Damon Fordham Today, two types of people know anything about "Hoppity Hooper"-Cartoon historians and collectors, and sixties children who fondly remember this the first time around. I fall in the former category, being born the year it came out in 1964 (it left the air when I was 3, so I have no childhood memory of it). But I saw a good number of episodes recently on the "Giant 600 Cartoon" DVD.I liked what I saw. Essentially the younger brother of "Rocky and Bullwinkle," this Jay Ward production succeeded the more famous moose and squirrel after they were canceled in 1964. Hoppity is a boyish, Rocky-type frog who travels the country with a con man fox named "Uncle Waldo" (in the pilot, the crooked fox hides out from the cops at Hoppity's house by claiming to be the frog's long-lost uncle) and Waldo's dumb partner, a bear named Fillmore with a classic "duh" voice.Jay Ward and co. let their imaginations run wild on this one. Adult satire mixes with kiddie fantasy (when Fillore turns into a giant turnip, the frightened townspeople form a lynch mob and shouts "would you let your daughter marry a giant turnip?" Any adult recalling race relations in that era would get the joke). Another bonus is that the stories were ultra-clever and never told the same story twice. However, the humor probably went over the mass audiences head and doomed it to oblivion.However, if you catch it, it is an acquired taste and you will find yourself searching for more rare episodes. "Hoppity Hooper" is really a lost gem.

theowinthrop It was a cute experiment that did not get as far as it could have. Jay Ward made television (and cartoon) history in the late 1950s and early 1960s with ROCKY AND HIS FRIENDS, which introduced a degree of savvy and sophistication to children's television cartooning that current cartoons rarely met. When I was growing up the old Warner Brother cartoons with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc., and the older Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons, all of which were rich in very grown-up humor and jokes. That was because those cartoons were meant to entertain grown-ups more than kids when the studios made them. But those cartoons done on television were rarely as clever. The Harvey cartoons (Herman and Catnip, Little Lotta, Casper the Friendly Ghost) were rarely good - they repeated the basic stories again and again (Lotta for example was fat and stupid, but constantly accidentally trouncing a fox who wanted to eat her - and at the end she realized it and beat up the fox). The Hanna-Barbera group had made good cartoons in MGM with both Tom and Jerry, Droopy, and the works of Tex Avery. But the television shows they constructed for kids with Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw Magraw, Doggy Daddy, Snooper and Blabber, repeated the same basic joke situations (Yogi going after "pickinic" baskets under the nose of Ranger Smith; Huckleberry Hound falling on his face trying to calmly show how to do various jobs; Doggy Daddy forced - despite his own intelligence - in doing things to maintain his son's respect). There were a few good television cartoons made for children, most notably Heckyll and Jeckyll, but those were a rarity.Ward changed that with ROCKY and it's cast of satyric nitwits like spies Boris and Natasha, Fearless Leader, and Bullwinkle. Somehow only Ward would make a rare element (sought by the spies for Pottsylvania) that is anti-gravity, and call it "Upsidaisium". Only he would have made the dangerous actions stop long enough for two old codgers on a nearby bench named "Chauncey and Edgar" to comment cynically about.ROCKY became a hit and a permanent highpoint in television history with three years of cartoons that have been repeated very frequently. But Ward could fail badly. And HOPPITY HOOPER is the proof of it.HOPPITY appeared immediately after Ward stopped doing cartoons about Rocky and Bullwinkle. He was a frog from Foggy Bottom, Michigan, a name that would register a chuckle with grown-ups, but only with some straining. Rocky's "Frostbite Falls, Minnesota" made sense because it dealt with the image of snow and cold in the land of a thousand lakes, but "Foggy Bottom" is a term really reserved for Washington, D.C. which was founded on swamp land - and the word suggests a fog surrounding the government area - but it has nothing to do with Michigan's national image. It was sadly symptomatic.Ward and his writers and artists did their best. Hoppity meets a fox named "Professor" Waldo Wigglesworth - voice of Hans Conreid. Wigglesworth travels with his associate Filmore Bear (who is so dumb he makes Bullwinkle look intelligent). Wigglesworth is a con artist, but he and Fillmore befriend Hoppity and they proceed to travel together. The difference here though is that Waldo is always looking for the main chance, while Hoppity is serious enough to believe in ethics and morality. It's not quite the mingling of personality in ROCKY where the flying squirrel was naive but smarter than Bullwinkle, and both were constantly fooled by Boris and Natasha (who were usually thwarted by their over-planning events). Now this new combination was not a bad one - it changed the adventures into moral debates, and the dialog never let us forget it was a comedy. Conried went to town with his Waldo - in every cartoon there was a moment where Waldo would launch into a tear stained soliloquy about life, hope, or some other theme - all with the intention of somehow pulling the wool over the eyes of Hoppity or some other character. Hoppity would be there like a brake on the fox's actions, and Fillmore would accidentally utter a truism that shattered everything. The spoofing was not forgotten either. In one episode where the situation is border-line weird or spooky, a Rod Sterling narrator's voice is heard about how Professor Waldo Wigglesworth has just entered the "Twilight Zone" continuum. And finally, a fed-up Waldo tells the narrator to knock it off!The result were a pleasing series of cartoon adventures. But they never captured the audience used to ROCKY. It's a pity because, for a series that ultimately failed, it was worth watching. As pointed out in several other comments on this thread only one season of cartoons were made, and then it was canceled. Without 100 episodes (like ROCKY) there was no chance of the revivals of the show that kept its name and memory alive. Hopefully the show will be revived at some point on the cartoon network - if it is try to catch it.

mhlong I have always liked those strange little, maybe bizarre shows that have always seemed to just appear on TV and then disappear almost as quickly. Few people even know they existed, but for the serious TV watcher, they were what made television exciting. Shows like Gerald McBoingBoing, WinkyDink, Smilin' Ed's Gang (with Froggie the Gremlin). Shows that most likely were the ancestors of later shows like Fraggle Rock, Futurama, and Trippin the Rift, and currently South Park, Family Guy, Drawn Together. (Yes, The Simpsons, too, but that show is way too popular,and no to Beavis and Butthead - just gross for no reason, and no to King of the Hill, actually a rather sad show. Though, Beany and Cecil was really close). Shows that from a distance looked like kids fare,but if you actually took the time to watch and listen, you'd see very mature, adult writing and themes done with humor- shows that challenged you to think a little, while poking fun at every cultural reference one could think of.Of course, I watched Rocky and Bullwinkle, but when Hoppity Hooper appeared, my immediate thought was that, aha, the writers of R&B are pulling out all the stops and just going for joke after joke, but all rather deep. You had to really know what was going on, to catch it all. And it was all hilarious. All three leads were way over the top, Hoppity with his oh so serious, wide eyed innocence, Waldo with his angles to scam everything and everybody, and Filmore with his absolutely brainless utterances.I could just see the writers and lead voices having a blast with the barest of plots, but with the sarcasm and irony going full bore. These shows aren't for everyone, but if you like that kind of humor, there are some places around here you can see an episode or two.Too bad they didn't get that magic 100 shows so there would be enough for repeat syndication. A little gem of a show for the all too brief time it was on.

Captain Ed I haven't seen this since I was a kid, probably close to 30 years ago. I remember this being a trippy, sarcastic, and very funny cartoon. Years later I found out it came from Jay Ward prior to Rocky & Bullwinkle and was not surprised.There was one very trippy story arc which was supposed to be a spoof on the Twilight Zone. I can't remember the story line but I seem to recall that the resolution was that the entire cast wound up as vegetables in a garden, and that was how they escaped from this weird dimension in which they were trapped. I remember it being a riot, although I was probably eight the last time I saw it.Maybe someone will bring it back to TV, perhaps as a Jay Ward retrospective. Wouldn't that be a great idea?