The Huckleberry Hound Show on BluRay

This is news that fans have been waiting for.

Many of you know that about 20 years ago, the first season of The Huckleberry Hound Show came out on DVD. Sales weren’t as good as expected, and that partially weighed into a decision not to release the remaining three seasons. There were also issues finding elements of the half-hour series but, more importantly, there were money problems trying to get the rights to use the Jack Shaindlin and Bill Loose cues as they had returned to the composers’ heirs.

This, evidently, has been worked out. The Huck show, in its entirety, will be available on Blu-ray next month.

The Warner Archive news release contains the following:

To faithfully present these episodes as originally aired, you’ll be able to enjoy each show containing original bumpers and bridges, as well as rarely seen vintage commercials featuring the characters from the series.

This means all the Huck, Pixie and Dixie, Yogi and Hokey Wolf cartoons that appeared on the show (Yogi, of course, was spun off and some of his cartoons appeared exclusively on his show). You can read more in this release.

Plugging Huck

Hanna-Barbera may have ended production of new Huckleberry Hound cartoons in 1962, but he was still deemed a big enough star that box ads were taken out in newspapers that year for his half-hour show.

Here are a few. These chatty ones are for a TV station in Indianapolis.



This is one for a station in Amarillo. I think. The ad doesn't mention a station or channel.


Flint, Michigan to the left; Roanoke, Virginia to the right.



Cincinnati.

It is only appropriate that Huck is seen and heard in North Carolina, where his accent should be familiar to viewers.


Portland, left; Tulsa, right.



Sioux Falls, above; Atlanta, below. They had trouble spelling Huck's name in South Dakota.


This is for Miami, Nov. 29, 1962. Whose brilliant programming idea was it to run Huck opposite The Jetsons? Maybe it was "Bobb."

There are other ads, but this is good enough for now.

If Huck wasn’t on your TV set, you could get your blue hound fix at home by watching him on a Give-a-Show projector by Kenner. It wasn’t a home movie like, say, a Super-8 of Woody Woodpecker. It was a strip of slides. That had to suffice for us kids in the ‘60s. There was no sound so we could practice our impressions of Daws Butler doing Yogi. Look at the price!


Jon B. Knutson in Olympia had a wonderful blog with links to Give-a-Shows he had put together with Capitol Hi-Q music in the background. We had linked to it here in 2010, but it seems to have died the following year. Too bad. There’s so much on the internet that has disappeared. We are still here, however.

The Yowp blog is supposedly on hiatus, but we do have some new posts that will appear periodically (closer to monthly instead of weekly), we hope, through to Christmas, which has been our traditional H-B music post.

A Few Frames of Huck and the Gang

One of the fun parts about the Hanna-Barbera shows for Kellogg’s was the little cartoons in between the cartoons. Various characters got to interact and promote the next cartoon. It was special back in the ‘60s; today there endless cross-overs, mash-ups and artificial “universes.”

Originally, it was cut-and-dried. The various shows had certain characters, though it appears The Yogi Bear Show was rushed into production and not all cartoons were ready when it debuted on January 30, 1961 (the same held true for Yogi’s replacement, Hokey Wolf, on The Huckleberry Hound Show; he finally appeared on the week of March 13, 1961, according to TV listings of the day).

Things started changing in the 1966-67 TV season. Mattel purchased licensing rights to the Huck show from Screen Gems and worked out a rather convoluted co-op ad agreement with Kellogg’s that meant Mattel ads on the Kellogg’s-sponsored Yogi Bear and Woody Woodpecker shows. It would appear, based on a story in Television Age of April 24, 1967, the individual cartoons were made available to stations as well.

But the half-hour Huck show carried on in one form or another into the 1970s and ‘80s. Reader Austin Kelly points out a 16mm reel of the show is being sold on eBay. The unusual thing is it does not contain a Huck cartoon. It has reruns of shorts starring Yogi Bear, Hokey Wolf and Yakky Doodle.

This mean the opening/closing animation had to change. The original from 1958 featured an assortment of Kellogg’s cereal mascots, eg. Tony the Tiger. It was reanimated to include Yakky and Hokey. It would appear the lettering card was re-used from the original closing.

Instead of Tony Junior getting his head bashed leaving the circus tent, Yakky gets the honour. Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle.

There’s not a lot I can remember about these re-worked Huck mini-cartoons. The Kellogg’s rooster still appeared, even if Huck’s door is not in a circus tent any more.

Unfortunately, these frame-grabs from the mini-cartoons are a little ho-hum. Hanna-Barbera and/or Screen Gems didn’t seem to care that Pixie and Dixie weren’t in this cartoon; I couldn’t tell you if they were in the re-worked series.

Oh, the character on the Hokey Wolf title card below isn’t Yowp. It’s 1961 and Hanna-Barbera is already borrowing from itself. In the actual cartoon, some of the dog’s poses look like they came from Snuffles. While the hunter is English like Yowp’s owner, Daws Butler gave him a little faster delivery.

How many of these mini-cartoons are in the Hanna-Barbera archives is, I imagine, anyone’s guess. And I still hold out no hope we’ll ever see future volumes of Huckleberry Hound Show DVDs, including the ones featuring Hokey Wolf and the frames you see above.

Season Four For Huckleberry Hound

Before anything else, I’d like to thank Denise Kress for sending me a bunch of documents that were in the files of her late husband Earl. That’s where the production numbers and so on have come from for this series of posts about the Huckleberry Hound Show.

Huck’s fourth season in 1961-62 was the final season. Things were petering out for ol’ Huck. Hanna-Barbera was winding up the Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw shows and concentrating on the prime-time Flintstones and Top Cat series, the drab theatrical Loopy De Loop cartoons and the new syndicated shorts starring Wally Gator, Touché Turtle and Lippy the Lion. (For the record, there was no such thing as “The New Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Series.” The internet won’t seem to let that one die ¹). The Jetsons would soon be going into production.

Only five Hucks, five Pixie and Dixies and four Hokey Wolfs were made for the final season, though there are some gaps in the production numbers. Other cartoons were begun, maybe even completed. For example, we posted this Pixie and Dixie storyboard for an unaired cartoon; unfortunately, the seller has plastered a graphic over top of puny image files so the production number is blocked out.

The numbers come from papers in a file at Leo Burnett, Kellogg’s agency, dated January 22, 1962. In total, 57 Pixie and Dixie and 57 Huckleberry Hound cartoons were made, along with 28 Hokey Wolfs.

Unfortunately, the credits for the Hokey cartoons are hiding somewhere; I don’t have them and don’t want to guess at them. Only one of the original Hanna-Barbera animators worked on Huck from the first to the last seasons—Carlo Vinci. He was spending more time on the half-hour shows. Ken O’Brien, Ed Parks and Ken Southworth were assigned to animate the shorts. The final cartoon was animated by Don Towsley, a former Disney artist who later worked for Chuck Jones and then at Filmation. As a boy, Towsley lived in Atlanta and there was taught dancing personally by Arthur Murray. Howard Beckerman recalled Towsley directed some animated openings used on I Love Lucy at Lee Blair’s Film Graphics in New York.

E-160 Loot to Boot (W-25) Hokey
‡E-161 Hokey cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-162 Hokey cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-163 Hokey cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-164 Hokey cartoon for 1960-61 season.

‡E-165 Hokey cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-166 Hokey cartoon for 1960-61 season.
E-167 Guesting Games (W-26) Hokey
‡E-168 Hokey cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-169 Pixie and Dixie cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-170 Huck cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-171 Pixie and Dixie cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-172 Huck cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-173 Pixie and Dixie cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-174 Huck cartoon for 1960-61 season.
E-175 Strong Mouse aka Hercules (P-53) P&D/Lokey
E-176 Bullfighter Huck (H-54) Huck/Southworth
‡E-177 Hokey cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-178 Hokey cartoon for 1960-61 season.
‡E-179 Pixie and Dixie cartoon for 1960-61 season.
E-180 Mouse Trapped (P-54) P&D/O’Brien
‡E-181 Huck cartoon for 1960-61 season.
E-182 Huck dé Paree (H-53) Huck/Southworth
E-183 Aladdin’s Lamp Chops (W-28) Hokey
E-184 Magician Jinks (P-55) P&D/Parks

E-185 Bars and Stripes (H-56) Huck/Boersma
E-186 No production
E-187 Meece Missiles (P-56) P&D/Vinci
E-188 Scrubby Brush Man (H-57) Huck/Parks
E-189 Sick Sense (W-27) Hokey
E-190 Homeless Jinks (P-57) P&D/O’Brien
E-191 No production
E-192 No production
E-193 No production
E-194 No production
E-195 Two For Tee Vee (P-55) Huck/Towsley

---

1 Note: Jerry Beck has a better collection of, and access to, reference materials than I. He points out the Broadcast Information Bureau annuals for TV stations used that title. I've never seen it in any Screen Gems trade ads or preview stories at the time the three series were first aired and the title was never used on screen.^↩

Hokey Wolf — Tricks and Treats

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Don Patterson; Layout – Paul Sommer; Backgrounds – Fernando Montealegre; Written by Warren Foster; Story Director – Alex Lovy; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Hokey Wolf, Farmer Smith, Humphrey – Daws Butler; Ding-a-Ling, Humane Society Woman – Doug Young.
Music: Hoyt Curtin.
Production No E-145.
First aired: week of March 13, 1961.
Plot: Hokey cons a farmer into giving him free grub by feigning a leg injury.
Copyright 1961 by Hanna-Barbera Productions.

The most interesting animation in the first Hokey Wolf cartoon is when our hero places his finger in the rifle of Farmer Smith, daring him to shoot. He does. Here are the individual drawings. The third drawing is shot on twos, the rest on ones. (P.S.: nice going on the DVNR on the DVD, Warner Home Video).



Hokey Wolf really doesn’t interest me and I’ve been working through my head about why that is. In this particular cartoon, Warren Foster has written a solid story, Daws Butler’s voices are tops as always and Monty has some interesting colour choices in his backgrounds, but I just can’t get into it. Maybe it’s because Hanna-Barbera wasn’t just borrowing from sitcoms—The Honeymooners or, in this case, Phil Silvers—it was now borrowing from itself. Tall schemer, short conscience? Sorry, I’d rather watch Yogi Bear and Boo Boo do the same thing (the praise Ding-a-Ling heaps on Hokey must be inspired by the 1954 Warners cartoon “Dr. Jerkyl’s Hide” written by Foster). And how many more times did H-B use that formula?

Don Patterson, a veteran of “Fantasia,” “Dumbo” and some crazy takes in “A Fine Feathered Frenzy” at the cost-conscious Walter Lantz studio, is pretty much reduced to walk cycles and characters standing around talking. He gives it a good try every once in a while. Here’s Hokey faking having his leg in a trap and howling in “pain.” The only thing that moves here is the head.



A good effect is a flash camera effect, where the screen turns white when a “photo” is taken. You can see the same thing in the Yogi Bear cartoon, Space Bear, which was also animated by Patterson.



Whether it came from Foster’s storyboard or Paul Sommer’s layouts, I don’t know, but there’s silhouette animation of Farmer Smith.



Sommer would have designed the incidental characters. I like Humphrey, the photographer.



I mentioned above that the backgrounds were painted by Fernando Montealegre, if the credits are correct (I’m not fully convinced they are). As you can see by the interior above, he abandoned the great, stylised flat designs which I really like in those 1958 Huck and Yogi cartoons. Here is his farmhouse. Note the pink clouds and the shades of green in the trees.



Foster gives Hokey some nice dialogue here: “Neat. Well-kept. You’ll notice around that wheat field a little border of dichondra. It makes it dressy. Gives every evidence of being stocked with good, whoooolesome food.”

Hokey, a la Phil Silvers’, keeps up a steady stream of disorienting patter. “Well, it’s lucky for you,” he says to the rifle-toting farmer,” I am a no-good, thieving, low-down, good-for-nothing wolf, or I’d sue you for slander. Ding-boy, snap this picture (click). Good boy. Now a close-up of the cruel trap. (click) And another one like this (Hokey pulls rifle up to his face). For protection, you know. It’s my best side (click). Now get one of the defendant. Smile. That’s it (click).” When the farmer asks what it’s all about, Hokey explains he needs evidence for court. “Cruelty?” says the farmer. Hokey moves his trapped leg. “This isn’t exactly a charm bracelet on my leg, you know.”

The farmer doesn’t have time to think that he never laid a trap. “You didn’t know (it was Be Kind to Animals Week)! But the whole world will know. I can see the headlines now: “Jury Convicts Farmer...” uh, come, come, the name. This must be spontaneous.” It’s the kind of finger-snapping line Silvers’ Bilko (or, later, Top Cat) might blurt out. Anyway, the farmer is conned into taking him into the home to feed him back to health, similar to the plot of the 1958 Yogi Bear cartoon Tally Ho Ho Ho (“Here it is, wolf,” says the farmer. “Some nice, hot barley water. Just the thing for your shocked condition.”). Like Yogi, Hokey isn’t satisfied and raids the fridge. And like the Yogi cartoon, the farmer discovers the fakery, in this case when he catches Hokey dancing.

Hokey, however, has hedged his bets. He calls the Humane Society to give it a scoop—Farmer Smith has befriended a crippled wolf and is nursing him back to health. And it works. The Humane Society people arrive just as the now-clued-in farmer is about to clobber Hokey. They take pictures of the fake-smiling farmer as he feeds the wolf. “That Hokey,” says Ding-a-Ling to the audience, “He’s the greatest wolf ever” as the cartoon ends. Ding, evidently, has never seen a Tex Avery cartoon.

Doug Young plays not only Ding-a-Ling, but lends his voice to the matronly Humane Society woman. I can’t think of another time he did a falsetto voice in a cartoon, but it’s as funny as Don Messick would have done.

Hoyt Curtin’s tracking library opens with his version of “Strolling Through the Park One Day.” The other cues will be familiar to you from Snagglepuss and Lippy the Lion cartoons.

Hokey (originally named “Wacko Wolf” until, perhaps, it was realised Larry Harmon had a cartoon character with that name) was supposed to replace Yogi Bear on the Huck show when Yogi got his own show at the end of January 1961. But the Hokey cartoons weren’t ready. Yogi reruns were featured on the Huck half-hour until the first Hokey short was ready in March; a rerun of Huck’s great Spud Dud accompanied it that week.

No, this is not going to be the first of a bunch of Hokey reviews. As I say, I’m not a big fan of the series and I frankly don’t have the time to blog, let alone attempt to mask TV cable network bugs on frame grabs for a series I’m not interested in. I will say it’s a shame that this series and the remainder of the Huckleberry Hound and Pixie and Dixie cartoons that don’t have music issues aren’t out on DVD.

Season Three For Huckleberry Hound

The Huckleberry Hound Show was in a bit of turmoil in the 1960-61 season, despite coming off a Emmy win earlier in the year. And you can blame Mr. Magoo.

Kellogg’s was looking for another half-hour cartoon show to sponsor in syndication; it already had the Huck show, Quick Draw McGraw and Woody Woodpecker running in the early evenings. The company’s ad agency, Leo Burnett, thought it had worked out a deal with Hank Saperstein for a Mr. Magoo series; Variety of August 3, 1960 intimated it had already been pitched to KGO-TV in San Francisco. But the deal collapsed. Saperstein’s UPA pulled out, complaining Burnett was interfering too much in the creative aspects of the show (Variety, Sept. 6, 1960).

Hanna-Barbera was ready. Kind of. It sold a half-hour Yogi Bear show to Kellogg’s, with the idea that a new “Wacko” wolf character would replace Yogi on the Huck series (Weekly Variety, Oct. 12, 1960). The problem was that complete Yogi Bear half-hours would have to be ready by late January. Hanna-Barbera couldn’t produce all the cartoons it needed in time. So, for a time, Yogi was doubling on the Huck show while “Wacko” (now “Hokey”) cartoons were being made to replace him. And some segments of the Yogi Bear Show were filled with Augie Doggie and Snooper and Blabber until enough Snagglepuss and Yakky Doodle cartoons were ready.

That brings us to the production schedule for the final seasons of the Huckleberry Hound Show from the files of Leo Burnett, the ad agency representing Kellogg’s, which paid for the half-hour cartoon show. A document dated August 3, 1961 reveals six Yogi cartoons were printed and broadcast on the Huck show, then aired as reruns on the Yogi show. It also states that “Do or Diet,” “Biggest Showoff on Earth” and “Genial Genie” (marked with an asterisk below) were intended for use on the Huck show but not used. Indeed, “Genial Genie” was the cartoon that appeared on the debut half-hour of the Yogi Bear Show on the week of January 30, 1961. Four cartoons made after that (marked with a dagger below) were apparently scheduled for the Huck show but prints were only made when the Yogi show began to air.

Hokey Wolf didn’t appear until the end of March or beginning of April on the Huck show; sources conflict. This means any internet sources that talk about Hokey wolf cartoons appearing at the start of Huck’s third season in September 1960 are full of it. Hokey hadn’t even been invented yet. The same if you read claims the Yogi Bear Show started in September. As you can see below, the Hokey cartoons were begun after all the Hucks, Pixie and Dixies and Yogis were in production.

Like the second season, the “K” episode numbers are misleading. In the second, third and fourth seasons of the Huck show, old cartoons were interspersed with new ones. In other words, all the new productions didn’t air first. The cartoons don’t appear to have aired in the “K” episodes as listed, though they were apparently copyrighted that way.

You’ll notice the names of several new animators brought in to handle the large production boost. My guess is some worked on a freelance basis (Don Williams, for example); it seems to me some of these people were either animating on the Magoo and Dick Tracy TV cartoons or the TV Popeyes around this time. I haven’t really examined it closely.

Artie Davis appears as an animator toward the end of the list after leaving Warner Bros. in a dispute over a promise to direct. I don’t have an accurate list of Hokey Wolf animators; versions of the cartoons available are without credits. I can recognise a few of the animators such as Don Williams, a really tame George Nicholas and Ken Muse, but have left off the names. Carlo Vinci was engaged elsewhere than the Huck show with the exception of one Yogi Bear cartoon.

E-143 has the distinction of being the last production which used the Capitol Hi-Q and Langlois Filmusic libraries (it opens with my favourite Jack Shaindlin cue, “Toboggan Run”). The last Huck on the list, “Cluck and Dagger,” all the Hokeys and the cartoons made for airing in the 1961-62 TV season had background cues supplied by Hoyt Curtin.

Some of the best Huck cartoons came out of this season. “Spud Dud,” “Science Friction” and “The Unmasked Avenger” with Huck as the Purple Pumpernickel are among my favourites. Yogi Bear’s “Oinks and Boinks” is a pretty funny send-up of the Three Little Pigs, reminiscent of Warren Foster’s Bugs Bunny/Three Pigs cartoon at Warners. And even Hokey Wolf has some good bits (Bea Benaderet supplies voices in one cartoon). Hokey and Ding-a-ling get arrested in ancient times in “Poached Yeggs” and are threatened with death. Ding turns to the camera and says “And they call this Merrie olde England.”


E-106 Oinks and Boinks (K-040) Yogi/Patterson
E-107 Booby Trapped Bear (K-041) Yogi/Marshall
E-108 Spud Dud (K-040) Huck/Nicholas
E-109 High Jinks (K-043) P&D/Lundy
E-110 Legion Bound Hound (K-041) Huck/Muse
E-111 Price For Mice (K-041) P&D/Muse

E-112 Gleesome Threesome (K-042) Yogi/Vinci
E-113 Science Friction (K-042) Huck/Love
E-114 Plutocrat Cat (K-042) P&D/Marshall
E-115 A Bear Pair (K-043) Yogi/Muse
E-116 Pied Piper Pipe (K-040) P&D/Patterson
E-117 Spy Guy (K-044) Yogi/Love
E-118 Nuts Over Mutts (K-044) Huck/Love
E-119 Woo For Two (K-045) P&D/Carr
E-120 Knight School (K-043) Huck/Marshall
E-121 Huck Hound’s Tale (K-045) Huck/Love
E-122 Party Peeper Jinks (K-044) P&D/Lundy
E-123 Do or Diet (K-045) Yogi/deMattia
E-124 The Unmasked Avenger (K-046) Huck/Williams
E-125 A Wise Quack (K-046) P&D/Carr
*E-126 Bears and Bees (K-046) Yogi/Lokey
E-127 Missile Bound Cat (K-048) P&D/Marshall
*E-128 Biggest Show-Off on Earth (K-047) Yogi/deMattia
E-129 Hillbilly Huck (K-048) Huck/Lokey
*E-130 Genial Genie (K-048) Yogi/Lundy
E-131 Kind To Meeces Week (K-047) P&D/Lokey
E-132 Fast Gun Huck (K-047) Huck/Case
†E-133 Cub Scout Boo Boo (K-049) Yogi/Carr
†E-134 Home Sweet Jellystone (K-050) Yogi/Case
E-135 Crew Cat (K-049) P&D/Case
E-136 Astro-Nut Huck (K-051) Huck/Marshall
†E-137 Love Bugged Bear (K-051) Yogi/Carr
E-138 Huck and Ladder (K-050) Huck/Lokey

E-139 Jinxed Jinks (K-050) P&D/Davis
E-140 Lawman Huck (K-048) Huck/Carr
E-141 Light-Headed Cat (K-051) P&D/Marshall
†E-142 Bareface Disguise (K-052) Yogi/Davis
E-143 Mouse For Rent (K-052) P&D/Carr
E-144 Cluck and Dagger (K-052) Huck/Davis


From what I can tell, the “K” designation on the Huck half-hours stopped when Yogi Bear got his own programme. It is now 1961. There were still four new Hucks and four new Pixie and Dixie cartoons that hadn’t aired to round out the remaining half-hours for the rest of the 1960-61 season, along with a bunch of brand-new Hokeys. Numbers in parentheses are the order in which they aired.

E-145 Tricks and Treats (W-1) Hokey/Patterson
E-146 Hokey Dokey (W-2) Hokey
E-147 Lamb-Basted Wolf (W-5) Hokey
E-148 Which Witch is Which (W-3) Hokey/Nicholas
E-149 Pick a Chick (W-4) Hokey
E-150 Robot Plot (W-7) Hokey
E-151 Boobs in the Woods (W-8) Hokey
E-152 Castle Hassle (W-6) Hokey
E-153 Booty on the Bounty (W-13) Hokey
E-154 Hokey in the Pokey (W-11) Hokey/Patterson
E-155 Who’s Zoo (W-9) Hokey
E-156 Dogged Sheep Dog (W-10) Hokey
E-157 Too Much to Bear (W-16) Hokey/Muse
E-158 Movies Are Bitter Than Ever (W-12) Hokey

E-159 Poached Yeggs (W-14) Hokey
‡E-160 Hokey cartoon for 1961-62 season.
E-161 Rushing Wolf Hound (W-15) Hokey/Patterson
E-162 The Glass Sneaker (W-18) Hokey
E-163 Indian Giver (W-19) Hokey
E-164 Chock Full Chuck Wagon (W-17) Hokey/Muse
E-165 Bring ‘Em Back a Live One (W-21) Hokey
E-166 A Star is Bored (W-23) Hokey/Love
‡E-167 Hokey cartoon for 1961-62 season.
E-168 West of the Pesos (W-24) Hokey
E-169 Jinks’ Jinx (P-49) P&D/Carle
E-170 Caveman Huck (H-49) Huck/Goepper
E-171 Fresh Heir (P-50) P&D/Harding
E-172 Huck of the Irish (H-50) Huck/Harding
E-173 Home Flea (P-51) P&D/Boersma
E-174 Jungle Bungle (H-51) Huck/Somerville
‡E-175 Pixie and Dixie cartoon for 1961-62 season.
‡E-176 Huckleberry Hound cartoon for 1961-62 season.
E-177 Phoney-O and Juliet (W-20) Hokey
E-178 Hokey’s Missing Millions (W-22) Hokey
E-179 Bombay Mouse (P-52) P&D/Boersma
‡E-180 Pixie and Dixie cartoon for 1961-62 season.
E-181 Ben Huck (H-52) Huck/Boersma

Let’s Watch Huck and Quick Draw

Who doesn’t love the little cartoons between the cartoons on the Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw shows?

Someone has posted a bunch more on the internet that are from a private collection and have never been on home video. I remember a few of them, and at least a couple are animated by Ed Love, with one by Ken Muse.

Joe Ruby and Ken Spears told Stu Shotak on Stu’s Show a couple of weeks ago that their first writing jobs at Hanna-Barbera were on these bumpers. Mark Evanier, on the same show, noted the thrifty Bill Hanna only brought in Daws Butler to do voices to save money, but you’ll hear Doug Young and Don Messick as well.

A couple are edited and a silent, full version of one of them follows.

The second one has the syndicated Yogi opening with the Kellogg’s references deleted.







A big Yowp to Kliph Nesteroff for letting me know about these.

More Storyboards and Models

Tony Benedict was the first writer hired at Hanna-Barbera after the arrival of Mike Maltese and Warren Foster, and began work on all the company’s series. Like Foster, he drew his own storyboards (Maltese seems to have drawn sketches that were cleaned up by others), but I can’t tell you whether he drew these story panels for ‘Cinderella Stone’ (1964) or if Alex Lovy did. Regardless, Tony wrote the cartoon and here are some panels for it.






Yogi Bear was spun off into his own show in 1961. That meant someone had to replace him on The Huckleberry Hound Show. That somebody was Hokey Wolf, with mandatory sidekick Dingaling. Dick Bickenbach came up with these model sheets. The Ding model is from October 1960. Hokey first aired in January 1961 so that gives you an idea how fast the cartoons were churned out. The Hokeys were really the first I-can-take-it-or-leave-it TV cartoons the company produced. They weren’t nearly as funny as Huck or Quick Draw but were okay. The drawing style and voices gave them a familiarity.




Hokey wasn’t nearly as funny as Snooper and Blabber, either. Here’s a nice model sheet of them from Bick.



And, finally, some odds and sods. This August 1960 model sheet by Bick is self-explanatory. I didn’t realise sheets like this would have been made for television cartoons.



This model is from the Quick Draw McGraw cartoon “Talky Hawky.” The chicken hawk is called “Maxie” because Daws Butler used his Maxie Rosenbloom-style voice that was used more often at the Jay Ward studio. Tony Rivera did layouts on the cartoon.



Here’s a layout drawing of Blabber. I haven’t been able to figure out which cartoon this is from. I suspect this is Bick again.



And, finally, a 1964 sheet from ‘Ricochet Rabbit,’ showing differences in character sizes. Someone more interested in Mr. Bing-bing-BINGGG!! can tell you which cartoon this is from. It looks like Bick’s hand-writing again.



I believe these all came from the Van Eaton Gallery web site, which is always worth a look to see what animation-related things they have for sale.