Wednesday 30 March 2011

Yogi Bear Sunday, April 1961

The last couple of months, we’ve brought you the Yogi Bear Sunday (Saturday, in Canada) comics from 50 years ago, so we’ll do the same for the month of April. One of the papers I ran into on-line had the full comic, the others are missing the top rows.

On the Yogi Bear Show, our favourite con artist bruin sets up a wishing well (A Bear Living, animated by Art Davis), but the plot’s entirely different than the strip of April 2nd.


April 9th features more pic-a-nic baskets and more rhymes.


A Loopy De Loop cartoon called Happy Go Loopy, released in March 1961, was built around Loopy stumbling upon a masquerade party, being invited in, and becoming the life of the party; he even plays the piano. Then, Loopy’s asked to take off his disguise, informs everyone he’s not in disguise and he’s kicked out of the party. The plot’s the same in the April 16th Yogi comic but the ending’s different.


Indian rain dances seem to have found their way into cartoons on occasion; Augie Doggie did one in a gag in Pop Nature’s Pup. Yogi does it in the April 23rd comic. The layout’s pretty clever here. I like the panel with Yogi in silhouette in the background, the Ranger in the foreground and a tree that’s in between them in the distance. And the Ranger’s dance is nice and clumsy.


Short, bald, monocle-wearing Englishmen make up the incidental character world of Hanna-Barbera on occasion. Here’s one on April 30th. The “Earl of Cloves” reminds me of that great bit in Rabbit Hood when Bugs is bashing, er, knighting the Sheriff of Nottingham. The punny-peerage title bit was used again in later cartoons.


Our colour drawing quota this time comes from the people who, besides Columbia Pictures, had the cash that put our favourite half-hour Hanna-Barbera cartoon short shows on the air. Someone might have a better idea when this post card featuring that cereal company in Michigan was created, but Coco the Elephant apparently had a short life span starting either in 1959 or 1960. You’d figure Cornelius the rooster would rate an appearance but perhaps it’s because he was known more for packages than TV commercials like the others. Thanks to Billie Towzer for the photo.


4 comments:

  1. Love the Kelloggs's panel. There's a character I haven't seen in ages. On the bottom right. " Sugar Pop's Pete " WOW!!

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  2. Sorry. On the bottom left. Lot of getting up early and heading to the bus stop memories in that poster.

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  3. I really love your blog, thanks to post so much hanna barbera's cartoons.

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  4. "Coco the Elephant", of course, represented Cocoa Krispies at the time the postcard was issued in 1960. A year later, Snagglepuss became the icon [and star] on the package and their Tv commercials, right through the mid-'60s.

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