“Rocky and His Friends” premiered on ABC on Nov. 19, 1969.
The whole first series (mooseberry rocket fuel) is on Hulu.
There was one “Dudley Do-right” cartoon that was only shown ONCE. The subject was “Stokey the Bear”. This bear was at one time famous for tellling people to prevent forest fires. However, under the hypnotic influence of Snidely Whiplash, he became an arsonist! The US Forest Service objected to the obvious and intended parodic similarity to “Smokey the Bear”, and the cartoon was never shown again. It’s on YouTube, of course.
Rockt and Bullwinkle are considerably older that 50 years. As the book The Bullwinkle Shoe tells us, Jay Ward developed them many years before, when doing “Crusader Rabbit”, his earlier foray into limited animation TV, which also figured a dimiutive bright hero and his tall, dumb, lany sidekick (Ragland “Rags” T. Tiger) Rocky and Bullwinkle were supposed to be supporting characters, but for some reason never made it onto the show. They finally did show up, on their own show.
I have the first three DVD collections, and wish they’d put out more of them.
Hey Rocky, watch me pull a Season Four DVD set out of my hat!
The Season Three set includes a preview of Season Four, so obviously they intended to continue the series. But four years later (after the first three sets came out at one-year intervals) it doesn’t look good…
I’m having trouble finding a Fractured Fairy Tale. It was about a monster that was a mixture of other creatures (like a chimera, but they didn’t call it that). He sang this song,
“I’ve got the head of a lion, body of a snake and when I move my wolf’s feet all I do is shake. Oh I hate me, I hate me, oh I hats myself. I’ve got the mean, loathsome, horrid kind of thing blues!”
I used to sing it all the time as a kid. No one else seems to remember it.
Hokey smoke! There’s a bit of moose DNA in a lot of entertainment- Bill Scott, the voice of Bullwinkle, wrote for Bugs Bunny before working with moose and squirrel, and writers Allan Burns and Chris Hayward would eventually go on to create and write for various programs including The Munsters, Get Smart, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and others. Matt Groening has stated that Homer and Bart Simpson have J as their middle initial in tribute to Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket J. Squirrel (which in turn had theirs in tribute to J Troplong Ward), and Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh have stated that Bullwinkle was a direct inspiration for Phineas and Ferb, quite possibly the best children’s cartoon on TV today. And although moose and squirrel may not have been a direct inspiration, I’ve often referred to Pearls Before Swine as the Bullwinkle of comic strips- it makes up for its average drawings with its brilliant writing. Now there’s something you do see every day, Chauncey!
Congrats to the whole goofy Ward gang- that super-sonic speedster, the moose with the most, that no-good trickster (say the name…) Boris Badenov and his USC (Ukranian Safecracking College) co-conspirator Natasha Fatale, Mr. Peabody and his pet boy Sherman, Dudley Do-Right, and a host of others. Let’s take a ruby yacht of Omar Khayamm over to Frostbite Falls and give a toast to Jay Ward, Bill Scott, Ponsonby Britt, and the whole gang.