Tag Hanna-Barbera

The Retro Bin: Laff-A-Lympics (1977-1978)

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As you may have noticed by now, Twinsanity generally doesn’t probe too deeply into the careers of Hanna-Barbera’s premier roster of characters like Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss and the many, many Scooby-Doo clones. This is for 2 reasons: one, they tend to be a tad on the interchangeable side, and two, the H-B studio has provided us with opportunities to discuss several of them at once.

One such example is the subject of today’s Retro Bin, Laff-A-Lympics.

 Laff-A-Lympics was the co-headlining segment, with Scooby-Doo, of the package Saturday morning cartoon series Scooby’s All-Star Laff-A-Lympics, beginning in 1977. The show was a spoof of the Olympics (duh!) and the ABC television series Battle of the Network Stars, which debuted one year earlier. It featured 45 Hanna-Barbera characters organized into the teams (the Scooby Doobies, the Yogi Yahooeys, and the Really Rottens) which would compete each week for gold, silver, and bronze medals. One season of 16 episodes was produced in 1977–78, and eight new episodes combined with reruns for the 1978–79 season as Scooby’s All-Stars. Yes, both incarnations of the show were named after Scooby-Doo; he was pretty much the Kingpin of Saturday morning back in the 70’s.

“Riss my ring, ritches!”

The episodes themselves basically reiterated the same formula: the 3 teams would lock horns in various sporting events, typically taking place in some exotic location. The various team members would employ their special talents, quirks and shticks to win; sometimes they’d work, sometimes they wouldn’t. The ‘bad guy’ team, the Really Rottens, would habitually cheat and suffer the consquences, and at the end, 1 team would emerge victorious with a gold medal, a 2nd would earn the silver and the loser (usually the Rottens) would get stuck with the bronze. Yada yada yada. What made this show special was its’ novelty: it featured no less than 45 H-B stars occupying a single program. That means nothing to anyone born past Generation X, but for a kid in the 70’s, especially one who was a hardcore Hanna-Barbera fan, LAL was the equivalent of giving a kid the keys to a candy store and saying they can go nucking futs, or a horndog let loose in the Playboy Mansion with a License to Grope badge. Here’s the intro:

 

Now, on to the show’s major selling point: the teams and the stars themselves. The “good guy” teams, consisting of the Scooby Doobies and the Yogi Yahooeys, were good friends and their respective team members gladly helped each other whenever they got into a jam. The Really Rottens, however, always cheated and pulled dirty tricks which would ultimately cause them to be the last-place losers in most episodes. Much like Dick Dastardly and Muttley on Wacky Races, typically the Really Rottens would be just on the verge of winning, before they would make a fatal error at the very end that allowed one of the other two teams to end up at the top. Occasionally, though, the Rottens’ cheating technique wouldn’t actually be against the rules, which resulted in them (unlike Dastardly and Muttley) actually winning in a few episodes; there was even one episode where they won through sheer chance. The final event on the show’s final episode, which took place on the moon (!), ended in a 3-way tie.

Each team adhered to a particular ‘theme’ or genre/era of H-B cartoons.

THE YOGI YAHOOEYS

This team was comprised of Hanna-Barbera’s 1950’s through 1960’s television shorts characters. It was the only team made up entirely of anthropomorphic animals. Grape Ape was the only post-1962 character in the line-up. With this team, the challenge wasn’t finding members for it, but narrowing the choices down to just a few!

TEAM ROSTER:

  • Yogi Bear (captain)
  • Boo-Boo Bear
  • Cindy Bear
  • Huckleberry Hound
  • Mr. Jinks
  • Pixie
  • Dixie
  • Wally Gator
  • Quick Draw McGraw (no Baba Looey)
  • Hokey Wolf (no Ding-a-Ling)
  • Snooper
  • Blabber
  • Augie Doggy
  • Doggy Daddy
  • Yakky Doodle
  • Grape Ape

“Oh sure, name your frelling team after one of us but don’t even ask us to be on it! No royalty check, nothin’! We couldn’t even get jobs as water boys! Yeah, that’s fair!”

“You folks are probably wondering why your old pal Beegle Beagle didn’t make it to the Yahooeys team. Well, it turns out I was blacklisted by the Laff-A-Lympics Ethics committee. Geez, you offhandedly mention that you know a guy who can hook your team up with some Happy Win-Time Go-Go Juice injections, and suddenly you’re banned for life!”

“So let me get this straight: the Scooby Doobies had a magic user. The Really Rottens had a magic user. I’m a 60’s era H-B character who’s a magic user, and I don’t get so much as a phone call? What the what?!”

THE SCOOBY DOOBIES

Much like how the Yogis team represented 50’s-60’s era H-B, the Scooby Doobies team had a heavy 1970’s vibe to them. (They were the ‘modern era’ team at the time.) This team drew mainly from the 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoons, particularly the “mystery-solving/crime busting” series derived from Scooby-Doo, whose titular character served as team captain.

TEAM ROSTER:

  • Scooby-Doo (captain)
  • Norville “Shaggy” Rogers
  • Scooby-Dum (Why? I don’t know)
  • Dynomutt
  • Blue Falcon
  • Captain Caveman
  • Brenda Chance
  • Taffy Dare
  • Dee Dee Skies
  • Babu (from Jeannie)
  • Hong Kong Phooey
  • Speed Buggy
  • Tinker

*Rumor has it that Mark and Debbie from Speed Buggy had fled to get busy in a love nest in Tijuana at the time.

BTW, take a gander at the original lineup for the Scoobies.

Yes, that’s right: the early production art for the series showed Jeannie from the Jeannie series and Melody, Alexander, Alexandra, and Sebastian the Cat from the Josie and the Pussycats series as members of the Scooby Doobies team, but legal problems with Columbia Pictures Television, Screen Gems’ successor, prevented it. Babu from Jeannie made the final cut, as he was an original creation of Hanna-Barbera, but Columbia controlled all rights to Jeannie’s image. As a result, Babu appeared alone as a member of the Scooby Doobies. Likewise, Archie Comics held rights to the Josie characters. In the actual series, Jeannie was replaced by Hong Kong Phooey and the Josie characters were replaced by Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels.

“When we lawyers sink our teeth into something, there’s no letting go!”

“Shafted again, naturally…”

THE REALLY ROTTENS (Boo! Hiss!)

No prizes for guessing, This team is composed of villainous characters. With the exception of Mumbly and the Dalton Brothers, all of the members are original characters, many of whom are based on various characters that appeared in cartoons and comics prior to Laff-A-Lympics. Originally, Muttley and Dick Dastardly were planned as the leaders of the Really Rottens; however, they could not appear on the show due to those characters being co-owned by Heatter-Quigley Productions. In their place, Hanna-Barbera used the existing character Mumbly and created the new character Dread Baron.

“What did I just tell you??”

Prior to Laff-A-Lympics, Mumbly was a heroic detective rather than a villain on his original show. (Turns out he was another cop gone corrupt, just like in Serpico.) Following the character’s revision as the villainous team leader, he remained a villain in Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose, which was also Dread Baron’s only other role. The Dalton Brothers appeared in 1950s and 1960s shorts (including the 1958 short Sheriff Huckleberry Hound, which featured appearances by Dinky, Dirty, and Dastardly Dalton, as well as their other brothers Dangerous, Detestable, Desperate, and Despicable). However, they were given new character designs for the Laff-A-Lympics series. After Laff-A-Lympics, Dinky reappears in The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound with brothers Stinky (who bears a resemblance to Dastardly Dalton from Laff-A-Lympics), Finky, and Pinky. Mountain-sized Dinky (get it?) was the only mainstay of the Dalton clan.

TEAM ROSTER:

  • Mumbly (captain)
  • Dread Baron (co-captain)
  • The Dalton Brothers (Dinky, Dirty and Dastardly)
  • The Creeply Family (Mr., Mrs. and Junior; loosely based on the Gruesomes from the Flintstones and the J. Mad Scientists from the H-B shorts)
  • Orful Octopus (aka Octo, the Creeplys’ pet)
  • The Great Fondue (villainous magician who seemed to be incapable of performing magic with any sort of accuracy; Similar to Abner K. Dabra from the 1963 book, Yogi Bear and the Cranky Magician)
  • Magic Rabbit (Fondue’s pet, dialogue limited to “Brack!” Bears a resemblance to the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland (or What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?)
  • Daisy Mayhem (or as Goldstar likes to refer to her “Boner Launcher”; mean-spirited hillbilly gal with split ends, Daisy Dukes and bare feet, who bears a resemblance to the Li’l Abner character Moonbeam McSwine)
  • Sooey Pig (Daisy’s pet pig. You can tell he’s rotten because he wears sneakers and an eye patch!)

“What? You recruited a bunch of newbies and doppelgangers instead of me? You could’ve just hired me and all the bad guys from ‘Yogi’s Gang’. There’s your Rottens team right there!”

“I didn’t get a call either? What’s the deal? Just yesterday I was in the park feeding the pigeons…to some alley cats! I’m totally rotten up here!”

Trivia Time:

  • In one season 2 episode, Mumbly is referred to throughout as Muttley.
  • Hong Kong Phooey was originally set to be an official (i.e., referee), but he was added to the Scooby Doobies team roster at the least minute to replace Jeannie (see above).
  • Dick Dastardly and Muttley appear in issue #13 of the Laff-A-Lympics comic book series, “No Laff-A-Lympics Today!”. In the book, Dread is revealed to be Dick Dastardly’s twin brother.
  • In the Latin American dub of Laff-A-Lympics, Dread Baron and Mumbly are called Dick Dastardly and Muttley.

Each episode was presented in a format similar to an Olympic television broadcast, with announcing/voice-over duties handled by an unnamed/unseen Announcer character (see also Wacky Races, Yogi’s Space Race and Fender Bender 500). Hosting duties and commentary were provided by Snagglepuss and Mildew Wolf from the It’s the Wolf! segments of Cattanooga Cats (though unlike It’s the Wolf!, Mildew was not voiced by Paul Lynde; he was here voiced by John Stephenson). Apparently, Lynde had a reputation of being difficult to work with, so HB opted to go with a sound-alike rather than contend with the real deal.

I guess H-B considered Mr. Lynde to be kind of a silly savage.

Also, since the show was airing on ABC, Snagglepuss and Mildew wore the then-traditional yellow jackets of ABC Sports announcers.

Laff-A-Lympics ran for 16 episodes in it’s first season (1977-78) and an additional 8 episodes for its’ second season (1978-79). The series kind of fizzled after that; probably because it was the same basic formula repeated again and again, and also, let’s face it: the show lacked the ‘jiggle factor’ that permeated throughout the series that inspired it, Battle of the Network Stars. Let’s address the elephant in the room…

 These guys don’t have much to offer in the wet T-shirt department.

Cartoon Country: Teen Force in “Word Star”

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Today’s Cartoon Country is about the Teen Force.

Number 1 in tha hood, G!

Number 1 in tha hood, G!

-Ah, no. That’s the Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Not surprised about the confusion, though; every time I’ve searched for this topic on the interwebz, these guys have come up.

No, the subject of today’s Cartoon Country are in fact the Teen Force, one of the regular segments from Hanna-Barbera’s Space Stars (1981-1982), one of the many, many attempts by the Alphabet Networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) to bring Star Wars to Saturday morning in the late 70’s through early 80’s.

In space, no one can hear you smell like Teen Spirit.

In space, no one can hear you smell like Teen Spirit.

You might have encountered these shorts on Boomerang, or rather you could if they were still showing old HB toons from the Turner/Time-Warner vault and not just spamming us with episodes of Teen Titans GO! and The Amazing World of Gumball, neither of which belong there and are already airing first-run on Cartoon Network.

'BOOOOMERAAAAANNNGG!

‘BOOOOMERAAAAANNNGG!”

Teen Force focused on three superhuman young teenagers who hail from an unknown alternate universe which is located beyond the confines of the mysterious Black Hole X, which serves as a gateway into the universe in which the other main characters from Space Stars exist. Each episode would typically begin and end with our titular teen team jetting in and out of Black Hole X on their souped up space scooters.

Cool bikes, huh??

Cool bikes, huh??

One thing I never got: how the heck were they able to go in and out of a black hole as if it were just a screen door?

“Perhaps Black Hole X is not in actuality a black hole at all, but rather a rare space anomaly knows as a WHITE HOLE, a reverse black hole which returns time and matter back into the universe, or maybe it’s a WORMHOLE, an inter-dimensional gateway between vast distances in space, enabling travelers to traverse intergalactic distances in mere moments.”

“Magic. Got it.”

The Teen Force consists of:

Kid Comet, who possesses tremendous levels of superhuman speed, enabling him move at speeds exceeding the speed of light, and can even move quickly enough to travel through time. Zoom-zoom. Also, he occasionally dated Space Ghost’s sidekick and twin sister of Jace, Jan.

BOM-CHICKA-WOW-WOW!

BOM-CHICKA-WOW-WOW!

Moleculad, who can control his molecular structure for various effects. I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to this guy. When I was a kid, I thought Moleculad was lame because I originally though all he could do was transform into a mass of random molecules, Big Whoop, but after re-watching some of these shorts, I realized he could do other things, like in one instance he rearranged his molecules to morph himself into a lookalike of Elektra and in the episode we’ll be discussing here, he rearranges the molecules of a common rock to resemble a precious stone. So sorry for calling you wack earlier, guy.

And Elektra, who possesses the psionic disciplines of telepathy, telekenesis, and teleportation.

“Copycat!”

Accompanying them are a pair of diminutive blue-skinned aliens named Plutem and Glax, also known as the Astromites. TRIVIA TIME: Glax and Plutem’s bleep-bloop-blip dialogue was provided by Police Academy‘s Michael Winslow.

What exactly, were these 2, anyway? They looked roughly humanoid, rode ther own cycles and wore clothes, yet they didn't talk, had no powers and were often lumped alongside Blip, Gloop, Gleep and the other pets on the show. Were they sapient beings, the Teen Force's pets, or what?

What exactly, were these 2, anyway? They looked roughly humanoid, rode ther own cycles and wore clothes, yet they didn’t talk, had no powers and were often lumped alongside Blip, Gloop, Gleep and the other pets on the show. Were they sapient beings, the Teen Force’s pets, or what?

“They were wannabes, that’s what they were. Yours truly is the Cadillac of goofy comic relief sidekicks!”

Their principal enemy in the series is Uglor, a mutant native and tyrannical ruler of the planet Uris (whose inhabitants are a race of evolved simians) in Galaxy Q-2. Uglor’s mutancy granted him bird-like wings and the ability to generate destructive energy blasts from his bionic eyes, which allowed him to see through Space Ghost’s Inviso Power and Elektra’s telepathic illusions.

Even by mutant alien ape standards, this guy was no looker.

Even by mutant alien ape standards, this guy was no looker.

The episode of Teen Force we’ll be examining today is the short “Word Star”. (No, that’s not something from The Electric Company.) I’d like to show you the short itself, but unfortunately it’s not currently available for viewing. It was on YouTube for a time, but during the time I was researching for this article, it got taken down from there.

“YOOOOU TUUUUUUBE!”

“Word Star” followed a fairly typical formula: Uglor discovers the existence of the Word Star, an all-powerful McGuffin which enables anyone who possesses it basically do anything, and naturally he wants to get his grimy monkey paws on it. The Teen Force naturally intervene to stop that from happening. After some back-and-forth (including Moleculad slipping Uggs a fake by shifting the molecules of an ordinary rock–that nifty trick I listed above), the Teens succeed in snagging the Word Star away from Ol’ Ugly. Then they do the same thing that so many heroes have done in so many other shows: when faced with the prospect of ridding the universe of Uglor once and for all, say by blasting him to his component atoms or shrinking him down to the size of a bug and going clog-dancing or sucking him into an empty beer can and sealing it shut, they opt not to do it, on the grounds that, say it with me now: “If we did that, we’d be no better than him.”

Gag me with a space spoon!

Gag me with a space spoon!

Yeah, yeah, I know heroes have to walk a fine line, that they have to set a good example for the kiddos at home and all that good stuff, but I get so tired of that cliche. Maybe it’s me, but I would’ve rather seen it end this way:

“If you use the Word Star to vanquish your foes, young ones, you’ll be no better than Uglor.”

“Works for us!”

“We’re awesome. Now who wants monkey brains?”

-END OF EPISODE-

-Hey, a fella can dream, can’t he?

Talkin’ Nerdy: The Hanna-Barbera Zoo’s Big Three

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Hey, I’ve noticed something about Hanna-Barbera’s roster of 1960’s ‘funny animal’ characters (hereinafter referred to as the Hanna-Barbera Zoo): Nearly all of them seemed be derived from 1 or more of the same 3 basic archetypes. You have your Big Three of:

Huckleberry Hound

Yogi Bear

Quick_Draw_McGraw

…And Quick Draw McGraw.

…And then you have the others.

Hey, kids. Did you spot Waldo?

It’s no secret by now that HB liked to repeat successful formulas, and so I theorize that just about all of HB’s 1960’s output is in some way a derivation of one of those characters’ shorts. They’re either about an animal who appears in a different setting/occupation each time, an animal in a recognizable human sanctuary like a park or a zoo where they make trouble for some human shmuck in charge of them or an animal hero crime fighter who does battle with wacky criminals and is often aided by another animal with the opposite personality who acts as their sidekick.

Now when I first proposed this theory on a message board, someone hit me with this:

“That’s not true! What about Snagglepuss?! He’s not like any of them! He’s the Shakespearean actor of Hanna-Barbera!”

To which I say:

“IRRELEVANT!”

That’s not my point. Like, at all. I’m not talking about individual cast members, personalities or character shticks. Geez, even H-B’s characters aren’t that autonomous. I’m referring specifically to the tones and structures of the shorts themselves. Many of them can be traced to either Huck, Yogi or Quick Draw. Some examples:

  • The aforementioned Snagglepuss is a Huckleberry Hound archetype: a funny animal who appears in a number of various settings in each short doing his usual shtick each time, regardless of how incongruous.
  • Wally Gator is Yogi Bear in a zoo.
  • Ricochet Rabbit is Quick Draw McGraw except here the smaller animal is the leader and the taller one is the sidekick. Also, the leader here is competent and the sidekick dim-witted rather than the reverse like on Quick Draw.
  • Touche Turtle is Quick-Draw in a French period setting.
  • Squiddly Diddly is Yogi Bear in an aquarium.
  • Hokey Wolf is kind of a Yogi/Huck hybrid: a canny taller animal and his short sidekick who scam humans, but in a different setting each time.
  • Breezly and Sneezly are Yogi and Boo-Boo in the Arctic.
  • Magilla Gorilla is Yogi Bear in a pet shop.
  • Snooper and Blabber are Quick Draw and Baba Looey as cat and mouse detectives.
  • Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har are basically a luckless Hokey Wolf and Ding-a-Ling, who as previously stated carry traits of both Huck and Yogi.

-Of course, not every HB funny animal toon falls into 1 of these boxes. Pixie & Dixie is a TV version of Tom & Jerry, but with the main characters able to speak and with limited animation. Loopy DeLoop is a character fighting against his stereotype, in this case a do-good wolf trying to undo the myth that all wolves are evil. Winsome Witch follows a similar formula, only with a witch. Yakky Doodle can be traced back to Tom & Jerry, with a recurring character similar to the titular star and the formula of a small animal being protected from a wily predator by a tough animal with a heart of gold who has no reservations about beating the predator’s brains in (see also It’s the Wolf!). Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy likewise have roots in Tom & Jerry; they’re somewhat more anthropomorphic versions of Spike & Tyke. The Hillbilly Bears are a family of, well, hillbilly bears. (Incidentally, Ma and Pa Rugg were voiced by Jean VanderPyl and Henry Corden respectively, who’d go on to voice Wilma and Fred Flintstone.) Ruff & Reddy was a takeoff of multi-part adventure serials. Yippy, Yappy and Yahooey were 3 hyperactive canine royal guards who shouted their names and crashed into stuff. Dumas is back and we’ve got him!

So while there are exceptions, it’s no secret who had the stroke in the Hanna-Barbera Zoo.

“You heard the man. You jobbers, second-stringers and ham-and-eggers better pay yer respects. WE’RE the top dogs in this pound, an’ doooooon’t you ferget it!”

TV Special Tonight!: Yogi’s First Christmas

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It’s December, and that means that it’s time to settle in front of the boob tube and be bombarded with the usual array of unrelenting Christmas themed TV specials. All of the classics that you know and love that the networks run every year. So to mark this occasion, today we’re going to focus on a Christmas special that ran for a couple of years in syndication and was then largely forgotten: a slice of 1980s cheese titled Yogi’s First Christmas.

Holiday cheer…we’re full of it!

Yogi’s First Christmas is a 1980 holiday-themed television film first aired on November 21, 1980, and produced by Hanna-Barbera. Throughout the 1980s it was offered to U.S. television networks broken up as a one-week strip syndicated program, generally showing the week of Christmas, one episode per day for four days, although I originally saw it in it’s full 2 hour version, again in syndication. Not to be confused with Casper’s First Christmas, which is a half hour H-B special that aired on NBC in 1979.

Wait…Casper and Hairy Scary have never heard of Christmas? When did these guys die, anyway? Yeah, they’re ghosts, but they’re not aliens. They should at least know of the holiday, even if they don’t celebrate it. OK, I’ll save that kind of nitpicking for Talkin’ Nerdy. Back to the show…

We begin with Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Augie Doggie and Doggy Daddy traveling in a snowmobile while singing the song “Comin’ Up Christmastime”(which is one of 2 songs that were previously performed on Casper’s First Christmas). They’re on their way to Jellystone Lodge (why not?) to celebrate the holiday. Yogi and Boo-Boo are usually hibernating during the Christmas season, even though both characters were wide awake to celebrate the holidays in Casper’s First Christmas just a year earlier. Contradict yourselves much? It’s probably best to just consider these H-B specials as each being in their own separate continuity, like the Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z movies. Anyway, Yogi and Boo-Boo are soon awakened by the rest of the gang, which also includes Ranger Smith, hotel manager Mr. Dingwell and Otto the chef. The gang is obsessed with keeping the lodge’s owner, one Sophie Throckmorton, happy so that she won’t close down the lodge, which has become unpopular due to activity caused by Herman the Hermit, a grumpy Christmas-hating hermit who just wants to be left alone, that is when he isn’t prospectin’ fer gold and shooing revenuers off’n his property. Mrs. Throckmorton has arrived to the lodge with her nephew Snively, a rotten brat with a voice that sounds like he’s been gargling with gravel. Seriously, who names their kid Snively? Unless his parents want him to become a horse opera villain. Snively perpetually has his shorts in a bunch because he hates all things associated with Christmas. Yeah, you get the week off from school and a pile of toys for doing nothing. Christmas sucks if you’re a kid.

Snively: Look at me! I wear long pants indoors but change into shorts when I go out in the snow because I make no sense!

Yogi and Boo Boo are put to work as employees of the lodge. Yogi is first ordered to operate the snowplow, to which he saves Mrs. Throckmorton on the road from an avalanche caused by Herman. Later, Yogi is working as a bellboy, where he is tasked by Ranger Smith to stay on Mrs. Throckmorton’s good side. Though Snively tries to embarrass Yogi with his pranks, Yogi comes out on top.

Also, during a lodge scene, Boo-Boo sings the “Hope” song, which was previously used in A Christmas Story. No, not the movie starring Peter Billingsley, but a 1972 animated special with the same title.

7d-sleepy

“Wow. And they say I’m lazy!”

In another attempt to degrade Yogi, Snively tricks him into entering a figure skating contest, which Snively is also a participant. Although Snively earns high marks, Mrs. Throckmorton covertly wishes Snively would lose in order to tame his poor attitude. Yogi, the last contestant, manages to impress the judges well enough to earn the highest marks and win. Snively is a sore loser and enraged that Yogi beat him at his own game, but his aunt Sophie says that Yogi won fair and square and losing is a lesson of life. Fed up with Snively’s antics, Yogi gets revenge on him during an ice fishing contest, with Mrs. Throckmorton agreeing that he needed to be taught a lesson. Furious, Snively runs away and meets up with Herman, and the two team up to ruin Christmas, when they proceed to sing a song about how they’re “mean, sour, nasty and cruel”, a song that would later be re-used, rewritten slightly and sung by Gargamel in an episode of Smurfs.

Snively: Yeah! Let’s go ruin Christmas!
Herman: Hang on a sec. There’s a tick in my beard and I wanna save that bad boy fer desert!

Cindy Bear also awakens from her hibernation, to help Yogi out (due to her love and concern for him). There’s a running joke within the special of Cindy trying to get Yogi under the mistletoe so that she can give him a smooch. She explains her desire to Boo-Boo and then…this happens.

Ah, there’s a little something for the furries.

Yogi's First Christmas - Cindy Bear

BOM-CHIKKA-WOW-WOW!
 
That bit almost cost them their G rating. Is this a Christmas special or Showgirls? If Cindy starts doing a striptease, I’m leaving.
Back to the plot.  The tag team of Herman the Hermit and Snively set out to ruin Christmas, but Yogi, through a combination of wit and dumb luck, thwarts them every time. Back at the lodge, Mrs. Throckmorton forbids her nephew Snively from attending the gang’s tree trimming party (Gee, I wonder why). Snively is distraught. (Am I supposed to be feeling sorry for this little snot right now? ‘Cause I don’t. Montana Max is cuddlier than this kid!) But instead of Snively getting the ass whuppin’ that he’s been asking for since this thing started, he instead is invited by Herman to join him outside of the lodge in the freezing cold for some vittles and roadkill (Now that’s good eatin’!).
Meanwhile, The gang is celebrating their tree trimming party where they sing “Making A Big To-Do”, the other song that was re-used from Casper’s First Christmas. You gotta love Hanna Barbera; those guys were recycling before it was fashionable.
Yogi dresses up in a Santa Claus suit and plans to surprise the lodge guests, but his plans take a surprising turn when the real Santa shows up and makes the scene before Yogi does.

“Yeah, I can’t believe I showed up for this thing either!”

Hands up. Who saw that coming?
Yogi, Santa and company spot Herman and Snively freezing outside, but instead of throwing rotten fruit at them, they instead invite the 2 of them inside to celebrate Christmas, where both of them have a profound change of heart and spirit. Santa even gives Herman a present. So, Herman has hated Christmas with a burning passion for years, possibly decades, and he changes his tune almost instantly?
“Can you say ‘plot contrivance’, boys and girls? I knew that  you could.”
 
Anyway, Herman would later re-join society and find some people with similar beleifs, and fashion sense.
Duck Dynasty
Oh, and Cindy gets her kiss from Yogi also, by the way.
BOM-CHIKKA-WOW-WOW!
 
Santa gives Yogi a basket full of food, however, Yogi has fallen asleep. Prompting Snively say “Good night, you ol’ fuzzball. You’re some terrific character.”

Shut up, Snively!

Santa then says that Yogi and Boo Boo can have the basket when they wake up in the spring. With that, the partiers return Yogi, Boo Boo and Cindy to their caves for the rest of their hibernation. Shlock a doodle doo.
**********************************************************
So that’s Yogi’s First Christmas. It could have been better, but it could have been worse. if you want to check it out, it’s floating around on YouTube. The special is also available on DVD and VHS, although personally, I suggest renting it first. But what do others think?
“Yeah, listen, Teddy Ruxpin. Stick to swiping picnic baskets and leave the “holly-jolly” stuff to the experts! Me and Rudolph, we are Christmas! Represent!”