Spacely’s a Stupe!
Six year old kids don’t know much about corporate backstabbing. But they do know when someone is being treated like crap and shouldn’t be. So it was that young me had a pretty good idea what was going...
View ArticleToons in Toyland
Did your parents buy you stuff featuring your favourite animated cartoon characters? Considering how huge the cartoon merchandising business is, the answer must surely be “yes.” And as we’ve shown in a...
View ArticleThe Great Maltese
Is there any doubt that Mike Maltese was the best cartoon writer of all? Not for me, there isn’t. Some of the funniest stories ever concocted at Warners Bros. were his, and he somehow managed to pump...
View ArticleHuckleberry Hound Rides Forever
Poor Huckleberry Hound gets abused in a bunch of his cartoons, but he never really seems to mind. In Dragon-Slayer Huck (1958), for example, a purple dragon breathes fire in his face and smashes him...
View ArticleEarly Bedrock?
Flagstones concept art? Reader Pat Caldore has pointed out these pieces below were recently put up for auction at the Van Eaton Gallery in California. Nowhere does the site indicate who is responsible...
View ArticleFlintstones Comics, July 1965
America’s fight to check the spread of Communism resulted in four pages in the Chicago Tribune 50 years ago this month listing the number of young men killed in Vietnam. Another page enumerated those...
View ArticleSnagglepuss in Feud For Thought
Snagglepuss spent a good chunk of his cartoon career “exiting.” And his quick departure from the stage was handled differently depending on the animator. Ken Muse simply went from a full character...
View ArticleLife At Hanna-Barbera
Hundreds of pictures of the Hanna-Barbera operation were taken for a Life magazine story published on November 21, 1961. We blogged about it HERE, linked to a copy of the original article and posted...
View ArticleYowp Artist Writes Book
How many people who animated your favourite cartoon dog Yowp are still alive? Here’s a hint: it’s the same answer to the question “How many animators who worked at Hanna-Barbera before 1960 are still...
View ArticleMasking For Trouble Storyboard
Put Quick Draw McGraw in a disguise, and you just know things are going to end badly. Take the episode “Masking For Trouble” (1959), for example. Poor Quick Draw tries to rescue a damsel from a...
View ArticleA Bear For Safety
Hanna-Barbera characters were used in a variety of public safety campaigns in various media, especially after pressure groups in the late ‘60s complained about cartoons being too violent. Perhaps...
View ArticleA Plan of Success Through Planned Animation
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera weren’t the only ones trying to make it in the TV cartoon business in 1957, but they were the most successful. Everything fell into place for them. They needed a bankroller....
View ArticleYogi Bear Weekend Comics, August 1965
Sorry, Yogi Bear fans, but my sources of half-page, three-row Yogi Bear newspaper comics has dried up again, so you’re stuck with the best versions I can find that are, unfortunately, missing the top...
View ArticleToday's Health Advice
Ads masquerading as columns were not something unheard of in newspapers. In many cases, they were labelled as an ad (in small print). Here’s a blatant ad for Flintstones Vitamins pretending to be a...
View ArticlePrivate Property
The plot of the Jetsons cartoon “Private Property” revolves around a set of blueprints that look exactly the same facing two different directions. So how is anyone supposed to be able to read them...
View ArticlePsst! Wanna Buy a Lawman Horse?
The Quick Draw McGraw Show debuted on September 28, 1959 on the “Kellogg’s network.” Kellogg’s agency, Leo Burnett, placed the half-hour cartoon show on stations across the U.S. willing to air it. But...
View ArticleHoyt Curtin Scores
Other than reruns of The Jetsons, I can’t think of a single Hanna-Barbera cartoon I’d want to watch on a Saturday morning 40 years ago (the 1974-75 season). That’s despite the presence of some of H-B’s...
View ArticleFlintstones Comics, August 1965
The postman’s back—at least for one encounter with Pebbley-Poo—in the Flintstones daily comic strips from 50 years ago this month. There isn’t much to say about them; you can click on each week to make...
View ArticleSnagglepuss in Arrow Error
The best part of any Snagglepuss cartoon is the declamations made by the pink lion, generally near the start thereof. Witness this soliloquy from “Arrow Error.” It starts with Snagglepuss (supposedly)...
View ArticleSnuffles the Model
One of many reasons that Quick Draw McGraw is my favourite Hanna-Barbera cartoon series—Snuffles! The poses on this sheet come from Snuffles’ first appearance in “Bow-Wow Bandit.” The animation is by...
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