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 16th.
Touche Turtle was probably the prize of this stage in Hanna-Barbera's devolution into quantity-over-quality mediocrity. And what about Yippy, Yappy, and Yahooey, which I can't believe I even remember? All I remember about Lippy the Lion was the title sequence, specifically Lippy and Hardy climbing a ladder of arrows up a tree; I couldn't remember the plot of any individual cartoon under advanced interrogation techniques. All I remember about Wally Gator was that he was boring.
ReplyDeleteThe one Wally I remember has him complaining about a leaky pipe and trying to fix it, with increasingly disastrous results until the whole zoo is flooded. The running gag has Mr. Twiddle offering to call a plumber and the payoff lets him say, "Now why didn't I call a plumber?" as he and Wally drift in a boat. The whole thing was similar to a KFS Popeye of a year or two earlier, "Plumber's Pipe Dream."
DeleteThere are a few bits in the Lippy episodes I remember besides the title sequence (note how smoothly Lippy is animated as he climbs -- an example of H-B animators splurging in opening/closing titles). Toward the end of one episode, Lippy and Hardy are at the controls of an airplane moving slowly through thick fog. The altimeter says they're a few hundred feet below sea level -- Lippy is first to notice this but slower than Hardy in grasping the significance. In another, the two are stranded and Lippy declares that he's so hungry he could eat *anything.* Hardy flees and Lippy can't understand why.
ReplyDeleteI was in kindergarten when the Yippee, Yappy and Yahooe-e-e-ey cartoons first came out. Of course, even at that age I liked Yogi and Huck better, but I enjoyed the Goofy Guards as a 5 year old. (I even drew pictures of them, which I still have!) I watched one on YouTube the other day and of course it was ridiculously bad, but they were made to appeal to kids, not men in their 60s. With that said, however, I never liked Lippy and Hardy. There was something depressing about them... maybe because they were like hobos, with a disaster waiting to happen.
ReplyDeleteAt least I can see some more potential with Lippy-Hardy and Wally Gator. Touché Turtle to me was the most dreary of the 3 shows brought up here.
ReplyDeleteWell, I still like 'em. Of course, perhaps it was because we didn't have a working TV from '61-'64, so these were just voices I could hear on FM radio, which carried the audio from the ABC station that broadcast them in Milwaukee, and I had to wai three years before I could put images to the voices.
ReplyDeleteRepetitive actions like walking, runs or climbing can seem like full animation but in reality, the same drawings are being used over and over again in a cycle, effectively stretching 8-12 drawings out into many seconds of screen time.
ReplyDeleteAll I can think of when I hear the announcement of the complete Wally Gator on Home Video is this Something Awful post: https://www.somethingawful.com/news/animation-website/1/ (scroll down to the second article, also warning for some more mature language).
ReplyDeleteLOL! I just read it. Dated 2007! I liked all three,except Touche was kind of dreary..As for the Goofy Guards I liked those a lot more than late 60s on.More fun,subjectively,the threee goofy guard dogs.
DeleteAs I said in my last comment, shows like Lippy and Wally would probably be more memorable without Touché Turtle with the exclusion of the latter helping to lighten the heavy burden of the writers and animators on these shows by Hanna-Barbera. And the prolific actor Bill Thompson can still maintain a staring role by being cast as Lippy the lion's downtrodden hyena comrade Hardy Har Har instead of Mel Blanc who of course already was a H-B staple by that time.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. I saw these as they originally aired, but I really don't remember the plots. I remember the themes and voice actors vividly, but not much more. Just like the song " Making the Magilla " by Little Eva in the " Beach " episode of " Magilla Gorilla " really comes to mind, but not the story.. When it comes to plot, so many H-B cartoons I watched around that 1965 era have really faded from memory. Ricochet Rabbit, Mushmouth, Hillbilly Bears, Peter Potamus, and all the side cartoons that played with them ... Hanna-Barbera was churning out at much at that time.
ReplyDelete