A Recreation of the Jonny Quest Opening Titles Made with Action Figures

Jonny Quest fanboy supreme Roger D. Evans put together this amazing video using action figures and a ton of hard work. You can view his behind-the-scenes handy work here… Read more…

Tags: fan videos, Hanna-Barbera, Jonny Quest

Good Grief — Vintage Peanuts Toys!

These vintage Peanuts toys come straight from the pages of the 1968 Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog. You could get two of the characters for $5.30 or the entire set for $12.90 and as you can see you had your pick of Charlie Brown, Schroeder (sporting a Beethoven sweater), Lucy, Snoopy and Linus clutching his trademark blanket. On the same page there was also a selection of Huckleberry Hound and Pogo toys: Read more…

Tags: 1968, Hanna-Barbera, Peanuts

Is Anime Cooler to Americans Because We Don’t Speak Japanese?

As an adult I appreciate Hanna-Barbera, but frankly it was my childhood dislike of limited animation that drove me to admire anime. So I was pretty amused to stumble across the above the above clip of Secret Squirrel from 2 Stupid Dogs with a Japanese soundtrack, and much to my amazement I realized that because I couldn’t understand what was being said that the entire clip seemed cooler somehow. Now the funny thing is that the Japanese voices are clearly being used to a comic effect, however they seem much more downplayed when put next to the original American voice acting which sounds much more over-the-top: Read more…

Tags: Anime, Hanna-Barbera, Japan

My Dad is a Mouse Squisher! An Animated Twist on an Old Tale

My favorite thing about this cartoon is that after our father-and-son dog team feel so guilty about trying to kill the poor mouse — that they in fact continue to spend the rest of the cartoon trying to still kill the mouse! Which also makes me realize that Good Mouse Keeping must be one of the few cartoons to feature a “dog vs. mouse” theme. This Hanna-Barbera cartoon was released on this day in 1952 and shows off the theatrical high quality work that that the animation studio was doing for MGM before they went off on their own for the low budget world of limited animation TV shows. Read more…

Tags: 1952, Auggie Doggie & Doggie Daddy, Hanna-Barbera, MGM

The Golden Age of Jetsons Optimism

This Jetsons Little Golden Book is from 1962 — and what’s refreshing to me about this cover is the bold sense of optimism which you don’t see much these days. Authors like Isaac Asimov always felt that dividing line of modern science fiction was that it viewed technology as a positive force in the universe. However I think science fiction (and other imaginative literature) is a reflection of how society views the world at that point in time. So while attempting to predict the future these cultural documents tell us more about the present — or in this case the past.

Found via stuffbywackystuff.

Tags: 1962, A Little Golden Book, Animation, Children's Books, Hanna-Barbera, The Jetsons