It’s a good story and I’m baffled as to why it never appeared on TV. I love the beast design (there was an HB cartoon with a similar beast, right?) and there are some pretty nice settings that Dick Thomas could have rendered really well. The artwork is very attractive. Boo Boo trips the beast? A little pro-active for him, isn’t it? Jean Vander Pyl likely would have had a chance to pull out her old crone voice that she used for Winnie Witch a number of years later.
Warren Foster wrote the story (it’s safe to assume) but whether these are his story panels, or Alex Lovy’s, I don’t know. You’ll notice some changes were made to the dialogue, especially at the end. They appear to be in Joe Barbera’s hand-writing.
Nice find! I remember finding all but the last two storyboard pages on another animation website years ago. Good to know the ending after so long =)
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a non-formula cartoon from Forster (or someone else), with Jellystone Park and Ranger Smith showing up only in the final 45 seconds or so of the story. But as late in the game as this one was apparently storyboarded, not being a formula cartoon may have been more of a liability than an asset (and the Beast looks at bit like the model for the Beast from the version used in Fractured Fairy Tales, albeit with an angrier face).
ReplyDeleteThose boards are SO GOOD, that I feel I’ve just seen a lost classic-era Yogi Bear cartoon. The poses, running, chasing, crashing-and-vibrating, etc. are that perfectly rendered!
ReplyDeleteReally, I could even “hear” Hoyt Curtin’s “spooky” and “chase” music playing throughout, not to mention Daws Butler, Don Messick (also as the Beast) and Jean Vander Pyl.
I completely agree with Joe. I love the clear lines and the many, many fun drawings in this storyboard. And, needless to say, the story is great, too. A shame this cartoon wasn't produced. It would have been a nice break from the formula.
ReplyDeleteI wish someone at Warner Bros would see this storyboard and get this cartoon made. If WB is
seriously interested in reviving interest in Yogi Bear and other HB properties, this would be an ideal way to do it, not that lame CGI/live-action movie they made a few years ago. There's so much untapped potential for these characters, just in the unused storyboards HB left behind. Thanks so much for posting this, Yowp. It really brightened my day.
A modified version of Beast's design was used years later for the Slag Brothers in Wacky Races, and then Captain Caveman about a decade afterwards.
ReplyDeleteGreat! Looks like I will have to voice this and made a video out of it! :-)
ReplyDeleteThis ine has Daws's voice! https://youtu.be/He-Rvc93zwc
Yogi and Boo Boo also met Snow White, the Seven Dwarfs, Little Red Riding Hood, the Bears' Fairy Godmother, and the Three Little Pigs, so this one about Beauty and the Beast would have fit nicely into that mix. The H-B takes on fairy tales were usually pretty clever and funny. This one looks like it would have been a riot!
ReplyDeleteAs Yogi might say, "It's a shame, this one beast we never got to tame."
I remember of having read a topic about the storyboard from this unreleased Yogi Bear episode at the old GAC (Golden Age Cartoons [http://goldenagecartoons.com]) forums.
ReplyDeleteHere's a precious stuff which worths a while to see.
I guess that's the nature of the beast. Thanks for sharing Yowp and I also wish that these story sketches had wound up as a Yogi cartoons,too.SC
ReplyDeleteIt is an absolute crime that this episode never saw the light of day. I thought of the Slag Bros. too when I saw the beast,...who could have had their own show too had it ever been dreamed up.
ReplyDeleteSomebody needs to take those boards and animate them albeit crudely in Storyboard Pro and at least offer it in extremely limited animation.
I could at least see this in a new Yogi Comic book as one of the stories. How cool would that be to see this inked and on the shelves!?!?
How cool would it be to see a "new Yogi comic book" PERIOD!
DeleteBut, yeah... Here's some ready-made content, just waiting. Oddly, since the animation and the voices would not be the same, a comic book might actually be the closest we could get to what we'd imagine what the original to be like.
At the very least, you'd think someone at Hanna-Barbera would have dug this story out and used it as part of the new series of Yogi cartoons in 1988.
DeleteJoe,..that is a great point! Let's be real,..we ALL know what the voices should sound like and how the mannerisms would be as well as the background music etc....it's engrained in our brains....so the ONLY way to get close to how the episode would have played out is in a comic book. That way we..as purists and true HB fans....would have it play out in our own minds and imaginations exactly as it should and most likely would have played out on the air.
DeleteIt seems that the layouts on this missing Yogi Bear episode were made by Dick "Bick" Bickenbach.
ReplyDelete