I agree with reviewer Krorie that Zoo Parade, primitive as it was, was more enjoyable than the later more sophisticated Wild Kingdom, perhaps because, in those days of early TV, everything was live and everything was magical. Marlin Perkins and his straight man sat at a desk and keepers brought in animals for Marlin to explain to the audience. At intervals, the straight man would tell us about Ken L Ration and its magic ingredient: chlorophyllin that helped stop doggie odors. That was the first time I'd heard of chlorophyllin which, losing the final "in" became wildly popular as chlorophyll and was added to toothpaste and chewing gum (and I don't know what else). Every product with chlorophyll was green. The gum looked like green Chiclets. I distinctly remember the day six keepers carried out a python to exhibit. I don't know which came first, but there was a Chas Addams cartoon showing a bunch of zookeepers holding a python. As Marlin told us about the python the Zoo Parade keepers were holding, the snake suddenly had a bowel movement all over the hand of the keeper at that point of the snake's anatomy. You could see the other keepers biting their cheeks and trying hard to stay serious. At the end of every show as the credits rolled and the theme song played, there was a cartoon picture of the dog on the Ken L Ration label whose eyes moved back and forth. This was high tech stuff and a cartoon of the star of the show with moving eyes was also used at the end of the Groucho Marx and Jerry Colonna shows. It's hard today to give the show a star rating. I might have given it 10 stars in 1952, but lots of stuff from 1952 is unwatchable today.
