-Review by Matthew Hunter
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Buy,Download, Or Stream Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s Vol. 2! Click Here
“Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960’s Volume 2″ is kind of like that mountainous “sampler” tin of chocolates your family gets for Christmas every once in a while. There’s a lot of variety, plenty for everybody, and the contents range from incredible to gag-inducing.
This state, like the previous volume, collects a wide variety of cartoon series from the 1960’s, and attempts to expose them as closely to their novel TV presentation as possible. It’s a stout belief on Warner’s allotment, as it brings together material that may not warrant a complete box-set release by itself (or hasn’t yet) in an affordable and delectable map.
The bulk of the material included here is of the Hanna-Barbera variety, and it’s enchanting to compare earlier, better material like “Mercurial Scheme McGraw” to later efforts like “Atom Ant” and “Wally Gator”. Towards the demolish of the 1960’s, Hanna-Barbera had been cloning their “laughable animal” formula so often that it grew even more traditional with every recent attempt. H-B eventually began focusing on “action” cartoons, and unfortunately the examples of these included on this station are among the weakest.
Buy,Download, Or Stream Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s Vol. 2! Click Here
The collection opens with an episode from “The Lickety-split Plan McGraw Expose”, nicely restored with its modern opening theme song and supporting segments, “Snooper and Blabber” and “Augie Doggie”. The animation on this expose is minute and low-budget, but the writing and humor gain up extremely well, thanks in great share to writer Michael Maltese. Hastily Diagram is a Wild West hero who impartial happens to be a horse, Snooper and Blabber are a cat and mouse detective team, and Augie Doggie is a brainy sitcom-style kid living with his fater, Doggie Daddy. This episode, along with a second episode focusing on Rapidly Draw’s illustrious alter-ego, “El Kabong”, really makes me wish Warner had released the Hasty Plan exhibit as a standalone series collection.
Next up is a present that should be avoided at all costs. Though an provocative curio, there is absolutely no entertainment value in “The Residence Kidettes”, a note about a group of annoyingly cute space-age kids in a Jetsons-esque setting who are being stalked by a state pirate named Captain Skyhook. Its supporting segment, “Young Samson”, is even worse, about a teenage boy named Samson and his dog, Goliath, who can transform into a superhero and a lion, respectively. How does a dog turn into a lion? That is a mystery I do not want to show…because to do it, I would have to peek more episodes! This demonstrate sucks, and is largely unheard of for VERY expedient reason.
“The Bugs Bunny Expose” is a nice surprise, including the modern “This Is It” title sequence and some long-lost bridging footage. Mac and Tosh, the Goofy Gophers, are the hosts, but raze their incessant polite contrast forces Bugs himself to introduce the cartoons to maintain the explain going. There is some footage missing, but everything is in color and presented as it would have aired in Saturday Morning reruns. All three cartoons (minus titles and credits, as they originally aired) peer fine: “Enormous House Bunny’ and “Canned Feud” are the restored “Golden Collection” versions, “Home Tweet Home” is not, but it’s a better transfer than I’ve seen before.
“The Porky Pig Note” compiles three more Warner Bros. classics with the new opening, closing and several bumper segments from that TV package. An inviting “skit” that probably originated on the “Bugs Bunny Note” has Bugs Bunny playing piano on stage, in animation re-traced from “Rhapsody Rabbit”, to introduce the musical short “Baton Bunny”. The other two shorts included are “Scaredy Cat” and “Feather Dusted”, and all but the third are restored. “Feather Dusted” is at least uncut and is a perfectly acceptable copy.
Next, we collect another “lost care for” from Hanna-Barbera, entitled “The Adventures of Gulliver”. A young man named Gulliver and his father go on a sea voyage with a cherish intention to a lost island, a creepy stowaway thug knocks them out, steals the procedure, and Gulliver wakes up shipwrecked with his dog on the island of Lilliput. What follows is minute more than a loosely updated knockoff of the broken-down Jonathan Swift narrative “Gulliver’s Travels”. It will probably be of interest only to those who acquire seeing it as kids. No flaws in terms of print quality, relate or sound here.
“The Wally Gator Indicate” is a fondly-remembered 3-cartoon variety explain featuring “Wally Gator”, “Touche Turtle”, and “Lippy Lion and Hardy Har-Har”. Unfortunately, it was a hastily-produced and thoroughly lackluster series, aimed squarely at children. Wally Gator longs to rush free in the Everglades, instead he’s stuck in a zoo with a nagging zookeeper named Mr. Twiddle. Touche Turtle is a miniature do-gooder voiced by Bill “Droopy Dog” Thompson, who dresses like a French musketeer and tries to serve people (in this case, Captain Ahab) along with his aptly named dog sidekick, Dum Dum. Lippy the Lion and his sorrowful, sad-sack hyena sidekick Hardy Har Har (brilliantly voiced by Mel Blanc) are easily the best of the bunch, but they, too, seem cookie-cutter and forced. If these cartoons have not used well content-wise, they have fared even worse physically. Originally mastered on cheap film, they contemplate muddy, scratchy and at times out of focus. For those nostalgia buffs longing to contemplate this stuff beautifully restored, you won’t rep it here!
A classic “Jetsons” episode entitled “Elroy’s Mob” rounds out the first disc. Young Elroy gets mixed up in a crime, and in typical 60’s sitcom fashion, hilarity ensues, followed by a satisfied ending. It looks and sounds tremendous, probably the same version veteran for the new series DVD state.
Disc Two begins with Rapid Method McGraw again, this time in the guise of “El Kabong”, a masked, Zorro-like alter-ego who fights villains by bashing them on the head with a guitar. Once again, this does not disappoint, with razor-sharp humor and charm that can be enjoyed by young and old-fashioned alike. Snooper, Blabber, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy once again have the supporting segments, and are also worthwhile, “Augie” especially. As with the episode on Disc 1, everything from the opening and closing titles to the cartoon shorts in between gawk and sound titanic.
Following Speedy Contrivance, we again plunge into the abyss of Hanna-Barbera’s decline with one of the strangest cartoon characters ever created: Peter Potamus. Peter is a rotund, purple hippo who travels the world in a hot air balloon with his monkey pal, SoSo. In this episode, Peter gets caught in the middle of a fight between cowboys and Indians. The one highlight of this expend in blandness is the divulge work of Daws Butler, Don Messick, and Mel Blanc, but since the endless stream of talk is all there is to it, it gets tedious in a speed. When Peter (not to mention the audience!) has had enough, he dispatches his tormenters with his “Hippo Hurricane Holler”. Translation: he screams loud enough that it literally blows everyone away. Supporting segments include “Breezly and Sneezly”, a polar gain and a seal who have nothing better to do than annoy the soldiers at a military outpost in the Arctic, and “Yippie, Yappie and Yahooey”, three dogs who aid as inept guards to a fussy Medieval king. It’s hard to imagine anyone getting aroused about any of these goofball critters, and though they have their moments, they pale in comparison to earlier H-B efforts and will probably bore kids and adults alike. The show’s unusual opening and closing are included, and are in attractive rough shape, but the cartoons themselves peep handsome.
Once Peter and pals acquire the blandness out of their systems, we pick up an episode of “The Road Runner Exhibit”. I was really looking forward to this, and was very disappointed with the results! The new opening, closing, a rarely-seen keen bumper segments are included, as are the title cards created exclusively for this iconic package of Warner classics. The bumper segments are not to be missed: director Robert McKimson created these after the departure of Chuck Jones from the Warner Bros. animation studio, and while low-budget, they are extremely droll. Where the folks at Warner compiling this DVD collection went heinous, though, is evident in the cartoons themselves. Whereas the “Bugs Bunny” and “Porky Pig” shows mixed the archaic, worn-out TV bridging footage with nice, smart copies of the true cartoons, the “Road Runner Expose” gets a microscopic TOO “authentic”, using copies of the cartoons from the same dilapidated TV masters as the bridging animation. The results glance abominable, especially the opening short, “Zip N’ Pronounce”, which looks so abominable that Chuck Jones is probably turning in his grave over it. The other two cartoons included, Sylvester and Tweety in “The Jet Cage” and Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote and Fleet Gonzales’ race-off “The Wild Waddle”, glimpse objective as bad, and there is absolutely no excuse for that. They are stale, scratchy and blurred. Why would you drink tainted milk when you have a modern, unopened carton in the same fridge? Maybe I’ve been base by the incredible restorations Warner released on the “Looney Tunes Golden Collection” DVD series, but these cartoons leer worse than I’ve ever seen them, and including them in this manner is disgraceful.
Next comes “Atom Ant”, another Hanna-Barbera series about a microscopic ant with elegant powers. The title character is a snooze, but the supporting segments, “Precious Pupp” and “Hillbilly Bears”, point to more inspiring. “Precious” isn’t particularly humorous, but he is an ancestor of one of H-B’s most memorable and intriguing creations, Muttley. Precious shares Muttley’s mumbling bid and wheezy laugh, but instead of Muttley’s villainous master, Dastardly, Precious’ companion is a sweet shrimp extinct lady. The segment is not particularly clever or droll, but it’s a nice try. “Hillbilly Bears” is easily the best segment, and should have received top billing over Atom. It’s about a family of (what else? Hillbilly bears!) voiced by Henry Corden (Paw) Jean Vander Pyl (Maw, Flora) and Don Messick (Shag) . Corden’s mumbling, grumbling, almost unintelligible relate for Paw is absolutely hilarious. Irreverent, politically wrong and violent (Paw has an itchy trigger finger to match his colossal black-powder gun), it’s a miracle that a cartoon this humorous managed to spring up out of the bland mire of this later H-B material. Skip Atom and Precious and stare the Bears! In terms of physical quality, everything looks and sounds heavenly here.
“The Tom and Jerry Demonstrate” is gripping only for some linking segments absorbing by Chuck Jones, which have not been seen in years. They’re not in very superior shape, but they’re fun to explore for the first time. The rest of the expose is classic MGM cartoons: Tom and Jerry in “Salt Water Tabby”, Droopy in “Mutts About Racing” and Tom, Jerry and Runt Quacker in “Objective Ducky”. These are nothing unique if you already hold the Tom and Jerry “Spotlight” sets and the “Tex Avery’s Droopy” DVD, the only contrast is that the MGM Lion openings and credits are replaced with made-for-TV title cards.
The region comes to a terminate with “Magilla Gorilla”. Some fans of this series complained that the stand-alone series DVD state didn’t include the theme song, and it has been included here. Magilla Gorilla is fondly remembered, but really doesn’t have a whole lot going for him except a catchy theme song and a likeable personality. A bonus documentary glowing considerable agrees with me. As with “Atom Ant”, the supporting segments are more inviting, but not by considerable. “Punkin Puss and Mushmouse” are a sort of talkative, Ozark hillbilly Tom and Jerry, and probably never caught on with audiences due to their derivative premise. There are only so many variations that can be done on the “cat vs. mouse” cartoon, and by the time these guys came along, they were one variation too many. “Ricochet Rabbit”, a segment sometimes seen on “Peter Potamus” as well, is a lot of fun. A rabbit sheriff named Ricochet (Don Messick) and his deputy, Droop-Along Coyote (Mel Blanc), try to retain law and order in the Wild West. It’s got some wit to it, and the characters are instantly likeable, but the influence of earlier Western plots in “Huckleberry Hound” and “Expeditiously Procedure McGraw” is painfully sure.
In summary, this DVD is a fun method to expend a indolent day off, and nostalgia hounds will regain a kick out of it. Unfortunately, it’s a mixed bag in terms of philosophize and image quality. It does offer a lot of material for not a lot of money, so it’s well worth checking out as long as you’re not expecting perfection. And doooon’t you forget it!
This is a frosty blast from the past (1960’s) that will be enjoyed by anyone who loves the frail Hanna-Barbera cartoons. I honest wish it had a collector’s booklet or episode guide so you read more about the cartoons and summaries. I hope Warner will release more in this series.
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