The Toho film King Kong Escapes (1967) is a live action spin-off and tie-in to this TV series (although none of the human characters from the TV series appear in it) and it is not a sequel to King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), an earlier Toho film also featuring King Kong, as many people believe.
This TV series was an animated adaptation of the famous film monster King Kong with character designs by Jack Davis and Rod Willis. In it, the giant ape, who lived on Mondo Island, befriended the Bond family and Captain Englehorn with whom he went on various adventures, saving the world from monsters, robots, aliens, mad scientists and other threats. Included in it was an animated TV parody of 1960s spy films called Tom of T.H.U.M.B., which was about a six-inch tall secret agent for T.H.U.M.B. (the "Tiny Human Underground Military Bureau") named Tom and his equally tiny Asian assistant Swinging Jack who were sent out in a variety of miniature vehicles by their bad-tempered boss, Chief Homer J. Chief, to foil the fiendish plots of M.A.D. ("Maladjusted, Antisocial and Darn mean"), an evil organization made up of black-cloaked and black-hatted scientists who were "bent on destroying the world for their own gains" (neither Tom's nor Swinging Jack's last names were ever revealed in any of the Tom of T.H.U.M.B. segments). In Japan, the first two episodes were combined into a 56-minute TV special titled King of the World: The King Kong Show, which was aired on NET (now TV Asahi) on December 31, 1966. The rest of the TV series, including the Tom of T.H.U.M.B. segments, was then broadcast on NET as King Kong & 001/7 Tom Thumb and aired from April 5 to October 4, 1967 with a total of 26 episodes that had 52 segments of King Kong and 26 segments of Tom of T.H.U.M.B.
On November 15, 2005, Sony Wonder released the first eight episodes of the TV series (each one with two segments of King Kong separated by one segment of Tom of T.H.U.M.B.) on two DVD volumes. The pilot episode was included in its two-part version and was divided in half between the two DVD volumes with the first part at the end of Volume 1 and the second part at the end of Volume 2.
This is the first anime TV series that was produced in Japan for, and commissioned by, an American company (not counting Rankin/Bass' previous Animagic stop-motion holiday TV specials, which were also animated in Japan). The animation for it was provided by Toei Company, Ltd. for Rankin/Bass (then known as Videocraft) in the U.S. ABC-TV ran this TV series in the U.S. in color from September 10, 1966 to August 31, 1969.
This TV series had three time slots in the U.S. for two days on the weekend only: from Saturday, September 10, 1966 to September 2, 1967 at 10:00-10:30 AM for Season 1, from Saturday, September 9, 1967 to September 7, 1968 at 11:00-11:30 AM for Season 2 and from Sunday, September 15, 1968 to August 31, 1969 at 10:30-11:00 AM for Season 3, all of these on Eastern Standard Time on ABC-TV in color.