Yogi Bear, Sunday, November 1961

What’s with the geyser obsession at Hanna-Barbera, anyway? It seems to have started when Yogi captured a couple of crooks by driving their getaway car onto a waterspout in Big Brave Bear in the first season. Of course, you’ll recall Yogi trying to make a getaway with some picnic baskets in the opening of his half-hour show, only to be lifted skyward by a geyser. And isn’t there an ‘Old Faceful’ at some of the Jellystone Park tourist resorts?

There was a geyser in the Sunday comic of the first week of August 1961 and there are two of them in November. The first one, on November 5, features a play on geyser with the word “geezer.” And we get a bratty kid. I wonder if someone connected with the comic had a daughter named Pamela.



A guest shot by Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy highlights the November 12 comic. The rhymes are a bit much but the end gag is clever play on words. You’ll recall Augie playing baseball in Talk It Up Pup (1959).



Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker did animated cartoons where they’d talk about the accomplishments of their relatives (who could forget “Wyatt Earp-pecker”?). Yogi’s done it in the comics on November 19. But couldn’t they have come up with a better name than “Hogi Bear”? Another cute ending.



And it’s geyser-catches-crook-as-Yogi-ineptly-drives-car time once again on November 26. The way cars are portrayed in the cartoons and comics is interesting. They look like a car that would have been on the streets but the design doesn’t quite copy any particular make or model. The one in this cartoon reminds me of a Cortina or maybe an Envoy, though I don’t think either were sold in the U.S.



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