The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and Underdog original cartoons (1 Viewer)

[TJPC]

I have been watching through season 1. Someone said to view it in small doses, due to the elements which are constantly repeated becoming tiresome (“Watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat”). The commercials of course are absent already, but if you ff through all the credits and repeated elements, you get to the meat of the show, and an episode only about 15 minutes long without missing anything.

 

[Nelson Au]

Interesting, I have been trying to watch the Rocket Fuel storyline. I got about 20 episodes in and sort of burned out. They’ve been dishing out the story in such short segments. I enjoyed Fractured Fairytales and Mr. Peabody a lot more as those are more fun and complete self contained stories. I’ve always liked those more.

 

[Marsh]

Hello all,
I just discovered this thread, and I really enjoyed all the comments and history info. I was a child in the 60's, and I remember watching the Jay Ward shows on Sunday mornings on ABC. The Bullwinkle Show was there with the "Broadway style" opening and closing music that was mentioned earlier. Dudley Do-Right had his own show, with The Hunter, Commander McBragg, and Tooter Turtle cartoons were part of the series. In fact, several years ago, I bought a 16mm network print of The Dudley Do-Right show with the original commercials (one with The Brady Bunch's Christopher Knight for Cheerios), bumpers, etc. During its last months on air, The Beatles cartoon series also was part of the ABC Sunday morning lineup with Bullwinkle and Dudley.

I remember watching the first airings of Underdog on NBC, but as I was so young, I didn't remember a lot of the details. But the show ran so much in the following years, that then I became quite familiar with a lot of the stories, etc. I also have the Shout Factory Underdog and Tennessee Tuxedo DVD box sets and the individual Rocky and Bullwinkle DVD season releases that make up the box set.

BTW, Mark Arnold and Victoria Biggers (daughter of TTV co-founder Buck Biggers) have a book out now called "The Total Television Scrapbook." It features images of Underdog Tennessee Tuxedo, Go Go Gophers and more cels, model sheets, advertisements, etc. Three days ago, a review I wrote of the book was posted online. The link is below. If this breaks any of the group's rules, feel free to delete it.

Thanks,
Marshall

Review of The Total Television Scrapbook

 

[LouA]

I don’t think anyone has mentioned the Rocky And Bullwinkle feature film . I liked it , although I thought it could have been better. Any one else like it?

 

[BobO'Link]

I thought it was poorly done - modern cartoon "antics" grafted onto classic characters, though it's far superior to the Amazon attempt to bring the series back with current art syles and frenetic ADHD type antics. FWIW I generally do not like any of these, IMHO, ill advised remakes/feature film versions of classic TV series.

 

[RobertMG]

Hello all,
I just discovered this thread, and I really enjoyed all the comments and history info. I was a child in the 60's, and I remember watching the Jay Ward shows on Sunday mornings on ABC. The Bullwinkle Show was there with the "Broadway style" opening and closing music that was mentioned earlier. Dudley Do-Right had his own show, with The Hunter, Commander McBragg, and Tooter Turtle cartoons were part of the series. In fact, several years ago, I bought a 16mm network print of The Dudley Do-Right show with the original commercials (one with The Brady Bunch's Christopher Knight for Cheerios), bumpers, etc. During its last months on air, The Beatles cartoon series also was part of the ABC Sunday morning lineup with Bullwinkle and Dudley.

I remember watching the first airings of Underdog on NBC, but as I was so young, I didn't remember a lot of the details. But the show ran so much in the following years, that then I became quite familiar with a lot of the stories, etc. I also have the Shout Factory Underdog and Tennessee Tuxedo DVD box sets and the individual Rocky and Bullwinkle DVD season releases that make up the box set.

BTW, Mark Arnold and Victoria Biggers (daughter of TTV co-founder Buck Biggers) have a book out now called "The Total Television Scrapbook." It features images of Underdog Tennessee Tuxedo, Go Go Gophers and more cels, model sheets, advertisements, etc. Three days ago, a review I wrote of the book was posted online. The link is below. If this breaks any of the group's rules, feel free to delete it.

Thanks,
Marshall

Review of The Total Television Scrapbook

Great review!!!! Working on two books about Macy's I reached out to Joe Harris and got to be able to call him a friend - spent many hours at his loft in CT. Also brought him into Macy's and meet the parade execs!

 

[LouA]

I thought it was poorly done - modern cartoon "antics" grafted onto classic characters, though it's far superior to the Amazon attempt to bring the series back with current art syles and frenetic ADHD type antics. FWIW I generally do not like any of these, IMHO, ill advised remakes/feature film versions of classic TV series.

I just got a chance to see the Amazon version. SO - have the people responsible, ever seen the original show? It doesn’t seem they have any idea what made the original show so funny.
BTW , on the 3D version of Sherman and Peabody, there’s another reboot with better animation than Amazon’s version, but again no idea what made the original so funny. This one is circa around 2012.
So, our best hope is the original show on Blu-ray - Rocky and Bullwinkle last stand if it ever happens!

 

[Marsh]

Great review!!!! Working on two books about Macy's I reached out to Joe Harris and got to be able to call him a friend - spent many hours at his loft in CT. Also brought him into Macy's and meet the parade execs!

RobertMG,
Sorry for the way too long reply. Thanks for the kind words about the review. You were so fortunate to call Joe Harris your friend. Did he have much of his artwork relating to TTV in the loft? Your Macy's books sound like they'd be great and informative reading. Do you have a link to see some excerpts from them?

Take care,
Marshall

 

[RobertMG]

RobertMG,
Sorry for the way too long reply. Thanks for the kind words about the review. You were so fortunate to call Joe Harris your friend. Did he have much of his artwork relating to TTV in the loft? Your Macy's books sound like they'd be great and informative reading. Do you have a link to see some excerpts from them?

Take care,
Marshall

Joe was a great guy! He had storyboards in storage, when we would go the visit him he would order italian food, he would tell us great stories of playing volleyball in the Hamptons on weekends and young actors like Dustin Hoffman would join them. He took me downtown near the waterfront one time treated me to a great lunch. He is missed -- I miss him. I actually called him the morning of 9-11 to tell him what had just happened. Amazon i think has the search inside on my two books

 

[RobertMG]

Joe was a great guy! He had storyboards in storage, when we would go the visit him he would order italian food, he would tell us great stories of playing volleyball in the Hamptons on weekends and young actors like Dustin Hoffman would join them. He took me downtown near the waterfront one time treated me to a great lunch. He is missed -- I miss him. I actually called him the morning of 9-11 to tell him what had just happened. Amazon i think has the search inside on my two books

 

[Marsh]

Joe was a great guy! He had storyboards in storage, when we would go the visit him he would order italian food, he would tell us great stories of playing volleyball in the Hamptons on weekends and young actors like Dustin Hoffman would join them. He took me downtown near the waterfront one time treated me to a great lunch. He is missed -- I miss him. I actually called him the morning of 9-11 to tell him what had just happened. See on Amazon

RobertMG,

I'm so glad to hear that Joe was a great guy! What interesting stories you heard from him, too. Calling him the morning of 9-11 to tell him what happened , I'm sure, is something you'll always remember.

Marshall

 

[ClassicTVMan1981X]

For the 1961-64 NBC run, is it true that for Fractured Fairy Tales there was a different outro than the "chalk and burning fuse" (as used on Aesop & Son), while the fairy Bullwinkle waving his magic wand on the placard to read "THE END"?

~Ben

 

[Garysb]

Included as an extra on the DVD set, The Bullwinkle Puppet which started and ended the Bullwinkle Show during it's original run on NBC until it was dropped. This is a compilation of the intros including the famous one where the puppets tells kids to pull off the knob of their TV so they can be sure to watch the show every week and the kids did.



The puppet was also used for a Dear Bullwinkle segment

 

[oldtvshowbuff]

I have a dub of a circa 1964 NBC Underdog show with the commercial breaks. It starts out with a show opening (same announcer audio but different visuals than the one frequently seen in syndication).

There are two Underdog chapters (in this case, "The Magnet Men" parts three and four), and in between there's an Aesop & Son ("The Lion And The Mouse") and a Hunter ("Seeing Stars"). There is no short cartoon such as a Commander McBragg, Twinkles or Bullwinkle's Corner.

Leading into the first Underdog cartoon is the usual prologue from the pilot cartoon. The second Underdog cartoon is preceded with the usual Underdog song. Aesop has no intro. Hunter has an intro which is different from the usual one seen now -- it's a clip from a later cartoon with mobs of people singing "we're calling, we're calling the Hunter."

There are some in-between bits with the sign-posting business (this is featured in the show opening as well, with Underdog's image being plastered onto a billboard, and of course the "Post No Bills" closing). Before the closing credits there are previews of next week's show introduced with a short piece of animation where they put up a big neon sign that says "Next Show." The "Go Go Gophers" music plays under this, although the Gophers don't appear in this episode.

That's what was in an original Underdog show, at least this one. (The sponsor billboards were done "live" with a slide leading me to believe it might be a summer rerun.)

By the way, there were two variations of the Underdog Show intro we've all seen in the reruns, where Underdog is flying through space. Originally it went on a little longer at the end and a satellite bumped into Underdog. It popped open and a sign came out. There were two versions, in one it said Go Go Gophers and in the other it said The Hunter.

Of course, the Underdog show had different formats over the years. When CBS carried reruns circa 1966, it was all Underdog (all four parts in one half-hour) with no other characters. There was a 1960s syndicated series called "Cartoon Cut-Ups" which featured Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo and Commander McBragg. This series was later re-edited and repurposed as the "first season" of the 1970s syndicated Underdog show.

It would be quite obvious that Daws Butler and Charlie Ruggles were uncredited on The Underdog Show, likewise it was the same for those two guys on The Bullwinkle Show.