My daughters and I haave been listening to the old 1940s Archie radio shows starring Bob Hastings (as Archie) and Harlan Stone (as a whiny-voiced Jughead).

The long-running program has always bugged me for how it seemed to distrust the Archie Comics prototype and model itself instead on competing radio sitcoms such as Henry Aldrich or Great Gildersleeve or Father Knows Best.

In those shows, parents and authority figures are a steady presence. Since the radio Archie takes its cues from full-family fare like that, there’s just way too much Fred Andrews (“carrot top”’s dad) in what is ostensibly the Archie Andrews program.

Archie’s father tries to take a bath. He tries to paint a room. He tries to close an important deal at work. He tries to impress the neighbors. All his schemes are scuttled by his reckless son.

These sorts of stories aren’t unheard of in the comics, but they’re certainly rarer than the many stories which simply focus on the teenage characters, of which of course there are many.

The Archie radio show, derivative as it was of non-Archie entertainments, did have one major influence on the future Archie programs: it gave Veronica Lodge the Southern-belle vocal mannerisms later borrowed for the various TV cartoon Archie series of the later 1960s and 1970s. Talking animals aside, those cartoons were truer to the Archie comic book spirit than the radio show was. Grown-ups weren’t a regular feature, for starters.

Another annoyance regarding those Archie broadcasts: the ads for Swift Premium Franks, the irritating jingle for which will overwhelm any other memories you have of the program.