I mean look at him! ( http://www.jackwild.com/puf.htm – note the groovy boots) The only vestige of his noble draconic heritage is that scaly underbelly! No wings! No snout! He has the eyebags of a third-year graduate student! That’s one weak-ass dragon.
But sure enough Cecil and the IMDB both identify him as a dragon.
Oh yeah, those other things in the picture are supposed to be ants. Pssh. Good riddance to the 70s.
H.R. Pufnstuff,
Who’s your friend when things get rough?
H.R. Pufnstuff
Can’t do a little cause he can’t do enough.
Once upon a summertime
Just a dream from yesterday
A boy and his magic golden flute
Heard a boat from off the bay
“Come and play with me, Jimmy
Come and play with me.
And I will take you on a trip
Far across the sea.”
But the boat belonged to a kooky old witch
Who had in mind the flute to snitch
From her broom broom in the sky
She watched her plans materialize
She waved her wand
The beautiful boat was gone
The skies grew dark
The sea grew rough
And the boat sailed on and on and on and on and on and on.
But Pufnstuff was watching too
And knew exactly what to do
He saw the witch’s boat attack
And as the boy was fighting back
He called his rescue racer crew
As often they’d rehearsed
And off to save the boy they flew
But who would get there first?
But now the boy had washed ashore
Puf arrived to save the day
Which made the witch so mad and sore
She shook her first and screamed away.
H.R. Pufnstuff,
Who’s your friend when things get rough?
H.R. Pufnstuff
Can’t do a little cause he can’t do enough.
H.R. Pufnstuff,
Who’s your friend when things get rough?
H.R. Pufnstuff
Can’t do a little cause he can’t do enough.
Dr. Fidelius, Charlatan
Associate Curator Anomalous Paleontology, Miskatonic University
Homo vult decipi; decipiatur
The Bugaloos
The Bugaloos
We’re in the air and everywhere
Flying high, flying loose
Flying free as a summer breeze
The Bugaloos
The Bugaloos
We’re climbing high and diving low
Through the sky, 'cross the land
Straight to you
With a helping hand
Ready with a helping hand
We’re friends indeed
Should you need
If you ever need
The Bugaloos
The Bugaloos
We’re in the air and everywhere
Flying high, flying loose
Flying free like we all could be…
[[Good one Doc! But I gotta call you on one point… Wilhelmina Witchiepoo rode a “Vroom Broom” not a broom broom. Definitely a much cooler sounding name!]]
Ooooh, then you’re going to love Cecil’s column this week.
The only place I recall seeing that word is in the Mad comic books from the '50’s. Is it used anywhere else? I always assumed it was a “Mad thing,” like “potrzebie.” Or is “potrzebie” used in other places? Maybe I should start a new topic in GQ.
You know, I always kind of figured Pufnstuf was, well, a Puffin. You know, the aquatic bird. I mean, I wasn’t really sure, and he didn’t LOOK like a puffin, but then he didn’t look like much of anything, as far as I could tell. (On the other hand, I felt pretty certain that Mayor McCheese was a giant cheeseburger. I guess the folks at Krofft were more abstract; the folks at McDonalds more representational.)
But apparently he was a dragon - and now that I’ve heard that, and looked at Pufnstuf again, I guess it fits. It’s kind of satisfying to have a childhood mystery solved 30 years later. (Egad, can it really have been 30 years?)
I don’t know about “potrzebie” outside of “Mad”, but “furschlugginer” is Yiddish (more usually spelled “farshlugginer” nowadays, when spelled in the Latin alphabet at all). I’m no Yiddish scholar, unfortunately. The root meaning is something like “beaten”, “slammed” or “punched”, but Yiddish words tend to stray.
Early “Mad” was very Jewish.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
Geez, answers on two Mad Magazine words! Maybe I should make a Mad Magazine vocabulary list and have the Teeming Millions supply definitions. Then again, the only remaining Mad word that comes to mind is “Moxie,” and I already know what that one is. m:
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this, but I was told that the “H.R.” in “H.R. Pufnstuf” stood for “hand rolled.” Hand-rolled puffing stuff. Get it? Certainly consistent with the various drug references, e.g. “Lidsville.”
