old cartoons

A little change today, instead of music I thought we would try some cartoons instead. Way back when I was a kid I loved watching Saturday morning cartoons on TV. I’ve frequently turned to the network stations on recent Saturdays and have not found anything that matches the fun I used to have. Searching YouTube for some of these old gems led to finding a few.
Back before my watching was the first made for TV cartoon: Crusader Rabbit.


Created by Jay Ward, who also was behind many others that I really liked, including Rocky and Bullwinkle and friends. This episode seems to have just about everyone, including Boris and the moon men:


Hanna Barbera created a lot of early cartoons. One I really liked was Ruff and Ready


Along with Yogi Bear and Deputy Dawg. Beany and Cecil the seasick sea serpent were also up there


We used to get tv stations out of New York, and as most big cities did, they employed local announcers to introduce the cartoons, and to stretch out We had Ray Heatherton as the Merry Mailman and Claude Kirchner as a ringmaster. There were also a few shows that were more live action, one I always watched was Andy’s Gang, with his gremlin pal Froggie. This was the standard lead in:


This was brought to you by Buster Brown shoes, filmed in Hollywood supposedly before a live audience, though some of the gags seem to be too involved for live tv. That’s why we named our brown dog Buster.


Let’s not forget Howdy Doody.


I think that was Bob Keeshan, who moved on to be Captain Kangaroo.

When I got older I moved to more sophisticated comedy, like the Soupy Sales show. Regulars on the show were Pookie and White Fang, along with other unseen cast members, always filed with corny jokes that kids found hilarious. Soupy always ended up with a pie in the face, which eventually resulted in a lot of celebrities coming on just to get the pie.


A lot of the show was spend conversing with his regular cast of puppets. You can tell this was live and the staff always seemed to have a good time.


So, what did you watch when you were a kid?