The Ultimate Team-Up

Hanna-Barbara pretty much ruled Saturday mornings in the 1950s and early 1960s. That was the studio that developed the concept of Limited Animation in order to force production costs down low enough to be profitable for television.

An fan of animation at the time might have justifiably thought that this would be the death knell for the art form. And it is fair to aim some constructive criticism at the idea. There is a lack of smoothness to the animation and it can be really, really noticable when Fred Flintstone runs past the same table and chair six times in a few seconds.

But the Hanna-Barbara cartoons are classics in their own right despite the limited animation. Why? Because of clever writing and wonderful characters. A syngergy of writing, character design and voice acting (by brilliant voice actors such as Daws Butler and Don Messick) gave us Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and a bevy of other memorably, funny and engaging characters.

So the H-B cartoons were a hit and merchandising off-shoots were inevitable. The best of these off-shoots might just be a series of records featuring these characters produced between 1958 and 1967. Some of these used the voice tracks from the cartoons, with a narrator added to describe the action. But some were original stories, with Butler, Messick and other actors bringing the characters to life in brand-new stories.

The best of these is arguably Huckleberry Hound and the Ghost Ship, in which Huck, Yogi, Boo Boo and a few other characters decide to go on a fishing trip.

In the book Daws Butler: Character Actors, writers Ben Ohmart & Joe Bevilacqua describe the record: "The writing is much more fluid and complex than the TV cartoons, the jokes sharper, the word-play more intricate. And the characters better integrated into each other's lives."

Because of the magic of YouTube, you can give this wonderful tale a listen: