The Pogo Special Birthday Special - Part 1 of 3

[Drarack]

lol "porky will prolly commit himself a piece o suicide

[rockandroll4evermore]

Chuck Jones made everything "his" and not the original vision... Including Bugs Bunny and Daffy... and this.. I love Pogo, and this is way off the mark.

[doobiesmoke15]

@rockandroll4evermore He also messed up Tom&Jerry IMHO

[rockandroll4evermore]

@doobiesmoke15

I agree. It's interesting to note that Walt Kelly was one of the animators on the Disney "Alice in Wonderland" movie. Which is a sensational movie. That was Kelly's gold standard. So he knew plenty about animation.

[TPrower]

Having never actually read the comic, I can't really say whether this is a good or bad interpretation. Walt Kelly has every right to feel proud or disappointed in this, but personally, I like it, even if a lot of it is pretty nonsensical.

Octember?

Maypril?

[cossack207]

just glad this cartoon is up! thank you!

[kpadmirer]

All the characters have that Chuck Jones look about them.

[MWolfL]

They matched the voices with the characters perfectly in this. In fact the whole special is just about perfect, the only objection I have is the exact same as Walt Kelly's: Hepzibah's face was too human.

[ThePlunginater]

I love cartoons like this. The kind that stand on the thin line that seporate fiction and non-fiction.

[baryldrummer]

"Commit himself a piece of suicide." ??? Am I hearing that correctly? xD

[AirplaneRadio]

@baryldrummer Yeah, suicide wasn't a bad word then. It's not PC now in a cartoon. And also from looking at old cartoons neither is having guns or smoking cigars/cigarettes. If Pinocchio came out today, Disney surely wouldn't produce it.

[Marinemiketobe]

That hedgehog thing sounds like the squirrel from "Rocky and Bullwinkle."

[AirplaneRadio]

@Marinemiketobe That's because it is the same lady. Very good ear. It's June Foray and she still does voices to this day. She's like the queen of voice acting because I believe she's currently the most veteran alive today.

[BatSnakegirl]

I really need to find the original strips.

Bone has really inspired me to look for these things.

Apparently this was the very Pogo special that played a HUGE role in Jeff Smith's creation of Bone.

[TurbineDogSevenFour]

Churchy La Femme is wonderfully on model. Some of the other Chuck revisions yeah.  Not sure what that would've looked like if they had attempted Walt's really nice varying line weight inking. Probably better.

[doobiesmoke15]

Did Miss Mademaiselle start the Furry craze?

[Johnlindsey289]

@doobiesmoke15

Maybe but the root actually began with M'ress on Star Trek TAS then later with Animalympics and Thundercats

[YumRelish]

I'm not one of those dudes that go "If it's new, it sucks" but why can't there be more cartoons like this? Cartoons nowadays are either too randomly insane to be funny, or are more or less action adventures with cheezy characters. The only GOOD cartoon I can think of from today is Aqua teens ...

[WillScarlet16]

@sygo7g You said it.

Comic Strips used to have real art and decent storylines

Nowadays we get strips like "Pearls Before Swine," that just rant about other strips and seem almost proud of how badly drawn they are

[Ryoku75]

@WillScarlet16 Older stuff was usually done by professional cartoonists, now the papers run whatever they get and gets read. I've read PBS before and yes its ridiculous how nearly every strip just mocks itself.

[ThePlunginater]

@Ryoku75 I don't need to mock myself, other people do it for me. Isn't that nice?

[Ryoku75]

@ThePlunginater Thats irrelevant to what I was saying.

[ThePlunginater]

@Ryoku75 I'm a cartoonist too, ya know. I know all about the ridicule artist go through. Trust me.

[Ryoku75]

@ThePlunginater What does that have to do with what I was saying?

[ThePlunginater]

@WillScarlet16 Hey I like that strip. But I understand wear you're coming from. That is why I've constructed my own comic strip: Slap-Happy Saturdays! I think you'll like it. Look for it in the Bangore Daily.

[tdickensheets]

This only on TV. I not sure is on DVD.

[DubbleM900]

"Porcy'll probably commit hisself' a piece of suicide!"

I feel bad for laughing so hard at that...

[AirplaneRadio]

Ha, Pogo was not for kids. Anyone who reads the strip would know it would be way over most kids heads. It was like reading Doonesbury if it took place in the Appalachia mountains.

[Neville6000]

Says you.

[Marbles471]

I'd say there's plenty of smart writing around, but it's outnumbered by stuff that's just outrageous for its own sake. (Although I admit things like South Park somehow manage to be both at once, the problem is everyone wants to copy that kind of thing, so the result is that EVERYTHING'S like that.)

[pieislikesoawesome]

a kids cartoon and they talk about suicide?

[AarHan3]

Bun Rab's mentioned a holiday right up my alley: FAT TUESDAY! 8-) (4:47)

[corpclone]

4:18 guy fawkes day!

[Cloaytonem2]

adgibawha...SUICIDE????

wow, ya never hear that in TODAY'S cartoons...

[sowhatsupwithcancer]

Great style. I'm a little disappointed in some of the voices, but they NAILED Churchy. I don't think I've ever seen a comic character come to life so close to the way I imagined.

[zenspinner]

Oh, I remember this from when I was little, but I never saw it again! I can't wait to watch it all again. Anybody remember the laundry soap promotion where you got all the dolls? I have them all, somewhere. :)

[Gnillob802]

The figurines first came out in 1969 on Proctor & Gamble products including toothpaste (the Family size). I know because I literally ate all the toothpaste so I could collect them all. I doubt I have them anymore, but maybe somewhere. There was a second release to tie in to one of these specials.

[drcoxcentral]

Lucky, now that you said I want have Mam'selle doll now.

[boru25]

You see how simple this is yet it's way more entertaining than modern toons. What year did this come out?

[OgawaBurukku]

WOW, can you even say suicide in cartoons like this these days? That was excellent.

Porky is so much cuter here than in the few comics I've read. Pogo is Granny, though, haha

[Marbles471]

Don't forget---this is a special, not a series. Specials had way more lattitude back then than Saturday morning stuff, which was blanded down to the point of being ennui-inducing.  There's no way a series in the 60s or 70s would have talked about suicide.

(Also, Pogo was never specificaly designed for children.)

Nowadays, I'm having trouble thinking of taboos that haven't been broken in TV animation, but the shame is that there's almost zero craft to go along with the outrageousness.

[Johnlindsey289]

@Marbles471

Same logic for Batman TAS

[JagaimoLoco]

"He'll probably commit himself a piece of suicide."

Why can't all cartoons be as straightforward as these? At the expense of sounding 50 years older than I am, I want the old days back.

[moneymandate]

Walt Kelly rules

[telebob59]

Wonderful! I sought this out 'cause a teevy ad had Deck The Halls playing and reminded me of 'Boston Charlie.'Beauregard's rendition

(especially the 'polly wolly' part) was stuck in my memory banks for almost 40 years before hearing it again now. Interesting June Foray voice for Pogo-a bit like Woody Woodpecker's progeny with a Okefenokee accent. Love them swamp critturs!

[Latifkyo]

Thanks for posting this! I am such a huge fan of Pogo, good to see there are some that are fans as well.

[sonicsuks]

lol I can relate to the porkupine I can't understand any of them and when he heard Octember he just had to be the one showing how it was spelt like to say WTF

[steakdiaper]

who would've thought at the time that we'd some day have a president who talks like Pogo

[smokygarage]

As a real Pogo fan, I can't thank you enough for putting this on YouTube. Haven't seen this in almost forty years.

Albert rocks.

[bribabytt]

Pogo is my favorite all-time comic strip! I'm trying to collect all the paperbacks. Thanks so much for posting this! Was that June Foray voicing Pogo?

[MrUnidyne]

Yes, that was the one and only June Foray as the voice of Pogo Possum... and Mam'selle Hepzibah and Miz Weevil.

[MovieRatIan]

He sais it alright. Well, "a peice o' suicide" anyway

[kristell9]

In the 70s the Pogo paperbacks were worth their weight in gold. Before ebay, stuff like that was hard to find.

[rockdontrun]

We had possums at our shop and we caught one of them and I said "Don't kill it! Don't kill Pogo!" Nobody knew what the hell I was talking about. I asked two guys in their sixties if they remembered him, one said he kind of vaguely remembered him. So basically, I was the only one that knew who Pogo was and I'm one of the youngest people there. I don't get it.

But one thing I DIDN'T know was that this cartoon existed. Thanks for Posting this!

[drcoxcentral]

I wonder why he hasn't have a big legacy like Charlie Brown.

[Neville6000]

Not in enough papers these days, or ever since the 1960's, much like what's happened to the Phantom, Mandrake The Magician, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy-all are only seen overseas nowadays. Plus, Pogo stopped in 1973 when Kelly died.

[drcoxcentral]

Yeah it needs a reboot BIG TIME! I think in order to do the comics justice there needs to be a PG rated TV series.

[sega31098]

@Neville6000 No it did not end when he died. Pogo was continued by Kelly's own family for a few more years until they decided newspapers couldn't accommodate them anymore.

[charmy97]

jeff smith loves this

[eiremoonblossom]

Walt Kelly was dissapointed in this special, namely because of Chuck Jones making Miss Mademaiselle more human in appearance. There was also a Pogo movie, but since it was never released on anything it's very hard to find.

[evergreenanimations]

It was released on VHS.

[Marcus1428L]

"I Go Pogo" was released on Disney VHS in the early 80's. It can usually be found on eBay. I much prefer this one, though. Obviously because Walt Kelly was intimately involved and provided the voices for many of the characters, most notably Albert. And as you noted, he did *not* approve of Chuck Jones' redesign of Mamzelle Hepzibah. As I understand it, Jones made that change and a few others when Kelly had to leave LA to care for his dying wife.

[ThePlunginater]

@eiremoonblossom Don't worry, pal. Us die-hard fans ALWAYS find the hard to find stuff !

[swampalex]

@eiremoonblossom was there really a pogo film?

[erick0992]

the turtle is like condorito xD

[barulez]

AWESOME! CHUCK JONES ROCKS! Even he's gone over 5 or 6 years from now, his cartoons will go strong for many generations to come. GREAT VID!

[SIMPFANN]

Walt Kelly was a goddamn genius. That goes for Chuck Jones too.

[ecto123]

This is one of the best animated cartoons I've seen in years!

[CartoonFan56]

That's Chuck Jones doing the voice of Porkypine. Where did you find this?

[vrikey]

And that's Walt Kelly doing the voice of P.T. Bridgeport (the bear) at the very beginning!

I remember seeing this when it came out on TV, they also had the characters do a few commercials in the breaks.