Remembering friends from my youth

A friend sent me a notice that it’s the anniversary of Tom & Jerry. I’m not sure why, maybe because my name is Tom, but I never really watched Tom & Jerry growing up. I was a big Hanna-Barbera fan and that was one of their first cartoons, created in 1940, but I was a big Hanna-Barbera fan of the 1960s cartoons like Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.

I’m wondering what makes a kid a fan of certain cartoons or cartoon studios. I’ve never been into Warner-Brothers cartoons or Disney. Not sure why, but most Hanna-Barbera stuff I loved and grew up with. I loved Fractured Fairy Tales, too. I had forgotten about them but a friend recently has been posting episodes on Facebook and it all came back to me. And I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle, which I think featured Fractured Fairy Tales and Sherman and Mr. Peabody, they were by Jay Ward Productions.

This is true: my earliest memory is me at age two or three, running around our Brooklyn apartment, with my mother chasing me, trying to get me into the bath and Huckleberry Hound was on the tv. The show was just coming on, I could hear the theme music in my head as I ran around trying to avoid bath time. That’s it above.

And the first character I can remember drawing is Fred Flintstone. I used to draw Fred daily I remember, from when I could first hold a pencil. So along with Huckleberry Hound, I loved The Flintstones and The Jetsons.

I loved Magilla Gorilla and Yogi Bear, Quickdraw McGraw, Wally Gator, Peter Potamus, Jinxie and Pixie and Dixie, Touché Turtle and Dum Dum, etc.

I remember Huckleberry and Magilla and Yogi and the others being on certain nights at about 7 or 7:30 pm on New York tv. They were reruns at the time and for instance, Huckleberry Hound was on Monday night and he had three parts – his own adventures, and Pixie and Dixie and Hokey Wolf, then Quickdraw McGraw might have been on Tuesday nights and he had his adventure and then showed Auggie Doggie and Doggie Daddy and Snooper and Blabber.

The Flintstones were on in prime time, so were the Jetsons and also Top Cat, I remember.

I remember watching the Wacky Races on Saturday mornings with one of my brothers. We would watch each week, cheering on our favorite character. I don’t think the show was on very long, maybe two years, but we watched the reruns over and over again.

Here’s a list of all the Hanna-Barbera shows.