This post is a hodge-podge of Yogi stuff sitting in a file for four to eight years. Since we’re winding things down here, I’m going to post it. Some of it may be in older posts; I really don’t have time to check.
As you know, Yogi was grabbed by the folks at Kellogg’s to push its version of Cherrios. The fact I’m not saying that Cherrios was General Mills’ version of OKs tells you which cereal was the more popular. Simultaneously, he was on the box of Kellogg’s biggest seller to push his birthday party episode on TV in 1961 (and the Dell Comic version of it) Yogi also found himself in an ad for Kellogg’s All-Stars cereal, featuring the voice of Cyril Ritchard as the Wizard of Oatz. Unlike the Oz version, this wizard wasn’t a wonderful wiz if ever a wiz there was. The cereal wasn’t around all that long. Perhaps he should have teamed with Snagglepuss as a cowardly lion. The ad is from the comic section of a number of newspapers of July 24, 1960.
Incidentally, Sponsor magazine of December 17, 1962 reported on rumours that Kellogg’s was about to create a Yogi cereal (along with a Jethro cereal). Either the rumours were false, or the idea was quashed (would the Jethro cereal be in the shape of double-nought spies?).
We’ve had pictures over the years of all kinds of Hanna-Barbera toys, dolls, games, comics, and more from the studio’s best period, namely the first few years when it was at the Kling/Chaplin studio on La Brea and the little cinder-block windowless bunker on Cahuenga (before they moved to the building most fans know about). The pictures we’re put up have been almost always of American productions, but here’s one from England. You can make and paint little sculptures of the main characters in the Huckleberry Hound Show, even though Yogi gets top billing. I realise I’m biased but I think toys were more fun back then. Today, it seems like all kids do is bang their thumbs playing games on their hand-held.
Finally, here’s an endless run cycle from the end of “Droop-a-long Yogi,” a pretty good 1961 cartoon from the Yogi Bear show animated by Ralph Somerville with story direction by Artie Davis. The cycle has six drawings on twos. The animation doesn’t match up with the repeat in the background but it won’t be too noticeable here. This is a little slower than in the actual cartoon.
