Today, we’ll begin with some franchises associated with the 1960’s (though venturing into incarnations of same that in some instances were produced decades later), then wrap up this week’s moving with a few WB television items from the early ‘90’s.
The Legend of Leonardo the Neat/Home Neat Home (Total Television, King Leonardo and his Short Subjects, circa 1960-61) – One of Leonardo’s ancestors was known as Leonardo the Neat. He was a fastidious cleaner-upper, spending all his time sweeping the palace. He saved so much doing his own cleaning, that he was rumored to have amassed a fortune, and buried a treasure somewhere under the royal palace. Itchy Brother has never brought the subject up to Biggy Rat, until reminded of it in casual conversation while sweeping up their hideout. Biggy’s ears are perked up at the news, and he thrusts a shovel into Itchy’s hands (after whacking him in the face with it for never telling Biggy before). “Okay, Big, I dig” says Itchy in his standard beatnik talk, “You will”, says Biggy, for once taking the expression to its literal conclusion.
Getting close enough to the palace is half the battle. An attempt to pole vault with a long ladder to lean it against the palace wall fails by the ladder being too short, giving Itchy an unexpected dip in the moat. Tunneling under also suffers from miscalculation, excavating into the side of the moat and blasting the villains out the hole on a stream of the escaping moat water. But with the moat dry, the villains can finally reach the palace walls. Leonardo, Odie, and the palace guards must be about the most unobservant royalty and royal assistants of any kingdom, as they take no notice of the dried-up moat or the activities around the palace gates. Itchy and Biggy thus excavate with a steam shovel under one side of the palace, causing the building to tilt. They paint fake crack lines all about the palace walls. And they strew garbage and trash around the perimeter, to make the once-proud palace look like a dump. Leonardo paces the floors – now in an upwards and downwards tilt – and complains he is beginning to feel like a mountain goat. Despite Odie’s singing of “There’s No Palace Like Home”, Leonardo has had enough. He orders the Royal Moving van loaded with his palacial belongings, and announces that the palace will be put up for sale, while he and Odie move to a hotel.
Within moments of the King’s departure, the villains remove the For Sale sign from the palace door, to prevent any nosy inquiries. With a lantern, they begin to investigate deep below a trap door in one of the palace dungeons. It doesn’t take long for Itchy to notice a convenient “X” etched upon the dungeon floor. Let the excavation begin. Meanwhile Leonardo finds he can’t sleep at the hotel, missing a royal storybook he left behind at the palace that he needs for his bedtime story. Odie volunteers to retrieve the book, but Leonardo wants to get it himself, welcoming the excuse to have one more look around the old homestead. Upon arriving at the palace, he hears the sound of excavation and tries to investigate. Biggy and Itchy give the King a run for his money through the corridors of the empty palace, then play upon his kingly instincts. Taking up the pose of heralds on either side of a door, they open the door before Leonardo, and shout, “Presenting his Royal Majesty, the King.” Believing reflexively he is being presented to his subjects for a speech, Leonardo enters the doorway, stating, “Thank you, my friends…” – and falls down an empty shaft into the South Dungeon. The villains return to the North Dungeon for more excavating. But by this time, Odie has become worried at the King’s failure to return. He too goes to the palace, calling through the corridors for his majesty. Biggy and Itchy waylay him, tossing him out of a high tower window. Despite taking a towering fall, Odie is saved by the deep and soggy mud left at the bottom of the now empty moat, cushioning his fall. When he rises, he is entirely black with mud. This gives him the advantage of invisibility in the dark palace dungeon, and he is able to re-enter and make short work of the villains, bopping them over the head with their own shovels. Leonardo is rescued, and, to everyone’s wonderment, a treasure chest is discovered in the pit dug by Itchy. However, one man’s treasure is another man’s junk. All that is found inside is what Leonardo the Neat would have considered a treasure – his broom and dustpan, bearing the royal seal. In poetic justice, Biggy and Itchy are forced to use them – in cleaning up all the mess they have made of the palace.
Piano Rolling Blues (Art Clokey, Gumby, 12/27/67) – In a failed attempt to set up a new nemeses for Gumby and the gang, this episode follows the activities of a Dr. Sveegee, in what appears to be his second appearance in the series – an evil scientist who would like to capture Prickle, the world’s only living dinosaur, for his own nefarious studies. Today, however, Sveegee’s large mind is not currently concentrating on Prickle. In fact, it’s not able to concentrate at all, as he has taken up residence for his secret laboratory in an abandoned warehouse next door to the studio apartment of pianist Paul Plunk. The constant music from next door is driving the Doctor crazy – so he plots to rid himself of the music by calling up a piano mover, pretending to be Plunk, and instructing the movers to haul the piano away. He calls up the Gumby Piano Movers, and tells them to take the piano away and give it to someone who needs it – as he’s tired of music. Gumby, Pokey and Prickle arrive with a van while Plunk is out to lunch. The door to Plunk’s studio doesn’t look wide enough, so the group dismantle a good portion of the brick wall around it until a wide-enough hole is achieved. Gumby suggests making the job easier by tying a rope around the piano and hauling it out with the truck. Prickle hooks up the rope, while Pokey climbs into the driver’s seat. Dr. Sveegee takes a peek out his own door to see how the movers are doing – and spots Prickle. Irresistibly drawn to capture the rare dinosaur, Sveegee comes out of hiding and makes a lunge for Prickle. Pokey spots him in the act, and steps on the gas pedal. Before the Doctor can get his hands on Prickle, the piano is yanked suddenly out of the building, rolling right into the Doctor and picking him up on top. Momentum keeps the piano rolling past the truck, snapping the tow rope, and as has often been the case in our piano-moving adventures, the runaway piano carries the Doctor several blocks through the city streets, finally colliding with the rear-end of a parked police car, the piano and the Doctor winding up piled atop the car roof. The Doctor ends the film in jail, wishing he’d left well enough alone, while Prickle declares he’s had enough of piano moving – after all, he can’t even read music.
A Moving Experience (Art Clokey, Gumby Adventures, 5/28/88) – This installment gives Gumby nearly nothing to do – and in fact, the whole Gumba family plays very little part, as it is a rare instance where the Blockheads take center stage and nearly carry the entire episode themselves – along with the furniture they are moving. The scene opens in the Gumba kitchen, just long enough to establish that this is their last breakfast in this house, and the movers will be arriving any minute. Everyone but the Missus leaves for work or school, and Mrs. Gumba packs up her fine dishes and a glass punchbowl which was a wedding present. Enter the Blockheads, in business under the name “Smosh and Bosh Movers”. Mrs. Gumba gets called away to the telephone, leaving the two to perform their task. They begin by each picking up a box full of the dishes. Both head for the same doorway at the same time. No, they can’t fit through side by side. They jostle between each other in attempt to decide who should go first – and drop both boxes in the process. Smash! Blockhead G smacks Blockhead J across the face for his stupidity, then sweeps up the broken fragments into the boxes, while J tapes the boxes shut, hoping no one will ever notice the difference. J next tries to move a bed frame, which doesn’t want to slide out. He kicks at one of its legs – and knocks the headboard off. Content with carrying it out in sections, he carries the headboard toward the living room, where he pokes one of its rods right through the screen of a TV set G is moving. Another slap for J, as G “covers up” by tossing a throw rug over the TV screen as he moves the set out.
Next, an upright piano. They manage to get this one out of the house atop a dolly in one piece. G fastens a tow rope between the dolly and a winch in the truck bed to drag the piano up a ramp into the truck. However, the rope scrapes along the frame of the van doorway at the head of the ramp, and snaps. J performs another piano ride through the city streets, slams into a parked car, and gets ticketed by a traffic cop for doing 30 in a 15 mph zone. J gets behind the piano and pushes it all the way back to the van, gaining momentum to a near run as he goes. He doesn’t see G ahead, waving his hands at J to stop, as G has now loaded multiple crates of stuff in the space of the van where the piano was to have fit. The piano rolls up the ramp, and – Crunch! Another face-slap for J. Finally, the boys get everything aboard, only it barely fits in the cargo compartment. With effort, they are able to close a door latch on the van, then drive on to the new location. Halfway there, they hit a bump, and the rear door flies open, leaving half of the family furniture scattered all over the road. Reaching their destination, the Blockheads back up the truck, directly into the front porch pillars, collapsing the porch. With the doorway blocked, no need to worry about getting the furniture inside – so they merely dump what is left in a heap on the lawn, and drive away. The scene dissolves, to a shot of Mrs. Gumba, bemoaning aloud the fate of her furniture and new home, but with her eyes closed in a fitful nightmare on the living room sofa. Gumby and his sister Minga (a late addition to the Gumba family) return from school, waking Ma up. Mama Gumba relates that she was having a terrible dream about moving to a new home, and Minga and Gumby declare that they don’t want to move from where they are. Mrs. Gumba tells them not to worry – after her dream, Mrs. Gumba doesn’t want to move anywhere either.
The Swiss Family Jetson (Hanna-Barbera, The Jetsons, 10/23/85) – Though there were a few interesting plots scattered here and there during the run of the 1980’s revival of “The Jetsons”, there was also a certain over-abundance of scripts that didn’t quite make the grade – where one often got the feeling the characters (and writers) were going through the motions but with no particular effort to duplicate the keen sense of comic timing and memorable dialog that filled the original first-season run. It certainly didn’t help these episodes to be run side-by-side with the first-season goodies to fill out a syndicated package of 65 shows – making the variances in quality become glaring at times. It would take until the syndicated shows for a plot to find the Jetsons considering a change of scenery to get away from the hustle and bustle of their future-tense life. Unfortunately, it was not one of their best.
George has had it. And the other family members are not far behind. Traffic on the spaceway has delayed George’s evening commute by over three minutes. Jane has to wait 20 seconds in the checkout line at the grocers. Judy’s new boyfriend drives George crazy with loud breakdancing parties in the back of his space van – then drives Judy crazy by breaking up with her. A new apartment complex springs up like a mushroom next to the Skypad Apartments, with a professional drummer, Boomer Megaton, as a resident, constantly rehearsing with his set of self-beating drums which set up a vibration rate that rocks both buildings. (I guess George prefers the old-fashioned hand-played drum kit he himself used in “A Date With Jet Screamer”.) A new branch of the spaceway is opened right outside the Jetsons’ window, exposing them to traffic noise to add to the din. And to top things off, Spacely informs George of a glut in the sprocket market caused by an influx of cheap Martian sprockets, forcing a budgetary cutback that lays George off for six months. One ray of possible hope presents itself – a television ad campaign for a life of peace and quiet, moving back to the soil. Own a Digifarm on your own planetoid – complete with automatic devices to let machines do all the work, and your own instant Digimansion. With time on his hands, this proposition looks like a salvation to George. And delivery is no problem – all equipment arriving at the Jetsons’ door just as soon as George can type in the work “Digifarm” on the computer monitor.
The Jetsons pack a “U-Fly” moving trailer, a convoy of tethered space vehicles, and a hovering fire hydrant for Astro, and set off for Planetoid Paradiso – the last one of the planetoids on the far end of the asteroid belt. On their way, they encounter a rural family, heading in the opposite direction, with intentions exactly the opposite of the Jetsons – to escape the rural rut for the excitement of big city life on Earth. Not very reassuring. The Jetsons continue on toward their destination – a trip that seems interminably long for the Jetsons’ tastes, though they are travelling at 5500 space miles an hour. They run out of rocket fuel just as they approach a planetoid dead ahead, and hope its Paradiso, since they’re landing there whether they like it or not. The space car crashes, leaving them stranded on their new “home”. They actually have reached their destination, but appear to have landed on the dark side of the planetoid – a side which is barren of plant life, all craters and rocks. George presses a button on one of the scattered crates from the trailer, to activate the instant mansion. What they get looks more like a space-age pup tent for four and pets, in which they spend an uncomfortable night shivering in the space cold. When sun rises, George tries activating some of the cultivating equipment. The tractor gets underway, but George hasn’t figured out the lever of its remote control yet, so it almost plows him down, mows down the “mansion” into a flattened pancake, then gets away. The seed planter is more manageable, and sews their supply of seeds into the ground easily. However, the well-digger for irrigation hits a snag, hitting not a water table, but a gushing pool of oil, soaking the seeds in the black goo.
George for once doesn’t despair, and, faced with using his wits or succumbing to starvation, decides to encourage the family to be resourceful. So, they do something no family of their generation has resorted to in ages – walk – miles – in search of better surroundings. They fortunately discover a ridge, below which lies the fertile side of the planetoid. A green panorama with running water beckons below. The family stops to rest their tired toes, and soon spots fruit growing for the taking in a grove of tall trees. Orbity’s spring-powered legs are the perfect thing for boosting Elroy to tree-top level to toss down the tasty goodies – asteroid apricots. Following in the footsteps of the fabled Swiss Family Robinson, George and Elroy set upon building a multi-level house within the trees, with Elroy using his scientific knowledge of harnessing wind power to generate electricity to give them lighting and some of the comforts of home. (But wait a minute! Wasn’t this all basically the premise of a famous 1960’s sci-fi show, entitled “Lost in Space”, and originally intended to be called “Space Family Robinson”?) Though their food supply seems to be only asteroid apricots, Rosey proves to be the culinary whiz as usual, coming up with a barrage of new recipes such as apricot lasagna and apricot cheesecake (where’d they get the cheese for these recipes?) Six months elapse quickly, and the Jetsons seem to have finally found an idyllic life of peace and quiet.
Such things are too good to last in a cartoon. The same firm that sold them the farm also has a land-development division, scouting for new locations to keep their stockholders happy with new real estate. Searching for opportunities everywhere, their scouting spaceship spies through telescope the Jetsons, having surprisingly made a go of their Digifarm, and appearing to be living in comfort. Just the place to bring in a new community. The developers arrive to inform the Jetsons that their title to the planetoid is no longer exclusive. “The good news is, you’re going to have new neighbors. The bad news is, you’re going to have new neighbors.” At the push of a button, up springs a new supermarket, high school, playground, and super-apartment towers, complete with tenants arriving in an instant – one of them being Boomer Megaton. Everything the Jetsons wanted to get away from. George declares that home can’t be any worse – and that’s where they’re going.
Seems like everyone’s gotten the urge to move to the newly-developed planetoid – which seems to restore the Jetsons’ old home to near normal. Even the rural family the Jetsons met on the road before are encountered again, moving on to a new life at the planetoid because the cities on Earth proved too quiet for them. And a call on the visiphone reveals that Spacely has been trying to locate George for weeks. The Martian sprocket competitor went bankrupt (presumably for shoddy product), and demand for Spacely Sprockets is bigger than ever. George is hired back at double salary – but with a new assignment. Sales representative on the former Planetoid Paradiso! George keels over backwards, while Spacely touts the planetoid’s specialty. “Asteroid apricots – you’ll love ‘em.”
• “The Swiss Family Jetson” is viewable on topcartoons.tv
Jetsons, the Movie (Hanna-Barbera/Universal, 7/6/90) was a big-budget disappointment – something you really only went to see for the last performances of George O’Hanlon as George and Mel Blanc as Spacely. It again tells a tale of relocation, with the Spacepad Apartments becoming a polluted mess of smog inversion layers (Rosey to mechanical parrot: “Polly wanna gas mask?”), requiring raising of the apartment houses by hydraulic lifts another couple of thousand feet into the air. Perhaps this opening should have told us that the script to follow would be a bit too eco-friendy to be genuinely entertaining. George gets another chance for advancement by accepting a reassignment – to an orbiting ore asteroid at the far reaches of the galaxy – an all mechanized mining base, controllable by a simple push of a button – something right up George’s alley. Problem is, Spacely’s been having trouble keeping a man in charge at the site, as something always seems to be putting the mining equipment off-line.
After another extended flight in the family car (without picking up an alien hitchhiker wanting a side trip to Mars), the family arrives at a space-station community of internetworked modules, complete with a space mall and an apartment development, the Intergalactic Garden Estates. They enter their new abode to find it looking like a cavernous empty warehouse. Rosey wonders if a remote control used to move furniture around at their old place will work here. A few pushes of buttons, and furnishings and electronics pop out of the walls where you please. Elroy obtains an indoor basketball hoop, and all the assorted space balls and athletic equipment he could want. Judy obtains a comfy bedroom with teddy bears, rocker posters on the walls, and a self-hovering telephone to press up to her ear effortlessly for unlimited calling. Rosey finds everything she could want in modern fooderacacycles for the kitchen. And of course, an indoor version of the dog walker for Astro – with the same usual result for George (“Jane, stop this crazy thing!”) New neighbors pop in to bid welcome, including a robot couple and their son upstairs, the husband robot also an employee of George’s plant in charge of maintenance, named Rudi (small world for robot names – just like home). Also, a mom, pop, and daughter of oversize blue fuzzballs aliens called Furrbellows.
Bill and Joe with their cast.
But all is not “Rosey” at the mining center. Despite Rudi’s constant checking of the equipment, something always sees to go wrong when the machinery is started. In fact, a camera view during the preceding night has shown us the lights of miniature helmets wandering through the plant, and sparks at a point where something electrical was tampered with. George uses his “magic finger” to press the start button, and watches a tote board approach the count of the millionth sprocket – only to begin counting backwards just before the milestone is reached. Sprockets begin vibrating off the assembly lines, and rolling underfoot everywhere. George even winds up with sprockets caught around the index fingers of both of his hands, and has to shut off the machinery by pushing the master control button with his nose.
Despite attempting to introduce some complications and drama into the plot, the story line boils down to a community of little furry creatures called Grungees, living in the subterranean depths of the asteroid, and having their homes destroyed by the mechanical mining arm. (The Grungees are depicted too cute by half, a near rip-off of design from Lucasfilm’s Ewoks in Star Wars III (later 6)). A real problem with the premise is that Spacely, who despite his screaming usually comes across as a comedically lovable curmudgeon, is nearly painted here as a true, cold-hearted, money-grubbing villain, who knew the Grungees were here when he built the plant. George actually has to reach the point of defying him (something he says feels good) when Spacely blocks him from turning off the button, by jetting himself into the master machinery to find another way to get the machinery to shut down. In a too-convenient ending, George, with Spacely over a barrel, convinces Spacely to enlist the Grungees as partners in running the plant, which at first seems like it will still leave the Grungees’ homes subject to the mining arm, until the Grungees miraculously present a way of recycling used sprockets so that the asteroid will never need to be mined again. (I told you the script was too eco-friendly.) Spacely, under pressure, gives George his old job back, and the right to still call himself a vice-president, but no pay raise. So its back home, to continue the airing of reruns – even though (at least until today) there would be no new episodes left to see, this being the swan song for the franchise.
• “Jetsons: the Movie” can be watched in full at ok.ru
Moving Experience (Filmation, The New Archie and Sabrina Hour, 10/1/77) – Boy, did this become an overused title, by many major producers in the television years (as we’ll see further below, and even into next week). Filmation wasn’t used to serving up Archie stories in half-hour form, previously preferring formats of seven minutes or less. When they tried, their results could often look like they were hastily glued together from disparate parts, as here. We begin with the gang, the coach, and Miss Grundy on a nature field trip. Reggie decides to play practical jokes, not only scaring Miss Grundy with wild sound effects from a tape recorder, but having Moose dress up in a bigfoot suit. Grundy agrees to forgive them if they promise no more practical jokes. But no sooner have they promised, than Grundy is waved to by a second bigfoot from behind a tree. At her wits end, Grundy swears she will give up teaching.
No one will admit to having worn the second bigfoot costume, but one of the gang retrieves a wooden club dropped by the culprit at the scene. The next day, the gang finds a substitute teacher presiding over Miss Grundy’s class, and assumes Grundy has made good on her threat to quit. Running out to her residence, they find a moving van in the driveway, fully loaded and ready to pull out. To prevent the move, the gang start carrying all the furniture back inside. Grundy appears, and thinks this is yet another of the gang’s practical jokes, ordering the moving men to put things back on the truck. The movers and the students compete in transporting the furniture in opposite directions, until the movers run out of wind and knock off for the day, leaving the truck. Grundy is furious at being made late for her move by these shenanigans, but the gang finally get a word in that they didn’t want her to quit – only to find that she hadn’t intended to quit, but only took the day off to move to a better location in a trailer park a half-mile down the road. Archie realizes their blunder has just put the gang into the moving business. So, back goes the furniture aboard the van, and Archie takes the wheel, with Grundy also in the cab to give him directions.
Archie takes a wrong turn at Grundy’s befuddled instructions, onto a bumpy road under construction. He tries to make up for lost time by “giving her the gas”, but then states, “I gave her the gas, and she took it. Pedal’s stuck!” The van plows through a fence, then ends up in a head-first collision with a tree, scattering most of Grundy’s furniture behind. Worse yet, they’ve arrived so late, that the owner of the trailer park assumed Grundy had changed her mind, and has rented the available trailer to someone else. Now Grundy swears to really quit – even with no place to go.
Principal Weatherbee demands that the gang convince Grundy to stay, or face serious consequences for losing one of Riverdale High’s best teachers. But Grundy won’t even talk to them. And still, no one will ’fess up to starting the whole mess with the second bigfoot disguise. But an egghead student among Archie’s classmates sheds some light on the subject. He has submitted the club found at the campsite to carbon dating – and found it to be over a million years old. Not the kind of thing one commonly rents at a costume shop. Could the second bigfoot have been – real?
The gang treks back into the forest, hoping that if they can find the bigfoot, they can convince Grundy that they had not really been playing further practical jokes. Jughead carries along the wooden club, and the real bigfoot appears, still looking for his lost possession. Overjoyed at the gang recovering it, bigfoot becomes friendly and pacified, and the gang drive him into town to show Miss Grundy. Though Grundy, cleaning out her desk at the school, still doesn’t want to talk to anybody, the sight of a bigfoot breaking its way through the small classroom doorway is hard to ignore. Grundy attempts a Scooby-Doo style unmasking to have the student inside expelled, but finds this furry head impossible to remove – and with loving hearts in his eyes at the sight of Grundy. “Please, I hardly know you”, says Grundy, until Archie calls the beast off, and explanations are made. Grundy makes peace with the gang, and agrees to stay. Weatherbee enters, happy to see that Grundy has been convinced not to leave, and with news for Grundy that the trailer park called, and has a new vacancy with an even better trailer. However. Weatherbee cautions the gang again about no more practical jokes. He extends a hand to Moose for a shake on it – and surprises him with an electrical joy buzzer, stating that he’s decided to fight fire with fire. Weatherbee even dons his own bigfoot costume, to show that he can look even more ferociously ridiculous than that “student” in the costume over there. The “student” is of course the real bigfoot, who again has loving hearts in his eyes. Bigfoot pursues Weatherbee in romantic wonderment, as the panicked principal flees for his life across the campus, Archie hoping that they can still find the two of them by morning.
C Flat or B Sharp (Warner, Tiny Toon Adventures, 12/7/90) – Buster Bunny, Plucky Duck, and Hamton try their hand at piano moving, when an upright piano is mistakenly delivered to the Looniversity via helicopter drop, leaving the instrument stranded atop the clock tower. Professor Yosemite Sam expects the instrument in the recital hall, and orders our three heroes to retrieve it pronto. The remainder of the episode is played entirely in pantomime, set to the inevitable Liszt Second Hungarian Rhapsody.
First, plans to get the piano down from the tower. Buster draws up blueprints, providing for flooding the tower with water from a fire hydrant, drilling a hole in the tower side and plugging it with a giant cork for removal later as a release valve, and floating the piano down inside the tower as the water is released through the hole. The idea works in principle, but somehow, the piano squeezes like rubber through the small escape hole, coming out of the tower prematurely, and slamming Hamton and Plucky into a wall. Next, pushing the heavy music box through the school corridors. A dose of Fifi La Fume’s natural aroma sends the boys into a hasty retreat, resulting in an unexpected roll of the piano down a staircase, and out a window, precariously balanced upon a ledge. So, propel it back into the building with a giant ACME skyrocket. Plucky takes this wild ride, and again finds himself and the rocket flattened into a corridor wall. Let’s take a shortcut through the Study Hall. Hamton’s suspenders get caught between the doors closing behind him, preventing his forward progress. Then, they pull Hamton backwards in an elastic snap. Hamton grabs hold of the piano, and takes it with him back through the doors in the opposite direction. Buster tries to guide the piano into a school locker to trap it, but the instrument escapes out the door of a different locker. Plucky tries to play Super Duck, via a quick costume change in a phone booth. He holds out a mighty hand to stop the instrument in its tracks – but when the instrument doesn’t show up in the corridor on cue, Plucky looks around for it distractedly, without his hand being raised, and is once again steamrolled by the piano as it appears by surprise. I’d love to see a floor plan of the Looniversity, as it seems as if the piano’s path has taken it down several staircases into sub-basements by the end of the cartoon – yet it is still on a level where it lands upside down, cracks through the floor, and descends to the recital hall even further below, to land on Yosemite Sam’s head, as Buster, Hamton and Plucky take bows before the student body, for the fade out.
• “C Flat or B Sharp” is the last of three shorts in a Tiny Toons half hour on ok.ru
A Moving Experience (Warner, Animaniacs (Hip Hippos), 10/7/93) – Flavio and Marita are possibly the last two of their kind – Hippopotamus Trendolius. They are being observed in their native jungle habitat by zoologist Gina Embryo (a Jane Goodall type), in their primitive lifestyle and rituals – that is, a rousing game of tennis on their own private court, on the grounds of a trendy jungle mansion. The two are in personality the idyllic epitome of Latin lovers, full of culture and a desire to stay on top of the times and modern ways. But Marita is hurt when she is informed by Flavio that she is not up on the latest hip slang – still stating “Let’s do lunch”, while Flavio informs her that “Let’s meal” is the new phrase, meal now being an accepted verb. Marita feels the trends are passing them by, as long as they remain in the jungle instead of mingling with the ground-breakers. So, to keep his spouse contented, Flavio consents to seeking out new real estate opportunities in the big city. This revelation comes as a shock to Gina, who fears that a city move will expose her precious hippos to far too much danger (ignoring danger already around her in the jungle, as a boa constrictor attempts to put the squeeze on her). Gina vows to follow the hippos, and make sure they return back to their natural habitat.
Flavio surprises Marita with a means to travel to the city in style – a private helicopter he has purchased especially for the occasion. They take off for some apartment hunting, with Gina lassoing the tail of the copter to keep up with them, and being dragged along for the ride, colliding face-first into building after building along the way. The copter sets down on a city helipad, crushing Gina flat under the combined weight of the whirlygig and its behemoth passengers. Nevertheless, Gina manages to outrace the heavy hippos to the doors of the local real estate agent, slipping the agent inside beaucoup bucks to take over the office for the day and borrow her flashy blazer. When the hippos arrive, Gina, posing as the agent, first tries to tell them there are no vacancies available, and they should go back to the jungle where they belong. But Marita’s tears and Flavio’s begging to be shown anything just to please his Misses gives Gina an alternate idea. Show them the worst possible venues, so they’ll get sick of the city and go home. She starts with an abandoned, rat-infested warehouse. To her surprise, Marita loves it, calling it a retro-industrial fixer-upper. Entering a doorway, the two hippos squeeze between two close-set steel pipes, bending them out of shape. The pipes unfortunately provide structural support to the upper floors, and just as the hippos step outside, the warehouse collapses upon Gina. Flavio sees no loss, expressing his own opinion that retro-industrial has been done to death. Next, Gina shows them an auto junkyard, with cars piled high. Flavio is fascinated by the structural design, while Marita marvels at the spectrum of colors. Again, Gina is not getting the reactions she hoped for – and again gets more than she expected, when one of the hippos tugs to open a car door at the bottom of one of the piles, toppling a mountain of cars onto Gina. Finally, Gina tries to show them a manhole to the sewer in the middle of a street, personally demonstrating one of its disadvantages – the heavy traffic, which plows Gina down (followed by a stomp-thru cameo for Rita and Runt to also run over her). The message finally gets through to Marita that nothing has been as trendy as their old home in the jungle, and Flavio agrees. At last it appears the hippos will be returning home. But not quite. Once there, the hippos attach tethers between their house and its grounds and their new helicopter. Then, it’s up and away – lifting the whole estate to the city. Gina once again gets snagged in the ropes underneath the estate, and is crushed once again when the hippos spot a suitable rooftop on one of the city’s tallest buildings, and play bombs-away, dropping their home atop it for an instant penthouse apartment. The hippos share a toast, admiring the sunset, while a battered Gina can only pop up through the ground to utter “Help”, and faint.
• NOTE: Sorry – There seems to be no available post for the Hip Hippos “A Moving Experience”.
NEXT WEEK: Likely a wrap-up of all our moving bundles.
Charles Gardner is an animation enthusiast who toils by day as a member of LA Law – but by nights and weekends indulges in classic jazz and ragtime as a performer; and studies classic Hollywood cartoons… maybe a little too much.
So the Jetsons had a syndicated episode with the same premise as “Lost in Space”/”Space Family Robinson”? Oh, the pain… the pain!
Given the myriad shortcomings of Filmation productions in the 1970s, perhaps it’s inevitable that the Archie writers would show a poor grasp on concepts like radiometric dating. Even granting that the brainy kid in the ascot could invent a magic lunchbox to measure the radiocarbon composition of an object just by scanning it, Carbon-14 only begins to break down in inanimate tissue; therefore carbon dating wouldn’t be able to determine how old a person was, only how long ago he had died. Also, Carbon-14 has a half life of less than six thousand years and would be of no use in measuring the age of a half-million-year-old piece of wood, even assuming — oh, to hell with it. Seriously, that cartoon made my head hurt.
The Hip Hippos were probably the least popular characters on “Animaniacs”, though at least their cartoons were less formulaic than those of Buttons and Mindy or Katie Kaboom. I actually liked the one where Flavio and Marita were passengers on the ark, with Richard Lewis guest starring as Noah.
As for Total Television Productions, I recall a Klondike Kat cartoon in which our hero, having disgraced himself somehow, was moving away from Fort Frazzle. I remember him sadly packing about a dozen neatly folded white shirts, one at a time, into a trunk. This puzzled me greatly, for Klondike Kat was never seen to be wearing anything other than his red Mountie uniform. What was the deal with all those white shirts? Was he doing Mormon missionary work on the side? Anyway, I don’t think he ended up moving after all, so that cartoon, whatever it was, probably lies outside the purview of this Animation Trail.
If I remember, Dr Sveegee looked kind of like Sivana from Capt Marvel.
It’s weird how sometimes Prickle was a dinosaur and sometimes he was a dragon.
I guess “A Moving Experience” joins other titles like “Do or Diet” as being overused, and in a multitude of venues.
It was nice to see Sabrina in the mix of the regular Archie gang, because that is how I first remember her in the series. It seemed a little distracting that there could be several characters in a scene but only one or two onscreen at any given moment. I enjoyed the voice work, particularly Howard Morris and Dallas McKennon, both of whom seemed in good form, even with this being a later entry.
The biggest travesty associated with the Jetsons movie is the replacement of Janet Waldo with pop singer Tiffany, who brings a totally different characterization to the role of Judy. This unfortunate casting choice takes the viewer out of the movie and makes it only a distant echo of the original series. The trouble with the later Jetsons reboots is that the writers and production staff lost sight of what made the series so iconic in the one and only true season of the show. To take the focus away from adult humor and eye-popping futuristic technology proved to be a step backward for Hanna-Barbera. Still, there is much to appreciate in Jetsons: The Movie, such as the more elaborate animation quality. Also, seeing the film on a gigantic movie screen is a very different experience from viewing it on a smaller screen in one’s living room. It loses a lot in the transfer to home video. The eco-friendly message didn’t bother me, and I rather liked the blending of various types and species of beings to promote acceptance of those who at first seem different. It may not have been the Jetsons’ finest moment (I would pick the Jet Screamer episode as the very best, perhaps alongside the intro of Astro and the intro of Rosey) but The Movie does give a big if not strong sendoff for the franchise.
“The King and Odie” is a good example of a kid-friendly series with adult humor thrown in. As a child, I had no idea who Edward G. Robinson or Ronald Coleman were, but the spot-on imitations work well for the characters of Biggy Rat and Odie Colonie. This is an example of how good a franchise can be when the adults in the audience are being entertained along with the kids.
Well, Tony Benidect (who created Astro) tried to take the role of head story editor for the new “Jetsons” episodes, but according to him, due to how the studio was run by that point, he ended up losing control and wasn’t happy with the results.
(suggestion: resist categorizing certain humor as “adult”, since any humor could be enjoyed and understood by any person of any age)
The “egghead student” in the Archie segment is one Dilton Doiley. In his earliest incarnation, he was a prissy mama’s boy the other kids hated. Given that his wardrobe back then consisted of a Little Lord Fauntleroy-type ensemble, an ascot and lab coat would seem to be a step forward fashion-wise.
If we’re going to discuss piano moving, we have to mention Laurel and Hardy in “The Music Box”. Yes, it’s live action. But it’s definitive.
I didn’t know Gerald Baldwin directed some episodes of “Tiny Toons”. One of these days, I need to read his autobiography. Unfortunately, I forgot the name.
Hanna-Barbera collaborated with Universal Studios to produce a theme park ride promoting The Jetsons Movie. Ironically, the character animation produced for that ride was more impressive than the animation in that movie.
Any discussion of “Jetsons: The Movie” in this forum is likely to bring up the substitution of Tiffany for Janet Waldo in the role of Judy. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera have stated that the decision was made by Universal against their own wishes, as Tiffany was signed to Universal’s subsidiary MCA. It’s unfortunate that Waldo was slighted in this way; but, since three of the original cast members passed away while the film was in production, it may not have been altogether unreasonable for the Universal suits to suppose that Janet Waldo, at seventy, was perhaps a bit old to play a teenager. The saddest thing about the movie is that it proved the franchise could not survive the loss of its original voice talent, and the First Family of the Future thereupon became a thing of the past.
Some years ago I was surprised to discover that Tiffany is actually a good songwriter. Unfortunately, her management wouldn’t allow her to record her own material back in the day, and since then few in the music industry have shown any interest in it because everyone thinks of her as a flash-in-the-pan pop princess. I honestly think she could have been a major star if she had had better management. It’s a shame that having played Judy Jetson remains one of her major claims to fame. I admit that she was wrong for the role, but she deserved much, much better.