I've quoted this before but someone once asked Kurt Vonnegut to explain the meaning of life. He said...
Well, I have a son who writes very well. He just wrote one book; it's called The Eden Express. It's my son Mark, who is a pediatrician and who went crazy and recovered to graduate from Harvard Medical School. But anyway, he says, and I've quoted him in a couple of my books, "We're here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
Mr. Vonnegut's writing helped a lot of people to get through this thing, whatever it is. It's a shame to lose him but at least we, and succeeding generations, still have the books.
Jerry Beck has the happy announcement not only that a DVD of Walter Lantz Woody Woodpecker cartoons is on its way but that it will be done right — with well-chosen cartoons properly restored. (Well, almost right: I can't help but look at the cover art and note that when I did the Woody Woodpecker comic book, a drawing like that would have prompted a polite but serious phone call from Mr. Lantz himself, admonishing the editors that Woody's eyes do not cut into his beak.)
My pal Jerry is too modest to tell you about all the lobbying and consulting and suggesting he did to make this happen. So I will.
I'm happy this stuff's coming out even though I'm not the biggest fan of Woody Woodpecker. I once was. As a kid, I loved his TV show but I think what I loved most about it was that Lantz did these little "how to draw cartoons" segments. As I grew older, I'd occasionally catch a Woody cartoon and wonder what it was I ever liked about most of them. I have a VHS tape I picked up once in K-Mart for four bucks that Universal put out many moons ago. It contains all the cartoons Tex Avery directed for the Lantz studio plus five or six good Woody Woodpecker cartoons. I used to tell friends it had every good Walter Lantz cartoon on it.
"Pish and tosh," they'd tell me. Well, not really. I don't know anyone who says "Pish and tosh." But that was the kind of disagreement I heard from animation buffs. There were many wonders from that studio, they'd insist...not just the few on my tape. Well, I'm eager and quite willing to be convinced.
What has Mark found this time? Hmm...how about a Post Alpha-Bits commercial with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd? This one was done for inclusion in the prime-time series, The Bugs Bunny Show, which ran on ABC from 1960 to 1962 before being relocated to Saturday morn. I think Friz Freleng directed this ad or at least supervised its direction. Mel Blanc, of course, is voicing Bugs Bunny. The Fudd voice is by Hal Smith, who most people will remember best as Otis the Town Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. Hal did an amazing amount of animation voicing in his long career without ever becoming associated with a famous character.
This commercial does not make me want to buy Post Alpha-Bits. In fact, it suggests that if you do, you're likely to drive off a cliff. But it's interesting that in it, they're touting a new formula for the product. For fifty-some-odd years now, whenever I've seen a commercial for Alpha-Bits, it always seems to be announcing a new formula. This may be the only cereal to change the outside of the box less often than they change what's inside it.
This is an outsider's perception but it's always seemed to me that Post lucked into a great name for a cereal and a great gimmick — the letter shapes — but they've never found an actual cereal that can be sold in those shapes and under that name that people like. I remember trying it a couple of times when I was a kid, usually when a little box of it came in one of those "Post Ten Trays" with individual servings. It tasted a lot like eating plain table sugar. Even when I was ten, it was too sweet for me. For a time there, it was even called Frosted Alpha-Bits.
About two years ago, the Post people reconfigured its recipe for the umpteenth time, removing all the sugar and adding in whole-grain oat bran. It's now supposedly just like Cheerios except that you get the 25 other letters in the box, as well and the ads now tout its fiber content...an amazing transformation.
April 12, 2007
