Video of the Week: The Stars of Hanna-Barbera at Halifax

Here's something I think you'll all really dig. Airing over in the UK in 2016, below is a series of commercials for the Halifax banking company starring several Hanna-Barbera characters. What's great about these commercials (and the reason I'm highlighting them) is that their art style stays very close to how the characters looked in the original series. It's not an exact replica, but it's far better than how they look in most commercials. The first one I'll share is the Flintstones one, complete with Jeff Bergman and Tress MacNeille as Fred and Wilma. The two have been the primary actors for both characters since 2000. 

The second series represented in this campaign was Top Cat, no stranger to being used in advertisements for British banking companies (check out another one here). T.C. is voiced by Jason Harris Katz, while vocal duties for Benny are handled by Chris Edgerly. You may not be familiar with them, but both portrayed these characters before in the CG Top Cat films released in Mexico. I'm not certain as to who plays Dibble, but I imagine it's Bill Lobley, who played him in the previously mentioned films. Halifax also created another video featuring Top Cat, comprised of several "bloopers" taken during the making of the ad.

The last franchise featured in these ads was, unsurprisingly, Scooby-Doo. However, the voice cast here is a bit of a weird one. Scooby and Shaggy are voiced by Scott Innes, who's only occasionally voiced the characters since the early 2000s. I'm not sure why they didn't get Frank Welker and Matt Lillard, maybe they were too expensive for them? Velma's voiced by Mindy Cohn. She began voicing the character in 2002, but by 2016, she had been replaced in all media by Kate Micucci, who voices her to this day. That makes this ad the last piece of Scooby media to feature Cohn in the role, at least as far as I know of.

Last but certainly not least, here is a behind-the-scenes video displaying how the Flintstones and Top Cat adverts were done. It's not every day you get to see how a commercial was put together, so the fact this exists is something special. I especially love seeing the animation tests they did for this campaign.