Jay Ward/Total TV Crossovers, Have I missed any? Options

[The Great Fleega...]

I don't mean Hunter and King & Odie shorts showing up in a "Dudley Do-Right" show...I'm referring to actual appearances of one studio's characters in the other's cartoons (which did occur, not too surprising since they were executed by the same production house). Here are a few I know of:

A Bullwinkle head mounted as a trophy in a "Commander McBragg" cartoon...

The Mole Men of Underdog's "Mole Men" story appearing as characters in a "Hoppity Hooper" storyline...

I'm also told Boris Badenov has a cameo either in one of the "King & Odie" or "Hunter" segments...can anyone verify this?

Are there any other examples?

[Gman4ever]

I have an Underdog And The Disappearing Ice Cream (1975) Golden Book which has in its story the moonmen from Bullwinkle....or it uses the term moonmen and credits the term "[copyright] P.A.T Ward". The Moonmen btw do not look like Ward's but I wonder if the writer were confused, as we all were at one time, by the Gamma style .....uhhh...borrowed from Ward.

In the wonderful book The Moose That Roared Rocky and Bullwinkle appeared in Go-Go Gophers.

[FleischerFan]

I don't believe Gamma "borrowed" the style. Gamma did the animation for both Jay Ward and the King Leonardo/Tennessee Tuxedo/Underdog" stuff as well.

[The Great Fleega...]

I have an Underdog And The Disappearing Ice Cream (1975) Golden Book which has in its story the moonmen from Bullwinkle....or it uses the term moonmen and credits the term "[copyright] P.A.T Ward". The Moonmen btw do not look like Ward's but I wonder if the writer were confused, as we all were at one time, by the Gamma style .....uhhh...borrowed from Ward.

In the wonderful book The Moose That Roared Rocky and Bullwinkle appeared in Go-Go Gophers.

I don't recall ever running across the Gophers short with R&B in it (the first 27 Gophers shorts are part of the syndicated Underdog package, but that segment may be one of the missing ones).

I do know that (also according to "The Moose That Roared") the credit "PAT/Ward" was used for merchandising which was officially licensed by Jay Ward and Peter Piech, and applied to the jointly-licensed Jay Ward and TTV charactrers. (I believe this no longer is the case.) I used to have an Underdog button with the "PAT/Ward" credit.

[J Lee]

While both companies used the same animation house in Mexico, Jay Ward Productions was a west coast company, while Total TV was based in New York and utilized its writers, artists and voice actors when the cartoons were made. It was in the 1970, when everything went to syndication, that the co-mingling began, and at first it was limted to both studio's "lesser lights" -- cartoons that couldn't stand on their own as a show, but could be mixed in with others to come up with a 30-minute episode. So while at first Rocky & Bullwinkle and Underdog remained "pure" other shows like Dudley Do-Right and Hoppety Hooper from Ward, and Tennessee Tuxedo and Go-Go Gophers from Total began having their elements combined into what most people remember today.

[FleischerFan]

Duddley Do-Right never had his own first-run show. He was an element in the Bullwinkle show Jay Ward created for NBC. However, Duddley's popularity led to the creation of the Jay Ward/TTV mix in syndication.

[The Great Fleega...]

While both companies used the same animation house in Mexico, Jay Ward Productions was a west coast company, while Total TV was based in New York and utilized its writers, artists and voice actors when the cartoons were made. It was in the 1970, when everything went to syndication, that the co-mingling began, and at first it was limted to both studio's "lesser lights" -- cartoons that couldn't stand on their own as a show, but could be mixed in with others to come up with a 30-minute episode. So while at first Rocky & Bullwinkle and Underdog remained "pure" other shows like Dudley Do-Right and Hoppety Hooper from Ward, and Tennessee Tuxedo and Go-Go Gophers from Total began having their elements combined into what most people remember today.

Well, actually...

The first occasion of a Total TV cartoon appearing on a Jay Ward show was when Twinkles aired on "Rocky & His Friends," simultaneous with the same shorts running on "King Leonardo & His Short Subjects." I'm not certain, but I believe that started in the second season of "Rocky & His Friends" (1960-1961).

"Commander McBragg" may or may not have originally aired as part of "Hoppity Hooper." (Maybe someone can verify this.) I have tapes of three network "Hooper" shows and McBragg isn't in any of them. However, the Commander McBragg shorts do appear in the syndicated "Uncle Waldo" package, which actually tells us nothing about whether or not those cartoons were in there originally.

"Aesop & Son" most definitely did air as part of "The Underdog Show" during its first season as an alternating segment with "Go Go Gophers."

The "Dudley" show actually was not created specifically for syndication, but you are correct in that all the segments were repeated from earlier shows. However, the original ABC version of the show (which aired from 1968 to 1970) was titled "The Dudley Do-Right Show" and originally featured two Dudley Do-Rights, two Commander McBraggs, and one each of The Hunter and Tooter Turtle. The original show opening began with the same clip of the wolf chasing Dudley and Dudley running into the theatre, but originally was accompanied by the Dudley Do-Right theme music as heard at the top of the individual cartoons. Additionally, there were no clips of other characters in the original show opening, but it would cut to the "screen credits" such as "Snidely Whiplash played by Sid Gould" with Jackson Beck's voice on the soundtrack announcing the characters. The closing was very similar to the one which still adorns the syndicated shows, but did not say "Dudley Do Right And Friends" at the end. The syndicated version (I don't know when it debuted in syndication) was retitled "Dudley Do Right And Friends" and as far as characters, dropped Tooter Turtle and added The King & Odie. The syndicated opening has clips of Commander McBragg and part of the "King Leonardo" opening (featuring The Hunter and The King & Odie) added. Two of the original "interstitials" (with Jackson Beck's voice) from the ABC series survived into the syndicated shows, which remained in there as long as the show was distributed on 16mm film, but when it was switched to tape, the bumpers were dropped. Interestringly, brief clips of "Stokey The Bear" were usedin the connecting footage and also in the syndicated opening.

The syndicated "Bullwinkle Show" included Commander McBragg and The Sing-A-Long Family for many years, but in the early 1990s, those cartoons were replaced with extra repeats of "Bullwinkle's Corner" and "Mr. Know-It-All" when the episodes were remastered.

[FleischerFan]

Memory is a notoriously unreliable thing...

HOWEVER, I was a devoted viewer of the Hoppity Hooper Show during its all-too-brief network run. I do not remember Commander McBragg being a part of the show at all. I was not very familiar with the character until I saw some of the episodes airing in syndication many, many years later.

Twinkles, if memory serves, was created by General Mills as a breakfast cereal with a built in "storybook" on each box. The character of Twinkles the Elephant was the mascot for the breakfast cereal. Again, as I recall, the Twinkles segments were there because General Mills sponsored the Rocky Show, but as kids, we knew they weren't part of the "real" Rocky show, but were there as kind of an animated product placement, if you get my drift.

So, I don't know if Twinkles is really a Total Television cartoon as it was a wholly-owned character of General Mills.

[Steve Carras]

While both companies used the same animation house in Mexico, Jay Ward Productions was a west coast company, while Total TV was based in New York and utilized its writers, artists and voice actors when the cartoons were made. It was in the 1970, when everything went to syndication, that the co-mingling began, and at first it was limted to both studio's "lesser lights" -- cartoons that couldn't stand on their own as a show, but could be mixed in with others to come up with a 30-minute episode. So while at first Rocky & Bullwinkle and Underdog remained "pure" other shows like Dudley Do-Right and Hoppety Hooper from Ward, and Tennessee Tuxedo and Go-Go Gophers from Total began having their elements combined into what most people remember today.

Well, actually...

The first occasion of a Total TV cartoon appearing on a Jay Ward show was when Twinkles aired on "Rocky & His Friends," simultaneous with the same shorts running on "King Leonardo & His Short Subjects." I'm not certain, but I believe that started in the second season of "Rocky & His Friends" (1960-1961).

"Commander McBragg" may or may not have originally aired as part of "Hoppity Hooper." (Maybe someone can verify this.) I have tapes of three network "Hooper" shows and McBragg isn't in any of them. However, the Commander McBragg shorts do appear in the syndicated "Uncle Waldo" package, which actually tells us nothing about whether or not those cartoons were in there originally.

"Aesop & Son" most definitely did air as part of "The Underdog Show" during its first season as an alternating segment with "Go Go Gophers."

The "Dudley" show actually was not created specifically for syndication, but you are correct in that all the segments were repeated from earlier shows. However, the original ABC version of the show (which aired from 1968 to 1970) was titled "The Dudley Do-Right Show" and originally featured two Dudley Do-Rights, two Commander McBraggs, and one each of The Hunter and Tooter Turtle. The original show opening began with the same clip of the wolf chasing Dudley and Dudley running into the theatre, but originally was accompanied by the Dudley Do-Right theme music as heard at the top of the individual cartoons. Additionally, there were no clips of other characters in the original show opening, but it would cut to the "screen credits" such as "Snidely Whiplash played by Sid Gould" with Jackson Beck's voice on the soundtrack announcing the characters. The closing was very similar to the one which still adorns the syndicated shows, but did not say "Dudley Do Right And Friends" at the end. The syndicated version (I don't know when it debuted in syndication) was retitled "Dudley Do Right And Friends" and as far as characters, dropped Tooter Turtle and added The King & Odie. The syndicated opening has clips of Commander McBragg and part of the "King Leonardo" opening (featuring The Hunter and The King & Odie) added. Two of the original "interstitials" (with Jackson Beck's voice) from the ABC series survived into the syndicated shows, which remained in there as long as the show was distributed on 16mm film, but when it was switched to tape, the bumpers were dropped. Interestringly, brief clips of "Stokey The Bear" were usedin the connecting footage and also in the syndicated opening.

The syndicated "Bullwinkle Show" included Commander McBragg and The Sing-A-Long Family for many years, but in the early 1990s, those cartoons were replaced with extra repeats of "Bullwinkle's Corner" and "Mr. Know-It-All" when the episodes were remastered.

Feegali, I recall seeing five years ago on CN the DUDLEY show and it had, for ONCE, BILL SOCZTT (the versatile, prolific Jay Ward voice), listed--somehting that at Mre.Scott's request jusually NEVER happened in voice credits, since he'd felt that his name was alrteayd TOO prominetly displayed elsehwere (hence the joint PONSONBY RBITT stuff that he and Jay Ward came up with as exec.producer.:-))

[Guest_JackSpit_*]

While Jay Ward lived on the West Coast, all of his animation productions not filmed by Gamma, i.e. the Quaker Commercials, Hoppity Hooper, and George of the Jungle were actually done in New York.

[The Great Fleega...]

Memory is a notoriously unreliable thing...

HOWEVER, I was a devoted viewer of the Hoppity Hooper Show during its all-too-brief network run. I do not remember Commander McBragg being a part of the show at all. I was not very familiar with the character until I saw some of the episodes airing in syndication many, many years later.

Twinkles, if memory serves, was created by General Mills as a breakfast cereal with a built in "storybook" on each box. The character of Twinkles the Elephant was the mascot for the breakfast cereal. Again, as I recall, the Twinkles segments were there because General Mills sponsored the Rocky Show, but as kids, we knew they weren't part of the "real" Rocky show, but were there as kind of an animated product placement, if you get my drift.

So, I don't know if Twinkles is really a Total Television cartoon as it was a wholly-owned character of General Mills.

I just got the book "How Underdog Was Born" and in there, authors Buck Biggers and Chet Stover talk about how they were working on "Twinkles" whle both worked for DFS (the advertising agency which handled the General Mills account) at the time they first set up Total Television. Total Television, according to the book, consisted of these two guys and was established specifically to produce "King Leonardo & His Short Subjects." So by strict definition, "Twinkles" may not actually qualify as a TTV cartoon. Now, I personally am too young to remember this myself, but I am told that when "King Leonardo" was syndicated as a 15-minute show under the series title "The King & Odie," the "Twinkles" shorts were included...but I never saw them as part of the half-hour syndicated "King Leonardo" reruns in the 1980s. If TTV never actually owned these shorts, that would explain it. I know they were created as a commercial tie-in, but there is no overt commercial plug in the shorts, and the Twinkles cereal doesn't even exist any more, so I can't see the tie-in business as a reason for not showing them. (Even "Linus The Lion-Hearted" was syndicated in the 1970s, and it ran in Chicago for a while.) Biggers and Stover also mention old theatrical cartoons being shown on the "King Leonardo" show during its first season, but they say they were Terrytoons. I have a copy of two network "King Leonardo" shows (which I got courtesy of our own Jungle Jim Engel--thanks, Jim) and they have Columbia cartoons in them. In fact, if I recall this correctly, Jeff Lenburg's "Encyclopedia Of Animated Cartoon Series" mistakenly lists two Columbia theatrical cartoon short titles in place of two actual "King & Odie" episode titles and it just so happens that it is these two cartoons. (For the record, they are #43 and #44, which Lenburg lists as "Cat-Nipped" and "Dog, Cat And Canary;" these are Columbia cartoons and the actual King & Odie cartoon titles which belong on the list are "True Blue Blues" and "My Dog Has Fleas.")

On the subject of the Lenburg book, it's a great reference simply by virtue of its being (at the time) pretty much the only published source for cartoon episode guides, even with its numerous errors. It was veryt sloppy and incomplete, with many series listed out of order, with some titles missing etc., but for some reason, the Ward and TTV stuff was listed pretty accurately for the most part, and generally in the right order. I am guessing he must have had access to some official information. Still, there were a few errors and apart from the fact that the recent Underdog DVDs have titles remade and replaced to begin with, it's likely that the Lenburg book was used as a source since in some cases, working titles are used instead of the actual original on-screen episode titles, and in at least one case, Classic Media picked up a misspelling of one title ("Failspin Tooter" instead of "Tailspin Tooter"). What a mess. Let's screw around with some classic animation, butcher it, edit multi-part stories into one long cartoon, chop off all the original titles, etc., and then when no one buys it, we'll say, "See? No one remembers Underdog! Told you these characters wouldn't sell!"

[Guest_JackSpit_*]

Underdog has always been big---gigantic even--remember the Macy's Parade? He was 50 ft tall!--But seriously, he's featured in the current #1 commercial right now w/ some Marvel-ous co-stars---"There's no need to fear- Shoe Shine Boy is here!"