Download Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s Vol. 2
Compare Prices on Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s Vol. 2
-Review by Matthew Hunter
[...]
Buy,Download, Or Stream Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s Vol. 2! Click Here
“Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960’s Volume 2″ is kind of like that sizable “sampler” tin of chocolates your family gets for Christmas every once in a while. There’s a lot of variety, plenty for everybody, and the contents range from extraordinary to gag-inducing.
This position, like the previous volume, collects a wide variety of cartoon series from the 1960’s, and attempts to prove them as closely to their fresh TV presentation as possible. It’s a stout conception on Warner’s section, as it brings together material that may not warrant a complete box-set release by itself (or hasn’t yet) in an affordable and delicious plot.
The bulk of the material included here is of the Hanna-Barbera variety, and it’s engrossing to compare earlier, better material like “Fleet Scheme McGraw” to later efforts like “Atom Ant” and “Wally Gator”. Towards the slay of the 1960’s, Hanna-Barbera had been cloning their “amusing animal” formula so often that it grew even more worn with every modern attempt. H-B eventually began focusing on “action” cartoons, and unfortunately the examples of these included on this residence are among the weakest.
Buy,Download, Or Stream Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s Vol. 2! Click Here
The collection opens with an episode from “The Speedily Contrivance McGraw Note”, nicely restored with its modern opening theme song and supporting segments, “Snooper and Blabber” and “Augie Doggie”. The animation on this indicate is shrimp and low-budget, but the writing and humor contain up extremely well, thanks in spacious portion to writer Michael Maltese. Speedy Procedure is a Wild West hero who honest happens to be a horse, Snooper and Blabber are a cat and mouse detective team, and Augie Doggie is a brainy sitcom-style kid living with his fater, Doggie Daddy. This episode, along with a second episode focusing on Hasty Draw’s noted alter-ego, “El Kabong”, really makes me wish Warner had released the Swiftly Blueprint expose as a standalone series collection.
Next up is a prove that should be avoided at all costs. Though an intelligent curio, there is absolutely no entertainment value in “The Spot Kidettes”, a note about a group of annoyingly cute space-age kids in a Jetsons-esque setting who are being stalked by a situation pirate named Captain Skyhook. Its supporting segment, “Young Samson”, is even worse, about a teenage boy named Samson and his dog, Goliath, who can transform into a superhero and a lion, respectively. How does a dog turn into a lion? That is a mystery I do not want to relate…because to do it, I would have to view more episodes! This exhibit sucks, and is largely unheard of for VERY generous reason.
“The Bugs Bunny Point To” is a nice surprise, including the new “This Is It” title sequence and some long-lost bridging footage. Mac and Tosh, the Goofy Gophers, are the hosts, but extinguish their incessant polite inequity forces Bugs himself to introduce the cartoons to preserve the display going. There is some footage missing, but everything is in color and presented as it would have aired in Saturday Morning reruns. All three cartoons (minus titles and credits, as they originally aired) behold fine: “Vast House Bunny’ and “Canned Feud” are the restored “Golden Collection” versions, “Home Tweet Home” is not, but it’s a better transfer than I’ve seen before.
“The Porky Pig Reveal” compiles three more Warner Bros. classics with the novel opening, closing and several bumper segments from that TV package. An inspiring “skit” that probably originated on the “Bugs Bunny Demonstrate” has Bugs Bunny playing piano on stage, in animation re-traced from “Rhapsody Rabbit”, to introduce the musical short “Baton Bunny”. The other two shorts included are “Scaredy Cat” and “Feather Dusted”, and all but the third are restored. “Feather Dusted” is at least uncut and is a perfectly acceptable copy.
Next, we acquire another “lost love” from Hanna-Barbera, entitled “The Adventures of Gulliver”. A young man named Gulliver and his father go on a sea voyage with a cherish blueprint to a lost island, a creepy stowaway thug knocks them out, steals the blueprint, and Gulliver wakes up shipwrecked with his dog on the island of Lilliput. What follows is tiny more than a loosely updated knockoff of the ancient Jonathan Swift sage “Gulliver’s Travels”. It will probably be of interest only to those who assume seeing it as kids. No flaws in terms of print quality, relate or sound here.
“The Wally Gator Prove” is a fondly-remembered 3-cartoon variety explain featuring “Wally Gator”, “Touche Turtle”, and “Lippy Lion and Hardy Har-Har”. Unfortunately, it was a hastily-produced and thoroughly lackluster series, aimed squarely at children. Wally Gator longs to scurry free in the Everglades, instead he’s stuck in a zoo with a nagging zookeeper named Mr. Twiddle. Touche Turtle is a slight do-gooder voiced by Bill “Droopy Dog” Thompson, who dresses like a French musketeer and tries to back people (in this case, Captain Ahab) along with his aptly named dog sidekick, Dum Dum. Lippy the Lion and his wretched, sad-sack hyena sidekick Hardy Har Har (brilliantly voiced by Mel Blanc) are easily the best of the bunch, but they, too, seem cookie-cutter and forced. If these cartoons have not old well content-wise, they have fared even worse physically. Originally mastered on cheap film, they leer muddy, scratchy and at times out of focus. For those nostalgia buffs longing to seek this stuff beautifully restored, you won’t glean it here!
A classic “Jetsons” episode entitled “Elroy’s Mob” rounds out the first disc. Young Elroy gets mixed up in a crime, and in typical 60’s sitcom fashion, hilarity ensues, followed by a overjoyed ending. It looks and sounds grand, probably the same version dilapidated for the novel series DVD station.
Disc Two begins with Hastily Device McGraw again, this time in the guise of “El Kabong”, a masked, Zorro-like alter-ego who fights villains by bashing them on the head with a guitar. Once again, this does not disappoint, with razor-sharp humor and charm that can be enjoyed by young and mature alike. Snooper, Blabber, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy once again enjoy the supporting segments, and are also worthwhile, “Augie” especially. As with the episode on Disc 1, everything from the opening and closing titles to the cartoon shorts in between inspect and sound enormous.
Following Snappy Plot, we again fall into the abyss of Hanna-Barbera’s decline with one of the strangest cartoon characters ever created: Peter Potamus. Peter is a pudgy, purple hippo who travels the world in a hot air balloon with his monkey pal, SoSo. In this episode, Peter gets caught in the middle of a fight between cowboys and Indians. The one highlight of this utilize in blandness is the yelp work of Daws Butler, Don Messick, and Mel Blanc, but since the endless stream of talk is all there is to it, it gets slow in a urge. When Peter (not to mention the audience!) has had enough, he dispatches his tormenters with his “Hippo Hurricane Holler”. Translation: he screams loud enough that it literally blows everyone away. Supporting segments include “Breezly and Sneezly”, a polar hold and a seal who have nothing better to do than annoy the soldiers at a military outpost in the Arctic, and “Yippie, Yappie and Yahooey”, three dogs who help as inept guards to a fussy Medieval king. It’s hard to imagine anyone getting exasperated about any of these goofball critters, and though they have their moments, they pale in comparison to earlier H-B efforts and will probably bore kids and adults alike. The show’s recent opening and closing are included, and are in attractive rough shape, but the cartoons themselves peer sparkling.
Once Peter and pals catch the blandness out of their systems, we salvage an episode of “The Road Runner Explain”. I was really looking forward to this, and was very disappointed with the results! The recent opening, closing, a rarely-seen titillating bumper segments are included, as are the title cards created exclusively for this iconic package of Warner classics. The bumper segments are not to be missed: director Robert McKimson created these after the departure of Chuck Jones from the Warner Bros. animation studio, and while low-budget, they are extremely humorous. Where the folks at Warner compiling this DVD collection went scandalous, though, is evident in the cartoons themselves. Whereas the “Bugs Bunny” and “Porky Pig” shows mixed the faded, worn-out TV bridging footage with nice, shapely copies of the valid cartoons, the “Road Runner Point To” gets a limited TOO “authentic”, using copies of the cartoons from the same feeble TV masters as the bridging animation. The results watch abominable, especially the opening short, “Zip N’ Assert”, which looks so awful that Chuck Jones is probably turning in his grave over it. The other two cartoons included, Sylvester and Tweety in “The Jet Cage” and Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote and Rapidly Gonzales’ race-off “The Wild Scramble”, discover unprejudiced as unpleasant, and there is absolutely no excuse for that. They are conventional, scratchy and blurred. Why would you drink faulty milk when you have a recent, unopened carton in the same fridge? Maybe I’ve been irascible by the astounding restorations Warner released on the “Looney Tunes Golden Collection” DVD series, but these cartoons glance worse than I’ve ever seen them, and including them in this manner is disgraceful.
Next comes “Atom Ant”, another Hanna-Barbera series about a diminutive ant with spruce powers. The title character is a snooze, but the supporting segments, “Precious Pupp” and “Hillbilly Bears”, reveal more bewitching. “Precious” isn’t particularly laughable, but he is an ancestor of one of H-B’s most memorable and engaging creations, Muttley. Precious shares Muttley’s mumbling squawk and wheezy laugh, but instead of Muttley’s villainous master, Dastardly, Precious’ companion is a sweet miniature mature lady. The segment is not particularly clever or comical, but it’s a nice try. “Hillbilly Bears” is easily the best segment, and should have received top billing over Atom. It’s about a family of (what else? Hillbilly bears!) voiced by Henry Corden (Paw) Jean Vander Pyl (Maw, Flora) and Don Messick (Shag) . Corden’s mumbling, grumbling, almost unintelligible divulge for Paw is absolutely hilarious. Irreverent, politically unsuitable and violent (Paw has an itchy trigger finger to match his broad black-powder gun), it’s a miracle that a cartoon this silly managed to spring up out of the bland mire of this later H-B material. Skip Atom and Precious and gawk the Bears! In terms of physical quality, everything looks and sounds graceful here.
“The Tom and Jerry Present” is spicy only for some linking segments bewitching by Chuck Jones, which have not been seen in years. They’re not in very kindly shape, but they’re fun to leer for the first time. The rest of the explain is classic MGM cartoons: Tom and Jerry in “Salt Water Tabby”, Droopy in “Mutts About Racing” and Tom, Jerry and Exiguous Quacker in “Honest Ducky”. These are nothing current if you already fill the Tom and Jerry “Spotlight” sets and the “Tex Avery’s Droopy” DVD, the only inequity is that the MGM Lion openings and credits are replaced with made-for-TV title cards.
The region comes to a finish with “Magilla Gorilla”. Some fans of this series complained that the stand-alone series DVD region didn’t include the theme song, and it has been included here. Magilla Gorilla is fondly remembered, but really doesn’t have a whole lot going for him except a catchy theme song and a likeable personality. A bonus documentary fair noteworthy agrees with me. As with “Atom Ant”, the supporting segments are more absorbing, but not by distinguished. “Punkin Puss and Mushmouse” are a sort of talkative, Ozark hillbilly Tom and Jerry, and probably never caught on with audiences due to their derivative premise. There are only so many variations that can be done on the “cat vs. mouse” cartoon, and by the time these guys came along, they were one variation too many. “Ricochet Rabbit”, a segment sometimes seen on “Peter Potamus” as well, is a lot of fun. A rabbit sheriff named Ricochet (Don Messick) and his deputy, Droop-Along Coyote (Mel Blanc), try to maintain law and order in the Wild West. It’s got some wit to it, and the characters are instantly likeable, but the influence of earlier Western plots in “Huckleberry Hound” and “Fast Map McGraw” is painfully obvious.
In summary, this DVD is a fun plot to expend a indolent day off, and nostalgia hounds will derive a kick out of it. Unfortunately, it’s a mixed bag in terms of converse and image quality. It does offer a lot of material for not a lot of money, so it’s well worth checking out as long as you’re not expecting perfection. And doooon’t you forget it!
This is a chilly blast from the past (1960’s) that will be enjoyed by anyone who loves the feeble Hanna-Barbera cartoons. I unbiased wish it had a collector’s booklet or episode guide so you read more about the cartoons and summaries. I hope Warner will release more in this series.
Buy Electronic Cigarette
Free Brain Training
Wholesale Designer Handbags
Electronic Smokeless Cigarette
Wedding Album Design
Craig Oconnor