Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, June 1967

“How nice,” I thought. “This Yogi Bear comic has a tie-in with the 1966 Hanna-Barbera Alice special by featuring Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.” Then I thought some more. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee weren’t in the Alice special, were they? I admit it’s been 51 years since I saw it but I don’t remember them.

Oh, well. They appear in a Yogi comic that appeared in newspapers 50 years ago this month.

This month also included Yogi being followed in two consecutive weekends.



The Alice characters appear in the June 4th comic. For whatever reason, the date doesn’t appear on the colour version of the comic that’s been posted, but I have a black-and-white version with the date in the frame with the saluting psychiatrist. The full page versions of these comics were always missing a panel found in the half-pagers (three rows), so I’ve added the missing panel in black-and-white. The composition’s really well thought out in the final panel. I really like the stylised trees, too, which add a storybook touch. I still don’t understand why a national park is run by a general.



Normally, the “Indians” are friendly toward Yogi in these newspaper comics (it is presumed there is a reservation at Jellystone Park with residents that dress and talk like movie clichés). But it seems they don’t like being shown up, even by accident. Or maybe they’re fed up with all those Yogi rhymes. Whatever the situation, they aren’t heap-big courteous to our hero at the end of the June 11th comic.



Lots of nice-looking action in the June 18th comic. One again, the park ranger system is just like the military, in that rangers don’t get holidays—they get passes. I guess the blue tinting of the “photos” is more attractive than plain old black and white.


Boo Boo has cheek ruffs that look like Mr. Jinks in the June 25th comic. I can hear Doug Young as the nasty ranger; probably a throw-back to Iron Hand Jones in the Yogi TV series. Apparently the jerk ranger has never heard of patching a tire. “Destruction” indeed. And do marlins live in fresh-water lakes?

Richard Holliss has again supplied the colour comics from his archive. Click on any of them to make them bigger.

Yakky Doodle in Foxy Proxy

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Dick Lundy, Layout – Dan Noonan, Backgrounds – Art Lozzi, Written by Mike Maltese, Story Director – Paul Sommer, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Yakky Doodle – Jimmy Weldon, Fibber Fox, Fuzzby, Psychiatrist – Daws Butler.
Music: Hoyt Curtin.
Episode: Production R-49.
Copyright 1961 by Hanna-Barbera Productions.
Plot: Fibber Fox tries to eat Yakky by pretending to be his mommy but starts acting like his real mommy.

How many times did Sylvester try to lure Tweety into a pot or a pan by playing some kind of game? And wasn’t there a Warner Bros. cartoon where a dog was driven nuts by sadistic gophers and started flying like a bird?

Well, these ideas found a home in the Yakky Doodle cartoon Foxy Proxy. Unlike Gopher Broke, this cartoon isn’t creepy. It’s just silly. Fibber Fox tells a psychiatrist at the start of the cartoon that he enjoys being a fox, we have a flashback where the charms (?) of Yakky turn him into a protective mother type, then return to the psychiatrist’s couch where he “has an irresistible urge to fly south for the winter,” starts quacking and flies south, joined by Yakky to end the cartoon.



Writer Mike Maltese added an interference character about two-thirds of the way through, a green fox named Fuzzby who keeps waiting for the now-reluctant Fibber to eat Yakky, grabs the duck, swallows him, then is choked into spitting him out (off-camera) by the “mommy dear” fox. (Warners used this hungry third-character concept, too, with Sam the orange cat in the Tweety cartoons, as well as other animated shorts).

Yakky’s a little more tolerable in this cartoon. His “I’m an orphan. I don’t have a momma” isn’t delivered tearfully or pathetically. And he’s pretty naïve. When he plays “cold snack” with Fibber (similar to the “sandwich” game Sylvester once played with Tweety), Yakky has no clue the fox really wants to eat him. “Oh, you’re the nicest, best-est momma I ever had,” says the duck. “I love you, momma.” Such dialogue could be wretch-inducing, but Jimmy Weldon says it with such sincerity, and Daws Butler puts just the right amount of emotion into Fibber’s response to the audience (“He loves me”) that it comes across well. Daws, of course, was a master at dialogue. Weldon did a fine job, too, though it’s no secret I dislike the Yakky character.



Maltese didn’t supply much witty dialogue; he seemed to save that for Snagglepuss. However, he gave Fibber “You close your eyes and count to bordelaise. I mean, uh, that’s French for ‘100’,” and “I’ve done sneakier things in my day but, somehow, I just can’t remember what they were.” Fibber is, by far, my favourite character in the Yakky cartoons. Maltese also tossed in a standard pepper/sneeze gag.

Dick Lundy’s animation is, sad to say, little more than serviceable. By 1961, even mildly-outrageous takes were out for the most part in cartoons, especially on television.

Art Lozzi, as usually, provides some inspired backgrounds.



And Lozzi seems to like green in this cartoon.



The opening shot of the psychiatric hospital. See the stylised cars.



There’s plenty of medium up-tempo music from Hoyt Curtin’s tracking library (Touché Turtle, Flintstones) to keep the atmosphere of the cartoon happy.

Ruff and Reddy's Crocodile Dilemma

Ruff and Reddy didn’t achieve the acclaim of Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear—their TV show was aimed strictly at children, for one thing—but they joined their fellow Hanna-Barbera characters on the drawing boards of Dell Comics.

I don’t claim any knowledge (or interest, to be honest) of comics, so I can’t tell you how many issues they appeared in. Checking around on-line, it appears there was an issue number 12, so that would mean the comics lasted for a few years. I gather they were published four times a year.

The comics are different from the TV show in that there’s no narrator, they’re not serialised, and they’re devoid of those Charlie Shows’ rhymes that drive me nuts on occasion. They’re not uproariously funny, either, but the stories were no doubt pleasant enough for youngsters.

Here’s one from issue number 11, cover dated December 1961. It features talking crocodiles and a turtle in tartan shorts. I couldn’t tell you the artist. Click to enlarge.

Mousekeeping (Chuckle)

Maybe it’s my imagination or a faulty memory due to ancient brain cells, but it seems to me Mr. Jinks fared much better against Pixie and Dixie in those little cartoons-between-the-cartoons than in the actual cartoons.

In one 20-second routine, genial Huckleberry Hound asks the vacuum-carrying Jinks if he’s housekeeping. No, says the cat. After sucking up the meeces, he tells us he’s “mouse-keeping” and chuckles at the camera.

Jinks’ head looks odd in this shortie. I couldn’t tell you who did the layouts.



Yes, the pun is pretty weak, but you can imagine Jinksie would think it’s funny, so it fits nicely. Mr. Jinks is a great character with loads of possibilities for stories (even beyond being paired with the meeces).

I suspect the animation is by Ed Love and the flat backgrounds by Monte Montealegre.

Playing With Yogi

Remember that cartoon “Scooter Looter” (March 1959), when Yogi Bear stole a Jellystone Park scooter then couldn’t figure out how to control it?

That apparently inspired Louis Marx and Co. (the makers of Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots, you’ll recall) to manufacture a Yogi Bear friction scooter toy. Reader Gordon Robson in the U.K. owns one of them and sent some pictures for you to see it. Yogi looks more in shock than anything else. It appears judging by the cover of the box that it may have been available in more than one colour.

And, look, Boo Boo! No hands! (Insert you own Yogi Bear-type rhyme here).



Somehow, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy from the Quick Draw McGraw Show ended up on the box. It would appear Yogi’s run over one of the miserable meeces and is going for the other.


This came out in 1963. The previous year, Marx started making a Jellystone Park playset (conveniently, it was just in time for Christmas). I gather it had a flat cardboard surface, like a board game, with a river and other things drawn on it where you could place the characters. You’ll notice Yakky Doodle, Fibber Fox and Alfie Gator, along with Cindy Bear and Ranger Smith, plus a beaver and a pile of other animals. Suggested retail price: $5.29 (according to the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 22, 1962).


A few close-ups.



The great thing about a toy like this is you could be pretend to be Warren Foster and Daws Butler, and create your own little live-action Yogi Bear “cartoon.” I suppose people today have fan fiction that kind of serves the same purpose, but this seems like a lot more fun.

Changing Yogi Bear

The original Yogi Bear wasn’t quite the Yogi Bear we all know today.

After Warren Foster arrived at Hanna-Barbera in April 1959 and took over writing the Yogi cartoons, a decision was made to put Yogi in a consistent setting with a consistent cast. So the bear was given a home in Jellystone Park, Boo Boo was made a permanent sidekick and Ranger Smith was added to give Yogi someone to conflict with. This template made for stronger story potential and, evidently, resulted in the character becoming more popular, and certainly more memorable.

But I still really like the pre-Foster Yogi that appeared on the first season of the Huckleberry Hound Show, and mourn his passing. Yogi was sometimes in Jellystone, other times in what appears to have been some generic woods. Several different rangers appeared on occasion. Boo Boo wasn’t always there. (As a side note, there was an awful lot less dialogue, even though Charlie Shows had been hired specifically to write words. I suppose it was natural, considering Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna had worked with silent characters for 17 years).

The first-season Yogi also occasionally employed the spot-gag format, which I really liked. Many of the theatrical studios had tried it, both in live-action and animated shorts. A narrator gives a line of patter on a particular subject, setting up a sight-gag on the screen. Then it’s on to the next gag.

There’s one problem with sight-gag cartoons—you have to rely on the artwork, and TV animation budgets are such that dialogue gags are wayyyy cheaper. Still, the Hanna-Barbera cartoons in that 1958-59 season carried it off.

If I had to pick a favourite spot-gagger, at least right this moment, it would have to be The Stout Trout, where narrator Don Messick accompanied Yogi Bear’s continual failed attempts to catch a fish in a lake. Much of the cartoon is animated by Carlo Vinci. Below are some frames of Yogi swatting his arm into the lake, and then after the fish sprays his face with water. You can see Yogi’s expressions. They’re solidly drawn. Sure, they’re not over-the-top reactions like you’d see in a Tex Avery or Bob Clampett theatrical, but no one was animating like that by the late 1950s. Carlo had Yogi glance toward the TV viewers near the start of some pieces of the narration to include us, and to avoid the monotony of a long held drawing.



Carlo also finds interesting things to do with hands, er, paws.



And here’s something else Hanna-Barbera eventually avoided. Perspective animation.



I realise Foster’s Jellystone structure propelled Yogi into greater success that lasts even to today and resulted in some funny cartoons, but, and I guess I’m in the minority, I miss the spot-gag format and wish Hanna-Barbera would have carried on using it with its syndicated characters.