it's all coming back to me now

In the early summer of 2024, retro nostalgia network MeTV launched an offshoot channel called MeTV Toons. After featuring The Flintstones and The Jetsons in its regular evening line-up of shows from over sixty years ago, as well as an early morning block of familiar animated shorts from the vast Warner Brothers catalogue , the cable network decided to offer a separate channel that ran cartoons 24 hours a day. When MeTV Toons debuted, no cable system offered the channel. It was only available as an HD channel, requiring a special antenna. Or, you could see it via an internet-connected TV.

I am a frequent viewer of MeTV. One Saturday afternoon this past December, I was watching Greg and Marcia Brady argue over who was the better driver when the debate was interrupted by a glorious announcement. MeTV Toons was now available through Xfinity, my cable provider. I could have grabbed the remote control any faster! I immediately punched in the channel and — ta daaah! — there it was! MeTV Toons! Right there on my television! I am both proud and somewhat embarrassed to say that I haven't changed the channel in almost two months. In addition to the Bugs Bunny cartoons I had seen on MeTV's Saturday morning schedule, I was now afforded the likes of Underdog, Mighty Mouse, Speed Racer, Mr Magoo and a slew of others that I haven't seen since the days of riding a yellow school bus and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with my classmates at a long table in the basement of Watson T. Comly Elementary School. 

When I was a kid, my favorite cartoons were Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and the rest of the characters from the Hanna-Barbera Studios. Unlike Warner Brothers and MGM, the Hanna-Barbera Studios cartoon were not originally shown in movie theaters.. Following the success of Ruff and Reddy, a cat and dog team widely acknowledged as the very first Saturday morning cartoon show produced specifically for television, Hanna-Barbera's Huckleberry Hound Show premiered in 1958, featuring the easy-going blue hound dog and supplemental adventures starring Pixie & Dixie, Hokey Wolf and Yogi Bear. Yogi would prove so popular, he warranted his own show in 1961. I loved all of the Hanna-Barbera characters, but now, seeing them for the first time as an adult, I have noticed some strange and disturbing things within their seven-or-so minute run times.

First of all, all of these cartoons feature an awful lot of guns, dynamite and cigars. Yogi, Huck, Hokey Wolf, Quick Draw McGraw, a bunch of black-masked crooks, a variety of big-game hunters and gangs of mean and unshaven western outlaws all regularly get shot by a pistol or a rifle, only to suffer a gray face, wiry hair or the occasional holes in their torso that miraculously heal in the very next scene.

Where does this endless supply of wooden-crated dynamite come from? What reputable demolition company is happily doing business with talking animals and have no questions when delivering an order to a semi-circular hole cut into the baseboard of a house? And what would a bear, a dog, or a couple of mice need with such enormous quantities of dangerous explosives?

And smoking? Jeez! Cigars are rampant throughout the Hanna-Barbera universe. From shifty looking gangsters (you can tell they are gangsters because they all have five o'clock shadows, dress in double-breasted suits and smoke cigars), to celebrating expectant fathers, to even Wally Gator all take pride in their tobacco habits. Ranger Smith often relaxes with a fat stogie after finally breaking Yogi Bear of that nasty penchant for stealing picnic baskets. Lippy the Lion has had more that one "loaded" cigar blow up in his face. What sort of example was this setting for impressionable youngsters in the early 1960s? Yeah, my father smoked four packs of tar-laden Viceroys a day, but he wasn't a funny cartoon character. Well, he wasn't funny, anyway.

Oh, I have other questions, too. A lot of 'em. Huckleberry Hound regularly wears a bow tie, sometimes a straw hat, and nothing else. Yet, in one episode in which he was doing some barbecuing in the back yard (whose house it was... that's another question), he was wearing an apron. Why? So as not to splash steak juices all over his... bow tie? And — yes! — who does own the house where Huckleberry Hound lives? Yogi Bear lives in a cave in Jellystone Park. Snagglepuss also lives in a cave (oh, I'll get to Snagglepuss in a minute), but Huckleberry Hound apparently lives in a house. I suppose he can afford rent or a mortgage because he has held so many different jobs across his manty cartoon adventures. He's been a police officer, a cab driver, a circus performer, even an astronaut. Obviously, Huck is pulling down a pretty good salary, despite the fact that he cannot hold a steady job.  But, I digress....

Speaking of houses, who owns the house where Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks live? In the old Tom & Jerry cartoons (an early endeavor by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera), there was always a human in the house to berate poor Tom and turn a blind eye to that rotten little instigator Jerry. But in Pixie & Dixie cartoons, it looks as though Mr. Jinks has full run of the house. There is never a human present, unless, of course, we are only seeing the antics that go on while the homeowners are at work. I guess we are not privy to the clean-up and putting the home furnishings back in order before the owners of the house get home. That's a pretty daunting task for a cat with a bow tie and little-to-no motivation beyond "hating meeces to peeces!"

Even though I watched both cartoons back in their first run, Mrs. P (who joins me daily in watching cartoons) pointed out that Snagglepuss and Fred Flintstone have similar looking mailboxes and entrances to their homes. Which begs the question who is sending letters to a pink mountain lion (in a tie and cuffs) and a caveman? Are they getting utility bills? Advertising circulars? Unsolicited offers from realtors to buy their homes for top dollar? Can humans and large felines really survive in the same type of accommodations? For goodness sakes, Mr. Jinks owns a house — like a brick and mortar house!

On a totally different note, what happened to Yogi Bear between Season 1 and Season 2? His face changed. It's like a different character design. Early Yogi Bear had a mostly yellow face, while later versions show the "smarter than the average bear with the yellow solely coloring his snout. Even his tie was rumpled in earlier episodes. It straighten out and time progressed. Y'know, I'm not even going to address the fact that Ranger Smith held intelligent conversations with a talking bear, yet got angry when a misunderstanding led to that same bear following the beleaguered ranger to a hotel in Miami on his vacation. The talking bear wearing a tie and a hat was perfectly normal to a US National Park Ranger, but picnic basket stealing.... that pissed him off.

And one last thing... can gruff dogs really have a friendship with baby ducks?

Oh, I will continue to watch MeTV Toons. There are plenty of things that I like. Things that greatly outweigh these petty inconsistencies I have just mentioned. Like Pixie & Dixie and Yakky Doodle both have pretty catchy theme songs that I find myself humming them absentmindedly through the day. 

I didn't even bring up the puzzling fact that Quick Draw McGraw has a pet dog, but his best friend is a donkey.

"Pixie Dixie diddly-dum....." (There I go again!)

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