WB Archive Collection: Discs On Demand!

[Ben]

Had to look this up on YouTube to see what the quality was like.

Even as the episode started and I saw "Directed by Byron Haskin" I was sold - he's one of my favorite directors.

What a strange and bizarre concept, actually pretty nicely pulled off! Who knew that HB basically made a virtual set show that long ago? Such a shame it doesn't seem to have been better received or remembered; without checking out the full series (I'll wait for the DVD) and seeing if it's sustained, this sure does look like a show ahead of its time.

https://youtu.be/Eou1IHUNJnw

[EricJ]

It was around the same time as Banana Splits, so the "Lilliput" and "Arabian" episodes may have been soft pilots that inspired the "Arabian Knights" and "New Adventures of Gulliver" cartoons, or at least a crossover. If you remember those, that's similar to the stories we get here.

If you don't mind tolerating the late-60's original-Scooby era animation, it's good--And I'd hardly call it "not better remembered", if anything's it's probably TOO better remembered than the HB episodes hold up: Anyone with an archival DNA memory of seeing this on prime-time or during afternoon Splits syndication has been banging down Warner Animation's door to get this one from the beginning, along with the Jack & the Beanstalk special.

[gaastra]

Where's Huddles? On DVD!

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Wheres ... ries/22429

[Randall]

The title rings a bell, but I have no memory of this show.

But, Paul Lynde, so maybe a purchase.

[EricJ]

The title rings a bell, but I have no memory of this show.

...Savages (chuckle!).

It was only a summer replacement show, and got complaints for HB being stuck in a rut trying to clone the Flintstones and Jetsons with pro football, but, FWIW:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLVQ9g_Tzt0
(And no, I don't remember an episode either, although I had a relatively good memory of Tom & Huck.)

[Ben]

Holy crap!

Didn't know the title, didn't remember the show...but when I saw that intro...! It all came flooding back. We used to have various Saturday morning "magazine" shows here, with live hosts, games, phone-ins, and a bunch of HB toons filling gaps and long stretches. I'm sure the Huddles was one of these. I remember randomly shouting out "the HUDdles"!

Ahh, to hear Paul Lynde (of all people) say that line, "the girls are alright...but the fellas...they play football you know..." with such relish! If only they knew!

[EricJ]

It had to come sooner or later--The series remembered as the sad "end" of Old-School Hanna-Barbera:
Kwiky Koala hinted on Warner Archive's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10154525212946563
(That's if you don't count the early proto-Turner days of 2 Stupid Dogs as "official" H-B, working for their new masters.)
From the days when they were picking Tex Avery's bones for posthumous cartoon memos.

So, leaving aside any hopes that QuickDraw and Huck v2 are in restoration condition (although that was back during the retail days when sets had to be more formally polished), does that mean their H-B series are now accounted for?
And leaving aside third-party licensed characters like the Addams Family series, of course.

[droosan]

A lot more of the H-B catalogue has been released on DVD than I'd ever dared to hope (much of it thanks to Warner Archive!), but there's still a few gems out-of-reach -- notably, as you'd said, the entirety of Quickdraw McGraw and Wally Gator .. but also a few 1970s 'originals', like Grape Ape and Mumbly. Significant chunks of Huckleberry Hound and The Smurfs remain unavailable, as well.

Most of the rest of H-B's unreleased works are (as you'd also said) licensed/partnered content .. like Jeannie, The Fonz & the Happy Days Gang, Casper & the Angels, The Gary Coleman Show, and etc. I'm still hoping some of those (most especially Jeannie, in my case!) will see a home video release, someday.

I'd love to see their animated Ruff & Reddy segments collated, as well!

I'm not sure how 2 Stupid Dogs (also conspicuously unavailable on home video!) didn't qualify as an 'official' Hanna-Barbera show; it opened & ended with the H-B logo on prominent display. Most animation histories I've read agree upon the 'What A Cartoon!' pilot episodes of The Powerpuff Girls as the final branded H-B production, before the studio was folded into Cartoon Network.

[Ben]

I actually used to like the Kwiky Koala show, while I have a handful of Grape Ape cartoons on 8mm!

Would be fun to see both those again after so many years!

[EricJ]

A lot more of the H-B catalogue has been released on DVD than I'd ever dared to hope (much of it thanks to Warner Archive!), but there's still a few gems out-of-reach -- notably, as you'd said, the entirety of Quickdraw McGraw and Wally Gator .. but also a few 1970s 'originals', like Grape Ape and Mumbly. Significant chunks of Huckleberry Hound and The Smurfs remain unavailable, as well.

Thought Grape Ape had already been released with the 70's H-B Saturday-morning Tom & Jerry, or were those just the individual cartoons?

The last time we saw Quickdraw and Wally were on the Saturday Morning 60's collections, and since those were retail, had the "We restored the best we could with what we had" disclaimer.
That's been the reason for the three missing old-school characters, since they were still in retail mode of thinking they had to offer complete restored episodes. The Boomerang TV prints of the shorts looked okay, but as Warner tells it, the film sources aren't great.

I'm not sure how 2 Stupid Dogs (also conspicuously unavailable on home video!) didn't qualify as an 'official' Hanna-Barbera show; it opened & ended with the H-B logo on prominent display.

2SD aired on Turner (TBS, pre-Cartoon Network?) and by that point, they were working for Cap'n Ted.
I'd like to think that the "Halloween Tree" special the same year was the last "true" H-B, just to not besmirch the legacy, but both were a good few years before Powerpuff.

[droosan]

Well, if we're gonna split hairs like that .. a decade-spanning 'sampler' 2-disc set with maybe an episode or two of a particular show, and a complete season/series DVD boxed set of that show -- are two rather different things, IMO.

The other issue for Quickdraw McGraw and Wally Gator is, apparently, music rights. Both shows made use of canned music from Columbia/Screen Gems. I still hold out hope that these series can see a home video release somehow, someday; Augie Doggie & Doggie Daddy is (IMO) one of H-B's definitive 1960s shorts series!

------------------------------

Bill & Joe sold their studio to Turner in 1991 .. but both men remained with the company. In addition to 2 Stupid Dogs, there were little things like S.W.A.T. Kats and Pirates of Dark Water made during this period .. all prominently branded with the H-B logo. The main difference between this period's output and their prior works (besides the fact that Ted was cutting the paychecks) was that these series aired across various Turner Networks in syndication, rather than on a single network's Saturday-morning timeslot. Everything else about these two eras of productions -- including much of the staff -- was the same.

Bill Hanna had 'semi-retired' by the time the 'What A Cartoon!' shorts were being made (although he is credited as a director for The Wind-Up Wolf) .. but by all accounts I've heard, Joe Barbera went to his office in the H-B studio every day -- and was involved in every production -- until the very end.

[Randall]

And let's not forget The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest!

I'd also love to see "QueekStraw" get a set, as well as Grape Ape and some of the licensed shows (esp Jeannie and the ones based on Garry Marshall sitcoms). But my "outside the box" holy grails would be Season 2 of Wait Till Your Father Comes Home (I loved the Season 1 set), and Those Were The Days, a Waltons-like show.

But yeah, now that Atom Ant and Secret Squirrel are on my shelf, I'm feeling pretty satisfied. There are so many shows on DVD already that I never had hoped to get.

[Ben]

I still need to get Ant and Squirrel (no, that's not an allusion to Jay Ward!)

[EricJ]

The other issue for Quickdraw McGraw and Wally Gator is, apparently, music rights. Both shows made use of canned music from Columbia/Screen Gems. I still hold out hope that these series can see a home video release somehow, someday; Augie Doggie & Doggie Daddy is (IMO) one of H-B's definitive 1960s shorts series!

H-B fans can divide the whole artistic canon of classic H-B into three eras: Pre-Pebbles, Post-Pebbles, and Scooby. (Don't know if "Smurfs era" qualifies, as there really wasn't much about 80's to define H-B.)

Pre-Pebbles, Bill & Joe, and Michael Maltese and Warren Foster, were just bringing their shticks over from MGM and Warner respectively, and because it was a bit more "homemade" without a studio chief looking over their shoulder, the humor was a little more subversively sarcastic and self-mockingly facetious. When you realize that AD&DD was just Maltese bringing Sylvester & Sylvester Jr. ("Ohh, the shame of it...") over to the new studio under a new name, you can appreciate just how farther off the original style of humor they could get with Augie's imagination.
And with Quick-Draw (and El Kabong), Augie, and Snooper & Blabber, the whole QDMG trio is right up there with the Big Three of Huck, Yogi, and first three Flintstones seasons as the jewels in the Pre-Pebbles HB crown.

Post-Pebbles is when H-B started to become more conscious of its own commercialization, moved out of prime time into Saturday morning, replaced the old-radio voices of Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet with more movie/TV-sitcom character-actor staples like Howard Morris and Arnold Stang, and the humor turned cookie-cutter. (There is some clear Maltese WB influence in Precious Pup and Hillbilly Bears, and even Atom Ant can be traced back to a Chuck Jones gag, but on the whole, it's pretty much Post-Pebbles.)
And Bill & Joe could still claim director credit and keep some of the early Scooby-era series light and silly, but when Charles A. Nichols took over on the Superfriends and other 70's series, it just became the empty-eyed Saturday-morning industry everyone remembers instead.

[Randall]

One more 60s classic is coming... Peter Potamus! Looks like a 3-disc set on the FB video. That's another one I'd wondered if we'd get to see. Guess I'm not done collecting these yet.