Saturday 30 January 2016

A Word From Our Sponsor

Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon work around 1960 wasn’t limited to those great half-hours shows we used to see at home in the late afternoon or early evening. There was the lacklustre Loopy De Loop theatrical series. And there were commercials. Not just ones related to Kellogg, Winston or whoever was sponsoring the various cartoons it seems.

Here are some story panels for a series of spots for Oscar Mayer Weiners. The first one is almost complete, the other two are even less so; they were on an auction site which only posted these as examples of what was up for grabs. Opening of the “Bandits” 60-second commercial might remind you of the opening of a certain cartoon show. Did anyone see any of these? Did Dick Beals play the kid or was it Daws Butler? And I wonder if these aired on Bewitched, which had animated opening titles by you-know-who.



A partial one by the same artist. Could it be Dan Gordon’s work?



I presume this one was from a preliminary storyboard. I wonder if the dialogue included “Whoa, camel, whoa!”?



This one’s really fun. More fun than the series, to be honest. I love the drawings. And it features Arnold Stang and Marvin Kaplan. There’s something wrong with anyone who dislikes those two guys. You’ll hear them when you read along. The dialogue has the feel of the other Kellogg’s spots that aired during the cartoon shows in that period.



These faded panels, I suspect are, for the Kellogg’s ad that’s the second one you’ll see in the video below, which also includes the closing Top Cat animation (without credits) by Ken Muse.



5 comments:

  1. Yowp, I have seen in various bio's for Dick, that he did do some work for Oscar Mayer. Could have very well been him on the " Bandits " spot. I watched " Bewitched " in first run, especially the early years. I can't recall seeing this commercial, but again, it has been a few years.

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  2. That commercial is also on the TOP CAT COMPLETE SERIES DVD. The sound effect heard at 1:48 when Fancy is clobbered sounds like one heard commonly in THE JETSONS, which would air the following season. So I'm wondering if this particular ad was produced late in TOP CAT's production season.

    BTW Ken Muse animates the opening title sequence, and Dick Lundy the closing.

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  3. I don't know if the famous "Oh I wish I were" kids marching Oscar Meyer Wiener commercial was animated by Hanna-Barbera, but that lead little boy's voice to me CLEARLY is Dick Beals, and Errol, being born in 1960, I also watched "Bewitched" in its primetime first run,all years (I'd just come to Whittier from Glendale that year,1964).

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  4. Could be wrong, but those Corn Flakes commercials look like Ed Love.

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    Replies
    1. Looks more like Irv Spence. Both animators have worked on the series and have similar styles, but Spence is a bit looser and doesn't have the deep set eyes or 'purse mouth'.

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