Wednesday 29 April 2015

Yowp Sightings

Hi, Yowp here. You know my story. I appeared in three Yogi Bear cartoons. Then Joe Barbera told me, “We’re going in a different direction. Yogi, Ranger Smith, Boo Boo and Jellystone Park. No room for you.”

Ah, there was a time stardom seemed in my grasp. Hanna-Barbera included me in their marketing. Here are a couple of examples I’ve spotted.



Dynamic Toy, 109 Ainslie Street, Brooklyn 11, N.Y., made a number of these vegetable ink tattoo kits in 1961. There was one with the Flintstones and another with Disney characters. And there was this one with various characters from the Huck and Yogi shows.


Here they are. And look! Second row to the far left, there I am. All the other characters are identified except me. “Yowp, you don’t need an introduction,” said Joe. Smooth talker, that Barbera.


Now, here’s an odd mixture of characters—the TV version of Felix the Cat, the 1950s Famous Studios version of Popeye with people in the Popeye newspaper strip, and the cast of “The Yogi Bear Show.” And yours truly is there, too. Same design as in the Cockamamies. Who made these rubber stamps? I have no idea.

But my days were already numbered. The studio introduced the Flintstones in 1960 and Top Cat in 1961. Touché Turtle, Lippy and Hardy, and Wally Gator were around the corner. The studio now had plenty of starring characters to sell. And it did. Secondary characters like me became a memory. But we won’t quite fade away altogether, so long as you can see the fun old cartoons we were in.

And since we mentioned the Flintstones Cockamamies, here they are, including Baby Puss.

7 comments:

  1. Yowp, You were a great actor, and highly underrated by your own studio. Glad to see some mementos of when you were riding high. Your 45 seconds of going from one emotion to another in " Bare Faced bear " was deserving of an Emmy .

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  2. No one could do more with a single word than you could, Yowp!

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  3. Yowp was one of the earliest adherents to the minimalist school of acting, where broad, theatrical gestures weren't needed to get your point across.

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  4. Love the tats - especially Snagglepuss' bewildered facial expression, and the misnomer on the Yakky one.

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  5. Wow! I use to have a few of those rubber stamps.
    - Jez

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  6. 5/6/15
    RobGems.ca Wrote:
    More interesting H-B toys, courtesy of "Honest" Ed Justin & his staff at Screen Gems publicity department. The rubber-stamp collection is my favorite one. I still sometimes find these old toys in various antique shops, flea markets, and thrift shops (in various conditions,of course.) Finding any of those collectibles complete with all of the extra pieces and the box or package still intact would be worth a fortune.

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  7. Mike Tiefenbacher18 May 2015 at 16:24

    I had the YOGI rubber stamp set (actually, I still have the stamps), and in at least the version I received, it only featured Yogi, Boo Boo, Cindy, Ranger Smith, Snagglepuss (missing from the above picture), Yakky, Chopper, Fibber, the Major, and (as I still refer to him) Yowp Yowp. The Popeye/Felix stamps were from a separate King Features-licensed set from the same company (which appears to mix the comic-strip Popeye cast (Popeye, Olive, Wimpy, Roughhouse, and Geezil--instead of the more obvious Swee'pea, and perhaps Pappy or Sea Hag), with the Felix cartoon/comic-book casts (Felix, Rock Bottom, his magic bag and the non-cartoon nephews Inky and Dinky from the comic books).

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