As promised, here is the tentative list of Hanna-Barbera titles for 2007:

Birdman and the Galaxy Trio

Space Ghost and Dino Boy

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home (Season 1)

Wally Gator/Touche Turtle/Lippy the Lion (Complete)

Scooby Doo, Where Are You? (Season 3)

The Banana Splits Adventure Hour

and (drumroll, please…)

Quick Draw McGraw (Complete Series - My fav!! Of course, I already gave this one away by the picture above… so the dramatic pause was pretty pointless.)

Notice I said these are tentative. As you all know by now, releases get cancelled, rescheduled and shuffled around depending on condition of masters and how much work needs to be done on them. I know, for instance, that the Banana Splits is going to be very difficult to piece back together.

There is also an issue with the condition of the Wally Gator et al. masters. The prints that have been around for years are very grainy, leading some to believe that they were shot in 16mm. I don’t think they were, but anything’s possible.

There are three other series also scheduled for 2007, but they are even more tentative than the ones I listed because of rights issues, so I don’t even want to say what they are for fear of blowing some ongoing negotiation. When they become more set, I will annnounce those as well.

With Quick Draw, of course, we have the same problem with locating all the interstitial material that we had with Huck and Yogi. Hopefully there will be more time to do a more thorough job.

And for those wondering, the search for Magilla elements is still ongoing and I will let you know more about that when there’s pertinent information.

Back here, I told you some more details on the Master Replicas line of Muppets and if you follow that link, there are links to even older news, in case you need to get caught up. Well, Kermit has begun shipping and here, for your dining and dancing pleasure, is a picture of how he arrives.

The box is a very nice heavy duty cardboard with a sliding lid. It is adorned with artwork from a current Disney Muppets style guide. Kermit is fully poseable and how authentic he looks really depends on your skill at posing him. I know that sounds odd, but it’s true.

It’s a nice presentation, but many have commented that it looks like he’s in a coffin. It does rather resemble a coffin, but most people won’t be leaving him in the box. You can’t pose him at all in the box.

For those that might be wondering, and I know some of you are… no, you can’t turn it into a puppet. Not only is there no sleeve for your arm, but you’d have to so thoroughly trash it to get the armature out, you might as well start from scratch and build your own, if that’s what you want.

I think Master Replicas did an outstanding job with this, and yet, on the message boards, there are still those that quibble and complain. Sure, there are tiny things that could be changed, but then, the “real” Kermit and his photo puppet pals have gone through many changes of their own over the years. This one definitely looks light-years better than some of the “posers” that have actually been photographed both by the Hensons and Disney.

And speaking of photography, if you’re looking to take pictures of your own replica, you will have to do it with either natural or artificial lighting, but not flash. The flash reflects off the fibers in the material making it look shimmery on digital photographs.

Now, as revealed here, is the first public picture of the next Muppet replica, Gonzo. I must say I wasn’t that excited about Gonzo until I saw the pictures.

Please, I can’t stress enough that this is just the very first prototype and everything is subject to change. Moreover, this has not yet even been approved by Disney. But even saying all that, it’s a really nice piece of work. This prototype was built by former Muppeteer Terry Angus and he did a smashing job.

One last word about Kermit - even Master Replicas was surprised by the way he sold. It is a limited edition of 2500, so if you want one, I suggest you order post haste. After all, it’s not that easy being green… with envy.

While I was looking for a picture of the game “Sorry” to use in the last post, I came across this which I think is much more interesting than a box game:

If you can read the tiny type, you will notice that the words are written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, at least one of whom was one of Groucho’s favorite people. This song writing duo penned many of Groucho’s most famous songs, including “Hooray For Captain Spaulding” from Animal Crackers.

They also wrote a song called “Dr. Hackenbush”, which was to appear in A Day At The Races, but didn’t. It would be interesting to know if it was ever filmed, although I’ve never heard that it was. Besides a 1950’s Decca recording that Groucho did, he also performed it in 1964 on The Hollywood Palace, complete with frock coat and striped pants, but no painted on moustache. He had the real thing on his lip by then.

They also wrote a song called “Go West”, which I have to assume was written for the Marx Brothers movie of the same name, but also wasn’t used. In a rather bizarre sequence in Copacabana, Groucho not only dons the frock coat and pants, but also paints on the moustache and eyebrows one last time to perform “Go West”. It’s not a great movie, but it’s worth the whole thing just for that.

The movie that “Who’s Sorry Now?” is from, A Night In Casablanca, is also not a great film. But still, the worst of the Marx Brothers is better than what passes for comedy in the movies today.

There… did that make me sound enough like an old coot? Because that’s what I was going for.

Okay, I know that header doesn’t really work since the name of the game is “Crue… not Crue!” (That’s also a dopey attempt at a Get Smart reference.)

Anyway, when I started this blog back in April, I really tried to update it every day. And I was doing pretty good for a while. This last month, however, a little thing called work and life got in the way.

If I haven’t already lost most of my regular readers, please keep checking back. Posting is still going to be very light for the next month, but should hopefully be better than this past month when posting was nonexistant. (And how could it be worse than that?)

I should have some news about upcoming Hanna-Barbera DVD’s shortly. You’ll definitely read it here first.

To those that were concerned about me, thanks so much for your kind words. At least this time, the things that caused me not to have time to post were good . It’s not like I had to have an OPERATION.

So, without taking another RISK, I’ll close my MOUSE TRAP and go feed my HUNGRY, HUNGRY HIPPOS.

Okay, that was probably my lamest post ever.