TVSquad

It looks like the guys at Giant magazine's web site are at it again, trolling YouTube for videos that you may not have thought of. This time, they've dug up ten intros to Hanna-Barbera shows, in tribute to Joe Barbera, who passed away a couple of days ago. Among the selections are the wonderfully un-PC intro to Hong Kong Phooey (I guess it was OK for Scatman Crothers to sing "ching chong" back in the seventies... Rosie O'Donnell was born in the wrong time, I guess), and intros to The Herculoids, the "so hip it's square" Flinstones Comedy Hour from '72 ("We'll have a groovy time!"), The Jetsons, and one of H-B's Scooby-Doo clones from the mid-'70s, Speed Buggy. There's also an intro from the live-action show Korg: 70,000 B.C.

Speaking of Scooby, the intro they post is from a late-'70s revival of the show, which included the then-new character of Scooby-Dum. But they kind of miss the boat on this one; that's maybe the third-best intro, behind the originial Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? and my personal favorite, the oh-so-cheesy Scooby-Doo Movies from 1972. Remember the episodes with the Harlem Globetrotters, Sandy Duncan, Batman and Robin, and Tim Conway? That was from this series. In order to refresh your memory, I've embedded the intro to that after the jump.

Sad news in the world of animation tonight: Joseph Barbera, half of the mega-successful animation team of Hanna-Barbera, died today of natural causes. He was 95.

As most people know, Barbera and his partner William Hanna were responsible for creating the most endearing cartoon characters of all time. From their first major creation, Tom and Jerry, they went on to create memorable characters like Yogi Bear, The Flinstones, The Jetsons, Huckleberry Hound, Scooby-Doo, and Jabberjaw (well, the last one was only memorable to me, I think). Hanna died in 2001, so this is the end of an era.

The AP obituary for Barbera mentioned that his strengths, according to Leonard Maltin, were comic gags and the ability to capture emotion with subtle drawing techniques (never thought HB cartoons were subtle, huh?), while Hanna was good at timing and conveying warmth. Say what you will about how they cheapened animation with their TV cartoons, especially the ones from the seventies; they've inspired many an animator in the last fifty-plus years.