You know how it is when you turn on the TV over the Christmas holidays. You want to see your favourite old cartoons. “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.” “Bucky and Pepito Help Santa Claus.” Okay, maybe not the last one (mercifully, such a cartoon never existed). But you love them and you watch them rerun year after year after year.
Well, we at the Yowp blog are taking the same attitude this Christmas. In almost five years, we’ve HTMLd a number of Christmas posts. So allow us to rerun a few of them.
THIS LINK will allow you to listen to Yogi Bear sing “Have a Hap-Hap-Happy Christmas.” Well, it’s not really Yogi. It’s Frank Milano as Yogi Bear. Better still, you can read the Little Golden Book “A Christmas Visit” starring Yogi. The artwork is enjoyable.
GO HERE to read the Whitman book “Yogi Bear Helps Santa,” drawn by Lee Branscombe.
THIS POST is where you can find another Whitman book with two Huckleberry Hound Christmas stories and a great drawing of some of the other H-B characters in a Christmas tree.
AND THIS LINK will take you to some background art from “Christmas Flintstone,” the second made-for-TV Christmas cartoon (yes, even before Charlie Brown).
What you see above is a drawing from the collection of Mark Christiansen, one of so many people who have helped contribute not only to this blog, but our knowledge of the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Judging by the lettering on Yogi’s bag, I suspect this was drawn at the time all the characters were together on the Huckleberry Hound Show (that is, before 1961). I wonder if the bow-ties are pinned on Huck’s and Jinks’ throats.
Since we’re showing off artwork I’ve purloined from elsewhere on the internet, allow me to pass on a few more things that are pretty neat.
Isn’t this the perfect Christmas gift for your kids? Your little boy can look just like Yogi Bear. Or is it Corporal Agarn? And your little girl can be Huck. Or a leprechaun. Okay, the hats aren’t terrific. But they’re probably sturdier than what you can buy today. The picture is courtesy of John Cawley.
Here’s what may be a draft drawing for a Colpix record cover passed on by Bill Wray, whose name you may recognise from Ren and Stimpy. Bill spent some time at Hanna-Barbera, though it was long after Cornelius the Kellogg’s Rooster (in the picture above) had left the premises.
I gather these are two rough sketches for publicity art, likely from 1958-59. In the top drawing, you can see what looks like an Ed Benedict version of Yogi. The front-facing Boo Boo is a little unusual. The crow is Iggy, voiced by Don Messick. There’s Li’l Tom Tom in a typical pose and the unnamed fox caught by the wily Yowp in “Foxy Hound-Dog.”
And look! There’s Yowp in the drawing below. The unnamed rabbit from the Li’l Tom Tom cartoon (“The Brave Little Brave”) is featured, along with Wee Willie the gorilla and both crows, Iggy and Ziggy. These drawings are from Bill Wray’s collection as well. Don Parmele posted his copy of the publicity photo that was made from the sketch. Don’s worked for a number of studios in a lengthy career.
The day of unnamed foxes and rabbits being on publicity material was brief. Hanna-Barbera used/mentioned secondary characters for the first year of the Huckleberry Hound Show. When Quick Draw McGraw came along in 1959, there was a whole new set of starring characters that began replacing Iggy and Ziggy and Wee Willie in the studio’s P.R. campaigns. When the Yogi Bear Show premiered in January 1961, the studio had enough stars that it didn’t need Li’l Tom Tom or (sniff) Yowp in its publicity and merchandising any longer.
Ah, but this is the Christmas, not the woe-be-unto-Yowp, season. So we wish you and those you love,