For my money, you can’t overestimate the pop culture footprint of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. From the heady fifties adventure of ‘Ruff & Reddy’ to the prime-time sitcom antics of ‘The Flintstones’ to the decades-long madness that is Scooby-Doo, the H-B line has some of the most endearing cartoon superstars ever. I’m particularly enamored of the Hanna-Barbera sixties adventure cartoons, which gave us Space Ghost, Jonny Quest, the lunacy that is The Impossibles and whatever the hell was going on with ‘Young Samson.’ I even love the time that the Globetrotters got super-powers, leading us to today’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) has a life-long love of Tom & Jerry, the shorts that started it all, especially the weird 60s Chuck Jones shorts, asking: What’s the BEST Hanna-Barbera production of them all?
3 Comments
I always liked Harvey Birdman.
Hanna-Barbera’s has a really mixed bag. Their best cartoons were in the 40’s through mid 60’s. The original Tom and Jerry series produced by MGM was fantastic.
I am more of a Warners Brothers fan, but of Hanna-Barbera’s animation, “Jonny Quest” was my favorite.
For my youthful nostalgia, it has to be Super Friends (& all the variant versions thereof.) But learning that they were responsible for Dexter’s Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls does make me question my objectivity.