Want to make money from cartoon characters? You don’t do it with cartoons. You do it with merchandising. Walt Disney knew it. Walter Lantz knew it. Even Charlie Mintz knew it. And so did Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.

In 1958, the Huckleberry Hound Show became a TV fad. Huck, Yogi Bear, even Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks were bankable characters with loads of licensing potential. But after that? Well....

The marketing people at H-B Enterprises and Screen Gems (and maybe Leo Burnett, the sponsor’s agency) needed more. About all they could was pick out secondary characters that may have had enough popularity (and screen time) to be marketable. Boo Boo was an obvious choice as he appeared in some, but not all, Yogi Bear cartoons that season. After that, it was down to wishes and hopes. Iggy and Ziggy, the crows that harassed Huck, were in two cartoons so they got a push. So was Li’l Tom Tom, the Indian boy; girls love child dolls. And then there was that little duck that came over from MGM and showed up in a pair of Yogi Bear cartoons. If Bill Hanna loved him, the rest of the world could, too. Even Cousin Tex appeared on merchandise, though his time on the screen was limited to one cartoon.

Naturally, I’m saving the best to last.

There were two cartoons in the 1958-59 season (and one in 1959-60) featuring a dog that went “yowp.” That was good enough for appearances in bits of merchandise—a gin rummy game, birthday table cloths and napkins, a Huckleberry Hound/Quick Draw McGraw lampshade, a Huck giant playbook by Whitman, a rubber stamp set, even wash-off tattoos. Not bad for a dog that can only say one word, eh?

Whether Keith Semmel reads this blog, I don’t know, but he found another way kids can play with Yowp at home. A company called Tower Press in Britain came out with a card set to play a variation of Old Maid. Huckleberry Hound “Booby” featured 18 pairs of cards plus two Booby cards (only one was used in the game so it wouldn’t match). Keith points out a fine individual has posted scans of the cards on line. The game was created in 1962 but it still has some minor characters that faded away (except for the annoying duck) as the studio created more and more stars.


Here’s Yogi ironing a shirt he doesn’t wear. There’s also one of the Booby cards.


Pixie and Dixie are playing cricket; ask your English friends what an over is. Huck is a London bobby (not booby) as he was in Piccadilly Dilly. Yakky Doodle was named Iddy Biddy Buddy in the first season of the Huck show before getting his own cartoons in 1961.


Some nice personas for Huck in this set. Wasn’t he a magician in one of those little cartoons between the cartoons?


The kangaroo is Kapow, who bested Jinksie in one solitary cartoon. Iggy is the crow with the straw hat, Ziggy is the other.


Cousin Tex, Li’l Tom-Tom, Jinks in formal wear and a red-eyed Yowp.

Times have changed. I’m not really certain what kids play today. I doubt it’s a two-or-more-person card game. For one thing, young people seem to spend a lot of time alone punching letters on a handheld. And cards are low-tech and, in an era where Donkey Kong is quaint and nostalgic, really old fashioned. But I’d like to think those of us approaching senior citizenship had good times with simple board games and cards, and that’s the main thing. I suspect Hanna, Barbera and Screen Gems were happy about it, too.

Time to clean out a folder of drawings of the early Hanna-Barbera characters I’ve corralled from various parts of the internet. I didn’t make a notation of where most of this came from; it may been something you posted. So my apologies if I don’t credit you as I post it for everyone’s viewing pleasure.



As we all know, the best dog in Hanna-Barbara cartoons was Yowp. But if we had to pick a second-best, well, Astro would pretty much be up there (I’m talking about a dog as a pet, not a humanised dog like Huck Hound or a dogised something-else like Dino). Tony Benedict wrote the first Astro story on “The Jetsons” and made him the series’ funniest regular character. He was so good, the studio ripped off his “r” speech impediment and gave it to another character seven years later. Astro was voiced by the versatile Don Messick, who graciously signed this model sheet for a lucky fan.



This great drawing is from the collection of artist William Wray. Cornelius the Kellogg’s rooster is conducting the starring characters of the first season of “The Huckleberry Hound Show.” I couldn’t tell you what it was for, promotional material perhaps. The side of the piano is made from a Corn Flakes box.



These layouts are for one of the in-between cartoons on the Huck show. It would seem Dick Bickenbach was responsible for them.



Oh, no! Dixie is headless! Someone can correct me but I believe the little tree-charts on the side indicate which level the cels with various body parts (such as heads) are to be laid for camera work.



The note is have simply says this is a drawing of Cindy Bear by Ed Benedict. It seems odd Cindy would be dressed up as a maid.



These two great sketches are from the Wray collection as well. In the first one, we see Boo Boo, Huck, Pixie, Dixie and Iggy the crow on the top row, and Yogi (from “The Runaway Bear”) , the unnamed little fox that Yowp caught (in “Foxy Hound Dog”), Li’l Tom-Tom (from “The Brave Little Brave”) and Mr. Jinks on the bottom.

The second drawing features Ziggy and Iggy, Mr. Jinks, Yowp, the rabbit from “The Brave Little Brave” and Wee Willie on the top row and Yogi, Li’l Tom Tom, Huck, Pixie and Dixie and Boo Boo on the bottom. It was for a publicity photo. Here is it below.



And from cartoon historian John Cawley’s collection...



The Yogi hat looks more like something Larry Storch wore on “F Troop” and Huck’s resembles the ones I’ve seen people wear on St. Patty’s Day—except it has “WIGGL-EARS.” No hat is complete without them.

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Carlo Vinci; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Art Lozzi; Dialogue and Story Sketches – Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision - Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Huck, Ziggy – Daws Butler; Iggy – Don Messick.
Music: Bill Loose/John Seely, Jack Shaindlin, Geordie Hormel.
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show K-021, Production E-47.
First Aired: week of February 16, 1959.
Plot: Huck tries to evict two crows from a bird house.

Writer Charlie Shows comes up with a great bit of logic near the beginning of this cartoon, when two crows take over Huckleberry Hound’s newly-constructed bird house.

Huck (shouting in front bird house): Listen here, you! I built this here house for the birds.
Iggy: For birds? Ain’t we birds, Ziggy?
Ziggy: What else?
Iggy: You sure we is birds?
Ziggy: Sure I’m sure. You can ask mom.

You can’t really argue with that, can you? The crows are absolutely correct. But Huck won’t accept that because, well, we wouldn’t have the conflict needed for a seven-minute cartoon, would we?

Bill and Joe pinned some early hopes on the two crows. The studio hadn’t built up a big stable of stars so it marketed what it thought were its top incidental characters. Iggy and Ziggy were among them; perhaps Hanna and Barbera hoped to develop them into kind of a Heckle and Jeckle. But the H-B cartoons were a lot tamer than the wise-guy Terry-Toon magpies, whose cartoons benefited from fast-paced action, something the easy-going Huck show didn’t have. It’s telling that when Warren Foster was brought in to write the second season cartoons, he kept a couple of Huck’s adversaries from the first year (Leroy the lion and Wee Willie the gorilla) but discarded the rest, including Iggy and Ziggy. They just never lived up to their potential.

This cartoon’s structure is a familiar one. Huck’s involved in a string of gags as he tries to remove the crows from his birdhouse. It’s highlighted by Carlo Vinci’s thick ink-lines, wide mouths, scowls, thick teeth, stretch-dive exits from scenes and jerky movements. I wish he had kept this style but it was not to be. You won’t see anything as distinctive in, say, Breezley and Sneezley.



The cartoon opens with a long shot on action, which seems unusual for an H-B cartoon. Huck’s putting the last coat of paint on his new, high-aloft, bird house. But there’s something different when the scene cuts to a closer shot. The house has developed rain gutters and the two crows are lazing about on the roof, biding their time until Huck has finished the bird house, supremely confident they’re able to get the best of him. They zip into the house as soon as Huck puts up the “Vacancy” sign. Then they have the exchange we mentioned above. Huck tries to argue with their logic. Charlie Shows stretches for a pun.

Huck: I mean the “cheep, cheep” type of birds.
Ziggy: Uh, Brother, we is the cheapest.

What you’ve got to admire about Huck is despite the fact he’s angry, he’s able to step away from the situation and comment on it to the audience. He turns to the camera, smiles and says “You just gotta ad-mire them fellas’ spunk.”

We’re about a third of the way through the cartoon already. Now the gags:

● Huck gives the crows ten seconds to get out. He starts counting. The crows pull apart the ladder Huck is on. He quickens his count to ten before he plummets with a crash. “I can count right fast if I have to,” he tells us. Nice reaction line by Shows; he’s got some good ones in this cartoon.

● Huck tries to pole-vault up to the crows (and spells “out” ‘o-w-t’ in the process). Ziggy squirt oil on the pole the birdhouse is sitting on. Uh, oh. Here comes a Shows rhyme. “Surprise, wise guys!” says Huck. He’s surprised as he slides down the pole. “That’s a right, slick, oily trick, fellas” rhymes Huck. Why does the dialogue sound like the title of a Ruff and Reddy cartoon? (This is a rhetorical question, folks).



● Huck tries to chop down the pole. He “plumb forgot it was iron.” Huck vibrates back to his house, singing ‘Clementine.’ Shows Rhyme Time. Iggy: “Yeah, Ziggy. He’s got a neat beat.”

● A balloon lifts Huck to the birdhouse. He blows cigar smoke inside to get the crows out. Iggy: “Who’s burnin’ trash?” Ziggy: “Not me. I like trash.” As you might guess, the cigar smoke has no effect but makes Huck sick. Ziggy takes care of that by removing the cigar from Huck’s mouth and popping the balloon with it. Huck lands with a crash against the base of the pole. “You know sumpin? I feel better already.”



● Huck lassos the birdhouse and pulls it toward him (But, but, the pole’s made of iron. How does it bend?) Iggy pulls out a knife. Shows Rhyme Time. “Unhand our home, you cur, sir.” The bird house now swings back and forth, bashing Huck deeper and deeper into the ground, interrupting every few words of Huck’s threat to the crows.

● Huck straps wings to his arms and zooms in the air toward the birdhouse. Ziggy: “Is it a bird? Is it a plane?” Iggy: “It’s a buzz bombing buzzard.” With lines that, you can see why the crows didn’t make it in show biz. They get on the roof of the birdhouse, pull it off and Huck lands inside. They slam the roof back on. Shows goes for the tired and obvious.

Iggy: This house is for the birds.
Ziggy: Yeah. But now it’s gone to the dogs.

Ah, but Huck wins. The crows are now out of the birdhouse. Huck finishes the cartoon by victoriously singing ‘Clementine’ with the disgusted birds picking it up at the end. For some reason, Huck is muffled in the shot when he’s singing inside the birdhouse, as if the intention was the dialogue was to be played while the crows were outside.





This was the final animated cartoon for the crows, but Ziggy’s voice lived on at Hanna-Barbera the following TV season as Super Snooper.

Lots of music by Bill Loose and John Seely here. For reasons that don’t make a lot of sense, Huck sings ‘Clementine’ over top of the stock music.

0:00 - THE HUCKLEBERRY HOUND SONG (Hanna, Barbera, Curtin, Shows) – Main titles.
0:26 - Clementine (trad.) – Huck works on bird house.
0:47 - LAF-4-1 FISHY STORY (Shaindlin) – Iggy and Ziggy on roof, zip into bird house, sweep dust into Huck’s face, Huck knocks.
1:28 - TC-300 ECCENTRIC COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Crows in house, pull apart ladder.
2:37 - TC-303 ZANY COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – “I can count right fast”, oil can gag, Huck walks with hatchet.
3:26 - Clementine overtop of Hi-Q.
3:40 - TC-201 PIXIE COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – “I hates to do this,” Huck tries to chop iron pole, blows cigar smoke into bird house, Huck moans.
4:11 - Clementine overtop.
4:55 - TC-202 ECCENTRIC COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – “What was that,” Ziggy breaks balloon, rope scene, Huck on roof.
6:10 - ZR-48 FAST MOVEMENT (Hormel) – “In the air,” Huck flies into bird house.
6:42 - TC-301 ZANY WALTZ (Loose-Seely) – Huck in bird house, Crows talk to each other.
6:55 - Clementine (trad.) – Huck and crows sing Clementine.
7:10 - THE HUCKLEBERRY HOUND SONG (Hanna, Barbera, Curtin, Shows) – End titles. Yowp Note: All the Season One Huckleberry Hound cartoons have now been reviewed on this blog.

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera
Credits: Animation – Ken Muse; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Sam Clayberger; Dialogue and Story Sketches – Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Cast: Huck, Ziggy – Daws Butler; Iggy – Don Messick.
Production E-39, Huckleberry Hound Show K-009.
First aired: week of Monday, November 24, 1958.
Plot: Farmer Huck vs. hungry crows vs. the clock.

So, there’s this cartoon where this character is on guard trying to stop someone else from stealing what he’s guarding. But the twist is they’re just doing they’re doing this as a 9 to 5 job. They’re really friends before and after their battle of wits and resultant bashings while at work.

Yes, that’s an apt description of the Wolf and Sheepdog series at Warners. But Hanna-Barbera wasn’t above borrowing ideas from the great theatrical cartoon directors of the day; in this case, Mr. Ptui to Illustrated Radio, Charles Martin Jones. For H-B simply took the Ralph Wolf-Sam Sheepdog concept, glued it on Huckleberry Hound and came up with Two Corny Crows.

And you don’t have to squint too hard to see another influence come into focus—direct from the Woolworth’s of Animation. For a case could be made that the title characters bear somewhat of a small resemblance in personality to Paul Terry’s best bargain-basement product, Heckle and Jeckle.

Of course, it’s unfair to compare this made-for-TV-on-a-shoestring product to the cleverly posed and timed Jones cartoons or even the quickly-paced talkiness of the low-budget TerryToon magpies. But, once again, we’re dealing with a cartoon that, once the plot really gets underway, consists of maybe four gags. The rest of the time Charlie Shows and whoever else developed this one are content to let the situation double as a gag, or we wait for something funny to happen. And it doesn’t.

Still, the cartoon isn’t a total loss. There are some nice little drawings, such as the opening shot, either from a Dan Gordon story sketch or a Dick Bickenbach layout. We see silhouetted crows with funny hats on a tree, with a colourful cornfield behind them and a plowed hill in the background. The silhouette draws our attention to the crows. And since corn ripens in the fall, there’s a lone tree framed by foreground branches that has appropriately lost its leaves. UPA veteran Sam Clayberger supplies the colour.

The camera trucks in and dissolves to a close-up of the crows snoring. There’s an alarm clock in the tree which goes off, and is turned off by the straw-hatted crow, then the birds go back to sleep. The alarm rings again, the crows awaken and the camera pans over Clayberger’s background to stop at Huck’s farmhouse (with purple shingles?).

We now move into on Huck’s bedroom where the same make of alarm clock is ringing. “Time to go to work,” says Iggy. The other crow is Ziggy, with the Ed Gardner voice that Daws Butler would later use for Snooper. They fly over to a fence and wait for Huck, who arrives on the scene singing and whistling ‘Clementine’ to pad for 19 seconds (he’s not in time with the calliope music but that’s probably a plus). Huck and the crows exchange some small talk and then Huck checks his watch. Somehow, the time has gone from 6 o’clock to when the crows landed on the fence to 10:15. Oh, well. You’ve got to love the stylised cornstalks by Clayberger. He doesn’t draw any ears of corn. Instead, we get different shades of green leaves overtop of a wall of yellow that represents the corn.


The whistle on top of the barn, the sound of which is well-known to fans of several versions of the opening of The Flintstones, bellows to mark the start of the work day and the plot begins in earnest (we are now well into two minutes of the cartoon). The crows run off the fence with one of those Charlie Shows rhymes: “Let’s blow.” “Go, Joe, go!” as Huck fires his rifle at him (it’s a rhyme for the sake of rhyming as no one is named Joe in this cartoon).

The crows return to their tree branch (their clock has somehow vanished) as Ziggy taunts Huck by telling him he “couldn’t hit the side of a...” At that point, Huck’s bullet hits its target and blows the feathers off his body. Ziggy beats a hasty retreat.


Unfortunately, that may be the best gag. The crows use their beaks to rip the leaves off an ear of corn then remove kernels without even eating them, which would seem kind of pointless. Huck captures the pesky birds in a milk can. Shows gives us churn-it-out dialogue like “Corn on the cob, comin’ up.” “You mean canned crow, comin’ up.” OK, maybe we’ll get laughs in the next scene.

Not really. As Huck snoozes, Ziggy uses Iggy’s beak to get them out of the milk can (the top of which is covered by an anvil). “How about this,” remarks Ziggy. “A crow can opener. What a keen idea. I’ll make a for-tune.” “Close your mouth and open the can, man,” answers Iggy in another of Shows’ rhyming pairs of words. Not only is the dialogue little more than filler (though I can hear Hubie and Bertie at Warners making it work), before the birds escape, we get the voices of both crows coming out of one of them.

All this does is set up an explosion gag. The crows say “hi” to Huck, who wonders why they aren’t in the can and goes to investigate. Huck’s topper line: “Those crows have such a corny sense of humour.” It’s a cartoon about corn and they have a “corny” sense. That’s the gag. Maybe we’ll get laughs in the next scene.

Huck booby-traps a cob to a rifle. The crows respond by grabbing the corn—and we don’t know how they get it without springing the trap because it’s off camera—and substituting a wallet. Huck, naturally, sees it, chats a bit to himself, goes to pick it up and blam! Another patented Charlie Shows ‘ass pain’ joke. Huck’s response? “Very funny.” All right, maybe the NEXT scene.

Huck dresses up as a scarecrow. The crows aren’t fooled. They fly over and engage in witty banter like “What’s this supposed to be, Ziggy?” “It looks like a low-budget scarecrow.” “A scarecrow? You’re kiddin’.” One of the crows takes a pencil and draws a moustache on Huck and blackens his teeth. Huck doesn’t take kindly to the laughter (from the crows, not the audience) and zips off camera. Time for a Shows rhyming two-some: “He’s mad, dad.” as the crows race to hide in a nearby mailbox.



Huck trains his gun, the crows plead with him not to shoot, but then the whistle sounds to end the work day. Huck pulls the gun away from the birds and they exchange pleasantries about the good day’s work they’ve done before bidding farewell until tomorrow. The gag here is the sudden turnaround in behaviour which isn’t any different than what Jones was doing at Warners a few years earlier. “Nice people, that Huck,” remarks Iggy. “Yeah, just like kin-folks,” adds Ziggy, as Huck heads back into his house, whistling ‘Clementine.’

Evidently, H-B thought they could weave animated dross like this into marketing gold. They stuck the crows in another cartoon that season, Birdhouse Blues, and featured them in some marketing. The concept was good but the crows never lived up to their potential. Their wisecracks just weren’t wise-guy enough and the characters vanished unnoticed and unlamented.

There’s a period of almost 30 seconds where there’s no music or sound effects, just dialogue, and it actually works pretty well. Otherwise, we get Clementine (on a calliope) twice and several very familiar background tunes.

0:00 - Clementine/Huck sub main title theme (Hoyt Curtin).
0:26 - TC 303 ZANY COMEDY (Bill Loose-John Seely) – Crows, Huck wake up.
1:27 - CLEMENTINE (trad.) – Huck strolls out of house, chats with crows.
2:00 - no music – Whistle blows, Huck shoots at running crows; shoots feathers off Ziggy.
2:29 - LAF-20-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Crows strafe cob, Huck captures crows in milk can.
3:05 - TC 432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) – Crows escape from milk can; put dynamite in can, Huck peers in can, can blows up.
4:24 - TC 201 PIXIE COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Booby trap corn/wallet gag, Huck dresses scarecrow.
5:45 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shaindlin) – Crows draw on Huck, Huck corners them in mailbox, “Quittin’ time,” crows praise Huck.
7:04 - CLEMENTINE (trad.) – Huck strolls into house.
7:10 - Huck sub end title theme (Curtin).