King Leonardo and His Short Subjects

I love this show!! You should see it. It's a classic! Never underestimate the power of the TRUE BLUE ODIE COLOGNIE (and his should-be sidekick, King).

*****/***** (this is even better than Wacky Races!)

Before anything else, I have to make a correction to someone else's comment. Jay Ward and Bill Scott had nothing to do with "King Leonardo and His Short Subjects." In fact, it was the first production of Total Television (AKA TTV), the same folks who brought us "Tennessee Tuxedo" and "Underdog." They used the same animators as Jay Ward and had a similar style, not to mention both were sponsored by General Mills, so it is very easy to get confused! At any rate, "King Leonardo and His Short Subjects" may not be as well remembered as "Underdog" or "Tennessee Tuxedo," but it should be. It has the same wit and sense of whimsy about it as TTV's later work. And the voice work, as with any TTV production, is superb.

Even as a child I recognized a political element in the King Leonardo stories. Odie, ostensibly a loyal toady, was the power behind the throne in the constant conflict to maintain the status quo on one hand against the installation of a puppet of the scheming lower class Biggie. Neither of the lion brothers were really more than figureheads. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but then Jay Ward and Bill Scott were pretty subversive guys! I was fortunate enough to get on their mailing list (by claiming to be editor of a humour magazine) and the stuff they sent out free was even better than their cartoons. What stays with me after forty years is the stories were endlessly entertaining and the characters well defined. I can still hear the voices.

It never ceases to amaze me that some of the best shows from the "Golden Days of Television" attract so little comment. This is yet another example. Only two of us (so far) have ventured an opinion.

'King Leonardo' is right up there with 'Milton the Monster' as one of my all time favorite TV shows. The animation was very basic but the characters and the comedy were both memorable. It's often overlooked that several of the character voices were, in fact, based on Hollywood movie stars. Biggy Rat was Edward.G.Robinson and Odee Colonee was Ronald Coleman.

One of my favorite moments in the show came when Itchy Brother got dressed up as a mother and Biggy Rat was in a pram dressed as a baby complete with cigar! This unlikely ploy was cooked up in an effort to get past the guards at King Leonardo's palace. Needless to say, the jig was soon uncovered.

A great little show which brings back lots of happy memories.

This show was the cradle for other Total Television cartoons such as Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo, Tooter Turtle, The Fox and The Hunter, Go Go Gophers, Klondike Kat, The World of Commander McBragg, and others, yet this particular cartoon has fallen into obscurity compared to the others. And it is not really a shock.

King Leonardo himself was the dense king of Bongo Congo, with his loyal skunk assistant Odio Colognie helping him out of various scrapes, mainly Biggie Rat trying to install Leonardo's even denser sibling Itchy Brother onto the throne, with other villains sometimes helping them out-but of course Odio Colognie saves the day every time.

So why did this fall by the wayside compared to the others? Undoubtedly because each episode had basically the same plot, with relatively little variety. Though Underdog always won the day, he at least had a variety of villains to deal with, and different ways to deal with them, sometimes even by solving their problems rather than simply defeating them. Tennessee Tuxedo had to get help from Mr. Whoopee each episode, but his problems were not the same each time. Even little kids don't like the same story each time, and why certain Total Television cartoons became more popular over the others.