I’m not of the generation that watched those Hanna-Barbera competition cartoon shows where all manner of the studio’s funny characters were tossed in together like so many corn flakes in a Kellogg’s box. Since I grew up in the ‘60s, I like seeing the “Kellogg’s” characters kibbitz once in a while (Yogi, Huck, Quick Draw, etc.), but anyone else seems out of place. Top Cat doesn’t really belong with them, to me, but there he is nonetheless in the March 7th comic. I guess it just shows you T.C. was a bigger star than Super Snooper (since they’re in the mountains, Snagglepuss the mountain lion might have been a better choice). And I don’t think I’ve ever seen Top Cat wearing a tie before.
Some of Harvey Eisenberg’s silhouettes grace the March 14th comic. It’s hard to get the effect of the joke with this scan of a photocopy of the panels. I suspect Mark Kausler’s blog will have a full-colour version where you can get a better look. The top panel is the only appearance of Ranger Smith this month.
A rather large blue jay highlights the March 21st comic, with an interesting perspective layout in the final panel. We also get a cutsy-utsy squirrel who Screwy Squirrel would beat up. Instead, Yogi rhymes. “Squirms” and “worms”?
Pic-a-nic baskets? Nah. Yogi’s stealing hotel towels now. Maybe he got them on a tour pushing “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear.” All the hotels in the final frame of the March 28th comic are legit, as best as I can tell. The Mark Hopkins is on San Francisco’s Nob Hill.
Unfortunately, the last newspaper I could find running these comics in full no longer has its weekend comic section available on-line past March 1965. So this will be the final Yogi comic post.
Thanks so much for sharing these Yogi Bear comics. Wish they would come out with a large newspaper sized format book of all these classic weekender comics. I'd pay $$$ for it. I remember years ago, at book castle in Burbank (1990) finding a binder book of collected newspaper comics from 1956. It was an inch thick and used to belong to Universal Studios. I think they wanted 5 bucks for it. I'm an idiot for not buying it.
ReplyDeleteAll these materials were drawn by Harvey Eisenberg.
ReplyDeleteA shame the Yogi strips are going to end. As Harvey Eisenberg passed away in early to mid-1965, it would be interesting to see how much longer his art would appear from this point.
ReplyDeleteAfter the Harvey Eisenberg's death, other Hanna-Barbera artists continued to draw the Yogi Bear comic strip. Among them: Jerry Eisenberg (who's the Harvey's son), Iwao Takamoto, Pete Alvarado, Ed Nofziger (who was the Hank Ketcham's assistant in Dennis The Menace) and, of course, Gene Hazelton.
DeleteI have the Yogi Bear Sundays through 1965, and most of them look like Harvey drew them or laid them out. Keep checking my blog every month for another batch.
ReplyDeleteThere was probably some deliberate cross-promotion going on by including Top Cat among Yogi's friends. If I remember correctly, it was right around this time that Top Cat, after a brief absence from the airwaves, returned to Saturday mornings and became a regular for several years. With Huckleberry Hound and Yogi still in reruns on weekday afternoons and Quick Draw still playing on Saturday mornings, all of the characters depicted in the pyramid were current and viable members of the Hanna-Barbera franchise circa 1965.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to see Huck portrayed as 'dog-sized' in relation to Yogi in the first strip. The Marx Yogi & Huck ramp walker of the early '60s has Huck slightly taller than Yogi. As Huck is wearing a tie and Yogi a bow tie, I wonder if the heads were swapped at the last moment, either to improve the balance of the toy (or perhaps simply the look), or because Yogi's star was in the ascension? Anyone know?
ReplyDelete