ometimes, having a werewolf for a friend can come in handy, especially for a group of teen sleuths who find themselves in constant danger. Biff, Kim, Puggsy and Sherman were four friends who traveled around in an orange convertible they dubbed the “Wolf Buggy,” fighting crime and solving mysteries. Their adventures normally had them confronting supernatural beings of some sort; from aliens and mummies, to lost creatures of legend and man-made monsters, usually with a backdrop of mad-scientist types who were intent on exploiting the situation for their own nefarious gains.

Biff was leader of the gang and along with Kim provided the brains of the bunch, formulating plans to net themselves the bad guys. Puggsy was best friends with Sherman, but it could be difficult to tell because Sherman’s befuddled temperament often led to Puggsy getting annoyed with him and telling Sherman to, “eh, shut up!” Puggsy might have been best served to work on his own education, because his vocabulary was atrocious. He constantly made up and used words like ‘helichopper, straptified and evaporize’ in place of actual words. Sherman Fangsworth was a complete coward, but as it turned out he played the most important part in the group.

Every four hundred years a werewolf was born into the Fangsworth family, and Sherman’s birth happened to coincide with the four hundred year mark. Thus, whenever he saw a full moon he transformed into a werewolf, who was better known to his friends as “Fangface.” Fangface possessed super werewolf senses and strength, but the condition didn’t improve his intelligence. Neither Sherman nor Fangface were endowed with an overabundance of common sense. Sherman – nicknamed “Fangs” by his friends – never retained any memories of his time as a werewolf, and subsequently never knew that he was one. Inevitably, whenever he transformed back to human form he was confused as to how he ended up wherever he was.

When the gang ran into trouble they knew they could rely on their “secret weapon” to save the day. The moon is needed to enact the change from a person into a werewolf, but they found that a photograph of the moon worked just as well as the real thing, so whenever they needed the assistance of Fangface they simply showed Sherman a picture of the moon. Normally the sun is needed to change a person back, but they found that a photograph worked just as well to reverse the process. Curiously, despite his being a werewolf, strangers were unaffected by the presence of Fangface. They were never taken aback or even commented on his presence, and acted like it was perfectly normal to see a werewolf hanging out with teens.

Unlike Sherman, Fangface was fearless and had little trouble handling whatever menace the group faced, but the transformation did come with a few hiccups. Upon his transformation, Fangface’s first overwhelming urge was to go after Puggs (his nickname for Puggsy), either to rough him up or to put him in his mouth with the intent to eat him. Only by rubbing Fangface’s foot could Biff and Kim calm Fangface enough to come to his senses and let Puggsy out. Whenever the teens split up into pairs Biff and Kim always formed one team and Puggsy and Fangface the other. Puggsy had to be careful though, because the sight of food or any mention of food made Fangface lose control and try to eat Puggsy. It’s logical to think that these brushes with death would make Puggsy a little cautious around Fangface, but no – he never curtailed his desire to tell Fangface to shut up or to call him “pinhead,” the same as he did with Sherman.

Another potential problem the group needed to avoid was letting Fangface look into a mirror. Whenever Fangface saw his reflection he went into a berserker fit and lost all rational thought, which usually resulted in ruining their plan. As if that weren’t enough, seeing an image of the sun (on items such as a poster, food container or suntan lotion bottle) often reverted Fangface to Sherman at the worst possible moment, leaving a confused Sherman face-to-face with some bad guy or creature Fangface was just about to confront.

In the show’s second season episodes were trimmed from twenty-one minutes to eleven minutes in length, and became one of several segments on the two-hour long Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show. Another change was the addition of a new cast member to the group – Baby Fangs, Sherman Fangsworth’s toddler cousin. The obvious question is, why would four teens choose to bring a small child with them, exposing him to all sorts of danger. It could have been for the additional firepower, because Baby Fangs was afflicted with the same lycanthrope condition as Sherman which, it could be argued, rendered the possibility of him getting harmed negligible. To the group the toddler werewolf was called “Fangpuss.” Baby Fangs appeared in all but a few of the second season episodes, but the show’s mystery solving formula otherwise stayed the same.

Baby Fangs/Fangpuss always stuck close to Sherman/Fangface and the same conditions applied to his transformation from human to werewolf and back again. For the unfortunate Puggsy, the addition of another werewolf put him in twice the danger, because the miniature werewolf was every bit as intent on accosting Puggsy as his older cousin immediately after transforming into a werewolf.

A point of interest: the existence of two werewolves in the same generation seems at odds with the opening narrative which implies that one werewolf is born into the Fangsworth family every four hundred years. However, the narrative does not say the curse is limited to a single person, so it could be assumed that every four hundred years the curse strikes the family, and that at least one newborn is afflicted with the curse, with the possibility of more.