Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s Vol. 2 (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)-Review by Matthew Hunter
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"Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960's Volume 2" is kind of like that huge "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 fantastic to gag-inducing.
This set, like the previous volume, collects a wide variety of cartoon series from the 1960's, and attempts to present them as closely to their original TV presentation as possible. It's a great idea on Warner's part, as it brings together material that may not warrant a complete box-set release by itself (or hasn't yet) in an affordable and enjoyable way.
The bulk of the material included here is of the Hanna-Barbera variety, and it's interesting to compare earlier, better material like "Quick Draw McGraw" to later efforts like "Atom Ant" and "Wally Gator". Towards the end of the 1960's, Hanna-Barbera had been cloning their "funny animal" formula so often that it grew even more stale with every new attempt. H-B eventually began focusing on "action" cartoons, and unfortunately the examples of these included on this set are among the weakest.
The collection opens with an episode from "The Quick Draw McGraw Show", nicely restored with its original opening theme song and supporting segments, "Snooper and Blabber" and "Augie Doggie". The animation on this show is limited and low-budget, but the writing and humor hold up extremely well, thanks in large part to writer Michael Maltese. Quick Draw is a Wild West hero who just 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 Quick Draw's famous alter-ego, "El Kabong", really makes me wish Warner had released the Quick Draw show as a standalone series collection.
Next up is a show that should be avoided at all costs. Though an interesting curio, there is absolutely no entertainment value in "The Space Kidettes", a show about a group of annoyingly cute space-age kids in a Jetsons-esque setting who are being stalked by a space 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 uncover...because to do it, I would have to watch more episodes! This show sucks, and is largely unheard of for VERY good reason.
"The Bugs Bunny Show" is a nice surprise, including the original "This Is It" title sequence and some long-lost bridging footage. Mac and Tosh, the Goofy Gophers, are the hosts, but end their incessant polite disagreement forces Bugs himself to introduce the cartoons to keep the show 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) look fine: "Big 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 Show" compiles three more Warner Bros. classics with the original opening, closing and several bumper segments from that TV package. An interesting "skit" that probably originated on the "Bugs Bunny Show" 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 get another "lost treasure" from Hanna-Barbera, entitled "The Adventures of Gulliver". A young man named Gulliver and his father go on a sea voyage with a treasure map to a lost island, a creepy stowaway thug knocks them out, steals the map, and Gulliver wakes up shipwrecked with his dog on the island of Lilliput. What follows is little more than a loosely updated knockoff of the old Jonathan Swift tale "Gulliver's Travels". It will probably be of interest only to those who recall seeing it as kids. No flaws in terms of print quality, picture or sound here.
"The Wally Gator Show" is a fondly-remembered 3-cartoon variety show 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 roam free in the Everglades, instead he's stuck in a zoo with a nagging zookeeper named Mr. Twiddle. Touche Turtle is a diminutive do-gooder voiced by Bill "Droopy Dog" Thompson, who dresses like a French musketeer and tries to help people (in this case, Captain Ahab) along with his aptly named dog sidekick, Dum Dum. Lippy the Lion and his depressed, 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 aged well content-wise, they have fared even worse physically. Originally mastered on cheap film, they look muddy, scratchy and at times out of focus. For those nostalgia buffs longing to see this stuff beautifully restored, you won't find 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 happy ending. It looks and sounds great, probably the same version used for the original series DVD set.
Disc Two begins with Quick Draw 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 old alike. Snooper, Blabber, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy once again hold 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 look and sound great.
Following Quick Draw, we again descend into the abyss of Hanna-Barbera's decline with one of the strangest cartoon characters ever created: Peter Potamus. Peter is a fat, 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 exercise in blandness is the voice work of Daws Butler, Don Messick, and Mel Blanc, but since the endless stream of talk is all there is to it, it gets boring in a hurry. 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 bear 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 serve as inept guards to a fussy Medieval king. It's hard to imagine anyone getting excited 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 original opening and closing are included, and are in pretty rough shape, but the cartoons themselves look fine.
Once Peter and pals get the blandness out of their systems, we get an episode of "The Road Runner Show". I was really looking forward to this, and was very disappointed with the results! The original opening, closing, a rarely-seen animated 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 funny. Where the folks at Warner compiling this DVD collection went wrong, though, is evident in the cartoons themselves. Whereas the "Bugs Bunny" and "Porky Pig" shows mixed the old, worn-out TV bridging footage with nice, clean copies of the actual cartoons, the "Road Runner Show" gets a little TOO "authentic", using copies of the cartoons from the same old TV masters as the bridging animation. The results look terrible, especially the opening short, "Zip N' Snort", which looks so bad 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 Speedy Gonzales' race-off "The Wild Chase", look just as awful, and there is absolutely no excuse for that. They are faded, scratchy and blurred. Why would you drink spoiled milk when you have a fresh, unopened carton in the same fridge? Maybe I've been spoiled by the wonderful restorations Warner released on the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection" DVD series, but these cartoons look 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 little ant with super powers. The title character is a snooze, but the supporting segments, "Precious Pupp" and "Hillbilly Bears", prove more entertaining. "Precious" isn't particularly funny, but he is an ancestor of one of H-B's most memorable and entertaining creations, Muttley. Precious shares Muttley's mumbling voice and wheezy laugh, but instead of Muttley's villainous master, Dastardly, Precious' companion is a sweet little old lady. The segment is not particularly clever or funny, but it's a nice try. "Hillbilly Bears"...Read more›

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