Speaking of Hanna-Barbera shows: A lot of you have seen this but I'll bet some of you haven't. It's the opening to Ruff & Reddy, the first cartoon show produced by that studio. It ran on NBC on Saturday mornings beginning in December of 1957, a few months before I turned six. Still, I remember getting up to watch it every week.
The show had a host named Jimmy Blaine who'd run a couple of episodes of Ruff & Reddy and then, in between them, he'd offer up an old Columbia theatrical cartoon, often one featuring The Fox and the Crow. Between the animated features, Mr. Blaine interacted with a couple of bird puppets — Rhubarb the Parrot and Jose the Toucan. They were operated by puppeteer Rufus Rose, who was the main puppeter on Howdy Doody, which was also a part of NBC's programming for kids. After a few years, the show with Mr. Blaine went off but Ruff & Reddy came back later in another series, this time hosted by Captain Bob Cottle.
I never cared much for either Blaine or Cap'n Bob but I liked Ruff & Reddy…though I liked Hanna-Barbera's next few shows a lot more. It's a shame we aren't likely to see their first series out on DVD for a long time. There were 156 of the four minute Ruff & Reddy cartoons and they'd fit nicely on two DVD sets. In fact, they'd probably fare better there than they have anywhere else.
These were serialized stories and those don't work so well on a cable channel like Boomerang or Cartoon Network, especially the way those channels have usually run them on the rare occasions when they've run them. They were used as fillers. I don't think kids today ("those kids today") will really spark to the notion of following a serialized storyline. That's why no one makes serialized cartoons and why the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, as wonderful as we all know them to be, don't do well on TV. But you really can't build an audience for a serialized cartoon show that doesn't air in a regularly scheduled time slot. A serial might, however, work just fine on a DVD. It's a pity that Warner Home Video will probably have to be right down to the bottom of its barrel before we get The Complete Ruff & Reddy. So for now, just enjoy the opening titles…
