40 Years After ‘Happy Days,’ Do You Remember Its Spinoffs? (Video)

Shirley Feeney (Cindy Williams) and Laverne DeFazio (Penny Marshall) started out as two girls The Fonz calls up to help Richie with his dating life. But they were the main attraction of this long-running sitcom, two Shotz Brewery bottle-cappers making their dreams come true and doing it their way. Laverne & Shirley eventually followed Happy Days’ footsteps and became the No. 1 broadcast series in the country.

Blanksy’s Beauties (1977)

A week after a fourth-season Happy Days episode introduced Nancy Walker as Howard Cunningham’s (Tom Bosley) cousin Nancy Blansky, the latter character got her own ABC sitcom. In Blansky’s Beauties, Nancy was den mother, landlord, and stage show producer for a gaggle of Las Vegas showgirls, while Pat Morita played Arnold, the same character he played in Happy Days. But this spinoff only aired one season.

Mork & Mindy (1978–1982)

A fifth-season Happy Days episode, on the other hand, introduced Robin Williams as a humanoid alien from the planet Ork named Mork, and the popularity of the eccentric extraterrestrial led to a sitcom in which the Orkan studied earthlings on behalf of his home world. Almost everyone assumed Mark was just an oddball human, but his ally-turned-love interest Mindy (Pam Dawber) knew the truth. Mork & Mindy ran for four seasons and became Williams’ big break.

Out of the Blue (1979)

Is a Happy Days spinoff really a spinoff if its first two episodes air before the Happy Days episode that introduces its main character? The jury’s still out. In any case, Jimmy Brogan played the bumbling angel Random in a Season 7 episode of Happy Days and again in the short-lived Out of the Blue, an ABC sitcom in which Random covertly helped a single mom played by Dixie Carter — and only the children of the family knew his identity.

The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang (1980–1981)

In this animated Saturday morning series that ran on ABC for two seasons, The Fonz (Winkler), Richie (Howard), and their Happy Days friend Ralph (Don Most) got lost in time after Fonzie helped a girl from the future repair her time machine. The gang tried to get back to their home in Milwaukee circa 1957 but ended up yoyo-ing throughout the centuries.

Joanie Loves Chachi (1982–1983)

Richie’s younger sister, Joanie (Erin Moran), fell for Fonzie’s cousin Chachi (Scott Baio) on Happy Days, and the duo tried to make a go of a music career in Chicago in this ABC sitcom. Catchy as the songs may have been, the music ended in Season 2 when ABC canceled the series, and Moran and Baio returned to Happy Days.

Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/Fonz Hour (1982–1983)

In another of ABC’s Saturday morning programs, this animated program — an evolution of the earlier Laverne & Shirley spinoff Laverne & Shirley in the Army — featured the title characters in various adventures and misadventures, with almost everyone reprising their onscreen parts. (Lynne Marie Stewart took over the role of Shirley after Cindy Williams’ departure.) The first half of each episode was devoted to Mork and Mindy, and the second focused on Laverne, Shirley, and The Fonz.