Huckleberry Hound/Yogi Bear/Quick Draw Options

[The Great Fleega...]

I got to thinking about some of the early Hanna-Barbera toons: the half-hour "Huckleberry Hound," "Quick Draw McGraw" and "Yogi Bear" shows started out in first-run syndication (in 1958, 1959 and 1961, repectively) and I remember seeing all these cartoons repeated through the 1970s and into the early 1980s on WGN in Chicago, where indivdual segments were featured on "Bozo's Circus," "Ray Rayner & His Friends" and "Garfield Goose And Friends" (and eventually, a half-hour show called "Yogi Bear & Friends," which included all nine series). By the early 1980s, these cartoons had been exiled to the "dumping ground" of a very early Saturday and Sunday morning generic half-hour timeslot (listed in TV Guide simply as "Cartoons") alongside old Warner Brothers shorts (early musical ones with no "starring" characters, mostly), "Mel-O-Toons" and the like. When WGN ran these Hanna-Barbera shorts, the majority were the versions with the "short main titles," featuring just the final title card with the name of the cartoon accompanied by a short musical fanfare (most of which had served as the closing title music on the versions with the longer, theatrical-style credits). Only the "Quick Draw McGraw," "Snooper & Blabber" and "Augie Doggie" cartoons had the "long credits" (which weren't even seen when the cartoons originally aired in first-run syndication). WGN didn't show any of the individual shows' openings, closings or connecting segments ("interstitials") except for the odd accident (I do know of one being left on the beginning of a "Huckleberry Hound" cartoon aired on "Bozo's Circus" once in the early 1970s). Flash forward to 1985: USA Network added a show called "Yogi Bear" to its "Cartoon Express" lineup, which had consisted mostly of oddball 1970s Hanna-Barbera shows. This was a very interesting presentation of these cartoons. As I remember, most of the shows matched up with TV Guide listings of the original airings of "Huckleberry Hound" going back to 1958, even to the point of having the cartoons in the same running order within a show (sometimes the show would start with a Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear or a Pixie & Dixie short, but the three seemed to rotate positons). The shows began with the original "Yogi Bear" opening (freeze-framed towards the end just as Yogi is emerging from the billboard; look very closely and you could faintly see him holding the Kellogg's logo, which you weren't supposed to be able to see) and ended with a short version of the "Huckleberry Hound" closing (at the time, this perplexed me since the closing featured Huckleberry Hound, Yakky Doodle and Chopper, and Hokey Wolf and Ding-A-Ling, and I don't remember them being featured on the same show together at any time). So these were "Huckleberry Hound" shows with "Yogi Bear" openings tacked on. Very early in the USA run, they included a few interstitial segments between the cartoons, but only a very few...and Hokey Wolf and Ding-A-Ling were edited out of these segments. In only a few cases (as I remember), the shows featured Yakky Doodle, Snagglepuss and /or Hokey Wolf, and those half-hours featured the original "Yogi Bear" show closing...but those were few and far between, and only a small number of post-1960 cartoons were included (and no post-1960 Huckleberry Hound or Pixie & Dixie). Now...as for the cartoons themselves, the vast majority of them were beautiful remastered copies that looked like they were made from the original 35mm, and the majority of the cartoons had the long theatrical-style openings. They never looked better...before or since. Then in 1988, Hanna-Barbera decided to relaunch "Yogi Bear" in syndication. The Yogi character and cartoons were yanked from the package, USA started calling it "Huckleberry Hound And Friends," the show opening was dropped (though the "Huckleberry Hound" closing remained) and the individual half-hours were reformatted to replace all the Yogi Bear cartoons with either Hokey Wolf, Snagglepuss or Yakky Doodle. A few years later, Turner bought the Hanna-Barbera library and the cartoons began airing on TNT (and the newly-launched Cartoon Network). But now the prints weren't as good...they looked like washed out 16mm dupes, and the majority had the "long credits" partially edited with dead silence (or more accurately, film scratch noise) until the final title card with the name of the cartoon (usually accompanied by the "short title" or "end title" music). And there were a few real oddities...instead of the dead silence I mentioned, some of the Yogi Bear shorts had an edited version of the "Yogi Bear" title music; one Pixie & Dixie cartoon had "sponsor billboard" music from the "Huckleberry Hound" show (with no announcer's voice, but the "rooster in a balloon" sound effects intact). When I've seen some of these cartoons released on home video (even when USA was still running them), it's these dupes that were used...I have a 1980s Huckleberry Hound videotape that has the Turner-style "long credits" on the first cartoon included on the tape...but instead of dead silence, someone dubbed Huckleberry Hound's voice singing "Clementine" from one of the cartoons. What I can't figure out is this: why would Hanna-Barbera (or whoever put this stuff together) resort to that, when brilliant, beautiful, complete prints of the cartoons were readily available and were even running regularly on television at the time? And what happened to those remastered versions of the cartoons after they left USA?

Not a big deal...but I'm curious about this.

[RobEB]

I have always wondered about the missing HB theme music from the HH, YB, and QDM cartoons on Cartoon Network. What is the story behind this? From 1958 to roughly 1964, Huck and the original HB animal stars were HUGE, as big as SpongeBob and (somewhat ironically) Scooby Doo are today. Probably even bigger, given the lack of other kiddie-TV choices in those days before cable. It's a real shame the characters aren't given better treatment these days.

I recently bought a complete Huckleberry Hound Show on 16mm. The opening and closing were the newer, non-Kellogg's versions (although the Kellogg's rooster does make a brief appearance). But the bridging sequences are there, and the color and quality is outstanding. The animation on these sequences is actually much better than the cartoons themselves, looking much like the last bunch of MGM Tom and Jerrys made about a year or two earlier.

[Guest_JackSpit_*]

The Leo Burnett Company -- responsible for Kelloggs advertising brokered the early HB material-- without the Cereal Giant's patronage, Yogi, R&r, Huck, Quick Straw--et. al, would've never been made. More $$$ was designated for intros on most TV series, as well as all the commercials that featured them than for the actual episodes.

[RobEB]

The Leo Burnett Company -- responsible for Kelloggs advertising brokered the early HB material-- without the Cereal Giant's patronage, Yogi, R&r, Huck, Quick Straw--et. al, would've never been made. More $$$ was designated for intros on most TV series, as well as all the commercials that featured them than for the actual episodes.

Don't know where you're from, but if you're ever in Michigan, make the pilgrimage to Kellogg's Cereal City, in Battle Creek. This is a huge museum dedicated to everything cereal, and is a replacement of the popular plant tours Kellogg's used to give through the 1980s. There you'll find a room filled with TV sets that will play vintage Kellogg's commercials with Huck, Yogi, Top Cat, Woody Woodpecker, and more (even live action commercials, including ones from Superman and The Beverly Hillbillies) at the touch of a button. They've also got displays of character premiums and lots of cereal boxes. It's a cool place.

[The Great Fleega...]

I recently bought a complete Huckleberry Hound Show on 16mm.  The opening and closing were the newer, non-Kellogg's versions (although the Kellogg's rooster does make a brief appearance).  But the bridging sequences are there, and the color and quality is outstanding.  The animation on these sequences is actually much better than the cartoons themselves, looking much like the last bunch of MGM Tom and Jerrys made about a year or two earlier.

Hey...any chance of sharing this show with fellow collectors? Nudge nudge, wink wink?

Can you tell me anything about the content of the shows...which characters are featured, which connecting segments (interstitials) are in there...are Yakky Doodle and Chopper pictured in the closing? Was "Yakky Doodle" indeed a segment on "Huckleberry Hound" at one time? How about the interstitial segments? Is Yakky Doodle in any of them?

I know, what does that have to do with the price of beans...but you've piqued my curiosity.

[Ray Pointer]

[Can you tell me anything about the content of the shows...which characters are featured, which connecting segments (interstitials) are in there...are Yakky Doodle and Chopper pictured in the closing? Was "Yakky Doodle" indeed a segment on "Huckleberry Hound" at one time? How about the interstitial segments? Is Yakky Doodle in any of them?

The curious thing about Yakky Doodle is this. The character started out in "Pixie and
Dixie" and Yogi Bear segments on the original 1958 HUCKLEBERRY HOUSE SHOW as "Iddy-Biddy Buddy." He was used again in an "Augie Doggie" cartoon on QUICK DRAW MCGRAW in 1959. He became Yakky Doodle as a regular segment on the YOGI BEAR SHOW in 1960.

Sometime in the late Spring of 1965, Screen Gems started mixing the cartoon sements between the HUCK and YOGI shows. Pixie and Dixie, which I thought was the funniest segment on the HUCK show, was exchanged with Yakky Doodle from the YOGI show,
and joined Huck along with Hokey Wolf cartoons. The YOGI show thne consisted of
a Yogi, Snagglepuss, and Pixie & Dixie.

When the original black and white opening and closing of HUCKELBERRY HOUND was remade in color, Cornelius the Kellogg's Rooster was replaced with Huck. The ending
sequence with the clown car in the circus tent has Huck driving (not Corelius), picking up Hokey and Ding-A-Ling at they "thumb a ride." (Originally this was Huck) Yakky and Chopper are piled up in the rear of the car. The car passes through the tent entrance, and Yakky hits his head on the top of the opening, falling out of the car. Huck runs in and picks him up, and runs back out. In this, Yakky is subtituted for Tony Jr. of the Frosted Flakes commercials, and all of the other Kellogg's cereal characters such as Smacksie the Seal and Sugar Pops Pete are also subtituted with Hanna-Barbera characters because the Leo Burnett deal had expired, and the cartoons were now in syndication independent of the Kellogg's sponsorship.

[Guest_JackSpit_*]

Tony Jr. was first replaced by Sugar Pop Pete, the pistol-packin'porcupine--or it was the other way around---OR they were run intermitantly--

[Ray Pointer]

Tony Jr. was first replaced by Sugar Pop Pete, the pistol-packin'porcupine--or it was the other way around---OR they were run intermitantly--

I guess this is well before your time. In the mid to late 50s, The Frosted Flakes commercials featured Tony the Tiger and Tony Jr. Sugar Pops Pete was a Wetern Prarie Dogl character representing the cereal of that name, voiced by Daws Butler. The Sugar Pops commercials were seen on the WILD BILL HICOCK SHOW, which was replaced by HUCKELBERRY HOUND in 1958. There were other Kellogg's mascot characters such as Smacksie the Seal for Sugar Smacks. All of these characters were replaced by the Hanna-Barbera characters as they gained popularity. Quick Draw McGraw Replaced Sugar Pops Pete, Yogi Bear was on the Corn Flakes box replacing
Cornelius, and later was on the forgoten, Kellogg's Okays cereal box. Snaglepuss
was on the CoCoa Crispies box. Most of the star H-B characters were used in Kellogg's commercials including Jinxs, Pixie and Dixie for Raisin Bran. Snap, Crakle and Pop were the few to survive. And of course, after the Leo Burnett deal was finished, Cornelius the Rooster returned to the cover of the Corn Flakes box.

You can imagine that these cereal boxes have collector's value now.

[Jorge Finkielman]

You can imagine that these cereal boxes have collector's value now.

It is important to mention that Kellog's stuff never made it in Argentina, even though they are always trying to make it. My regular breakfast (and afternoon snack) has always been coffee & milk that more or less tastes as a cappuccino and some cookies.

Since this is more or less the conventional breakfast in my country, Kellog's made money with other things: snack stuff (chips, cheeses, etc.)

Anyway, around the 80's Kellog's decided to "abandon" their snack products and concentrate in cereals. But since they did not drop the snacks, they adopted a secondary brand (I think Tazos) for that purpose.

Cartoon Network in both, their Latin American and Argentinean versions, air commercials of these companies trhoughout the days. The soundtrack is somehow different from channel to channel with neutral mexican actors occasioanlly replaced by Argentinean actors with their natural accents.

The commercials dealing with sports, unlike the American counterparts, concentrate almost exclusively on Soccer leaving the other sports like baseball or football out.

All of these commercials features animation, wether it is for Kellogg's or Tazos.

As far as I can remember, the animation shows in Buenos Aires were always presented without their orginal commercial tags. In the 70's some anime shows were dubbed in Argentina and their titles fully remade in Spanish (I remember Heidi).

By around 1978 or 1979, the Pink Panther cartoons made it to the Argentinean screens. It was slotted in the afternoons and had a sponsorship by Citroen. But the comercials were done in Buenos Aires. The original shows were not touched. However, some of the 16mm prints were not in good shape and the sound was out of sync.

These prints has been used for years, until the show was pulled out of broadcast stations!!!!

[RobEB]

Hey...any chance of sharing this show with fellow collectors? Nudge nudge, wink wink?

Can you tell me anything about the content of the shows...which characters are featured, which connecting segments (interstitials) are in there...are Yakky Doodle and Chopper pictured in the closing? Was "Yakky Doodle" indeed a segment on "Huckleberry Hound" at one time? How about the interstitial segments? Is Yakky Doodle in any of them?

I know, what does that have to do with the price of beans...but you've piqued my curiosity.

Sorry it took me so long to respond to this, but I wanted to re-watch the show again, and I wasn't able to do so until today.

After the show opening, the first segment (where Huck introduces the cast) is Huck's School of Magic. Jinx appears dressed as a swami and tries to shrink Pixie and Dixie, but it backfires, and he ends up shrinking himself. Then Hokey Wolf (no Ding A Ling) smashes Huck like an accordian with a large weight. Then Huck pulls himself out of his magician's hat, so there are two of them (kind of like the two Daffys in DUCK AMUCK).

After this segment, there is a shorter interstitial segment with just Huck on a trampoline. He bounces over his house and down the chimney, his head sticking out of the fireplace upside down. The camera then flips around so he's "right-side-up," and he says "Now I can watch the next Huckleberry Hound cartoon!"

Which is actually a mildly-amusing Yogi Bear cartoon (no credits or end title), "Loco Locomotive" (even though Hokey Wolf was in the opening and closing segments, it's a Yogi cartoon that shows up here. In fact, none of the featured Huck cast members have an actual cartoon on this show. I don't know if this was done by the distributor, Screen Gems, or by the local TV station. I do find it interesting that at a certain point in the '60s, you could have a HUCKLEBERRY HOUND show without any HUCKLEBERRY HOUND cartoons).

Then there's another short interstitial segment with track star Huck trying to throw the hammer, and ending up being thrown himself. This Huck looks slightly off-model. His ears are more dog-like. I've heard of HB farming out work, but I'm not sure they would have done so at this early stage of the studio's history.

Up next is "Remember Your Lions," a so-so Snagglepuss theatrical spoof, with full opening credits, but no end card.

This is followed by another brief Huck segment, with him driving a mini white sports car. When he tries to "stop on a dime," his legs go straight through the front of the car!

Next is a very lame Yakky Doodle cartoon called "The Most Ghost." No credits or end title.

To wrap up the show, Huck (this time reprising his role as Officer Huckleberry)brings the absentee cast back again. He suggests that Jinx get a license to hunt Pixie and Dixie! Then Huck is about to evict a snoozing Hokey from a park bench, until Hokey reminds him that, as a citizen, he actually pays Huck's salary. And as he lays back down on the bench, he asks Huck to "wake me up in time for the next Huckleberry Hound cartoon show."

Then the show ends with the post-Kelloggs closing, so wonderfully described by Ray Pointer elsewhere in this thread.

BTW, I never realized Sugar Pops Pete was a prairie dog. I always thought he was a squirrel...

[Super Rabbit]

Is there a reason Cartoon Network and Boomerang have never used the post-Kelloggs Huck and Yogi openings? It seems a little strange that they would have something as obscure as the 1960's Porky Pig Show opening, but not those two openings.

[The Great Fleega...]

Is there a reason Cartoon Network and Boomerang have never used the post-Kelloggs Huck and Yogi openings? It seems a little strange that they would have something as obscure as the 1960's Porky Pig Show opening, but not those two openings.

Cartoon Network has shown the Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw show openings, but not very often. The only place I have seen them is on their Saturday morning Boomerang preview block, and not every time. The Yogi and Quick Draw openings have only appeared relatively recently. CN was showing the Huckleberry Hound opening years ago (but not the closing; kind of ironic, since USA showed the closing and no opening). CN used to show the opening again at the end of the Huckleberry Hound show when featured on its Boomerang block; in the last couple years, they have shown the opening at the top of the show and the closing at the end, so they at least have gotten that right.

I've seen some HH connecting footage on CN, but I think it's the same couple of segments over and over, like the Porky Pig ones. In fact, the Porky Pig shows never feature the closing credits; they end with the "curtain calls" (maybe since the credits might include specific cartoon titles which wouldn't match the cartoons they had just shown--usually including colorized B&W Looney Tunes, which were *never ever* included in the 1960s Saturday morning Porky Pig show). (I'm told there were 156 cartoons in the "syndicated" "Porky Pig & Friends" package which Warner Brothers had available pre-1990, which were carried on WGN in Chicago, WWOR in New York, and other stations around the country; 78 of them were cartoons which had been aired on the 1960s Saturday morning "Porky Pig Show"--the majority of which had previously been pulled out of "The Bugs Bunny Show's" cartoon rotation in 1964, which is when the wholesale scrambling and chopping up of "The Bugs Bunny Show" started--and the other 78 were redrawn colorized Looney Tunes which had never been shown on the network series but had previously been syndicated--in black and white--by other TV distributors such as Guild and Sunset.)

The Yogi Bear opening I've seen on CN has always been black and white (here we go again; USA had it in color in 1985-1988) and it "freezes" a little earlier, so you don't see Yogi driving out of the billboard at all (see the first post in this thread). There also has been Yogi Bear show connecting footage, also in black and white and I think just a few segments that repeat over and over.

For Quick Draw McGraw, they show an edited black and white opening with all Kellogg's references eliminated, and the closing credits (which featured the Kellogg's logo prominently displayed on the back of the stagecoach throughout virtually the whole thing) have the logo optically painted out. A friend suggested to me that this might explain why the syndicated QDM, Augie Doggie and Snooper & Blabber cartoon shorts were the only ones in the package to include the long credits; maybe the closing credits of the Quick Draw McGraw show weren't made available in later syndication packages because of the Kellogg's logo (in the days before digital editing and retouching). All QDM interstitial footage I have seen on CN has also been black and white.

[stevea]

This is all interesting since I remember seeing all the Hanna-B shorts here in Indy on WTTV, with the short openings. And I've always wondered about the silence on the CN showings.

With regard to the videos, they probably pulled the most convenient source...it didn't matter that pristine remasterings existed...or they didn't know.

This shows why knowledgable need to be involved...

[Ray Pointer]

For Quick Draw McGraw, they show an edited black and white opening with all Kellogg's references eliminated, and the closing credits (which featured the Kellogg's logo prominently displayed on the back of the stagecoach throughout virtually the whole thing) have the logo optically painted out.

There was a non-Kellogg's version of the QUICK DRAW wrap-arounds that used the same animation without the sponsor's reference shown in Canada. Although the normal time slot in the Detroit area was Tuesdays at 6:30 on CKLW, Channel 9 (Windsor, Ontario), there was an afternoon kids' show called RAZZLE-DAZZLE (hosted by Al Hamel--Mr. Suzzane Summers) that aired at 4:00 p.m. coming from Toronto. This would have been around 1961 or '62, and Channnel 9 carried this on a network feed. One afternoon, there was a technical problem, and they ran the Canadian version of QUICK DRAW in progress as a substitute. In this verson the rear comparment of the stage coach flapping open and closed to the "Good Morning" music phrase without the annoucer's voice speaking the sponsor's line, "Brought to you by Kellogg's, the best name in cereal, etc." This version was also used when QUICK DRAW ran on CBS in the mid 60s. The opening was faded out as Quick Draw pulled the brake and settled into the dirt street.

[RobEB]

BTW, if anyone's interested, Ron Kurer's Toon Tracker site has a Huck and a Quick Draw open and close, and a few Kellogg's commercials (and a whole lot of other stuff, of course).