One of my earliest memories of watching TV as a child was the show Mannix. The jazzy opening theme song, with the blue, red and yellow tiles (based on the Armenian flag and a tribute to Conners' Armenian heritage) and multiple tiny screens of Joe Mannix in action, including one of him dancing with a blonde girl, who spins around giving us TV's first upskirt shot. Also, Joe had his faithful African-American secretary Peggy Fair.
Mannix was a cool show, but as with many shows that stay around awhile, people picked up on things that could be parodied. Bob & Ray created a parody they called Blimmix. MST3K frequently made jokes about Joe Mannix's habit of jumping off of something on top of a crook, as well as, using Mannix jokes during any Roger Corman film from the 50s staring "Touch" Conners. When TV Land ran reruns of the show, a promo pointed out that with all the gunfire on the show, nobody was ever hit.
I've mentioned before that one of my favorite books as a child was The World Encyclopedia of Comics by Maurice Horn. In that book was a listing for a German comic strip called Mike Macke. The character was based on Mike Conners and a parody of Joe Mannix. All I could find on the Internet about the character was a scan of the same page from that book.
Here is those great opening credits. Watch for that girl.
