and potentially choke on food. The anime series was originally sponsored solely by Toshiba—Later, in 1998, the program expanded to other sponsors, but the unity between Toshiba and Sazae-san remained strong. So when Toshiba withdrew its sponsorship due to poor management, it was big news.Sazae-san was the last animated television series to use traditional cel animation, although as of April 2009, the opening credits were digital; the series finally switched to fully digital animation in 2013. Despite the series being a hit, Hasegawa stated that she never wanted any merchandise to be made for it, including home video rights, making availability of past episodes, especially those prior to the introduction of the VCR, very rare. Following her death, her request to prohibit older episodes from being released in home media was honored. Despite this however, Fuji TV made an agreement with Amazon Prime Video in December 2018 to release the 1969 and early-to-mid 1970s episodes available on their streaming service. The episodes from the mid 2000s happened to also be on the service. The Opening Song and Ending Song are original songs sung by Yuko Uno from the start. Also, the audio itself has not been altered in any way, such as by arrangement, although it was trimmed to fit the length of the video in the early stages of the broadcast. There have been two previous suspensions of animation production: the first, for about a month beginning in February 1975, due to the 1970s energy crisis; the second, for about a month beginning in May 2020, due to COVID-19. Programming during these periods was handled by rebroadcasting past productions. In Japan, there is a term called "Sazae-san syndrome" (サザエさん症候群, Sazae-san shōkōgun), which refers to a depressed mood on Sunday night after an episode has finished on television, reminding people that the weekend is coming to an end. Live-action In 1955, a radio station aired a serial drama based on the comic strip. The same year, a short-lived live-action television series was started, and was aired on what is now TBS. In November 1965, TBS started a dramatic television series modeled after the comic strip. It aired until September 1967. In 1979, NHK made a dramatic serial which ran for six months, focusing on the creation of Sazae-san and Machiko Hasegawa in her younger days. In 2010, Fuji Television debuted a live-action situation comedy series, , followed the following year