“The House That Huck Built”

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Before The Simpsons , before Ren and Stimpy, before Beavis and Butt-Head, there was Huckleberry Hound.  A true blue canine with a flair for fantasy, Huck was the star of the first show to smash the barriers against television animation and emerge as a giant hit.  And who smashed those barriers for the sake of all future cartoonists?  Bill Hanna and Joe
Barbera.
Without their inspired efforts, a genuine American art form — cartoons – might have died a pathetic death.  Theatrical cartoons were over, the victim of economic forces.  Television was deemed too expensive to animate.  But then, a giant light bulb went off above Hanna and Barbera’s collective head.  Limited animation, it said! (Luckily, it was a
talking light bulb.)  Use fewer drawings!

And so The Huckleberry Hound  Show was born.  And Huck begat Pixie and Dixie who begat Yogi Bear who begat Boo Boo who begat Snagglepuss.  A classic cavalcade of characters all born from one show.

Buoyed by success, Hanna-Barbera proceeded to make America’s evening hours their personal empire with Quick Draw McGraw and Auggie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, The Hanna-Barbera Series  featuring Wally Gator and Touche Turtle, and The Magilla Gorilla Show.

And then the lodestone: The Flintstones, the world’s first prime-time cartoon sitcom, followed by The Jetsons, Top Cat, and the first cartoon show to feature realistic humans, The Adventures of Jonny Quest.

Expanding their empire to the realms of Saturday morning, Hanna-Barbera created instant favorites like Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines  and Scooby-Doo,  Where Are You ?

All in all, the body of work begat by Huckleberry Hound adds up to the largest video library in the world.  Hanna-Barbera boasts more than 3,500 half-hours of cartoon programming and more than 350 television series, specials and films.  And of course, now that Hanna-Barbera is sponsoring the biggest commitment to original programming in over
thirty years, with 48 new short cartoons debuting on The Cartoon Network, Huck’s legacy just keep’s on a-growin’.

Not bad for a slow-talkin’, Southern-drawlin’, calamity-bound blue hound.

“The House That Huck Built”
Essay #7 (of 15)
Original essay written by Bill Burnett, Creative Director, Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, 1993-1996