10 Worst Hanna-Barbera shows

[Ccook50]

This December 14th will mark 50 years ago that Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera launched their first cartoon made specifically for television, Ruff & Reddy. In the 44 years to follow, they were the go-to guys for Saturday morning TV.

However, due to TV's insatiable appetite and the need to expand Saturday morning schedules, many of H-B's shows were stillborn, badness that if they didn't gestate from bad animation, it was from the concepts and stories alone. H-B had some good shows, and even some guilty pleasures while others were just not important or interesting enough to warrant. But here are ten Hanna-Barbera shows that I wouldn't set a TiVo for, in order of when they premiered:

1. Frankenstein Jr. & The Impossibles (1966). This derivation of Mary Shelley's literature monster-turned-superhero and three Beatle-esque crime fighters was so corny the only thing missing was butter and salt. Didn't help that it looked bad as well.
2. Where's Huddles? (1970). This was a primetime summer series on CBS, about two neighbors who play pro football. The comedy is completely inert and wastes the voice talent of Paul Lynde (as o-fay football-hating neighbor Claude Pertwee).
3. The Amazing Chan & The Chan Clan (1972). Charlie Chan as a single dad to ten kids and a rather clumsy catch phrase "Wham bam, we're in a jam." Beware especially of episodes animated by Eric Porter Studios in Australia (where H-B farmed out work at the time).
4. Goober & The Ghost Chasers (1973). Rightly described at Warner Bros.' page Saturday Morning Forever as "Scooby Don't." Not even H-B knew what breed of dog Goober was supposed to be.
5. Devlin (1974). I hate to rag on a show whose heart is in the right place (orphaned family of performing cyclists) but it is so badly animated and the backgrounds look like first-graders painted them.
6. Jabberjaw (1976). Think "Josie" meets "Jaws" meets "The Jetsons" with the shark channeling Curley Howard and Rodney Dangerfield. On second thought, don't even think about it.
7. Kwicky Koala (1981). The great Tex Avery died shortly after conceiving this series that H-B would produce. If Tex had lived to oversee this show, it wouldn't have become the tedious, pedantic mess it turned out to be.
8. The Dukes (1983). A cartoon of "The Dukes Of Hazzard." 'Nuff said.
9. Popeye & Son (1987). Elsie Segar must have been turning in his crypt over his creation being done to a turn like this. Conceptually wrong on all levels.
10. The Addams Family (1992). H-B had done an Addams Family cartoon in 1973, and they used the designs from Charles Addams' original Saturday Evening Post cartoons. Here the studio takes liberties with the designs then jams in every unfunny macabre joke they can think of.

So there it is. Hanna-Barbera had always been reviled by animation purists and TV critics, but there are some of us out there who accept them and will judge their shows on how well they entertain in spite of their production values. Still, when a bad show comes along, the fish (to quote Col. Flagg on M*A*S*H) stinks from the head down.