Before Peter Jackson's crazy ass achieved the impossible and translated Lord of the Rings to live-action, fans of Hobbits had to make do with Ralph Bakshi's rotoscoped hell of a half-adapted animated film, and the works of stop-motion-holiday-special barons Rankin-Bass. They "helpfully" made a pseudo-sequel to Bakshi's film in the '80s, but they were the first to introduce TV audiences to Bilbo Baggins, with 1977's The Hobbit. The character designs are strikingly ugly, but the animation is surprisingly okay—which might be due to the fact Japanese animation studio Topcraft worked on it. (Topcraft would later become Studio Ghibli, btw.) So yeah, it looks really funky, and there's way too much AM-radio folk schlock crammed in here, but it's still the most faithful adaptation of Tolkien's humble little children's book.