lynn Ahrens
September 11, 1993 (1993-09-11)
A single man named Mr. Morton is the subject of a series of sentences describing his life and courtship with a neighbor. The episode illustrates the grammatical constructs of subject and predicate.
A proposed transportation bill, depressed about the long and arduous legislative process and eager to be signed into law, sits on the steps to Capitol Hill and laments his plight to a young boy standing nearby, explaining the legislative process along the way. To his delight, the bill is signed into law at the end of the song.
This song teaches about Immigration in America, using the extant analogy of a melting pot (stirred by the Statue of Liberty) to describe how multiples of cultures assimilated into each other over the course of American history.
27
7
"Elbow Room"
Sue Manchester
Lynn Ahrens
May 22, 1976 (1976-05-22)
This song teaches about the Westward Expansion, or moving south and west from the 13 original colonies.
Bob Dorough, Blossom Dearie, Essra Mohawk & Jack Sheldon
Bob Dorough
July 10, 1976 (1976-07-10)
In a play on the adage "Necessity is the mother of invention," great inventions are set to a series of short, mostly unrelated songs tied together by the titular Mother Necessity (resembling Whistler's Mother), who keeps pictures of the inventions on her wall. In several of the songs, fictionalized accounts describe how struggles of the inventors' mothers inspired major inventions by Samuel Morse, Thomas Edison, Elias Howe and the Wright Brothers.
This song teaches about the electoral college. Created in response to the controversial 2000 Election; it was featured in the 30th anniversary special video as a bonus. This episode was first produced in the 21st century.
32
12
"Presidential Minute" "The Campaign Trail"
Jack Sheldon
George R. Newall & Tom Yohe Jr.
August 27, 2002 (2002-08-27)
This song teaches about voting for president.
The song was originally recorded in 1996 as "The Campaign Trail". Six years later, the animated episode was released to DVD in 2002 as "Presidential Minute".
In the late 1950s, a greaser experiences misfortune due to things constantly falling as he courts his redheaded sweetheart, Mary Jean. The song superficially describes gravity and its necessity in keeping things attached to Earth and its orbit in outer space, also noting Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei's contributions to modern understanding of the concept.
34
2
"Interplanet Janet"
Lynn Ahrens
Lynn Ahrens
November 18, 1978 (1978-11-18)
An anthropomorphic comet with a rocket-tailed skirt, wings and her hair in curls, which done in a "cloud" style, and a humanoid head explores the Solar System, getting an autograph from the Sun (because it is, literally, a star) and visiting each planet. In bypassing Earth, she is mistaken for a UFO by the "weird" Earthlings. Near the end, it mentions the possible existence of exoplanets in other planetary systems (something that was eventually confirmed in 1992).
"Interplanet Janet" became outdated within three months of its first airing, due to Pluto being mentioned as the ninth and farthest planet from the Sun; on February 7, 1979, Pluto's orbit came closer to the Sun than Neptune's, a situation that remained until Pluto moved further out on its elliptical orbit in 1999.[4] Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet along with three other celestial bodies in 2006.[5] It was always re-aired intact, but structured so that the Pluto section could be edited out without clear inconsistency.
35
3
"The Body Machine"
Bob Dorough & Jack Sheldon
Lynn Ahrens
January 6, 1979 (1979-01-06)
This song teaches about our bodies' digestive process and nutritional needs. A young girl focuses on people going strong.
This song teaches about our bodies' circulatory system, in the style of an exercise video.
37
5
"The Energy Blues"
Jack Sheldon
George Newall
March 27, 1979 (1979-03-27)
The Earth, depicted with a human face, tells the history of energy production and consumption in the world and raises concerns about the environment and future energy crises.
38
6
"Them Not-So-Dry Bones"
Jack Sheldon
George Newall
May 5, 1979 (1979-05-05)
This song teaches about the human skeleton; the song is based on the traditional song "Dem Bones", which a male quartet sings fragments of throughout.
39
7
"Electricity, Electricity"
Zachary Sanders
Bob Dorough
May 19, 1979 (1979-05-19)
This song teaches about the use of electricity and the concepts (such as voltage and current) behind it.
This short was later edited in 2019, which tones down the speed of the flickering effects in several sequences to avoid risk of inducing epileptic seizures in reviewers.[6]
40
8
"Telegraph Line"
Jaime Aff & Christine Langner
Lynn Ahrens
June 30, 1979 (1979-06-30)
The human nervous system is personified as a messenger delivering telegrams to and from the brain, passing along messages representing pain, heat and stage fright.
This song teaches the three basic components of weather in the style of a vaudeville show.
Some time after 1987, "The Greatest Show on Earth" was pulled from broadcast after Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus objected to the name, as the circus owned a trademark on the phrase. The short only aired on television a couple times during the 1990s revival, and it was not included on most VHS releases after that date. On the DVD release of the series, it is included as a separate lost episode, using the name "The Weather Show."
Computer Rock, Season 5 (1982–84)
No. overall
No. in season
Title
Performed by
Written by
Original release date
42
1
"Introduction"
Darrell Stern & Bob Kaliban
Bob Dorough, Lynn Ahrens & Tom Yohe
1982 (1982)
This song teaches about the computer, introducing the recurring characters Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips. (This episode was left off of the DVD release, reportedly due to ABC having lost the master tape. Darrell Stern, the voice of Scooter Computer, preserved a copy on VHS and posted it to YouTube.[7])
Scooter Computer has been assigned statistician duties for his baseball team, and Mr. Chips explains how computers make the job of calculating statistics easier and quicker.
Money Rock, Season 6 (1994–96)
In the 1990s, ABC produced more new episodes along with the last two of Grammar Rock.
Becky Sue, an aspiring country musician, consults a banker on how to raise enough money to buy the music equipment she needs to become a star; the banker introduces her to the banking system, suggesting a savings account that will earn interest, or a loan which she would have to then pay back with interest. The punchline is that when she does buy the equipment, her farm lacks the electricity to operate it, with the singer advising the listener to use "a little bit of common sense."
A small, cute, sweet, and portly clown-like vaudeville star named Max and his five girlfriends, Tracy (dark skin), Annie (blonde hair), Kathi (tan skin), Joy (carrot top), and Natalie (red hair) explain how taxes are collected and how the revenue from those taxes is used, in a Broadway-style presentation.
48
3
"Where the Money Goes"
Jack Sheldon
Rich Mendoza
July 13, 1995 (1995-07-13)
A tuba-playing boy who wants to go on his school band's trip to the Rose Bowl parade asks his father why they can't afford the trip, so the father teaches his son the expenses a family incurs, and how he can help save money so he can afford the trip.
49
4
"$7.50 Once a Week"
Dave Frishberg
Dave Frishberg
October 23, 1995 (1995-10-23)
A kid with a $7.50 weekly allowance has spent all of it far quicker than he wanted to; the song explores the concept of budgeting, showing the several ways that the kid could have spent less money over the course of his week.
50
5
"Tyrannosaurus Debt"
Bob Dorough & Bob Kaliban
Tom Yohe
January 21, 1996 (1996-01-21)
The song is a discussion of the continuous increases in the United States national debt, which is portrayed as an ever-growing Tyrannosaurus rex. Bill from "I'm Just a Bill" makes a cameo at the very end.
51
6
"This for That"
Bob Dorough
George Newall
May 6, 1996 (1996-05-06)
This song teaches about the history of barter and trading as well as the evolution of the money supply throughout history, from prehistoric times to the modern age.
52
7
"Walkin' on Wall Street"
Dave Frishberg
Dave Frishberg
September 12, 1996 (1996-09-12)
A pigeon, who lives on New York City's Wall Street, also happens to be a savvy investor in the stock market, introducing to the audience the basics of investing in stock.
53
8
"The Check's in the Mail"
Luther Rix & Bob Dorough
Bob Dorough
November 22, 1996 (1996-11-22)
A kind, optimistic mailman teaches about the process a check goes through.
Earth Rock, Season 7 (2009)
Like the two newly-produced "America Rock" music video were released in 2002, none of the "Earth Rock" music videos were aired on television. This (last) season was released direct-to-video. Between songs 8 and 9, "The Energy Blues" is featured.
No. overall
No. in season
Title
Performed by
Written by
Original release date
54
1
"Report from the North Pole"
Bob Dorough, Jack Sheldon, Bob Kaliban & Barry Carl
Lynn Ahrens, Jack Sheldon, Bob Dorough, Bob Kaliban, Val Hawk, Vicki Doney & Nancy Reed
Lynn Ahrens
March 31, 2009 (2009-03-31)
This song teaches about energy conservation. This serves as a sequel to "The Tale of Mr. Morton" as the titular character, Pearl, and the cat (named Orton) return. The couple have a son named Norton.