The Simpsons was originally conceived as an animated sitcom where the characters couldn’t do anything that wasn’t possible in real life. James L Brooks got in a huge fight with the head of animation because when the first episode came back, it looked like a Hanna Barbara cartoon.
(The DeLux One raises his hand) and Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinx, who even did a cereal commercial…and Squiddly Diddly and Atom Ant and Secret Squirrel. Pretty abysmal fare, actually, with the exception being Huckleberry Hound. I just loved that drrrrawllly way of talking the cool, blue dawg had…
On the plus side, HB gave the world Muttley and Paw Rugg. They are just objectively hilarious in their surrealistic incomprehensibility. My very favorite HB cartoon, though, is still one of my favorite cartoons ever–Jonny Quest. It had everything–real monsters, real villains, and real violence, and the bad guys got properly killed in the end. Plus the stories are well-written and imaginative and still enjoyable, albeit a little bit dated.
I hated Screwby-Fucking-Doo and his whole damned crew with a passion right from the giddy-up, and all the clones that came after. Like those goofy parodies of then-current sit-coms that HB aired in the '70s, , Scoobs and his endless ilk only went to show that the studio had long since had their day, creatively speaking.
In the mid-1980s, a bar opened in my hometown under the name “Bullwinkel’s”. They ran ads on local radio with voice actors imitating Rocky and Bullwinkel.
One day, the ads made an abrupt shift when R and B described Bullwinkel reaching into his hat and pulling out another moose named “Magillacuddy the Moose”, and announced that the bar was renaming itself “Magillacuddy’s”.
Rumor was that the bar had received a letter from lawyers in New York ordering them to cease and desist. But they apparently worked out a reasonable transfer to a similar, non-trademarked moose. I’d be surprised if Disney were ever so easygoing.
Johnny Quest also was the first to feature a member of another race. Actually in high school we ONE kid from India and guess what his nickname was - Haji!
Had to, we didnt know any other Indian names.
Scooby Doo actually scared me at times. But I never could figure out why the gang was scared of ghosts one minute and the next, figured out they were guys in rubber masks.
Yeah, I’ll have to concur on that one – Top Cat was/is pretty cool. Especially if one overthinks the show and characters a wee bit. Like, does Choo-Choo have a touch of the old unrequited for the boss? (Yes, sez me). And of course, Spook’s got a whole secret life as a reefer-puffing, pill-popping, Buckley-and-Bruce-quoting Beatnik. Spook’s brother, Fancy Fancy…well, two thirds of the unscheduled kittens in the neighborhood look just like him, for some reason…unlike Benny and Brains, who’ve both been fixed aka neutered aka nutted.
nobody’s mentioned Hanna Barbera’s Cattanooga Cats? The all-cat country-rock band? Okay, given, the actual animated ‘story’ portions of the show, along with “Motormouse and Autocat” and “It’s The Wolf,” are pretty dire. But the musical segments are trippy, fun to watch, and feature terrific songs by future Lieutenant Governor Of California Mike Curb!
If we live in a world where “Wait Til Your Father Gets Home” can have a DVD set, the Cattanooga Cats definitely deserve one.
Like all things, they were good and bad. They had formulaic episodes of even the best.
Jonny Quest was great. I like Scooby at least until I aged out of it. (That was before Scrappy Do. thank goodness).
But then, they also made Inch High, Private Eye.
When I saw Peter Potamus I immediately thought of Adult Swim’s Harvey Birdman, not the original character.
As a child, I enjoyed Mightor, Space Ghost, and the Herculoids. I don’t know if I would bother re-watching them as an adult, though…
Does anybody else remember Wait Till Your Father Gets Home?
Or, “Where’s Huddles?”
Like a few other people, I do remember Peter Potamus, Magilla Gorilla, Augie Doggie, and the rest, and I feel some lingering affection for them. They were the cartoons that were on when I was a kid, so they were what I watched. No doubt I would find them pretty awful if I were to watch them today, but I liked them well enough as time passers when I was young. To that end, I suppose they accomplished what they were intended to.
I was more genuinely fond of Scooby Doo, being exactly the right age for it. I found it, especially the first couple of seasons, to be the perfect combination of spooky enough to be exciting, but not so scary as to give me nightmares or make me want to stop watching. Sure, now I can recognize how intensely formulaic the episodes were, but as a kid that didn’t bother me. But the quality went downhill in later seasons (or maybe I was just getting older). By the time the Scooby gang stated teaming up with Batman, the Addams Family, or Laurel and Hardy, it was time to call it quits.
I agree that Jonny Quest was the high point, although Space Ghost was pretty good as well. Somehow I never got into Top Cat, though I can objectively recognize its quality.
I really liked most of Hana-Barbera stuff.
Maybe it was because there absolutely nothing else on TV then in Peru, but it was good.
We also had Marvel Super Heroes.
Yes to both of these. For whatever strange reason, San Francisco’s CBS station would air Where’s Huddles? on Sunday afternoons. I also remember that WTYFGH had two different sets of music for the theme song, and one episode even had a title card.
Yeah, this kind of story has come up a few times on the SDMB. The important thing to remember is that one of the rules of maintaining a trademark is that you must demonstrate a consistent defense of it.
Did they make money? Okay, we’re done here. I see Sturgeon’s Law being invoked: “Ninety percent of science fiction is crap. But then ninety percent of everything is crap.”
If I had the talent to make crappy TV cartoons, and somebody offered me decent money for it, where do I sign?
And I miss Ted Sturgeon. That dude could write.
Yes, damn your eyes.
Hazards of watching the Boomerang network late at night, I suppose.
There was also an Ancient Roman version of it called The Roman Holidays which I… frankly, more-or-less used as background noise while I programmed.
“A short time?” *The Simpsons *has been riding that train for more than two decades now.
Sits next to Lucas and brings a bucket of popcorn