The ant and the aardvark

[D'Snowth]

DePatie Freling made a LOT of crap in the 70's (who didn't? Worst decade of animation, I've been saying that for years)... Ant and the Aardvark is freakin' Disney's Beauty and the Beast compaired to the lame sitcom ripoffs they made in the era..

The Barkleys...

a crappy All in the Family ripoff

Baggy Pants and the Nitwits...

Charlie Chaplin ripoff added with pointless adventures of 2 Laugh in Characters that are somehow crime fighters

Houndcats...

Ripoff of Mission Impossible.

My brain farted just watching those intros.

 

[fuzzygobo]

The Oddball Couple, anyone?

 

[D'Snowth]

You know what's another pretty poor cartoon? Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. It's like Hanna-Barbera suddenly fell back a couple of decades in their animation technology and such for that show, the whole thing looks like it was animated for five dollars or something, the characters and settings look like something a kid would draw, the voices and dialogue sound muffled and tinny, and the writing was pretty bland. Certainly NOT Hanna-Barbera's usual standard, but then again, they seemed to do rather poorly in the 70s as well.

 

[Drtooth]

The Oddball Couple, anyone?

Yeah... I knew I forgot one.

You know what's another pretty poor cartoon? Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. It's like Hanna-Barbera suddenly fell back a couple of decades in their animation technology and such for that show, the whole thing looks like it was animated for five dollars or something, the characters and settings look like something a kid would draw, the voices and dialogue sound muffled and tinny, and the writing was pretty bland. Certainly NOT Hanna-Barbera's usual standard, but then again, they seemed to do rather poorly in the 70s as well.

It's completely unwatchable. I tried sitting through an episode and it was like the most watered down bullcrap attempt at being a knockoff of All in the Family. The "improvements" were that Archie had a neighbor even more racist and stereotypically conformist conservative than he was and fat Velma Dinkly as his sex crazed daughter... seriously... she wanted to wear a see through dress in the only episode I forced myself through.

Look, I'm a HUGE HB fan. But they made some HORRIBLE choices in the 70's (though I LOOOVE Hong Kong Phooey). But that and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids (no relation at all to the movie) are like 2 of the worst things they ever done. Even the horrid Yogi Bear movie doesn't even place in the worst things they've been associated with (Yo Yogi was far more an embarrassment... Snagglepuss as Dwayne Wayne from A Different World? Exit Stage ANYWHERE!)

I could go on and on about how detrimental to cartoons the 70's were. At least with the 80's and deregulation the toy commercial shows were better than Scooby-Doo knockoffs based on fads. I've seen a lot of "My generation is the bestest with cartoons" crap, but I'd refuse to take it from anyone who grew up on the 70's. Unless they're devoted Fat Albert fans. THAT was an awesome show.

 

[Oscarfan]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, no HB can irritate me more than Fangface.

 

[D'Snowth]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, no HB can irritate me more than Fangface.

Very well then...

*Cues The Banana Splits' theme song*

 

[fuzzygobo]

Very well then...

*Cues The Banana Splits' theme song*

Speaking of the 1970's cesspool Hanna-Barbera had become...
I think it's tragically ironic that during Tom and Jerry's heyday as theatrical cartoons they managed to pick up 7 Oscars for "Best Animated Short". Then during the sixties Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones get a chance to direct them, each producing some occassionally nice moments but nothing to write home about. Then in 1975 Bill and Joe get to handle Tom and Jerry again. These are THEIR characters, THEIR creations, THEIR babies, and they produce some of the most nauseating garbage ever! Tom and Jerry are now friends, and spend most of their time helping Cinderella find Prince Charming, rescuing a woolly mammoth, etc. etc. etc. PHEW!!!! I know Bill and Joe were under pressure to minimze or eliminate the violence, but it seems like they totally forgot what made Tom and Jerry so great. They were reduced to playing bit-part players in their own cartoons.

Then a few years later Filmation got a crack at them... UGH!!!!

 

[D'Snowth]

I don't mind the Chuck Jones Tom and Jerry cartoons so much, mainly because I'm quite a fan of his in general, however, I can't really bring myself to watch any of these DVD movies of them... I can tolerate the original theatrical movie from the 90s very well since I actually grew up with that movie (I know most people despise it, but again, I didn't know any better, so I like it), but these recent DVD movies seem like they're just thrown into completely random situations for really no reason whatsoever but to make a DVD movie off them. Like these Buddies movies we've been talking about, there's really no point for them either other than being cash cows... err... pups... whatever...

 

[fuzzygobo]

You know what D'Snowth, I'm a huge fan of Chuck Jones too. I think it's interesting the paths he and Freleng took when Warner Bros. shut down Termite Terrace in 1963.

Friz and his crew joined up with David DePatie and scored an Oscar with the Pink Panther's very first short (The Pink Phink, 1964) and coasted along okay for a few years, and well, we discussed earlier how DePatie-Freleng ended up.

Jones and his crew at MGM cruised with Tom and Jerry for a while and then won an Oscar with THEIR first effort (The Dot and The Line, 1965). But after 1967 Chuck got out of the Cartoon Short Rat Race to concentrate on making The Phantom Tollbooth (starring a post-Munster Butch Patrick), a few holiday specials, and the quality of his work never really suffered. I guess he knew when it was time to quit.

 

[Drtooth]

Speaking of the 1970's cesspool Hanna-Barbera had become...
I think it's tragically ironic that during Tom and Jerry's heyday as theatrical cartoons they managed to pick up 7 Oscars for "Best Animated Short". Then during the sixties Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones get a chance to direct them, each producing some occassionally nice moments but nothing to write home about. Then in 1975 Bill and Joe get to handle Tom and Jerry again. These are THEIR characters, THEIR creations, THEIR babies, and they produce some of the most nauseating garbage ever! Tom and Jerry are now friends, and spend most of their time helping Cinderella find Prince Charming, rescuing a woolly mammoth, etc. etc. etc. PHEW!!!! I know Bill and Joe were under pressure to minimze or eliminate the violence, but it seems like they totally forgot what made Tom and Jerry so great. They were reduced to playing bit-part players in their own cartoons.

Then a few years later Filmation got a crack at them... UGH!!!!

The scary thing is the Filmation Tom and Jerrys were at least closer to the source material than the HB ones would ever be. I'm not buying the whole idea that Filmation's the worst animation studio of all time... creativity choking, maybe... but that would describe at least half of all animation studios that make animation for television anyway. But I really think they were a bad fit for Tom and Jerry, and even worse, Droopy. But their Mighty Mouse cartoons were quite a lot of fun. I like them better than most of the classic ones (those lame ones where he just chases cats around).

No.. CAMBRIA is the worst studio. Just for unleashing Clutch Cargo on the world.

But the Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape/self ripoff of Muttley show Tom and Jerry shorts were awful and bland. Like I always say, if Tom and Jerry are friends, you know the cartoon's gonna suck. Sylvester and Tweety never stopped trying to kill each other, even when they were solving mysteries. I'm wondering if most of it was due to the idiotic regulations about violence in kid's shows that neutered the greatest zip chase team of all time (other than Road Runner and Wile E.). Remember, in that era, a super hero fight was a rock monster throwing a rock at another rock monster, or using a laser to drop stalactites in a circular cage shape. it wasn't until He-Man when someone actually threw a punch, for crying out loud.

Still, I saw Grape Ape a couple times. There's nothing that special about it either.