Cartoon Hero Dies

Joe Barbera, the second half of Hanna-Barbera, died yesterday. His first cartoons, Tom and Jerry, won Academy Awards. And the last project he worked on was the Powerpuff Girls. That’s a pretty amazing run, particularly when you consider in between he either wrote or produced such cartoons as Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Scooby Doo, Captain Caveman, the Smufs (and their bastard cousins the Snorks), and a goodly portion of adult swim (Space Ghost).


It’s an impressive career. But most importantly, Hanna-Barbara made perhaps the second weirdest children show in TV history, the Banana Splits (number one is clearly HR Pufnstuf). The late 1960s and early 1970s was a glorious time for children’s programming, as networks decided to let obviously drug-addled crazy people simply animate their acid trips.* I think it was perhaps the world’s most effective antidrug campaigns. I’m never doing drugs on the off chance I end up getting attacked by the Banana Splits. Though the theme song was super catchy.

Who thought this was a good idea? What TV exec thought, “hey, the drug culture is really hip right now. Let’s expose it to six-year-olds!” I mean, the drug references in Scooby Doo were downright subtle in comparison. It’s really a shame these things aren’t on DVD. Or maybe it is a good thing.

But I’ll remember Jon Barbara by seeking out old Laff-A-Lympic episodes. I got my money on Grape Ape.

* Incidentally, this lead to one of my favorite comedy sketches of all time: “Drugachusettes” by Mr. Show with Bob and David. It really can’t be described, but it’s a brilliant parody of this era of truly insane TV shows. Especially when one of the characters has an overdose.