The Hanna-Barbera Pic-A-Nic Basket of Cartoon Classics.

Click here for my full Hanna-Barbera index.

Hanna-Barbera Pic-a-Nic Box

Anyone who knows me is aware of my music habit, and close readers of this blog will pick up on my affection for cartoon music in particular.

So it was extremely gratifying when my friend, Rhino Records founder Richard Foos, agreed to indulge me in the 1990’s with a (now out-of-print) four CD boxed set of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons themes, underscores, sound effects, and other audio ephemera and artifacts of our historic studio. It was compiled and produced with passion and knowledge by cartoon writer/producer Earl Kress.

I’ve posted about my worship and respect for the under appreciated HB music director and composer Hoyt Curtin but, a few years ago, I finally got around to scanning the great booklet Earl put together for the set. It not only includes a listing of all the sound in the box, but has great essays by Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera, David Burd, Bill Burnett, and Barry Hansen (Dr. Demento). Plus Marty Pekar conducted an interview about the studio’s unique sound effects library with Joe, Bill, Greg Watson, and Pat Foley. (As we get around to it, you can look at separate transcripts of the essays here.)

For a quick preview, here’s a Quick Draw McGraw track from the box set, composed, arranged and conducted by Hoyt:

Hoyt Curtain & The Hanna-Barbera Studio Big Band >Quick Draw McGraw (Underscore & Syndicated End Titles)

1994 Hanna-Barbera Calendar

Click here for my full Hanna-Barbera index.

1994 Hanna-Barbera Cartoons Calendar

1994 was our year to revive The Flintstones. Steven Spielberg was producing a live action movie, Cartoon Network had just launched and was featuring the series, and we had produced a laser disc set of the original episodes with John Kricfalusi and Earl Kress. We asked Drew Hodges and his Spot Design in New York to showcase The Flintstones with the quality we thought they deserved.
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From the credits page:
All the toys pictured in this calendar are from the collection of Justin Strauss. Justin has been collecting Flinstones and Hanna-Barbera memorabilia for 12 years. He lives in an apartment in New York City with his wife, two daughters, and a lot of shelves. Justin’s kids are not allowed to play with his toys but he does play with theirs.

Art Direction: Hanna-Barbera Creative Services,
Design: Spot Design, NY, Copy: Overnight Inspirations, Photography: Mark Hill,
Film/Printing: Digital Imaging of Southern California

TM and ©1993 Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc.
©1993 Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

1996 Hanna-Barbera Calendar

Click here for my full Hanna-Barbera index.

1996 Hanna-Barbera Cartoons Calendar

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From the credits page:
Calendar Production Staff

Creative Director: Bill Burnett
Art Director: Jesse Stagg
Designer: Tom Allain: Stimuli

Project Coordinators: Amy Mattingly, Ken Weisbrod
Executive assistant: Gina Lamar
Production: Lawrence Wilcox

Artwork: Alex Nino, Jennifer Yuh, Francisco Mora, Tom Allain
Colorists: Andrew Hinnebush, Al Gmuer, Steve Firchow, Marc Siry, Peter Steigerwald, Laurence Wilcox
Copy: Peter Lawrence
Printing: Kathleen Ryan at AGT/Gore Graphics

1995 Hanna-Barbera Cartoons Calendar

Click here for my full Hanna-Barbera index.

1995 Hanna-Barbera Cartoons Calendar

Call me crazy, but I’ve always loved calendars (heaven knows, I never actually use one). And when I got to Hanna-Barbera it seemed they would be a great way to communicate the studio was heralding a new future. Every year we focused on our most important creative and strategic initiatives, and brought a high quality design focus that had never really existed at the studio in the past. Great photography, illustration, and most of all great cartoons would let the world know we were back.

These calendars were distributed to studio employees, and a select list of colleagues, business partners, and friends of the company.

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From the introduction:

Hanna-Barbera Cartoons Calendar 1995

1995’s calendar celebrated Hanna-Barbera’s last era as a creative production studio and we’d spent the previous three years preparing. After rebuilding the production system from the ground up for the first time in 20 years, the studio started the ambitious What A Cartoon!/World Premiere Shorts project. Animators across the world were invited to pitch original characters for an original short cartoon completely, creatively supervised by the creator. It was our attempt to go “back to the future” and develop an environment that produced the great cartoon characters of the mid 20th Century. Thousands of storyboards later, we selected 48 shorts to produce and ended up with new classics like The Powerpuff Girls, Cow & Chicken, Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Dexter’s Laboratory. And solidified the future of the industry’s talent with stars including Genndy Tartakovsky, David Feiss, John Dilworth, and Craig McCraken. Cartoons would never be the same.

I wanted the calendar creative to be as exciting as our studio, so we selected a design style reflecting the revival of the modern rock posters inspired by Frank Kozik. The studio’s Creative Director, Bill Burnett, led his design team to real heights while highlighting twelve of the first shorts released.

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Credits:

Hanna-Barbera Cartoons Creative Director: Bill Burnett
Art Direction & Design by Jesse Stagg & Kelly Wheeler

TM and ©1994 Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc.
©1994 Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.