Celebrating Hanna-Barbera's Animated Legacy with the Superstars 10 Blu-ray Collection
Mar 09, 2024Episode 136
George Feltenstein
George Feltenstein joins the podcast for a fun-filled look at the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 Blu-ray collection and a full review of what it has to offer HB fans. Prepare to be whisked away on a nostalgic journey, celebrating iconic characters and discussing how these films were ingeniously reintroduced to capture hearts across new generations. We're not just retracing animated history; we're exploring the meticulous efforts by the Warner Archive to polish these classics for high-definition glory, diving into special features, pricing strategies, and the ultimate value for die-hard fans. From Yogi Bear's pic-a-nic escapades, the stone-age shenanigans of The Flintstones, those meddling kids from Scooby-Doo, and everyone's favorite family of the future in The Jetsons, this collection is designed to dazzle both the character loyalists and those devoted to the entirety of Hanna-Barbera's magical universe.
Links to win a FREE Blu-ray of one of the INDIVIDUAL film releases: Sign up for our mailing list at our website Or email the correct answer to the question "What is the most popular Hanna-Barbera release from the Warner Archive?" to info@theextras.tv
George Feltenstein joins the podcast for a fun-filled look at the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 Blu-ray collection and a full review of what it has to offer HB fans. Prepare to be whisked away on a nostalgic journey, celebrating iconic characters and discussing how these films were ingeniously reintroduced to capture hearts across new generations. We're not just retracing animated history; we're exploring the meticulous efforts by the Warner Archive to polish these classics for high-definition glory, diving into special features, pricing strategies, and the ultimate value for die-hard fans. From Yogi Bear's pic-a-nic escapades, the stone-age shenanigans of The Flintstones, those meddling kids from Scooby-Doo, and everyone's favorite family of the future in The Jetsons, this collection is designed to dazzle both the character loyalists and those devoted to the entirety of Hanna-Barbera's magical universe.
Links to win a FREE Blu-ray of one of the INDIVIDUAL film releases: Sign up for our mailing list at our website Or email the correct answer to the question "What is the most popular Hanna-Barbera release from the Warner Archive?" to info@theextras.tv
Hello and welcome to the Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and their release on digital DVD, blu-ray, 4k or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard host, and joining me is George Feltenstein to review the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 Blu-ray release from the Warner Archive.
George Feltenstein:
Hi George, Hi Tim, Lovely day today to talk about Hanna-Barbera.
TIM MILLARD:
I know that a lot of people were looking forward to this release, myself included, so it's going to be fun to chat about these today. And there's just so much I don't know nostalgia, I guess might be the word wrapped up around these shows, because so many of us remember them from our you know childhood, and I know I have a lot of good memories of these characters. Though I haven't seen all of these movies previously, I'm so familiar with all of the characters from Hanna-Barbera library, so this was a lot of fun.
George Feltenstein:
This was a very interesting project to embark on because, basically, as Hanna-Barbera was nearing their 30th year of being an independent animation production company, after having left a Metro Goldwyn Mayer where they were making the Tom and Jerry cartoons, they started their own studio, which we've talked about before. But what they did hear, which I thought was very clever, was they utilized many of their characters, especially from the early days, in a way to try to introduce them to a new generation. But also, in creating these telefilms which were made for syndication, they were creating kind of event programming and the idea was that parents who knew these characters would be able to, you know, expose their kids to them, because the generation that grew up with Huckleberry Hound certainly had children of their own by 1988. And so for 1987 and 1988, it was Bill Hanna who created the concept of the Studio Building 10 Made for Television features. That would have a little bit of a higher budget than what they were normally doing for Saturday morning work, and it was sort of a coming home for a lot of the adults who remembered these characters from their childhood and they really hadn't been seen very much. And it was also Hannah Barbera rightly acknowledging all the different characters they had brought throughout the years and the most popular characters have the most input here, or some of the most popular characters, in that you've got three Scooby-Doo telefilms and you have three with Yogi Bear, and at the time this was being done, they were doing a reboot of the Yogi Bear show. So there's many, many different things floating around the concept of this initiative that made it, I think, really appropriate to release to our consumers.
George Feltenstein:
We had released most of these 10 years ago or so as DVDs and we wanted to be able to release them on Blu-ray and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to do so. But I wanted to make sure we released them as they were created and marketed, and that's all 10 of them, and that posed a little bit of a problem because they produced 8 of them under normal circumstances, finishing them with a 35 millimeter negative, and for the very last two Yogi and the Invasion of the Space Bears, and Scooby-Doo and the reluctant Werewolf, the latter being extremely popular with fans they completed their animation work they were using digital ink and paint and finished onto one inch analog video tape, and normally I would never allow any kind of uprising for a Blu-ray of ours. It would seem like there's no point to it. However, technologically things have improved in being able to make some of those video tape-based programs, not just ours, but throughout the industry. There has been improvement in being able to work from these basically worst possible scenario elements and bring them into something that's decent and watchable, and if we hadn't included them then it wouldn't be the Superstars 10. So what I tried to do to sweeten the pot was add our long true HD from film specials, if you will.
George Feltenstein:
With Yogi Bear we had Yogi's Ark Lark from the Yogi's gang TV series and then we had Scooby-Goes Hollywood. So all in all, we're covering basically a history of Hanabarbara creations from 1958 up through 1969, and how they morphed over the years, because it's kind of funny At this point we're not going to be talking about the way at this point. When these were made, Scooby-Doo was nearly 20 years old and Scooby-Do still continues today as a powerful character in the pantheon of Hana-Barbera characters. We're really delighted the way this turned out. It's a beautiful, sturdy package, but we also made sure that each of the films got their own release because certain people don't like all these characters. There are Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear fans who don't have an affinity for Scooby-Doo. There are Scooby-Doo fans who aren't interested in Huckleberry Hound. So this way we give consumers a choice and that's what we've always tried to do, as I spoke to you when we announced this.
George Feltenstein:
The suggested retail price of the singles is $14.98. Certain retailers have been charging much more than that, which is really disappointing. There's nothing we can do about that. Retailers free to charge whatever they want. But it sort of undermined the intention of this being a good value proposition. Whether you bought a single for $15, or whether you bought 10 movies for $69.98, $7 a movie, I wanted there to be value inherent because also, these are not big budget. You know they're not like a feature animation that added millions of dollars poured into it, but nonetheless they are what they are and a lot of them are exceptionally well made and entertaining and are a salute to the animation studio, that kind of our bear put together.
TIM MILLARD:
Yeah, and why don't we just kind of go through each of them briefly to just kind of let people know what they are or give our you know input to on on them individually, because it is a terrific package if you get the the 10 and, and just before we dive into them you have the box and then inside you have the two Blu-ray cases with five discs in each, just so that people kind of know how that is delivered there. But to go back to the movies, I thought we could just kind of start with maybe the oldest, because Huckleberry Hound, if I have it correct, the Huckleberry Hound show was the first animated series from Hanna- Barbera.
George Feltenstein:
No, it was the second the first was rough and ready. Okay, rough and ready, put together very quickly and Finished it on 16 millimeter camera. Positive, rough and ready was Really there. I want to say there their test project to get something on the air. And Huckleberry Hound was really their first superstar. And the Huckleberry Hound show was put together with sponsorship from Kellogg's serials and there was talk of it maybe being sold to a network. But the ad agency for Kellogg's had a better idea of syndicating to local stations so it was a kind of a strip along with Adventures of Superman and other series that the ad agency was kind of driving on Kellogg's behalf what they were sponsoring. But people with long memories remember the Kellogg's rooster opening every episode of the Huckleberry Hound show and Huckleberry Hound His voice is very recognizable To animation fans courses the great Dawes Butler who voiced Huckleberry Hound, and Yogi Bericic, john McGraw, so many things.
George Feltenstein:
But you can hear his voices in the MGM cartoons. You know a lot of the MGM Tom and Jerry cartoons and the tech savory cartoons Feature his voice. So that's a very, very cool thing that you know. He moved with Joe and Bill from MGM to Hanna-Barbera productions and he was just incredibly talented. He did so much for so many animated characters, and a lot of people have tried to imitate the voice that he did, but there's only one, Dawes Butler, just like there's only one, Mel Blanc.
TIM MILLARD:
Right. Well, with the, the film that's included here the good, the bad and Huckleberry Hound there's a kind of a poignant element to it too. I mean, it's a great parody of Westerns, so it's very amusing and very fun and I think it holds up.
George Feltenstein:
It's one of my favorites on the set today.
TIM MILLARD:
Yeah, it's really good. You know it's co-written by Tom Ruegger, who created the Tiny Toons and Ana maniacs, so you get some of that humor that Tom brought to his creations over the years. But it's poignant because it was the last film that Dawes Butler released before.
George Feltenstein:
I mean, they were so fortunate to get him. It's almost an emotional thing to talk about, because his voice was such an important factor in the childhood of so many millions of people. It was great to see Huck get a little bit of a prime focus, because what happened was the Huckleberry Hound Show was originally Huckleberry Hound, pixie and Dixie and Yogi Bear. That's how it was for the first two seasons. Yogi eclipsed Huckleberry Hound in terms of audience popularity and Yogi was given his own show and started appearing in all sorts of things. He had his own feature film hey, there, it's Yogi Bear which we released on Blu-ray a couple of months ago. There were Yogi series throughout the 1970s and 80s. Huck had a supporting role in some of them, but there was no real Huckleberry Hound centric production until this. It is very poignant that it was his last major contribution that I'm aware of.
TIM MILLARD:
Yeah yeah. The film itself is a riot and you can rewatch this one, I think, because it is so well written and so well produced and the timing and the humor and everything is so good in this one. It's a great one and a fun one to start off with. It's really well written.
George Feltenstein:
I think that's really the important part of it. They even make reference to the Dalton gang and there were episodes of Huckleberry Hound where he was going up against Dinky Dalton. They really had a lot of fun with this.
TIM MILLARD:
Yeah, they did. You just mentioned Yogi Bear obviously becoming so popular. I thought we would maybe then talk about these Yogi Bear films because he had his own show. I guess Huckleberry Hound premieres in 58. The Yogi Bear show premieres in 61. So it was pretty soon after that. But these three I thought were all very, very entertaining. I thought Yogi's great escape with the I think the three orphan bears or whatever, was really quite fun and very entertaining.
George Feltenstein:
They're all great and they're all very, very different. You also have kind of all star casts in some of them, where a lot of Hanna-Barbera characters pop up and help propagate the story, or propel the story, I should say and they're very enjoyable. But it was just another testament to Dawes Butler that he could create all these different voices that were very distinctly different. I remember when I was very, very, very little and I was watching Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear, I certainly thought they were voiced by different people. I didn't think it was the same voice. But that's what a talented voice actor Dawes Butler was.
TIM MILLARD:
Well, the three that are in there are Yogi's great escape, yogi Bear and the magical flight of the Spruce Goose, which is highly entertaining because they are traveling all over the world with that one. And then you mentioned Yogi and the invasion of the space bears and the extra on there, yogi's arc lark, which I thought was pretty entertaining as well, and that one looks beautiful.
George Feltenstein:
Yeah, again, because Yogi and the invasion of the space bears was not finished to 35 millimeter film, as it should have been for protection, and finished on videotape of the era, which is pretty ghastly. We did everything we could to improve it. We didn't want to not include it because then it wouldn't be the superstars 10. And therefore, by adding Yogi's arc lark, which was the pilot film for what landed the Yogi's gang series, and bringing that here in HD from the film just helped to give us feel like we're giving the consumer a little more value.
TIM MILLARD:
Yeah, yeah, it's a great way to round that one out. Well, the other extremely popular show that kind of aired between Huckleberry Hound and Yogi is the Flintstones, which debuted in 1960. And that was the first animated show in prime time. I'm a big fan of the Flintstones. I remember watching that in reruns with my mom and I just have great memories of that show. So when I saw the Jetsons made the Flintstones I was really looking forward to seeing that movie and I really enjoyed it.
George Feltenstein:
I thought it was terrific. It's interesting that they kind of like they waited so long to come up with that concept and make a film out of it. And yet I found a comic book that was made around the time of the New York World's Fair in 1964 or so. That was the Jetsons Meet the Flintstones at the New York World's Fair. So someone was thinking about bringing the two worlds together, but it never happened in animation until 20-some odd years later. And the way they did it was very, very cool and very well written and all the characters kind of melded together very well. The story is very well told. The animation is actually quite impressive and we were very fortunate we as the audience.
George Feltenstein:
George O'Hanlon, the voice of George Jetson, was near death at this point and it was one of the last things that he got to do. And so you have basically the original Flintstones voice cast, with the exception of Alan Reed who played Fred. Flintstone died in the late 70s. So by this time Henry Gordon, who had replaced him as the voice of Fred, had been doing it for over 10 years, and the voice of Betty Rubble, the original voice B Benadirah. She was replaced halfway into the run on the network series because she went off to do Petticoat Junctions so Betty was voiced by another person for the rest of the series. On ABC and then anything else Flintstone when they needed Betty Rubble, it was a myriad of different actresses that did the voice thing.
George Feltenstein:
But on the Jetsons you have George O'Hanlon as George Jetson, penny Singleton as Jane Jetson, janet Waldo, of course, as Judy Jetson, who has her own movie, and it's really, really terrific to have everybody basically providing their own voices. You know, to hear Mel Blank as Barney Rubble that's the only person you want to hear do Barney Rubble. Nobody else could do it like Mel Blank. I think it's a great deal of fun and all of these are now 35 years old or more or less. You know around that vintage. They are as old or older now than these were when they were brand new, reaching back to those old characters. So it's really fascinating in that respect.
TIM MILLARD:
I always am amused that the Jetson still looks futuristic, like we still haven't achieved it. Oh for sure you know we haven't achieved it. But with all the talk of AI and with all of the developments of artificial intelligence, you watch the Jetsons and you see it in action. There you see the robots and you see the computers being so smart and they're part of the villain in these films as well. When I say villain, maybe I should say that in George's case, his computer there has been giving away secrets because he's infatuated with another computer.
George Feltenstein:
I mean it's very clever and it's very entertaining. And once again, a guy mentioned Dawes Butler. He was the voice of Elroy Jetson.
TIM MILLARD:
Well, you just mentioned the other movie too that is in that world and that's the Rocking with Judy Jetson, and that came out in 88. So that must have been a spin-off. Just because that character was so popular, is that why she got her?
George Feltenstein:
own movie. Absolutely. It harkens back to a Jetsons episode where Judy has a date with Jets' screamer and they sing the song Eep Up Ork. I think that kind of laid the groundwork for this film, because it just seemed like a perfect extension and they actually wrote original music for this. They really tried to make these films very, very special.
TIM MILLARD:
Well, the next film I thought we would talk about is a standalone and that is the Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cat from 1988. And this is a lot of fun. It's got their traditional storyline of how they have their antics and then the policemen comes to chase them and everything. But it's really clever and really fun to watch.
George Feltenstein:
Top Cat was the second Hanna-Barbera series. I wanted to say sitcom, but it was a sitcom series that just happened to be anime. And Top Cat only ran for one season on ABC and then for the next 20 plus years jumped from CBS to NBC to ABC to NBC to CBS. It was always on that one season's worth of content. It was always on Saturday morning television. I think they may have pulled it for a year or so to go with the syndication Not sure about that, but I think that might have happened. But Top Cat was always around and what they were able to do here was that they were able to bring back some of the original voice cast, most importantly Arnold Stang as Top Cat. That was really critical. And Leo DeLion was Brain and Marvin Kaplan was Choo Choo.
George Feltenstein:
But what you don't have is Officer Dibble. Alan Jenkins, who was the voice of Officer Dibble, had passed away several years before, and also Maurice Gosfield who was the voice of Benny the Ball. He had passed away. So I think they did a good job with the voice casting and you could kind of hear the age of some of the actors, but it's pretty close to the way things were 27 years before. I always thought Top Cat was a little bit more edgy and sophisticated than Flintstones or Jetsons, because there was a lot of inhumor and it was kind of just as the Flintstones was unofficially taking a little bit of adaptation from the Honeymooners. Top Cat is obviously influenced by Sergeant Bilko at Phil Silver Show and even to the point where Maurice Gosfield, who played Benny the Ball, was voice on Top Cat and he was Doberman on Bilko. So they were basically saying, ok, let's take these soldiers and their sitcom and make them Alley Cats.
George Feltenstein:
Despite only one season being made, the character continued to popularity and especially had a popularity in Latin America. So much so that I would say maybe 15 years ago or 10 years ago there was a Top Cat 3D movie made specifically for that market and while there was no interest here in the US, there was definite interest in Latin America and from what I understand, the reason for that partially is that the voice cast that did the dubbing down there was somewhat famous. So someone who was a Hannah Barbera expert, which I'm not, could confirm this, but I think that that's the situation. But it was great that they brought the characters back. I was delighted to see that and I hadn't watched it in a while. I enjoyed watching this one very much.
TIM MILLARD:
Well, the last three films are all Scooby-Doo and I worked on many of the current Scooby-Doo releases when I was there at Warner Brothers I think. Warner Animation was putting out two, sometimes even three films a year and the quality of these films is usually pretty high because they have very good writers on them. And the ones that they have done more recently some of the ones I worked on were like Scooby-Doo meets Kiss and Scooby-Doo interacts with WWE. I mean, they keep trying to keep Scooby-Doo relevant for the kids, so it was fun to kind of go back and see these and these, to me, are all I would say classics, and I'm sure they're very popular and that's why it was kind of deflating to find out that especially the reluctant werewolf because that's a favorite of the fans and that that one wasn't finished to film.
George Feltenstein:
I was really disappointed in that. So we've got the Boo Brothers. That looks terrific, but reluctant werewolf is a little bit on the deficient side. Scooby-doo and the Ghoul School was also great looking. What I'll say, that all three films have in common they're super popular with the Scooby Cult. There is an enormous Scooby Cult. Just like we deal with the DC fans and the Hammer Film fans and the Looney Tunes fans. There's a subset within Hanna-Barbera fans. They may not even be a subset, they may be separate, they may not care about anything else Hanna-Barbera, but they're Scooby-centric. The release of these films has led to people asking for more Scooby on Blu-ray. So we're looking into that little hint there. I think that it will be possible for us to bring some of the very highly requested Scooby telefilms that have yet to appear on Blu-ray on a beautiful disc celebrating the glories of physical media.
TIM MILLARD:
Well, those were highly entertaining and that's kind of fun for Scooby-Doo fans to get just a little tease there. But before we wrap up, george, I thought I'd throw a few questions at you, only because this is March and it's the 15th anniversary. So I have a couple of questions about the Warner Archive and Hanna-Barbera releases over the years. So are you okay with that? Sure, all right. Well, do you remember the very first Warner Archive Hanna-Barbera release that you did?
George Feltenstein:
I did them like in clumps, so I can tell you some of the earliest ones that we did, but I can't tell you exactly the specific one because they came out in groups.
TIM MILLARD:
Well, I know that probably the regular Warner Brothers Home Entertainment was still doing a lot of the.
George Feltenstein:
Flintstones and Jetsons. Oh for sure, we couldn't go near that. We weren't allowed to. Yeah.
TIM MILLARD:
Those are core Home Entertainment titles, so I wasn't sure if there were some other ones that were released out there.
George Feltenstein:
Well, what we did was we were looking at, okay, what's been ignored, what came out on VHS that wasn't on DVD. I will tell you the first Hanna-Barbera release as a Warner Archive DVD that really made an impression and sold very well was Yogi's First Christmas, and that was one of our earliest releases.
TIM MILLARD:
Gotcha Well along those lines. Do you recall what has been the most popular Hanna-Barbera release over the last 15 years?
George Feltenstein:
I would say without question is the Johnny Quest Blu-ray set that we worked on about four or five years ago and that opened the doorway for people to realize how important it was to have the Hanna-Barbera library looking great.
TIM MILLARD:
You and I have mentioned this on previous podcasts, but I did work on some of the extras for that one, so I remember how much fun that was creating some feature ads for that release. So that was a lot of fun. Well then, one last question I want to ask you about this is is there a title that has been requested a lot that you have not yet released on Blu-ray that you hope to someday?
George Feltenstein:
How long amount of time do we have to discuss this? That would take several hours, okay.
TIM MILLARD:
All right. Well, there's just so many things between the Jetsons, the Flintstones, the Yogi Bears and just so many great characters, so it's probably the possible question, but I thought.
George Feltenstein:
I'd ask you that. My feeling is I could give a more descriptive answer or even a descriptive hint, but until something has assigned a piece of paper that shows an approval, I'm not going to hint at anything. That could necessarily fall off the schedule and disappoint a lot of people. I don't want to do that, yeah.
TIM MILLARD:
Well, as always, george, you do drop us little hints here, which I appreciate, and I know the fans do as well. So Scooby-Doo fans keep a lookout, as you mentioned there, but there's just such a great, great great library there for Hannah Barbera that eventually, hopefully, we'll get out.
George Feltenstein:
So thanks for coming on and talking about this Absolutely, and when we start talking about our birthday, which is coming up in a few weeks, maybe we can get into more details of what the future will bring this year, because it's going to be an exciting year and I'm happy to share that.
TIM MILLARD:
For those of you interested in ordering the releases we discussed today, there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at wwwthexteristv, so be sure and check those out. If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at the X-Ris TV or Instagram at the X-Ristv, to stay up to date on our upcoming guests and to be a part of our community. And you're invited to a Facebook group for fans of Warner Brothers Films called Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog Group. So look for that link on the Facebook page or in the podcast show notes as well. And for our long-term listeners, please don't forget to follow and leave us a review at iTunes, spotify or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time you've been listening to Tim Lard, stay slightly obsessed.