Larry Markes’ story is here and there. It opens with a superfluous act about folding clothes, has Mr. Spacely’s son Arthur as a whiny jerk, then suddenly being friendly for the rest of the cartoon, and ends with Spacely concluding George Jetson is brilliant (as a child psychologist), which strikes me as a little out of character for the abusive boss.
The stars of this cartoon are the layout and background artists, unfortunately unidentified as the Jetsons cartoons now in circulation are ‘80s prints with all but writer credits removed. They created wonderful buildings and settings in this episode. Also unfortunately, my Jetsons DVD set has a huge gouge in the first disc so it won’t play and I’ve had to get a fuzzy, compressed version of “The Good Little Scouts” off the internet. The frame grab quality isn’t that great.
There are at least two animators on this cartoon. Ken Muse is easy to spot in the second half. The first one is Don Patterson, judging by the eye blinks and bit lips. His Yogi Bear cartoons feature the same kind of drawing.
Patterson is also animating dialogue with stretched necks jutting up.
I’m not an expert in identifying animators so I can’t tell you if someone else worked on this cartoon. It looks like there’s someone in mid-cartoon after Jetson and the scouts land on the moon.
Markes comes up with a cub scout song around the melody of that futuristic hit The Caissons Go Rolling Along. I can’t make out all the lyrics (this is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, after all), but the first two verses are:
We are strong, we are brave,
In ten years, we’ll even shave.
We’re the space cubs of Troop 54!
Through the storm, through the sleet
Draggin’ grandmas through the street.
We’re the space cubs of Troop 54!
Inventions: the talking clothes folder/repairer, the visi-phone and some kind of litter vacuum that is used on the lunar surface.
The premise of the cartoon is George is forced, somehow, by Spacely to take a troop of cub scouts on a field trip to the moon. Here are some of the great exteriors. I’ve snipped together some backgrounds that are panned. The first drawing is of Grand Central Space-tion; I can’t put together the whole thing because there’s an overlay (you see part of it to the left).
You can click on the backgrounds above to make them bigger. I sure wish I knew who designed them.
The moon is a blue-ish, stalagmitish place, as you can see below (the kids and Martians get in the way of one of the frames below). I love the see-through tents the cub scouts use.
And here’s the version of the Spacely Sprockets exterior shot. While it may appear the same painting was used in all the cartoons, there are subtle differences. This one has cars in a parking lot (and artificial green turf, it would seem).
Whoever the background artist was this time added some modern art on the wall and plants outside the apartment window.
That’s it for this post. If you can decipher verse three of the “Troop 54” song, leave the lyrics in the comment section.