All tagged Hanna-Barbera
What has become of Saturday mornings is a travesty. In the 70s and 80s, watching Saturday morning cartoons was a ritual. You’d climb out of bed at the crack of dawn, grab a blanket, go to the kitchen and pour yourself a bowl of Fruity Pebbles or Cocoa Krispies, make your way to the living room, and ready yourself for a marathon of sitting in your pajamas and watching the world of Hanna-Barbera unfold before your eyes.
Saturday mornings used to be the most-eagerly anticipated time of a child’s week. Getting up early, pouring yourself a big old bowl of Fruity Pebbles or Trix, making a blanket fort, and watching your Saturday morning cartoons. It was sacred time for the kid to rejuvenate from their school week and get lost in the world of animated fun. Of the myriad options you could tune in to over three major networks, the most common names to come up in your cartoons’ credits were those of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, titans of the animated Saturday morning world. This article is a celebration of the best of these Kings of Cartoons and the multitude of shows they churned out over the span of five decades.
Every Christmas, the television fills up with a variety of holiday specials that help us get excited for the yuletide season. As a small child, I remember becoming giddy with Christmas anticipation when these television treats would air, with their promises of Santa Clause, presents, and stockings. Nowadays, all you have to do is turn on Freeform’s 25 Days of Christmas marathon and capture some of the most beloved of these made-for-TV specials (sometimes in frequent repetition). Much more readily accessible than Disney films in the 70s and 80s, (and available to anyone who owned a televisions set) many of them are musicals and began the early indoctrination of a young “me” into the world of musical theatre by providing stories with scores that were fully integrated with the plot, advancing the storyline and deepening our understanding of the characters. What is more, they often featured the talents of Broadway performers voicing and singing for many of the characters.
Today’s blog entry is a look back at some of the best examples of these holiday classics and the wonderful music that inhabited these Christmas specials.
