Jazz-Hands

And as you join us (as they say in all the best live broadcast commentaries), Switch and Haily are trying to introduce Elysia and the Tyneham sisters to some aspects of modern culture.

‘I don’t understand it?’

‘Is it pretty?’

‘Is it art?’

‘It’s Hanna Barbera.’

‘Hanna Barbera? You mean the artist responsible for this was a woman?’

‘No, Rowan – two guys.’

‘Two gentlemen? Oh Cloverstardrop, the mores of your era are most vexing? And such primitiveness of line and colour!’

‘Yeah, well they never did learn to draw properly – Yakko, Wacko and Dot from Animaniacs used to rip on them about it. I’d have asked for a job with HB when I was nine if they’d still been around, but I’d probably have been overqualified!’

‘But what statement do they intend to make to the beholder by such crudeness? What are these artists trying to say?’

‘Um, that Scooby and Yogi are a pair of pussies?’

‘Pussies? I’m sorry but I do not understand? They look like a Great Dane and a bear, but yet you say they are representative of felines? And why is the bear wearing a tie but is otherwise naked? Are we to draw some inference from this paradoxical juxtaposition?’

‘Holy Sprite fountains, this is like drawing teeth!’

How are Elysia and Haily finding it?

♫ ‘MUMBLEY – MUMBLEY! OI – OI! MUMBLEY – MUMBLY! OI – OI!’ ♪

‘Ah well, if you can’t beat them, join them – ♫ Mumbley-Mumbley, OI! OI! – Mumbley-Mumbley, OI! OI! ♪’

‘Oh I see. Is this what is called Expressionism – one expresses oneself to the art?’

That’s a new way of enjoying art galleries. Wonder if it will catch on? Hordes of tourists going to the Musée Marmottan, pointing at the pictures and chanting ‘Mo-NET! Mo-NET!’? Or going to a photograms exhibition and chanting ‘Who’s the Man Ray in the black?’

* * * * *

Hanna Barbera Studios made a lot of crap cartoons amongst their good ones (largely to flood the market in the hope of putting their bitter rivals Filmation out of business), and one of HB’s more idiotic notions (of which they had many) was recycling characters in their few successful shows into ‘all-star’ spin-offs (eg. Yogi’s Ark), the first of these being the ill-named (and ill-fated) Laff-A-Lympics.

It was more in the spirit of It’s A Knockout/Jeux Sans Frontiers than the Olympics, the premise being three teams competing each episode to win a tournament of games held between two particular world venues that allowed HB’s scriptwriters to let their xenophobic stereotyping skills to run riot: the teams being the Scooby Doobies (facepalm at the silly name), the Yogi Yahooies (double facepalm with sprinkles and a flake), and the Really Rottens.

The first two teams consisted of ‘detective’ characters in Scooby’s and anthropomorphised animals in Yogi’s. The Really Rottens however were a ragbag of rejected or flop characters there to make up the numbers and provide the finger-wagging moral lesson that cheats never win – their dramatis being the Dalton Brothers (crap ex-nemeses of first Huckleberry Hound and later Quickdraw McGraw’s equally crap alter-ego El Kabong), the Creeplies (formerly the Gruesomes from The Flintstones – one of whom bore an alarming resemblance to singer/actress Cher), hillbilly Daisy Mayhem and Sooey Pig, plus Fondoo Magician and Magic Rabbit.

Originally they were to be led by Dick Dastardly and Muttley, but a legal wrangle with Heatter-Quigley Productions over the Wacky Races spin off Dick Dastardly and Muttley In Their Flying Machines aka Stop The Pigeon! (one of HBs few true financial success stories) meant a bad Dick Dastardly copy – the Dread Baron – was added, teamed initially with Mumbly – Muttley’s cousin – but from the off it was Mumbly alone that led the Really Rottens, Dread Baron being relegated to making up the numbers.

(In an ironic twist, the Dread Baron had been the original intended lead character in Stop The Pigeon, but was replaced with Dastardly and Muttley as their double-act proffered more plot potential).

HB were confident they had an easy hit with the two ‘goodies’ teams taking turns to prevail (more often than not the Scoobies) despite the dirty tricks of the ‘baddies’, the Really Rottens (the moral of the story being that in sport cheats never win, despite all evidence to the contrary), but the first series went down like colonic irrigation with kids, and a hastily rewritten second series didn’t save it from cancellation: the major problem being – ironically – the Really Rottens.

Having villains called The Really Rottens wasn’t likely to have the kids booing them when one of the most popular bands on the planet at that time was the Sex Pistols – led by Johnny Rotten – not least of all because they horrified so many grown-ups (always a plus with kids), but the major problem was the charactisation.

Mumbly had been a Columbo style detective (right down to the unwashed trenchcoat and semi-oxidised heap of a car) with a bit-part slot in Grape Ape, following the old formula of the atypical downtrodden underdog coming good at the end against both the villains and his good for nothing boss forever trying to take the credit for his hard work. Logically, Mumbly ought to have been in Scooby’s team – or even Yogi’s team with Grape Ape, whose show he’d been part of months earlier.

Kids found the idea of Mumbly now being a villain jarring, especially since Yogi’s team contained two long running HB villains in Hokie Wolf and Mr Jinks (the latter the nemesis of Pixie and Dixie – now confusingly together in Yogi’s team) that ought to have been Rottens, especially since – along with Dynomutt for the Scoobies – they weren’t averse to some cheating themselves in the show to win. Unlike the Rottens however, they did so without ever being penalised for it, theirs was somehow ‘gamesmanship’. Kids being kids, they found the double standard far more unfair than the Rottens’ dirty tricks.

It was only when the fifth issue of the spin-off comic version came out to soaring sales – The Day The Rottens Won – that HB realised to their horror they’d goofed. Viewers didn’t hate the Really Rottens as intended and enjoy some schadenfreude from their pratfalls, they felt sorry for Mumbly’s team and wanted them to win for once, not the also-cheating ‘good-guys’ – helped perhaps by having the only thing in the show that did manage to make people laugh: Mumbly sharing his cousin Muttley’s trademark asthmatic snigger. The rest of the show was about as funny as an ingrown toenail.

Another unexpected development was the Really Rottens produced what nowadays would be termed a ‘breakout character’, one becoming popular with the viewers despite a minor role, the one in this case being Magic Rabbit, who was often used in a ‘continuity’ role as events switched from one event or world setting to the other. It wasn’t so much what he done as the fact it ended invariably with him shouting ‘Brak!’ (his only piece of vocabulary) with his tongue out like he was vomiting up a furball. By the trunciated second series, he was being referred to in show by the name the viewers did – Brak Rabbit.

'Brak!' versus 'Ack!'. Was Brak Rabbit the demo version of Bill The Cat?

3 years after Laff-A-Lympics ended, a certain Bill The Cat was to become a cult figure in Milo’s Meadow/Bloom County/Outlands. His catchphrase was the only word he ever used, ‘Ack!’, also in a manner suggesting vomiting a furball. Was Brak Rabbit the inspiration behind an 80s American cultural icon?

There was also HB’s usual appalling sense of timing; running up cartoon characters to exploit popular cultural trends (eg. CB Bears), only to find the world had moved on by the time of release. Hillbillies may have been a staple target for derision since Deliverance a few years earlier, but Laff-A-Lympics’ second series appeared just as Dukes Of Hazzard was the second most popular TV show in the US and rednecks were ‘cool’ again, the villainous loud-mouthed Daisy Mayhem was completely at odds with a nation in love with hillbilly sweetheart Daisy Duke (whom she shared an accidental likeness to).

HB hastily rewrote the ending of two episodes of the second series so that the Rottens won to keep the viewers sweet (it was no coincidence that they were the episodes where the events were being held in the USA) as well as jointly winning the last episode with the other two teams, but the decision to cancel the show had already been made anyway by the networks halfway into the second season as yet another HB burst flush.

Laff-A-Lympics and the Really Rottens were all to disappear into cartoon history – all bar Mumbly, who finally got to be the lead character in his own spin-off show to cash in on his unexpected popularity with children.

Looks like he got the last wheezy laugh over his HB creators after all.