Allan Melvin commercials for fifteen years. In the early 1980s, Melvin appeared as a regular in "Archie Bunker’s Place", a successor to "All in the Family", in which he played the now more important role of Barney Hefner. When this series ended in 1983, Melvin’s work was exclusively devoted to cartoon voice-overs. Allan Melvin died of cancer on January 17, 2008, aged 84, and was buried at Westwood Memorial Cemetery in Southern California. Melvin is buried just yards from his TV best friend Carroll O'Connor, who played 'Archie Bunker' in TV's "All In The Family". Coincidentally, later the same year, famed 1950s
Teen sitcom format to "The Wonder Years", which ended before "Boy Meets World" debuted in 1993, both of which focused on a boy dealing with the challenges that come with growing into adolescence) and "Family Matters" (which originated as a family sitcom spun off from the family-friendly though adult-centered "Perfect Strangers", but soon shifted more of its focus towards its teenage characters due to the popularity of the character of nerdy high school (and later, college) student Steve Urkel). Over time, the Big Three television networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) began shifting away from family-oriented comedies toward comedy series focused on adults