The Stars of Hanna-Barbera Celebrate the Fourth of July

 It's the Fourth of July today, and I'm many of you who live in America are ready to watch some fireworks and have a cookout. While we all love spending time with our families and friends on this day, how about we add cartoon characters to the celebration? Back when Hanna-Barbera was still an active studio, they would release a new calendar for employees every year. Today, I'm sharing a few of the July illustrations seen in these calendars.

Here's the July art from the 1980 calendar. As you can see, Fred, Wilma, and Barney look to be channeling the spirit of '76 here. It's funny that people always discuss the strangeness of Flintstones media featuring Christmas, yet nobody ever talks about how weird it is to see these characters celebrate the birth of a country that didn't exist in prehistoric times.

In 1990, a decade later, the Hanna-Barbera artists decided to let the family of the future celebrate the fourth this time around. That one makes a lot more sense than the Flintstones one. It's also not shocking to see the Jetsons be the focus of July for this particular year, as this was the same time the 1990 animated movie was released in theaters. Here, we see the family preparing a barbecue while Astro and Elroy seem to have gone airborne!

One last illustration for today, this one comes from the 1998 calendar, which I believe was the very last calendar the studio put out. This one is based on Wacky Races, and has a similar kind of setup to the Jetsons piece. The difference is that this time, it's Dastardly and Muttley on the rocket. I imagine things don't go so well for them here.