''Captain Cosmic'' was a late-afternoon weekday TV show aired in the

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

on KTVU-2 from September 19, 1977 to January 18, 1980. The show was created, produced, and hosted by Bob Wilkins in the guise of ''Captain Cosmic'', airing serials, primarily featuring Japanese superheroes.

Background

The show was forced to kick off with the original ''

Flash Gordon Flash Gordon is the protagonist of a space adventure comic strip created and originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by, and created to compete with, the already established '' Buck Rogers'' adv ...

'' serials because of a delay in the shipment of ''

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'' from distributor Lakeside Television, but soon eased into its format with episodes of ''

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'', ''

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'', ''

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'', '' Spectreman'', ''

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'' and '' Star Trek: The Animated Series''. Programming in the first year was also supplemented by serialized versions of Japanese monster movies such as '' Dogora, the Space Monster'' and '' Godzilla vs. The Thing'', cut into five parts and run Monday through Friday. There was also one, two-hour Prime Time special, featuring the movie '' Godzilla vs. Megalon'' on November 8, 1978 at 8:00 pm. The show was created after Wilkins and his family vacationed in Hawaii and experienced the explosion of live action Japanese superhero television series broadcast on Honolulu's

KIKU KIKU (channel 20) is a multicultural independent television station in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, serving the Hawaiian Islands. It is owned by Allen Media Group alongside ABC affiliate KITV (channel 4). The two stations share studios ...

TV-13, and was further spurred onto the airwaves in the wake of ''

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'', capitalizing on the popularity of

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

. The character of Captain Cosmic flew around the galaxy in his spaceship with his sidekick "Wonder Robot 2T2", and was "faster than a speeding BART train" according to the opening sequence. ''Captain Cosmic'' would feature guests on the show, from local fans and celebrities, to actors from science fiction films and television series, such as

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and

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. "Within three weeks of going on the air, ''Captain Cosmic'' was the number one children’s program in the Bay Area."''Shock It To Me! Golden Ghouls of the Golden Gate'', page 67 (Monahan, Michael and Huber, Lon; UHF Nocturne, 2011) The show had a fan club with decoder cards. A weekly message would be shown that only members with decoder cards would be able to decipher (the code consisted of a three-shift alpha replacement) on upcoming events and new shows being added to the line-up. Despite its popularity, Wilkins decided to leave ''Captain Cosmic'' at the 11th Hour, instead of renewing his contract; he was transitioning out of television, in the wake of bowing out of hosting ''

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'' after eight years (January 9, 1971 to February 24, 1979), and return to concentrating on his own Advertising Agency. After more than 15 years as an on-air personality, he retired from television with the final broadcast of

KTXL KTXL (channel 40) is a television station in Sacramento, California, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group, and maintains studios on Fruitridge Road near the Oak Park district on the southe ...

-40's ''The Bob Wilkins Double Horror Show'' on February 14, 1981. Captain Cosmic's trusty sidekick, Wonder Robot 2T2, currently resides at the comic book emporium Atlantis Fantasyworld in

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References

{{Reflist 1970s American children's television series 1980s American children's television series Children's television characters Local children's television programming in the United States Television in the San Francisco Bay Area