Did not know until today that there was any such thing as a National Cereal Day, which was yesterday.
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog readily admit to having a soft spot for. . . Count Chocula and Frankenberry!
The cereal commercials from this writer's favorite Saturday morning television shows, especially any involving the Termite Terrace crew from Warner Brothers and the satirists of Jay Ward Productions, made a deep imprint upon his very soul, so it is fitting that a selection of ads from The Bugs Bunny Show featuring the WB cartoon characters, introduced by author and animation historian Jerry Beck, shall kick off today's post.
One of the exercises animation buffs do is to try to identify which studio produced the ads. This one for Corn Kix makes me think of John & Faith Hubley and their ultra-cool commercials for Storyboard Productions, Inc.
For comparison, here's a Maypo commercial produced by the Hubleys.
And, speaking of commercials that, as Marky Maypo did, sold lots of cereal. Kellogg's was a sponsor of Hanna-Barbera's Huckleberry Hound show.
Both print ads and commercials affiliated with Hanna-Barbera's subsequent hit, The Yogi Bear Show, sold lots and lots and lots of Kellogg's product.
The animated commercials for Kellogg's forced moms across America to get tough with their kids who persistently and annoyingly badgered their parents for the cereals they saw between Yakki Doodle, Pixie & Dixie and Augie Doggie cartoons. The booming voice of Thurl Ravenscroft as Tony the Tiger still makes me want that cereal - and I'm under doctor's orders to stay away from all variants of Frosted Flakes! And, if this commercial featuring Tony and a Little Leaguer is any indication, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes were the predecessors of steroids.
Characters from the Post cereal boxes for Alpha-Bits, Rice Krinkles and Sugar Crisp actually became recurring characters in the clever and enjoyable Linus The Lionhearted show, which featured voice characterizations by Sheldon Leonard, Carl Reiner, Ruth Buzzi, Jesse White, Paul Frees and more.
All I can think of seeing the Lucky Charms leprechaun is dubbing in "hey, there's that leprechaun - let's kick his butt! Little did we know, TV ads for sugary cereals eventually led to not just a lawsuit against General Mills, but at least one rock band named The Cereal Killers.
One of the funniest bumper stickers I've ever seen is one that said "let the rabbit have the Trix." Said Trix rabbit enters the following compendium of commercials at 4:05, after that irritating Lucky Charms leprechaun. Yes, all these decades later, "Trix are for kids" remains seared into the psyches of those who were watching Saturday morning TV in the 1960's. Following the Trix rabbit: Bullwinkle, accompanied by the way too wholesome Cheerios Kid, who we suspect was a p.e.d. user.
This blogger's favorite of all the studios that created cartoon series for TV, Jay Ward Productions, produced dozens of commercials for the Rocky & His Friends show. Small wonder, the sponsor was General Mills.
Jay Ward Productions went on to produce numerous Cap'n Crunch commercials, prominently featuring such ace voice artists as June Foray.
How could Quisp cereal not sell, with Daws Butler enthusiastically claiming "it's from outer space!"
As the 1960's ended and the 1970's began, bringing well-intentioned but humorless children's TV watchdogs, Saturday morning cartoons became more standardized and correspondingly both less imaginative and more oriented specifically towards children (and towards not offending the watchdog groups and parents), while the cereals themselves got even odder, such as King Vitaman. Don't remember a darn thing about King Vitaman cereal all these years later, but the commercials were fantastic!
While the Hanna-Barbera and Filmmation studios continued cranking out numerous cartoon shows for Saturday morning television through the 1970's and 1980's, the consistently inventive Jay Ward Productions, as well as the producers of Linus The Lionhearted, Ed Graham Productions, no longer made animated series for the small screen. After the very funny George Of The Jungle series in 1967, Jay Ward Productions made a few pilots which did not sell (Hawkear: Frontier Scout, Fang the Wonder Dog, Rah Rah Woozy), and then stuck to commercials. That was a loss to Saturday morning animation; the Jay Ward studio produced the funniest made-for-TV cartoons by far.
No comments:
Post a Comment