Hanna-Barbera Halloween Cards

 Halloween will be here before you know it, so for the first post focused on the occasion this year, I bring you this collection of Hanna-Barbera Halloween greeting cards. All of these were made by Hallmark, as you may have guessed it. Interestingly enough, Hallmark actually wanted to buy Hanna-Barbera when the studio went up for sale in 1991, but were ultimately beaten out by Turner.

Our first card was released in 1992, and shows Quick Draw McGraw with a message for trick-or-treaters. The message inside, for those curious, is "Hope you round up all the treats that you've been hoping for! Have fun!" Quick Draw is kind of a weird character to pick for a Halloween card, but I guess anything is appropriate for Halloween if you give it an orange background and throw some bats in.

This Yogi Bear card from 1990 shows Yogi dressed up as...honestly, I've got no clue as to what he's going for. I'm guessing an alien, but the cape seems a little random.  

The inside on this one reads "Here's Yogi Bear, right on the scene, all set for Halloween—Just looking for treats, the way bears do, and wishing for lots of fun for you! Happy Halloween!"

Finally, it is only appropriate that we end this with Scooby-Doo, a series tailor made for all things Halloween. This card saw release in 1987, and has Scooby rocking a Dracula cape. It's intended for a "special boy," and the inside reads "Somebody famous is bringing this wish to somebody special—guess who! Why the somebody famous is Scooby-Doo, and the somebody special is you!"

A Quick Draw Update

 There's been a couple of updates regarding Quick Draw McGraw the last week or so, both good and bad. I'm going to go ahead and share this pieces of news, starting with the bad.

Unfortunately, the much anticipated Quick Draw McGraw Blu-Ray has had its release date pushed back due to production delays. Instead of releasing the 29th of this month as initially planned, it will now be released on October 20th. While it's unfortunate we have to wait an extra month, I'm confident it will be worth the wait. Now onto the good news.

While we have to wait a bit longer for the Blu-Ray collection, MeTV Toons has more than got us covered. The series just started airing on the channel yesterday, and it's never looked better. Here's a clip of the intro as it appears on the channel. The show will air every weekday at 5:30 P.M., giving viewers a dose of Quick Draw Monday through Friday. It goes without saying that the next month or so will be quite the ride for fans of The Quick Draw McGraw Show, and I couldn't be happier.

Video of the Week: Tony Benedict and Willie Ito Talk Toons

 For this week's featured video, I thought we'd rewind the clock ten years back to this wonderful video starring two Hanna-Barbera legends, Willie Ito and the late Tony Benedict. This is an interview the two did at the 2016 Toronto Animation Arts Festival International, where much of the focus is on their time at Hanna-Barbera. There's some great stills also included in the video, and we even get a moment of the two doing what they do best. Can't really ask for more in a video about two of the greats.

Peter Cullen Hits the Big Time

 Last month, the one and only Peter Cullen passed away at the age of 85. Though most will remember him best for characters like Optimus Prime and Winnie the Pooh's Eeyore, his earliest roles were actually at Hanna-Barbera. Starting off with minor roles in 1979's Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, Cullen would have a recurring presence in their productions until The Pirates of Dark Water concluded in 1993 (acting against type, he voiced the villainous henchman Mantus). His voice could be found in many of their shows during that time, including The Smurfs, The Snorks, The Jetsons, and even the infamous rival of The Transformers, Challenge of the GoBots.

Normally, I don't talk a lot about Hanna-Barbera productions of the 70s and 80s, but there's no denying that the studio was still full of talent during this period, and Peter was no exception. He's voiced countless characters that have entertained generations, and today, I'm honoring him by looking back at an often forgotten portion of his career.

Below is a piece on Cullen that ran in the January 7th, 1974 edition of The Gazette, a paper from Cullen's birthplace, Montreal, Canada. You won't see any mention of cartoon voice-acting here. Rather, the focus is on Cullen's move away from CBC radio work to hitting it big on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Peter was one of the many regulars on the show, joining a cast that included other greats like Steve Martin and Teri Garr. Certainly not a bad beginning for what would become quite the career if you ask me.

Cullen: Starting to Hit it Big

By L. Ian MacDonald

    It is going on three years since Montreal comedian Peter Cullen gave up on the CBC and gravitated to Los Angeles, where he now works steadily on the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and the Bobby Goldsboro Show.
    He knew he was beginning to hit it in Hollywood this fall, when they invited him to play in a celebrity golf tournament at Pinehurst, North Carolina.
    This was before the fuel shortage forced airlines to curtail service and, for the occasion, 65 actors and their families were ferried across America in a chartered 727. 
    Peter Cullen, who plays to a 15 handicap, found himself paired with Roberto Di Vicenzo, the magnificent Argentinian player who once lost the Masters by marking down the wrong score.
    "I said, "Hey Roberto, you want me to keep score?" Cullen recalled the other day at the end of a Christmas visit with his family. 

    When it came time to perform at an elaborate dinner, nobody wanted to go on first. "I said, 'You want an icebreaker, I'll break the ice," said Cullen, who went out and broke up the place with his impressions of Richard Nixon and Howard Cosell. 
    This sort of willing attitude comes from working at the CBC, where all performers are underpaid and nobody is a star. Paradoxically, the CBC rehearsal hall mentality that drives our pest people out of the country, prepares them well for the Big Apple.
    If you can survive on a show with $7,000 budget, as Cullen did on a successive CBC comedy series, you can flourish on a $200,000 weekly production like Sonny and Cher.
    Having started as more or less as an announcer and a glorified extra, Cullen is beginning to find his level on America's top-rated and best produced variety series. On last week's show, he was given four minutes solo with the Cosell number. He has an offer to do a guest shot with Mary Tyler Moore. And he's involved in one or two series pilots with Blyebearde Productions, who put the Bonos on the TV map.
    So it's evident that if the bottom fell out of the Sonny and Cher market tomorrow, Cullen wouldn't lack for work.
    But at 32, Cullen apparently wants a bit more than that. Privately, he talks about putting aside enough money so that in a few years he might come home and go into the film business.
    California lifestyle, he says, is nothing beside his own city.
    And he asks about the CBC.
    "Tell me," he says, "is there anything for me here?"

An Ode to the Hanna-Barbera View Master Reels

 Out of all the old-school pieces of Hanna-Barbera merchandise that exist, I think the most charming of the lot has to be the Hanna-Barbera View Masters. What's so great about these you may ask? Instead of using traditional artwork to bring these characters and worlds to life, these reels used models and miniatures. Years before CGI was a thing, these reels were as close as you got to seeing these characters for real, and they are absolutely spectacular to look at.

I dig these View Masters a lot, but unfortunately, I haven't really talked about them on this blog. So today, I'm going to share some of my favorite images found in these reels. Starting off with a literal bang, we've got this still of Yogi drumming away. I love how much Yogi pops against that red background, and the designs of the people wouldn't look too out of place in an actual Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

This next one focuses on Quick Draw McGraw, and boy do I love how this one is staged. It's got a lot of energy, between both the lasso and the expression on the cow's face. With only a dozen or so images included in each reel, the artists behind these did an amazing job making you feel like you got your money's worth with images like these.

This Flintstones reel has more going on in it than most of these do, but it still has all the quality and charm you'd expect from these. I love Bamm Bamm pulling Fred off the ground with just a finger, and you've gotta love Barney's head poking out.

If you'd like to know more about these reels and more importantly the people behind them, check out this great blog post on Florence Thomas, who did many of the models for the images seen above. I've also done posts showcasing sketches for both the Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear reels, which I'd also recommend to fans of these. While there's been lots of Hanna-Barbera merchandise over the years, I don't think any has come close to capturing the spirit of these characters the way these View Masters did. I'd love to see an animated project of some sort take inspiration from these models. If nothing else, it wouldn't be worse than some of the directions they've taken the characters lately!

My Favorite Don Messick Roles

 I'm not quite done with talking about Don Messick just yet. Consider this post a fun bonus if you will. Back in 2024, I put together a list of my top five favorite Daws Butler roles. Now, I'm doing the same for his frequent co-star. These are, in no particular order, my favorite voices Don Messick did for Hanna-Barbera. As I'm only including five, there's going to be more than a few great characters that won't make the list. I implore you to share some of your personal favorites in the comments below, no matter how well known or obscure they may be. Now, with that out of the way, let's get into the list.

Scooby-Doo

This one is a no-brainer. If you've been following this blog for long enough, you probably know I'm not the biggest Scooby-Doo guy these days, but it would feel almost criminal to not include him on this list. He's easily the most popular of the characters Don voiced, and for good reason. While he may be cowardly, when push comes to shove, he'll do what is right and stand up for his friends. As Don himself often pointed out, "He's got human foibles. He gets into problems, but he always lands on his feet."

Astro

Moving on from Scooby, we have his predecessor, Astro, who I honestly like more than ol' Scoob. His relationship with the Jetsons family is great stuff, particularly those with Elroy and George, which couldn't be more different from each other. Despite being very similar to Scooby, Astro does have plenty of qualities unique to him, one of those being Don Messick's performance. Like the character himself, Don's performance is more over the top and exaggerated, unlike Scooby-Doo, who is more cautious and unsure. You've also gotta hand it to Astro for being the only Jetsons character to have a spin-off series, for whatever that's worth.

Boo Boo

I ranked him as one of my favorite HB characters, so of course Boo Boo had to show up here as well. Boo Boo is the perfect accomplice to Yogi, and likewise, Messick's performance is perfect alongside Daws Butler as Yogi. Whereas Yogi's voice is big and over the top, Boo Boo is more quiet and cautious. He's very much the straight man in the duo, and though another actor could have made that quite boring, in the hands of Don Messick, he's anything but. It's hard not to think of his voice when seeing the character, and in my book, that's the mark of an extraordinary voice actor.

Benton Quest

While Don Messick wasn't the actor who originated the part of Dr. Benton Quest (that honor goes to the great John Stephenson), he's without a doubt the man who made him one of the more memorable fathers in animation history. While the voice of Benton isn't too different from Don's normal voice, there's a lot more to voiceover work than doing crazy voices. Messick brought Dr. Quest both a warmness and intelligence that was vital to the character. Beyond that, the fact that the show was an action-adventure series gave Messick the opportunity for some more serious character work, which is also appreciated. Besides, who wouldn't want their dad to be a genius that takes them all over the world?

Muttley

Last but not least, I've got to give props to Dick Dastardly's nasty accomplice, Muttley. Though he's another canine character like Astro and Scooby, he might be the most unique fellow out of all of these guys. He doesn't have the character of someone like Dr. Quest or Scooby, nor does he have much of a vocabulary. Despite all that, Messick makes the character memorable with one of the most recognizable laughs in animation history. While Muttley wasn't the only character Messick played to have that distinct laugh, it's hard not to think of him when you hear it. How many other characters can you think of that are remembered from just a simple laugh? The character was a terrific sidekick to the also memorable Dick Dastardly, and their hijinks were definitely a high point of Wacky Races. Muttley is proof that a great actor can make even the simplest of roles ones worth remembering, and I think that's one of the great things about Don Messick. Just like Daws Butler and Mel Blanc, he created so many characters that endure to this day. No matter where you go, people know not just who Scooby-Doo is, but what he sounds like. If that's not an impressive legacy, I don't know what is.

Video of the Week: A Don Messick Demonstration

 To close out this week long celebration of Don Messick, I've got quite the video for you all to check out. This comes from the late Paul Maher's great archives, and showcases Don at what I believe is a charity event from the late 1980s. It's a pretty long video, and throughout Messick discusses everything from his early work to The Duck Factory. He also demonstrates many of his voices, including the New Zealand kiwi bird that was mentioned in Monday's post. Give it a look down below!