Not a Groupie For Loopy

Hanna-Barbera debuted two cartoon series in 1959. One is my favourite—the Quick Draw McGraw show.

The other is Loopy de Loop.

I’m afraid I’m not a fan of Loopy. He’s a French-Canadian wolf who’s not one of those Disney-type bad wolves. He’s a good wolf. And . . . well, that’s it. Hanna-Barbera managed to stretch this one-dimensional idea into 48 cartoons from 1959 to 1965. He starred in a theatrical cartoon series with a TV animation budget.

The reason I’ve broken my Loopy silence, all the more remarkable because this blog is more or less inactive, is I somehow stumbled onto the first Loopy cartoon. It opened so full of promise. I really like the background at the start.


The artwork is from Fernando Montealegre. I like this because he’s incorporated flatness with some perspective. This, by the way, would have been the first cartoon from Hanna-Barbera Productions seen in colour, as the TV series were aired (in 1959) in black-and-white.

Poor Mike Maltese. In 1959, he wrote 78 cartoons for television (the entire Quick Draw series, one Huckleberry Hound and one Yogi Bear), and then had to write this one, Wolf Hounded. He cobbled together a story with some familiar situations. The sexually-aroused grandma in Red Hot Riding Hood. The jerkish pigs from The Turn Tale Wolf (thanks to Jonathan Wilson for the correction). The “helpless” girl who can beat up someone in self-defence from The Dover Boys. Oh, and Loopy’s aspiration to be a lady-charmer comes from any number of Pepé LePew cartoons (also written by le guesse who?). I’m not saying these are the sources, but they have plot similarities with this cartoon.

Another Monty background.



Something the cartoon has in its favour is the casting of June Foray. It seems odd that Joe Barbera didn’t get Jean Vander Pyl, whom he started employing in 1959. I can’t help but wonder if she voiced Betty in the Flagstones reel about the time she did this. June Foray is a national treasure.

Columbia Pictures had been distributing cartoons made by UPA. Someone at Columbia must have realised this was a silly idea. After all, Columbia had a piece of Hanna-Barbera. Why not have them make theatrical cartoons instead? That’s what happened, although Columbia evidently had a deal permitting them to re-issue UPA shorts it had already put in theatres.

Here’s a full-page ad taken out in several trades.



The most hilarious thing in the ad isn’t the sell-job on Loopy, but the utterly inept drawings in the box for the old Screen Gems Columbia Favorites with the duck and hunter from Wacky Quacky, and the Indian and moose from Topsy Turkey. (Maybe even funnier is advertising “Another Travelark.” Yeah, theatre owners, we haven’t figured out what it is, but get the film anyway).

Maybe you’re one of those people who likes Loopy de Loop. Someone at Motion Picture Magazine guffawed over him. Here’s a review from the December 16, 1959 issue.

WOLF HOUNDED. Columbia Loopy de Loop Cartoon. 7m. This introduces a new cartoon character, a French wolf, who gets his fairy tales all mixed up and meets his match in Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, who much to his distraction, falls for him and causes him to flee. EXCELLENT.

This is the same publication which gave an “excellent” rating to the insufferable UPA short Picnics Are Fun (reviewed somewhere on the Tralfaz blog). Meanwhile, it only gave a “good” to Drag-Along Droopy, my favourite of all the Droopy cartoons, and dismissed Friz Freleng’s High Diving Hare and the Maltese-written Real Gone Woody as “fair.” But it also gave an “excellent” to Avery’s Billy Boy and Three Little Pups as well as Gene Deitch’s stylish The Juggler of Our Lady. These strike me as accurate ratings but, of course, taste in cartoons is subjective.

One other thing the Loopy cartoons did was eliminate the Capital Hi-Q and Langlois Filmusic background music at Hanna-Barbera. Hoyt Curtin was brought in to write a library of cues for Loopy. I love the stock music, but in-house compositions became the policy at H-B and resulted in excellent scores for The Jetsons, Jonny Quest and other series.

And now, you’re in for a treat (?)

Here’s a version of the Loopy theme song with lyrics. No doubt the intended kiddie audience would have said “Loopy who?” so to increase saleability, the 78 is “Yogi Bear Introduces Loopy De Loop.” Everyone knew who Yogi was.

Kids would have been unhappy to find Yogi was an imposter. As this is a Golden Record, Daws Butler is nowhere to be heard. I originally thought it was Gil Mack, a fine New York radio actor, but it seems to me it’s Frank Milano, who provided some voices in Total TeleVision cartoons and who recorded an LP as Yogi, his final album before his death, actually. I will allow you to determine how he performs as “Yogi The Bear.”

H-B Odds and Sods

Time to post some Hanna-Barbera image files sitting in my computer. I’ve made no notations where I got some of them.



A sadistic kid rode Yogi Bear in “Daffy Daddy,” so I guess this toy that’s seen better days makes sense. Light bulbs? Beats me.



Has Yogi merchandise ever stopped being made? This looks like newer stuff, not from the late ‘50s. Okay, other than the milk mug.



Here’s one of those great Kellogg’s ads in full colour. What?! The offer’s not good in Canada? Yogi’s lasted a lot longer than Kellogg’s OKs, hasn’t he?



Here’s Yogi in a beautiful Cadillac. Yes, I know you thought he drove a Chrysler LeBear-on. Hyuk, hyuk.



Prime time cartoons make the covers of TV magazines. The artwork is right on. These are from the collection of Jerry Beck.



These eggs cups were made in England by Ridgway Potteries in 1960. Even a really off-model Li’l Tom Tom rates an appearance.



“Hilarious new character”? Don’t think so. But this is a nice little one sheet to push the H-B studio’s only series that actually made it into theatres (others were proposed). Thanks to Scott Shaw! for this poster.



Finally, an image maker for Quick Draw McGraw. These look like they were used for newspaper box ads; the local station call letters and channel would be substituted.

Click on any of the images to make it easier to see.

Are You Loopy For Loopy?

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera won seven Oscars with cartoons starring Tom and Jerry. They won none with Loopy De Loop.

Let’s face it. Loopy cartoons just aren’t that great, certainly not compared with Quick Draw McGraw or Huckleberry Hound. And putting them up against other theatricals? Forget it. Unless you consider that, perhaps, they set the trend for cheap-looking, unfunny cartoons of the late ‘60s like Cool Cat or the Beary Family that were inflicted on patrons by theatres that still bothered to run cartoons.

You might think it’s odd that I’m not a Loopy fan, despite the fact he was made by the same artists behind the other great early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. But even back in the heyday of theatrical animation, not every character or cartoon was a hit, so the late ‘50s aren’t really any different.

Thus I’ve really said little about him on this blog, but I make an exception today because the Warner Archive Collection has announced it is releasing a DVD of all the Loopy cartoons. It’s great news because Hanna-Barbera fans can see it and make up their own minds about the series. I have no idea if the cartoons been fully restored or are just TV dubs, or if they contain full end credits.

The site has a snippet of one of the cartoons, 1963’s “Sheep Stealers Anonymous.” Here’s the opening shot, another one of Art Lozzi’s blue backgrounds.



The snippet doesn’t have any credit but George Nicholas’ work is unmistakeable. Here’s a neat little take.



The Loopy cartoons were released by Columbia Pictures. It had been releasing UPA cartoons since the late ‘40s. By 1959, Columbia must have figured “Hey, we own part of a cartoon studio. Why aren’t we releasing its cartoons?” Variety of April 29, 1959 mentioned Columbia had terminated its shorts deal with UPA “amicably.” Variety’s Larry Glenn reported in a front-page story on December 2, 1959 that Columbia was nearing a five-year deal with Hanna-Barbera to be its exclusive theatrical producers, with ten Loopy cartoons in the works. Obviously, the two studios had to have signed something before that. On November 23rd, Variety had mentioned Columbia releasing the ten Loopys, and contemporary issues of Boxoffice magazine state the first Loopy, “Wolf Hounded,” was available for theatres that month.

Incidentally, Columbia was supposed to release “Hillbilly Hawk” and “Three Mixed Up Mooses” cartoons from Hanna-Barbera (Variety, May 1, 1963), but something evidently fell through.

It’s a shame the Loopy cartoons weren’t done in full animation. I’d love to know the difference in their budgets compared with the money spent on the UPA shorts the previous year.

It’s also a shame that the Warner Archive Collection can’t see fit to release the last three seasons of the “Huckleberry Hound” show or any seasons of the “Quick Draw McGraw” show. The final season of each has no problems when it comes to music rights, as the scores were all cobbled together from Hoyt Curtin’s cues. I’d settle for just the cartoons on their own (restored and with the credits, of course).

The Loopy DVD, says Warners, “ships to U.S. only.” Ironic, considering the cartoon’s about a wolf from Quebec.

Great Moments in Acting With Chatterly the Cat

Loopy De Loop cartoons are full of concepts that Hanna-Barbera did far better earlier, but a few of them contain little gems.

The final Loopy cartoon released by Columbia in the 1964-65 theatrical season was “Big Mouse Take.” It’s different in that Loopy doesn’t show up for the first third of the cartoon, so during that time it seems like you’ve somehow tuned in to some lost H-B TV series from 50 years ago. The second thing I thought watching it was “Hey, that’s Carlo Vinci!” Chatterly the cat shows up on screen in a tail-pumping, awkward-looking run cycle that could only have come from Carlo’s mind. And the cat has a diving exit off screen just like Carlo animated at Terrytoons and in the early H-B cartoons of the late ‘50s.

But then something happened in the cartoon that caused me to stop it, download it, and study it frame-by-frame. Hanna-Barbera characters weren’t known for their big takes in 1965—how can you exaggerate Atom Ant, after all?—but Chatterly pulled off one in this cartoon. And you can’t credit Carlo this time.

The situation is something so warped only Mike Maltese could have come up with it. After a chase inside a home, Chatterly swallows Bigelow the mouse, who becomes stuck inside the end of the cat’s tail. Chatterly tries to evict Bigelow by putting his tail out the window and slamming down the sash. But that means he’s also slammed it down on his tail and he lets out a huge scream. Look at these great drawings.



These fun drawings aren’t the work of Carlo Vinci. I believe it was helpful Howard Fein who mentioned once that the stretched-head was an animation quirk of Hugh Fraser, the former Disney artist who teamed up with Carlo on “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons,” and pointed to the same sort of thing in the “Miss Solar System” episode. In fact, I found the same head stretch in an episode of the TV Popeyes he animated/directed in 1960.

Fraser began, like many other H-B artists, working for Walt Disney and went back as far as “Snow White.” He ended up working for former Disney director Jack Kinney at his own studio before moving to Hanna-Barbera for a long career. He animated (with former Disneyites Ed Aardal, Ed Parks and Harvey Toombs) on the first episode of “Jonny Quest.” Fraser died on January 6, 1994 at the age of 89.

Oh, the first thing I thought watching this cartoon? “Daws is re-using Fibber Fox’s voice.” Some aspects of the earliest Hanna-Barbera series were derivations of something else, but the studio began to copy itself, and the copies were never as good as the original. Loopy De Loop himself is an example. The idea of a pleasant guy with an accent who gets bashed around then talks at the camera came from Huckleberry Hound (and the Carolinian Huck had far more charm than Loopy and his Québécois dialect). There’s even a version of the “ran-out-of-piddies/finger” gag pulled by Tweety Bird that is tired and pale by comparison. And, in this case, the cartoon co-stars Bigelow the mouse whom the cat afraid of because he’s...Bigelow? I shrug.

At least the short has a few, very brief shining moments thanks to guys who had worked at Disney and Terrytoons, two studios at the opposite ends of the cartoon quality scale.

Here’s one of Carlo’s run cycles for the great-named Chatterly. I’ve slowed it down. The baseboard jerks a bit because the background drawings don’t match up between the last frame and when the first repeats again.

P.S.: If I had just bothered to check the credits before writing this post, I would have seen that Carlo Vinci and Hugh Fraser animated the cartoon.

Cue the Music, Q the SL and Bracco…what?

Die-hard Hanna-Barbera fans have heard of—and maybe even seen—the 1970 summer replacement series “Where’s Huddles?” A similar question arises in thumbing through a 1963 edition of Broadcasting magazine—Where’s Hoyt?



Nowhere in the BMI ad above is there any mention of Hoyt Curtin, the man who wrote the music for Hanna-Barbera cartoons at the time this ad appeared. It’s not like Curtin’s music wasn’t licensed through BMI; a check of the company’s site finds 1,779 of Curtin’s works under its wing.

Curtin confirmed Bill Hanna wrote the lyrics to the earliest H-B theme songs. I’ve never figured out what Joe Barbera’s involvement was, other than listening to the songs, but he’s handed a composer credit through a number of publishing companies. Charlie Shows is also credited as a composer as well. Just not in the ad above, since he was a member of ASCAP. Shows’ ASCAP listing is a little curious. For example, he has a composer cue for “Bear on a Picnic.” There are no songs in the cartoon with that name and the only music is stock music. Perhaps he wrote continuity for a record of that cartoon.

Let us cleverly segue into the world of H-B characters on Little Golden Records and also into a thank-you to faithful Yowp readers who have passed on notes or pictures of items that would interest early Hanna-Barbera fans. Unfortunately, I can’t recall who sent everything. Sorry. Anyway, back to the records.



Hanna-Barbera had a few different record contracts before the H-B Records label was established in the mid-‘60s. One was Colpix, the record arm of Screen Gems, owned by Columbia Pictures, which partly bankrolled the cartoon studio when it began in 1957. Another was New York-based Golden Records, which put out kids’ 78s and 45s. We’ve linked before to some H-B tunes released by the company, but someone has sent along pictures of record sleeves.

What’s interesting is the Flintstones’ record advertises “The Original TV Voices.” The main problem with the Golden Records is Daws Butler was sewn up by Colpix, the story goes, so he was unable to voice characters for Golden. Hence some not-very-good Daws imitators were hired to play Yogi et al. You’ll notice the Huck cover says “Video Cartoon Voices,” which doesn’t categorically mean you’ll hear Daws or Don Messick on the sides. And the Quick Draw cover tells you in teeny-weeny letters that the voices are supplied by Gil Mack and Don Elliott. Thanks to this link via Andrew Morrice, you can hear how weak another member of the Golden stock company, Frank Milano, sounded as Hokey Wolf.



While we’re on the topic of weak, Scott Shaw passes on this very nice one-sheet for theatres that really wanted to promote Loopy De Loop cartoons on their screens.



I’m not a Loopy fan. Huck, Quick Draw and Yogi were far more likeable cartoon characters. Frankly, I’d rather watch Wally Gator, and the studio’s short cartoons were already sliding down hill by the time Wally came along in 1962. Loopy first appeared three years before that.

How was it that Columbia Pictures began distributing Loopy cartoons to begin with? I’d sure love to know what was in the bankrolling deal the movie studio had with Hanna-Barbera. It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to conclude that someone like Columbia’s Harry Cohn barked “We own a cartoon studio. Why do we need to distribute those over-budget, artsy-schmartsy UPA cartoons anymore?” Cohn never seemed concerned about the quality of shorts so long as they were ground out on budget and, even if he was concerned, might have concluded that kids in theatres would accept limited animation just as they did on TV. It’s a real shame the H-B artists were saddled with Loopy instead of getting the money to do full personality animation on a new character with embellished sight gags like the kind Warren Foster and Mike Maltese wrote at Warners, with the score accenting and augmenting the artwork.

Columbia had released Scrappy cartoons some 25 years earlier. Scrappy’s biggest fan, Harry McCracken (note the segue again), has posted this interesting and, we suspect, home-made QSL card featuring Pebbles and Bamm Bamm from the ‘70s.



QSLs go back to the earliest days of radio when stations were experimental and listeners were hobbyists. A radiophile would tune in a station far away then send its engineers a reception report. The station would, in turn, reply with a thank-you postcard; some may still do it today. This card is for picking up some one’s CB radio transmissions from Port Alice, a somewhat remote mill town on Vancouver Island. Note the “Monitor 19” on the card. CBers generally use Channel 19 in Canada; some on the west coast use Channel 1. Chatting via CB and ham radio seems a little old-fashioned now, but you can meet some very genuine and friendly people that way.

Shortwave stations, too, sent QSL cards, like Italy’s RAI. And while we’re on the subject of Italian telecommunications (yeah, that segue is a real stretch), he’s something Charles Brubaker has discovered. It’s an Italian TV commercial from 1967 featuring Huckleberry Hound. Huck is known in Italy as “Broccobaldo.” I plugged the word into one of those Italian-to-English on-line translators to find out what it means. I got “Huckleberry Hound.” Therefore, I’m left to conclude the word didn’t exist before Huck’s creation in 1958.

Huck gains weight during the middle of the commercial, which has light backgrounds like a ’30s cartoon and some unidentified background music (besides the Huck theme).



Lest anyone think Huck is appearing as a twin in drag, Chris Sobieniak supplied this helpful information:

"Actually the girl is Huck´s girlfriend, Kitty, and the puppy is his nephew. These characters never appeared in Huck´s American cartoons or comic books; instead, they appeared in Italian comics with material featuring the Hanna-Barbera characters. drawn by local artists. In his Italian stories, Huck even had a mean grouchy grandpa, mirroring Donald Duck´s relationship with Uncle Scrooge. Oh, and the mole appearing at the beginning had originally appeared in one of Huck's comic books published in the early 60´s by Dell, in a story drawn by Harvey Eisenberg."

You’d think his girl-friend would be named Clementine.

My thanks to the contributors to this post. Others have sent neat little things which will find their way into a future writing on this blog.

A Lost Loopy De Loop Cartoon?

You’d think that because of the sheer volume of cartoons that Hanna-Barbera started pumping out, any story idea for a cartoon in an established series would end up on the screen. But that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Here’s a photocopy of a Loopy De Loop storyboard. The photocopy was in the possession of the late Earl Kress. I admit I’m not a fan of Loopy and haven’t seen all of his cartoons, but I can’t see that this story of Tony Benedict’s was ever made.

Columbia released Loopy to theatres beginning in November 1959. Seven cartoons were issued in the 1959-60 season, eight in the 1960-61. The production number on this cartoon was K-18, so that should have landed it in the 1961-62 season, but I can’t find it anywhere. It baffles me that it wouldn’t be made; Tony’s story is fairly typical for a Hanna-Barbera short made about this time—so typical, I can hear Doug Young as the cop—and seems no worse than any of Loopy’s other cartoons.

I fired off a note to Tony about the storyboard but he didn’t really have any information to pass on about it.

So, you Loopy fans can click on each panel to make it bigger and enjoy this “lost” Loopy De Loop cartoon. It’s a shame the notations on the first panels didn’t photocopy very well.













My thanks to Rick G. for e-mailing this. We all miss Earl greatly.

The Loopy De Loop Cartoon You Will Never See

The internet can be a blessing and a curse. It’s full of wonderful information on obscure things that’s easily accessible. And some of that information is completely inaccurate.

We’ve talked before about how some on-line Pedias and Databases are flat out wrong in entries to do with cartoons. And so they are with Loopy De Loop.

I’ve never really liked Loopy. He epitomises the blandness that starting worming its way into Hanna-Barbera cartoons. There’s not a lot that’s distinctive about the animation. The stories have a few clever lines but, basically, tread old ground (that was done better by Huck or Yogi). Hoyt Curtin’s music is just sort of there, with stock beds assigned to stock situations. And, probably more annoying, is each cartoon found it necessary to go into detail about how Loopy is a “good wolf” and “not like the other wolves” and blah-blah-blah. If you have to explain a character every time he comes on the screen, it’s not a strong character.

However, people have differing tastes from each other. There are people out there who can’t do without reality TV. There are people who wax nostalgic for disco music. And there are people who like Loopy De Loop.

Your friendly Yowp gets e-mail about things related somewhat to what you see on this blog. I get questions about horror movie stock music and about Dell Comic books. And I got a question from someone who collects Loopy De Loop cartoons.

He has a complete collection of all the Loopys but one and wanted to know where to find it. The cartoon is called Habit Troubles and is listed in Wikipedia and the Big Cartoon Database as having been released on November 19, 1964. There’s no other specific information anywhere about it.

And it turns out there’s a reason for that.

I always like going back to contemporary sources for information, and checked the release schedule of shorts in Boxoffice magazine (now, unfortunately, off-line). Here’s what various editions in 1964 and 1965 reveal:

Rls. No.	Cartoon Name	Released
5701	Trouble Bruin	Sep. 1964
5702	Bear Knuckles	Oct. 1964
5703	Rabbit Habit	Nov. 1964
5704	Horse Shoo	Jan. 1965
5705	Pork Chop Phooey	March 1965
5706	Crow’s Fete	April 1965
5707	Big Mouse Take	June 1965
*6701	Wolf Hounded	July 1965

* Columbia began re-releasing cartoons in consecutive order

There’s no listing for Habit Troubles.

Next was a check of the copyright catalogue at faqs.org and cocatalog.loc.gov. Nope, no cartoon with that name was ever copyrighted.

So it seems the reason no one has a copy of Habit Troubles is because it never existed.

Where did the misinformation come from? Who knows. But this certainly isn’t an isolated instance. Bob Jaques, on his fine Popeye Animators blog, recently bemoaned the same thing about Paramount “credits” that were either concocted through well-meaning assumption, guesswork or perhaps through revelation by staring at an empty beer bottle. Even worse, the “facts” are presumed to be correct by others and spread.

This is a good time for me to express my appreciation of the many animation historians out there who pride themselves on doing meticulous research to ensure their revelations are factual. Their time-consuming, unimpeachable work is of benefit to anyone who wants to know more about cartoons.

Hanna-Barbera’s Forgotten Star

Hanna-Barbera’s stars of 50 years ago are still stars today, right? After all, Yogi Bear is still one of the most popular TV cartoon characters of all time; a string of 73 franchised Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Parks can attest to that. Newspaper stories still compare people to Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw (including misguided attempts at humour involving a TV talk-show doctor with that last name).

And then there’s Loopy de Loop.

Who? Is that, like, an animated airplane?

No, Loopy is a wolf with a bright-sounding Quebecois voice by Daws Butler (by contrast, his Powerful Pierre voice in the Huckleberry Hound cartoons is harsher). He was Joe and Bill’s lone attempt at theatrical shorts after leaving MGM. I can only presume Loopy solely existed because it was a condition of the deal that saw Columbia Pictures pump money into the Hanna-Barbera studio. At least, that’s my guess because I can’t see other possible reason for his existence.

Columbia must have thought it had a winner. Here it was getting brand-new cartoons by the duo responsible for the most talked-about animation in television. Instead, it got the forgotten step-child of the H-B studio.

Loopy was even at the bottom of the quality ladder when it came to Columbia’s own cartoon releases. The studio was still sending old UPA shorts to theatres. So, in November 1959, Columbia re-released the atmospheric The Tell Tale Heart and the Oscar-nominated Trouble Indemnity with Mr. Magoo. And on the 5th of that month, 50 years ago today, the first Loopy short—Wolf Hounded—flickered on the big screen.

In a way, I really feel sorry for Loopy. It was like he was designed never to succeed. H-B used their best concepts in their television cartoons, like spoofs of clichés in westerns and detective shows, and a battle of wits between a big-hearted rogue and a guy in a uniform. All Loopy had was one premise—he wanted to overcome the stereotype that a wolf was bad. That would make for great subtle social commentary in the right hands but that’s a whole different league than what Hanna-Barbera played in. Instead, we get the first of what Joe and Bill were starting to churn out in shorts—a one-note character in warmed-over parody.

Loopy is plain, old dull.

It’s too bad. The first cartoon was a promising start. You can tell by the thin row of teeth that Ken Muse handled the animation. June Foray provided several familiar but funny voices in a rare bit of work for Hanna-Barbera (including the UPA-ish Granny who is a semi-greyish colour). The house designs were cool, characters on a storybook page talked and moved, and there’s a Rube Goldberg-type sight gag (I smell Mike Maltese at work) where Loopy used a brick down a chimney to get a basket of cookies to fly to him out a window. Boxoffice magazine reviewed a couple of the early Loopys and rated them “good,” but hinted to viewers to expect the same plot over and over. And that’s the biggest problem with them—repetition of old bits by a one-dimensional character.

All this leaves you unsympathetic about someone whose sole purpose is to gain your sympathy. Loopy simply fails. He’s just not fun like Quick Draw or Mr. Jinks.

Worse still, this is a theatrical series without full theatrical animation. It looks like a TV cartoon, and at a time when H-B’s animation was starting to get less interesting. A noteable exception is Just A Wolf At Heart (1963), where Jack Ozark’s crudish, but occasionally expressive drawings remind me of Carlo Vinci’s early H-B work (though a sheepdog design was ripped off from Touché Turtle). Even Lawrence Goble’s simple title cards look cheap and elementary.

The only additional expense on these seems to have been hiring Hoyt Curtin to compose some underscores, which certainly saved the trouble of negotiating with Capitol to use the Hi-Q library theatrically. H-B got mileage out of the underscores; you can hear the same melodies over and over on Wally Gator, Lippy the Lion, the aforementioned Turtle and even the Flintstones. And while you could hear Loopy’s bassoon music on TV in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, you would almost never see the Loopy cartoons there, which accounts for his lack of fame today among those of us who grew up ingesting almost every Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

Columbia started re-releasing old (?) Loopys in the mid-‘60s until he just quietly vanished from screens along with the studio’s other shorts. To add insult to his career, he was cast in the pointless and consultant-reeking TV series Yo Yogi!

So bon anniversaire, Loopy de Loop. Here’s at least one place where you’re still remembered. But, unfortunately, not that well.