Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, March 1968

Climate change affects the Yogi Bear newspaper comics 50 years ago this month—where the chill of winter is in the air with one exception, where it’s suddenly the middle of a hot summer.

Children appear in three of the five stories. There’s no room for Boo Boo this month.

Richard Holliss supplied these comics from his collection.



In the March 3rd comic, there’s a crook in Jellystone Park who’s so dumb, he thinks a bear carries a wallet. Mind you, he’s sitting in the middle of the forest in several inches of snow waiting for someone to rob. We learn Jellystone has an outdoor hockey rink with stands. I don’t know why Yogi just doesn’t dump the guy over the fence in the last panel.



Hockey was on Gene Hazleton’s mind (or whoever else may have written this), as it drives the story in the March 10th comic. We have cutsy animals in the top row and cutsy tykes in the rest of the comic. “Keen-o-neet-o” and “parra-keet-o” has to be the worst.



I like the perspective drawing in the last row of the March 17th comic with Yogi in the foreground and Freddie in the background. The first row is just a bit of filler for newspapers that didn’t run the complete comic.



Would Yogi Bear really whip Ranger Smith? Really? That’s what we get in the March 24th comic.



Maybe that whipping did some good. On March 31st we get the passive version of passive/aggressive Smith. The writer revisits the idea of Yogi Bear telling tall tales about his ancestors. The one kid in the final comic appears to have been reading Peanuts too much.

You can expand each comic by clicking on it.