When Huck and Yogi Visited Elyria – June 1960

Another topic that I mention on this blog a lot is animated cartoons, especially my favorites as a kid: Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.

Did you know that Daws Butler, the voice actor behind those two cartoon stars and many more, had relatives in Elyria that he used to visit? And that one of his visits made the pages of the Chronicle-Telegram?

Read all about it in the nice article by Bill Klucas below that appeared in that paper on June 23, 1960 – 56 years ago today. It gets a few things wrong (it mistakenly confuses the meaning of the word ‘animator’ with that of a voice performer) but is still fascinating.

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Series Popular With Adults, Too
‘Voice' For Huckleberry Hound
Magnet To Elyria Kids In Visit
by BILL KLUCAS

“Better than the aver-a-a-a-age type bear!”

The familiar Yogi Bear twang rolls off the lips of Daws Butler, now a resident of Beverly Hills, chief animator of America’s most popular adult cartoon show.

Butler, visiting relatives in Elyria, was entertaining every kid in the neighborhood who could walk or crawl, including one tot in a wheelchair.

A former vaudeville performer, commercial writer, and radio announcer, the Toledo-born star is the voice for Huckleberry Hound, Mr. Jinks and, of course, Yogi Bear.

Butler’s voice is not only familiar to millions as the characters in Huckleberry Hound, but it also entertains the numerous small-fry fans of Quick Draw McGraw, Tom and Jerry and Ruff and Ready.

While working for MGM on the Tom and Jerry cartoon series, producers Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera approached him with the idea for the Ruff and Ready cartoon show. With the origination of the Huckleberry Hound series, he was hired for the animation.

His job does not stop with the animation of the cartoon, though. He helps edit the script and suggests new story angles to the writers.

Made Hit With Adults
Originally intended as a children’s cartoon series, Huckleberry Hound drew such an adult response that today much of the satire in the series is definitely planned. “It may be poking fun at some government official, popular world figure or just an incident which happened to one of the crew, but it is all in fun,” Butler said.

The 44 year-old father of four believes that Huckleberry and company may stick around for at least five years. “It could last as long as 10 years if fresh material is poured into the series.”

The series appeals to all ages. An island in the Pacific Ocean has been named after Huckleberry, Butler said. Recently the University of Seattle held a Huckleberry Hound Day and tapes of Huckleberry Hound stories were piped over loud speaker throughout the campus.

Children “Sophisticated”
The controversial point of excessive brutality in today’s children shows does not bother Butler. “Children today are more sophisticated. They realize that the characters in Huckleberry Hound are not real.”

The producers always keep a friendly battle going between the characters and despite the fact that Mr. Jinks may hit the two little “Meeses” with a broom, shove them off a cliff or drop them down an eavestrough, when the chips are down the cat will come to their aid. “If you are going to have a ‘heavy’ character in a series, it has to be a humorous type of ruffian.”

Butler’s biggest challenge, in his own opinion, is writing commercials. “It is a real challenge to tell a whole story in 20 seconds.” His commercial work includes the bouncing kangaroo in the Jif Peanut Butter Commercials.

The four Butler boys, David, 16; Donny, 13; Paul, 10; and Charles, 6, all have started in show business already. Charles recently completed the animation for a Disney produced feature, “The Little Fur Tree.”

Butler met his wife, Myrtis while in the Navy during World War II. A former North Carolina resident, Mrs. Butler was working for the special services bureau in Washington, C.C. when the couple met.

The Butler family was staying with Butler’s cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Don Kirkbride, 207 Princeton Ave.

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I was hoping to contact Jane Kirkbride, the cute little girl in the photo clutching a Huckleberry Hound doll, but sadly, the longtime Elyria resident passed away in October 2008.

Go Bucks! Go Huck! – Oct. 1959

Well, this is Homecoming Weekend 2019 at Ohio State University, my Alma Mater.

The tradition goes back to 1912, making this the 107th celebration. (You can read more about the history of it here.) There's plenty of activities in store besides the football game: a big Homecoming parade; a pep rally; the election of a king and queen; and the decoration of the dorms and the Greek houses around a Homecoming theme.

This year’s theme is “Back to the Future.” But do you know what it was back in 1959 – 60 years ago?

Huckleberry Hound!

That’s right, Huckleberry Hound – one of my all-time fave-o-rite cartoon characters. Huck's TV show had gone on the air in October 1958 and turned out to be as popular with adults – especially the college crowd – as it was with kids.

This article from the September 6, 1959 Des Moines Register examines his popularity on campus.

As the article noted, Huck was going to be the theme of Ohio State’s upcoming homecoming game.

And here’s the cover of the football program, and the page spotlighting the festivities featuring Huck. Looks like Pixie (one of the two “meeces” on the show, along with Dixie) got in on the act too.

And here’s a photo from the big event, taken from a WTVN-TV Columbus promotional flyer (courtesy of yowpyowp.blogspot.com.)

And just to refresh your memory, here’s the Huckleberry Hound TV show theme, which the Ohio State Marching Band no doubt played on the football field that day. (Note that Huck isn’t even in the sequence; instead, the Kellogg’s rooster does the honors.)

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Huckleberry Hound has been spotlighted on this blog a few times, including this post when Huck was featured in a Meyer Goldberg ad; this post, from when Daws Butler (Huck’s voice) visited Elyria in 1960; this post about our Kenner Super Show Projector; and this post which shows several Huckleberry Hound Halloween masks.

Some of my earliest memories of being a kid are of watching Huckleberry Hound after dinner in the house at 1604 W. 30th Street in the early 1960s. Happy memories of a carefree time. I guess that’s why I’m still a fan of the ol’ blue hound dog.

Meyer Goldberg Ad Featuring Huckleberry Hound

Portion of a October 3, 1962 Meyer Goldberg ad from the Lorain Journal

I saw this great ad on microfilm the other day at the library, and had to post part of it here. It's from October of 1962, and combines a great Lorain memory – Meyer Goldberg super markets – and one of my favorite cartoon characters: Huckleberry Hound! (Give it a click for a closer look.)

Longtime Lorainites fondly remember grocery shopping at Meyer Goldberg's. In 1962, the chain was still in its infancy, consisting of only two stores – one on South Broadway and one at Oakwood Plaza. (I'll do a proper treatment of the store in a future blog series.)

But getting back to our old pal Huck. The cartoon hound was created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and was their first major TV star. The Huckleberry Hound Show debuted in 1958 and was sponsored by Kellogg's cereals. It was the first cartoon to win an Emmy award.

In 1962, Huck was still enormously popular with adults as well as kids. Consequently, Kellogg's used him and Yogi Bear in promotional campaigns that played out on the backs of Kelloggs cereal boxes, national magazine ads and super market newspaper ads, as shown here.

Note that the Meyer Goldberg ad also has a strange little SOS circle logo to the right of Huck. SOS stood for Sabin Oral Sunday and referred to a campaign at that time which encouraged people to get their three doses of the Sabin oral polio vaccine. You can read more about it here.

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Huck and Yogi were pretty big in our house while I was growing up – we watched the cartoons regularly (I still do, on DVD) – so I can't resist posting this photo.

It's probably the oldest of all my personal possessions: a Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear ramp walker made by Marx©. According to this ramp walker website, it dates from 1962 – same as the above ad.

I've had this toy all my life and looking at it brings back a flood of happy childhood memories.

I'll wrap up this post with a look at the closing credits of the original Huckleberry Hound Show, where Huck and Cornelius the Rooster pick up all of the Kellogg's cereal characters (Snap, Crackle & Pop, Tony the Tiger, Tony Junior, Smaxey the Seal, and Sugar Pops Pete) in their jalopy.

Huck & Yogi Visit Hills – November 1966

Huckleberry Hound seems to be a recurring topic on this blog. I wrote about him appearing at the 1959 Ohio State Homecoming game just last month.

Well, that affable blue hound sure got around. This time, Huck and his co-star Yogi Bear were making an appearance at the Hills Department Store on Route 57. The ad above appeared in the Lorain Journal on November 10, 1966.

Although we shopped regularly at Hills, unfortunately I don't think we were there the same day Huck and Yogi were.  (We missed Alvin and the Chipmunks’ Hills visit too.)

But Hanna-Barbara’s promotional department must have had some kind of ongoing connection with Hills, because on another Saturday afternoon, I know we came home from the store with some H-B freebie stuff. I seem to recall a Punkin’ Puss hand puppet, as well as a 45 rpm record with a lame, "groovy" pop song about Yogi Bear.

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Ever since the original Huckleberry Hound series became a hit, Hanna-Barbara had costumed characters of Huck and Yogi making public appearances in support of the show (and the various toys and other items tied in with it).

An article in the Morning Call of February 27, 1960 noted, “Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear, in man-sized costumes, travel year around, from city to city, visiting stores. Each outfit cost $1,500 and new men are hired in each city to climb inside and play the TV animal heroes for the kids.”

Here are a few ads showing how the appearances were promoted in the newspapers.

This is an early one that apparently predated the preparation of good promotional artwork. Yogi’s got some severely dilated pupils in this ad that ran in the Boston Globe on August 23, 1959.

On the other hand, this ad (below) from the Oakland Tribune of October 30, 1959 has some excellent renderings of the duo. And they were giving away rings and sample packages of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and OK’s too!

Here’s a nice article about a personal appearance of the pair at the Los Angeles Sportsmen’s and Vacation Show. It ran in the Los Angeles Times on April 9, 1961. Yogi looks a little stubby, more like a bear cub than a full-sized bruin.

Here’s another ad from 1961. By this time, Yogi had eclipsed Huck as the star and had his own show. You can tell because he’s headlining the ad, and now Huckleberry is referred to as his pal. This ad ran in the Daily Oklahoman on July 28, 1961.

Here’s another ad (below) featuring the costumed versions of the characters. It ran in the Newport Daily News on August 8, 1964. Gee, with chowder and clam cakes being served, maybe they should have had Squiddly Diddly there too.

Lastly, here’s another Hills ad announcing a visit by Huckleberry & Yogi to a store in Pennsylvania only a few weeks before the Lorain gig. The ad ran in the Evening Standard in Uniontown, Pennsylvania on October 19, 1966.

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Wonder what the Huckleberry Hound costume looked like in color? You can see a couple of them on this early album cover.

By the way, we had one of those Huck Halloween masks!

Bank on Huck and Yogi – O'Neil's Christmas Ad 1960

Back in November 1960, the Emmy-award-winning The Huckleberry Hound Show was in its third season, and the marketing push associated with the popular Hanna-Barbera program was in full swing. 

Above you see that locally, even O'Neil's was in on the cartoon act. The highlight of the Christmas-themed ad for the store were plastic 'Juvenile Bubble Bath' figures in the shape of Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear. As the ad (which ran in the Journal on November 30, 1960) notes, the non-breakable plastic containers "convert to coin bank when super bubbly, bath crystals are gone."

(Yogi would leave his buddy Huck and star in his own TV show a mere two months after the ad appeared).

It's not too surprising that O'Neil's carried the plastic banks/bubble baths, which were manufactured by Knickerbocker. The company had been very aggressive in coming up with different ways to market the Hanna-Barbera characters. The O'Neil buyer may even have seen the trade ad below.

And the Lorain Journal did its bit to drum up interest in the character banks. The item below ran in the paper on September 21, 1960.

The banks were as unbreakable as advertised. Today they are fairly ubiquitous on eBay.

Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear (two of my all-time favorite cartoon characters) have appeared on this blog several times, with three posts devoted to Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park Camp-Resorts.

1959 Woolworth’s Halloween Ad

Well, Halloween is only a few days away – so I’d better start posting some of these seasonal ads.

First up is one for Woolworth’s, highlighting their selection of costumes for trick or treating. It ran in the Lorain Journal on October 21, 1959 (the year I was born) – 56 years ago this month.

Although the ad is from 1959, there are no TV characters in the costume line-up with the exception of Walt Disney’s Zorro. Otherwise it’s strictly big-screen cartoon characters (Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse and Casper), Walt Disney-licensed properties (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty) or generic monster types.

By the way, I don’t remember ever going trick or treating as a skeleton, devil or something scary. I was strictly the type to go as Huckleberry Hound, Woody Woodpecker, etc. (That probably says something about me, but it would take an analyst to figure it out.)

I did my usual internet scavenger hunt to compare photos of the actual costume with the artist’s renderings in the ad.

The Mickey Mouse costume was pretty easy to find.

Finding the Cinderella mask took the better part of my lunch yesterday (below).

On the other hand, it took less than a minute to find the Disney Zorro costume (courtesy of modernkiddo.com).

I managed to find an actual photo of a kid wearing the Bugs Bunny costume.

It sure beats this (ugh) modern monstrosity (below), where Bugs appearing to be gnawing on this kid’s noggin. What fun is that?

Lastly, I had a devil of a time trying to find this mask (below).

Yikes, that thing is too creepy for me, even as an adult. No wonder I went trick or treating as Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Donald Duck, etc.

Crazy About Crazy Horse

Back in the summer of 1965, my family hitched the Apache pop-up camping trailer to our Olds F-85 and headed Out West to South Dakota for our vacation. I wrote about it in a five-part blog series beginning here.

My siblings and me (wearing bolo tie) in a picture from that trip

We saw a lot on that Western trip, with Mt. Rushmore, Deadwood, the Badlands and the Corn Palace being the main places of interest. But Crazy Horse – the Lakota war chief who defeated Lt. Col. Custer and the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn – figured prominently in two attractions we saw. (That's why yesterday I mentioned that the movie Chief Crazy Horse was of interest to me.)

The first one was Crazy Horse Pageant at Hot Springs, South Dakota. Here's the ad that ran in the This Week in South Dakota's Black Hills and Badlands tourist weekly for July 11, 1965.

As described in the tourist book, "The Crazy Horse Pageant is different from any Indian pageant you've ever seen... any place. It tells the story of the great Sioux nation in both its finest hour and its darkest moment – and of its greatest leader, the visionary Crazy Horse, and it tells it from the viewpoint of the Sioux.

"The Sioux nation was the only military force ever to fight the U. S Army to a standstill. Military experts regarded the Sioux as "the finest light cavalry in the world" and Crazy Horse was the most skilled fighter of them all."

As for the pageant, the tourist book noted, "No effort has been spared to make the pageant as authentic as humanly possible.

"The setting is a natural amphitheater on the Fall River which is almost an exact miniature of the Little Big Horn.

"The Crazy Horse Pageant is a memorable and moving experience and there is no other like it in America. It is perhaps the happiest marriage of historical accuracy with high drama which had ever been done."

The other Crazy Horse attraction was, of course, the Memorial. We visited the studio of the sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, who envisioned and designed the world's largest mountain carving as a tribute to Crazy Horse. 

Here's our photo taken at the studio of a miniature version of what the sculpture will look like when finished. 

And here's the mountain itself, as it looked at that time.

There's been some progress in the intervening sixty years.

There's still a lonnnng way to go, though. One of my favorite books, The New Roadside America, humorously described it like this: "When complete, it will be bigger than the Sphinx! The head of his horse alone will be bigger than all of the white men on Rushmore. Completion due date? The middle of the twenty-third century."

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I suspect that Chief Crazy Horse's fame inspired the creation of the character Chief Crazy Coyote, who heckled and harassed Huckleberry Hound in several classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Here’s hoping you have a great Valentine’s Day, however you spend it.

If this was 1960, you might have been considering taking your honey to Brady’s Restaurant on Leavitt Road near W. 21st Street. (Today the restaurant’s former location is the empty lot between Burger King and Marco’s Pizza.)

Brady’s Restaurant will be revisited as a blog topic here very soon.

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Speaking of honey, while looking at vintage valentine cards online in preparation for this post, I stumbled over these two bee-autiful examples, both featuring bees.

Courtesy V. Desjardins

Although the puns used on both hardly left me buzzing with excitement, what caught my eye was that both of the winged & striped honey-makers were dead-ringers for the early version of our pal Billy Bee, advertising mascot for Billy Bee Honey, the favorite of our friends in the Great White North.

Billy Bee when he was just a baby bee

Billy Bee today

I did a whole post about the un-bee-lievable resemblance between Billy Bee and other bees used in advertising back here.

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Lastly, thinking of Valentine’s Day brought back some funny memories of how the holiday was observed in our first grade class at Masson Elementary School in Lorain.

Remember how we had to buy a box of valentines with enough cards that we could give one to every other kid (even those of the same sex) in the class, as well as the teacher?

Most of the pun-ny cards were pretty generic, but with charming illustrations.

There was usually a special one with a slightly more ‘mushy’ sentiment that you would give to someone you had a crush on. We also had to make and decorate a ‘mailbox’ to hold the valentines we received.

I don’t remember the valentines having any well-known cartoon characters on them like they do now. Later, Disney and Hanna-Barbara licensed their creations for use. 

I like these ones with Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.