Wednesday 27 July 2016

Random Hanna-Barbera Pictures

Those wonderful TV producers you see to your right brought us hours upon hours of enjoyment—and still do through reruns and home video. And with it came an endless array of this-and-that for parents to buy for kids, campgrounds, contests, and all kinds of other things. People have sent me pictures of stuff involving Hanna-Barbera and we periodically get around to posting them. So here’s a hodge-podge of Hanna-Barberiana. One or two may have been posted before.



Is this a Yogi Bear sundial? Does anyone know where this is? The World’s Largest Yogi Bear is in Cook Forest, Pennsylvania, but I don’t believe that looks like Pennsylvania. I thought it might be in Larkspur, Colorado, but I can’t find this picture there.



If you grew up in the ‘60s like I did, you can probably sing the Kellogg’s jingle. Kellogg’s headquarters was in Battle Creek, Michigan. Here is the Kellogg’s plant (circa 1960) in all its glory, surrounded by its cereal box mascots. Coco the elephant’s banner waving didn’t save his job. He was replaced on packages of Cocoa Krispies by Snagglepuss (if I had to pick a favourite Kellogg’s cereal, that would be it. I’ll bet it tastes different now).



Here’s Bill Hanna surrounded by storyboards, a box of Man Size Kleenex and someone who remains unidentified. My suspicious is he worked with Hanna at the MGM cartoon studio. Nobody I’ve asked knows who it is, including people at the studio when this was likely taken (mid-to-late ‘60s).



A publicity drawing for that new TV series, The Jetsons. I’ve seen it in several newspapers of 1962 but not in colour. Artist unknown.



I’m presuming this is a record sleeve. We posted some, er, questionable country music stylings involving Yogi on the blog a few years ago. If you really want to search for them, go ahead. I’ll pass.



Magic Slate was released in 1959 by Watkins-Strathmore Company and cost mom or dad 29 cents. The only problem with these is the grey film on top would get wrinkled if it was used too much and that would cause a broken line with whatever you were drawing. But for 29 cents, you can’t go wrong.



Aladdin Industries of Nashville made lunch kits. The company is still around (under new management) but it’s apparently out of the carry-your-sandwich-to-school business. Mind you, a lot of moms are out of the making-your-lunch-for-school business, too, what with elementary school cafeterias and such today. I’m pulling for Quick Draw in this contest.

And now, the Yowp Fashion Section. Below is an example of good fashion.



And below is an example of bad fashion.



It’s cool to think that someone is making Huckleberry Hound T-shirts, especially since Huck isn’t exactly a very high-profile character these days (though he might be if Hanna-Barbera’s owners released the final season of the Huckleberry Hound Show on DVD; music rights are not a problem with it). And, having lived through the ‘80s, I can confirm guys wore mesh half-shirts. Have they made a comeback yet?



Ah!! Headless Snagglepuss!!! This sticker book was published by Whitman in 1963. Now, if they chopped off Yakky’s head...



T.C. was long into reruns when this colour version of the studio’s 1961 publicity art was made. That pose of Top Cat got an awful lot of use.



If Yogi Bear were a Japanese stop-motion production, would he look like this? And why is Yogi carrying Easter Eggs? Perhaps we have some readers who are able to solve these puzzles.

My thanks to Billie Towzer and others who sent these pictures to the blog.

8 comments:

  1. I actually kinda like the early design of Top Cat. It looks very creative.

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  2. The "Yogi Bear Goes Country & Western" image is the cover of one of those strange books written by Horace J. Elias. And the Yogi statue is at the Jellystone Park of Black Canyon at Montrose, Colorado.

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  3. I wonder if anyone has been able to confirm my suspicion (put forth in TOONS IN TOYLAND for all the world to see) that Horace J. Elias was a pseudonym for a non-existent person? There just seem to be too many low-budget storybooks for him to have been a real writer.

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  4. What's fun about that Jetsons publicity artwork is that its representing an actual scene - from the "A Date With Jet Screamer" pilot episode. Unfortunately, the sequence was one of the casualties of the syndication edits.

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  5. Yowp, there was a 1994 special, Yogi the Easter Bear - noteworthy for being the final time Don Messick voiced Ranger Smith and Boo Boo. I'm supposing the above advertisement is in conjunction with an airing in Japan.

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  6. Quick Draw is still used as the mascot of Medart Elementary School in Medart, Florida (south of Tallahassee).

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  7. Great photos. R/E the magic slate -- at the time I was an eight year old with an allowance of fifty cents. It's strange that when I saw the photo of the slate, I got very nostalgic for the price sticker of all things. That round sticker, usually with the 29 cent mark, was on many of the toys I wanted to buy with my allowance. It was put on by the factory, not an individual store, and was usually seen on coloring books, story books, slates, etc.

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  8. You show an example of something that has been perplexing me for a while. The Top Cat drawing featuring the cast is an example of something that exists for almost every HB property, always in this exact format. You see it sometimes at the closing credits of a cartoon, and almost always at the bottom of the first page of a Dell or Gold Key comic. I always wondered if this was some sort of trade mark or copyright deal or what?

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