Sunday 4 December 2011

Yogi Bear, Sunday, December 1961

What’s with Yogi Bear and Boy Scouts? Oh, right. Bill Hanna was heavily into the scouting movement. Yogi met up with Scouts in ‘Cub Scout Boo-Boo’ (written by Warren Foster) and then again in the comics twice in 1961. The second time was on December 3rd. They’re über-cute. Big dots for eyes and large freckles.



Incidentally, did you know there are two Yogi Bear Scout songs? The lyrics are HERE and HERE. You can even follow along with the movements you make while singing it. You’re supposed to pretend you’re flipping hair like an airhead or being a model when you act out “Cindy Bear.” I wonder what women’s groups think of that?

Yogi puts on over on Ranger Smith on December 10th. Several animated cartoons featured “Do Not Feed the Bear” signs and, of course, one was featured in the opening of ‘The Yogi Bear Show.’ In fact, the end gag here is a variation on the one in the opening when our hero scrawls “Except Yogi!” on the sign.



The itinerate, helpful Yogi is featured in the December 17th. I like it when he can get away from Jellystone and do other things, but it happened all too rarely on TV once Foster started writing his cartoons in 1959.



No, Yogi Bear’s first Christmas wasn’t in a wretched 1980 TV special. It was in the comics in 1961. Appropriately, on December 24th, the comic features Yogi playing Santa for a group of Disneyesque forest animals. Naturally, the real St. Nick shows up. It’s kind of cute. Better than TV shows with some guy wearing a Davey Crockett skunk hat.



Heap-big character talk like stereotype-um in the December 31st comic. This is an odd one. I wonder if it could have been turned into an animated short. I suppose someone like Tex Avery could do a string of avoiding-the-rain sight gags but it might have been a bit much for the dialogue-heavy H-B studio.



As usual, click on the comic to make it bigger. We should have The Flintstones newspaper comics for the same month next weekend.

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