Cro (TV series)


Cro is an American animated television series produced by the Children's Television Workshop and Film Roman. It debuted on September 18, 1993 as part of the Saturday morning line-up for fall 1993 on ABC. Cro lasted 1½ seasons and ran in reruns through summer 1995. The show had an educational theme, introducing basic concepts of physics, mechanical engineering, and technology.
The premise of using woolly mammoths as a teaching tool for the principles of technology was inspired by David Macaulay's The Way Things Work; Macaulay is credited as writer on the show. The last new episode aired on October 22, 1994. The show was released on video in a total of nine [|volumes].

Premise

A scientist named Dr. C and her assistant Mike travel to the Arctic to study artifacts and find a frozen woolly mammoth named Phil. They thaw him out and are surprised to find that he can speak. Whenever a situation in modern times involves physics principles, Phil remembers when a similar event occurred long ago in the prehistoric valley of Woollyville with his fellow mammoths and his Cro-Magnon friend Cro, who lived with a family of Neanderthals. Each episode features Phil narrating how a problem was resolved through simple engineering.
The show's name is an Occitan word for "cave"; it alludes to Cro-Magnon, the location in France where the earliest anatomically modern humans were first discovered.

Characters

Cavepeople

Season 1 (1993)

Season 2 (1994)

Home media

Three VHS tapes were released by Republic Home Video in the United States: