Blu-Ray? Oh, Dear! Oh, My!

“Gee, Yowp,” says my in-box, “why aren’t you writing about these?”



Um. How can I put this delicately?

These are not great cartoons.

They are wallpaper. They’re pleasant enough and killed air time in between routines with Crazy Donkey on Channel 11 when I was a kid.

But they’re filler.

I can tell you my favourite cartoons on the Huck Show. Or the Quick Draw and Yogi Bear shows. But the plots of the five-minute cartoons (this includes Touché Turtle) are completely unmemorable. I can’t recall a single one.

Earl Kress used to joke it seemed every Lippy cartoon ended with the pair of them on a raft, with Lippy yelling “Paddle faster, Hardy,” as they escaped from who-knows-what. (None of them actually ended that way).

These cartoons, to me, marked Hanna-Barbera’s slow, downhill slide. Does any of the animation or background art in these stand out to you? Anyway, just as Hanna-Barbera would repeat plots with different characters, I am repeating myself from this post.

The best part of Wally was the theme song, which I can only assume was written by Hoyt Curtin and Bill Hanna before it was decided to take Wally out of the swamp in the opening animation. I have never been a big fan of the Golden Records’ versions of the Hanna-Barbera music, but I like their take on Wally’s theme. The low-key arrangement for the little combo is quite good, especially the piano.

For fans of Mel Blanc constantly moaning "Oh dear, oh my," the discs will be available on December 15th.