Did you guess the conspicuously missing TV Tinykin? Ron Wallace did:

Let me close my itty-bitty lil’ eyes and guess that Marx forgot - poor old Chopper…yet they made an Alfie Gator!

Odd, isn’t it? Aflie Gator appeared in about three cartoons, Fibber Fox was in more, but Chopper was in more than either of them. Chopper was also in many more cartoons than Cindy Bear, who was also in the Yogi set. Plus, Alfie Gator was the eighth character. It would be interesting to know how this happened.

Extra Bonus Trivia: Fibber Fox’s voice, as performed by our mentor, Daws Butler, was based on stand-up comedian Shelley Berman, while Alfie Gator was Daws’ version of director and TV personality Alfred Hitchcock. I specifically used the term “based on” because many of Daws’ characters began as an impression, but grew into its own thing. Perfect examples are Yogi Bear and Hokey Wolf. While they might have similarities to Art Carney and Phil Silvers, if Frank Gorshin got up in a night club and did those voices, no one would think they sounded like the actual person. If Daws wanted to do an impression, as he did in the very early days of his career, he could do them. Lippy the Lion/Peter Potamus are dead-on impressions of actor Joe E. Brown, right down to the laugh and the big-mouthed yell. The other one that is almost a perfect impersonation that practically no one knew was Cap’n Crunch, who is character actor Charles Butterworth. You can see a photo of the befuddled Butterworth on the right. Before he became the beleaguered Cap’n, Daws would use the voice in the Jay Ward Fractured Fairy Tales, usually for a king. If you ever catch one of Butterworth’s performances, you’ll be astounded at just how good an impression Daws did.

To tie this up back where we began, Chopper’s voice was provided by Vance Colvig, son of Pinto Colvig, the original voices of Goofy and Bozo the Clown, as well as Gabby for the Fleischer Studio.

Dave Mackey writes:

I saw your post about the recent H-B figures. I remember having a whole bunch of little figurines of the Top Cat characters as a child. They were all there… TC, Benny the Ball, Choo Choo, Spook, Brain, and Fancy-Fancy. They couldn’t have been more than an inch or an inch and a half tall. Do you ever remember seeing those?

I do indeed. They are the aforementioned (in the previous post) TV Tinykins, made by the Louis Marx & Co. company and a sequel to their popular Disneykins line.

Above you see the Flintstones set. They were all released in late 1961 or early 1962 (They carry a 1961 copyright date). There were five sets - Huckleberry Hound Show, Quick Draw McGraw Show, Yogi Bear Show, The Flintstones and Top Cat. Most of the sets had seven characters, but a few had an extra one you could buy and unless I’m forgetting someone obvious, Huck only had six.

They were packaged many different ways. Individually, as our you see our friend Snagglepuss on the right. In show sets with added scenery and prop pieces and in one huge megaset, which was the way I got mine. They were made out of hard plastic and hand painted “by artists” (or so the box claimed)… but sometimes not so carefully. Unlike other H-B toys of the time, most of the colors were pretty accurate. The notable exceptions were Dino, who was green instead of purple; Betty Rubble, whose dress was green and not blue; Snuffles, who was brown instead of orange; and Yogi, who you can see pictured below painted dark brown instead of his regular chocolate brown. For some reason, there are some Yogi’s that were painted a lighter shade than this one. Maybe a different batch?

For the record, here is who was in each set:

Huckleberry Hound: Huck, Hokey Wolf, Ding-A-Ling, Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks.

Quick Draw: Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Snuffles, Snooper and Blabber, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy.

Yogi Bear: Yogi, Boo Boo, Ranger Smith, Cindy Bear, Snagglepuss, Yakky Doodle, Fibber Fox and Alfy Gator.

The Flintstones: Fred, Barney, Wilma, Betty, Dino, Baby Puss, Fireman and Policeman.

Top Cat: T.C., Choo-Choo, Spook, Brain, Fancy-Fancy, Benny the Ball and Officer Dibble.

Go back through the list and see if you can guess the one glaring omission. I’ll tell you now that it isn’t Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. They weren’t around when these were made. I’ll give you the answer tomorrow.

Most of these little guys were pretty sturdy, but some of them were very delicate, like the ones with very thin tails… Pixie, Dixie, Blabber and Snagglepuss. Officer Dibble’s and Fred’s clubs were prone to breaking, and so was Snooper’s magnifying glass.

These are one of my favorite toys of all time. My sister and I used them in place of game pieces on all of our board games. We would choose one at random and then do the voice as they played the game. This was certainly good practice for my voiceover career. Oh, wait. That never really took off, did it?

To Dave: I’m sorry I couldn’t find a picture of the Top Cat gang, but if I can muster up the energy, maybe I’ll dig mine out and take a picture of them to remind you what they looked like. When Fred Seibert was president of Hanna-Barbera in the 90’s, I suggested that they do a reissue set of TV Tinykins. He actually considered it, but it never came to pass. Too bad. They could have even updated it, adding other sets like The Jetsons and Jonny Quest. Say, maybe it’s still not too late!

Speaking of new Hanna-Barbera toys, as I was here, for my recent birthday I received the piece that you see pictured above. This is one of the Series One sculptures, designed by pal and Hanna-Barbera expert, Scott Shaw! and released by McFarlane Toys. There are two Tom and Jerry entries. I particularly like the one called “No Trespassing!” There is the Quick Draw El Kabong and a Hong Kong Phooey. Then there are two Fred Flintstones, each in a different vehicle, kind of emulating Big Daddy Roth.

There hasn’t been a nicer or more fun set of H-B toys since 1962 and Marx’s TV Tinykins, but these are even better. They make me feel like I own the sculptures from one of the old 3-D Viewmaster reels that used figures instead of drawings. Here is the cover of the Quick Draw set.

If you want to see the rest of McFarlane’s Series One, go here. And if you want a preview of Series Two that is being released in December, go here. Maybe the most astounding thing about these is the price. I think Quick Draw cost $15.99, cheap at twice the price as Soupy Sales used to say and then wind up paying the door-to-door salesman twice the price.

But if you want to see just how wrong H-B toys can go, take a look at these beauties:

Frightenin’, man, frightenin’!

After yesterday’s post about the Tinker Bell movie, Rich T writes with this suggestion:

As an encore, they should put a “Dopey” movie into production. Bobcat Goldthwait can do his voice. Sounds like money in the bank!

It certainly does. Personally, I’m waiting for the trilogy that starts with the Gideon flick, followed by Evinrude, the Movie and finishing with the one that everyone’s dying to see, Pluto Speaks! Are you listening Disney Toons?

This may be old news, but today was the first I had heard about this. I knew that Disney Toons was making a Tinker Bell movie. I also knew that it was CGI (Ugh!), and that Tink has been redesigned (another brilliant idea. <--- That's sarcasm, in case my tone doesn't come through in print). But I didn't know that they had hired Brittany Murphy to be Tinker Bell's voice. Wait a second. Did he just say, "Voice?", you're asking yourself. Yes, I did. Of all the bad ideas in this production, having the mute fairy talk is by far the worst. Here is a link to a Reuters story about this on some Chinese website (you search for a better link yourself… I’m too disgusted!)

John Lasseter, if you’re out there, can’t you shut this travesty down? We’ll love you forever. I promise!

A few weeks ago I linked to Mark Evanier, who had linked to the Main Titles for the Linus the Lionhearted Show. Today, I’m linking to two different sets of Main and End Titles for another obscure animated show, Calvin and the Colonel.

The show was produced and written by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, who had much greater success with a couple other shows, Leave It To Beaver and The Munsters. It was created by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll as a thinly veiled effort to revive their hugely popular radio show Amos and Andy. As on the radio show, the two men did the voices of the main characters.

Calvin and the Colonel had moments of being funny, but for the most part, they rehashed old radio scripts into animation and that translated into pretty tedious fare. However, the titles are very fun and the theme song is one of the all-time great forgotten tunes. (I never forgot it, even after I hadn’t seen the show in over 30 years.) So, here is Version 1 and here is Version 2. Enjoy!

“How much is that gorilla in the window?”

See the picture above? You won’t be seeing the scene that comes from on the upcoming Warner Home Video release of Magilla Gorilla. Jon Cooke of Golden Age Cartoons has received an advanced copy of the DVD set and posted his review. After I’ve written several pieces about the DVD’s of this Hanna-Barbera series without seeing the final product, it seems that once again they’ve completely overlooked the obvious and misjudged what people want. All the cartoons are present, but some of them are in terrible condition. Worse, the very memorable Main and End Titles (”We’ve got a gorilla for sale, Magilla Gorilla for sale!”) are nowhere to be found. Instead of packaging these as complete half-hour shows, the way collectors want them, they only put the individual cartoons on the set.

I have it on good authority that the Warner Home Video marketing department is as distraught about this as the fans are. They are searching the vaults for the missing material and if found, they are considering a disc replacement program like the one they are currently running for the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection, Volume 2. I repeat, this is only under consideration at this time! When a final decision is made, I will… PING! PING! PI-I-I-I-I-NNNG!… pass it along.

My good buddy Mark Evanier is railing against the multimedia conglomerates making us buy the same titles over and over again. Go read his piece, then come back here.

Normally, I agree with every word Mark says. On the off times that isn’t the case, I at least agree with every other word. This time, I agree with Mark’s sentiment. For instance, I have already purchased the James Bond Special Edition sets, including the movies I don’t even really like (does anybody like Moonraker?). Now comes word that an extra-special edition is coming out with frame-by-frame restoration like they’ve been doing on the Disney animated films. I don’t care any more. I’m not buying them again. I’m through… at least until the HD wars settle and one format prevails. Then I’ll consider rebuying.

But the one problem with Mark’s argument is that it’s a Catch-22. He says wait for the Ultimate Box Set, which has all the seasons of your favorite show. However, if the individual seasons don’t sell well enough, companies are now starting to reassess midway through and cancel series. For instance, Huckleberry Hound Volume 1, pictured at left, may turn out to be the only Huckleberry volume released due to low sales. Other series which have recently been shelved after one or more seasons were released are Boy Meets World, Murphy Brown and Night Court. If the sales aren’t good enough to release the entire series individually, they’ll never get to that ultimate box set.

I agree with Mark that these marketing schemes are devious and unfair to consumers. I also want to be sure that the rest of the seasons of Leave It to Beaver and F Troop come out. There is no good solution, except The Seven Percent Solution… but I’m only buying that once!

Here is my favorite acquisition from this year’s Comic-Con. A simple Huckleberry Hound plush. The reason I like this so much is it’s the most “on model” Hanna-Barbera plush toy I’ve ever seen. “On model” is a term used in animation to compare a drawing or product to the approved version of the character. Above is a Huckleberry model sheet that the artists would use for reference to keep their drawings on model. The plush folks even got those signature H-B turned back hands right on the toy.

Anyway, this particular Huck was made by a company called The Toy Factory in San Antonio, Texas. It took me a while to find them. They were buried about 6 pages deep on Google. There is a whole line of Hanna-Barbera plushes, including The Flintstones and The Jetsons. You can click on the link above to see pictures of the others. Once on the home page, click on “Product”, and then the line you want to see. They’re not all as good as Huck, but I particularly like the Quick Draw McGraw. Alas, it turns out that The Toy Factory sells exclusively to carnivals and claw machines and the like and not to toy stores or individuals. Their minimum order is a case, which, for the H-B characters is 66 pieces. I still haven’t figured out if it’s 66 of EACH character or an assortment of 66.

Anyone want to chip in with me to get these?

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a story after Preview Night of Comic-Con about the Master Replicas Muppet Photo Puppets. At that time, I announced that the second character in the line would be Gonzo. Gonzo will be based on a 1978 Muppets style guide and will be wearing his purple Muppet Show tuxedo. The person behind this product line is Kevin Eslinger. Kevin was gracious enough to let me make that announcement, even scooping Master Replicas own blog. Now, on the Muppet Central fan website, Kevin has posted the whole history of how the Muppet project came to be. You can read about it here.

Thanks, Kevin, for spearheading this great line, and for letting me spill the beans… or the halved ping-pong balls, as the case may be.